[Introduction to Decline of the West?: George Kennan and His Critics.]
In his Memoirs, George Kennan recalls his unhappiness with President Truman's March 12. 1947, speech to the Congress in which the President not only recommended American emergency aid to Greece and Turkey, but made certain general statements—which have come to be known as the "Truman Doctrine"—about what the United States should do in similar situations elsewhere. At that time Greece was the victim of a Communist insurgency supported by three neighboring Communist countries (Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria), and Turkey found itself under pressure from the Soviet Union.
"I believe," President Truman said, "that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.... The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuge as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter...."
Kennan thought this proclamation altogether too sweeping. He expressed the view—by his own account, even before the President's message—that Truman's pronouncement "placed our aid to Greece in the framework of a universal policy rather than in that of a specific decision addressed to a specific set of circumstances. It implied that what we had decided to do in the case of Greece was something we would be prepared to do in the case of any other, country, provided only that it was faced with the threat of 'subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.'"
Nevertheless, Kennan did support what he termed "our limited intervention in Greece" because it met three criteria he stipulated in a lecture to the National War College: 1) The solution to the problem at hand was within our economic, technical, and financial capabilities; 2) The resulting situation, if we did not take such action, might redound decidedly to the advantage of our political adversaries; 3) If we did take the action in question, there was good reason to expect that the favorable consequences would carry far beyond the limits of Greece itself.
The third point is especially interesting because it involves what has later come to be termed, in another context, the "domino effect" (sometimes even dignified with the appellation "domino theory"). Assistance to Greece was justified, first, on strategic grounds: If that country were to be taken over by an externally supported Communist minority, it would have extremely damaging effects on the Western position in the entire Eastern Mediterranean. But the political effects could be even more far-reaching. As Kennan himself pointed out, the United States had to consider the repercussions "in an area even more important from the standpoint of our security: Western Europe."
While these quotations are from the Kennan 1967 Memoirs, it should be noted that he was recalling his views of twenty years before, when the Truman Doctrine had been enunciated. Thus, in contemplating what might have happened if we had failed to support Greece, he wrote:
It was hard to overestimate, in those days of uncertainty and economic difficulty, the cumulative effects of sensational political events. People were influenced, as I pointed out on that occasion to the War College, not just by their desires as to what should happen but by their estimates of what would happen. People in Western Europe did not, by and large, want Communist control. But this did not mean that they would not trim their sails and even abet its coming if they gained the impression that it was inevitable. This was why the shock of a Communist success in Greece could not be risked.
About three months after the Truman Doctrine speech, Kennan's famous "X" article appeared in Foreign Affairs (July 1947). In it he analyzed "the sources of Soviet conduct" and suggested a policy for the West to deal with what he saw as the inherently expansionist character of the Soviet Union. A masterpiece of clarity, the article analyzed the historical and ideological roots of Soviet behavior in international affairs. In a key passage, Kennan wrote:
The very teachings of Lenin himself require great caution and flexibility in the pursuit of Communist purposes. Again, these precepts are fortified by the lessons of Russian history: of centuries of obscure battles between nomadic forces over the stretches of a vast unfortified plain. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility and deception are the valuable qualities; and their value finds natural appreciation in the Russian or the oriental mind. Thus, the Kremlin has no compunction about retreating in the face of superior force. And being under the compulsion of no timetable, it is a fluid stream which moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a given goal. Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power.
These pressures against the free institutions of the Western world, Kennan concluded, "can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence. The Russians look forward to a duel of indefinite duration, and they see that already they have scored great successes." In what has probably become the best-known passage of his closely reasoned article, Kennan wrote:
This [the relatively weaker position of Russia] would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.
Although Kennan's concept of "containing" Soviet power on a long-term basis was not enunciated publicly until some months after the Truman Doctrine speech, it nevertheless represents the philosophical underpinning of a long period of U.S. foreign policy, including that expressed in the Truman Doctrine. Certainly it was so perceived by the American public as well as by foreign observers of the evolution of American policy.
The concept of containment immediately came under attack from critics of various political persuasions: some, mainly on the right side of the political spectrum, thought it did not go far enough; others, e.g. Walter Lippmann, saw containment as the equivalent of "trench warfare" and thus uncongenial to the American character; and still others. such as former Vice President Henry Wallace, held that keeping the peace could and should be left to the United Nations.
But the most formidable critic of the containment doctrine as it was generally understood was Kennan himself. He described his reactions during the debate on containment, and, when attempts were made later to apply the concept in various parts of the world, in these terms:
Feeling like one who has inadvertently loosened a large boulder from the top of a cliff and now helplessly witnesses its path of destruction in the valley below, shuddering and wincing at each successive glimpse of disaster, I absorbed the bombardment of press comment that now set in.
In retrospect, he wrote in his 1967 Memoirs, he recognized that his article had had serious deficiencies. Since some of those deficiencies were similar to those which he had criticized earlier in the Truman Doctrine, it was not entirely clear why he had not edited or rewritten the Foreign Affairs article to convey his thinking more accurately. The first deficiency, he said, had been the failure to discuss the role of Soviet power in Eastern Europe.
The second serious deficiency of the X-Article—perhaps the most serious of all—was the failure to make clear that what I was talking about when I mentioned the containment of Soviet power was not the containment by military means of a military threat, but the political containment of a political threat. Certain of the language used—such as "a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies" or "the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points"—was at best ambiguous, and lent itself to misrepresentation in this respect.
The third great deficiency, Kennan continued, had been his failure to distinguish between various geographic areas, and to make clear that the containment of which he had been speaking was not something that could be applied successfully everywhere, or even needed to be done successfully everywhere, in order to serve the purpose he had in mind. Some of these self-criticisms were thus similar to the objections he had voiced about the sweeping language of the Truman Doctrine speech.
Whether by containment or another name, the principle of confronting the Russians "with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching" was a guiding concept of American foreign policy for at least two decades after the "X" article appeared. The only overt Soviet aggression during that period was directed against countries that tried to liberate themselves from Russian control, and to such situations containment was not applicable; but it seems fair to say that the attack of Communist North Korea against non-Communist South Korea in 1950 would not have taken place if the Soviet Union had not armed North Korea for that purpose and given it the green light. It is significant that Kennan (like many of America's top military and political leaders), having originally recommended against any U.S. effort to defend South Korea against an eventual attack, became aware, when the attack occurred, of the high costs to the United States else-where if it failed to intervene and to restore the regional balance that had been upset by the Communist attack.
While Kennan disclaimed paternity for the containment doctrine, at least in the form in which it was later applied, his thinking on East-West relations has apparently undergone a significant evolution. His belief that the United States should maintain alliances only with the major democratic industrial powers was already implicit in the exegesis of containment in his Memoirs; but he has also come to change his views about the nature of Western society and now even questions whether it is worth defending.
An extreme formulation of the latter thought is found in his letter which first appeared in 1976 in the German newspaper, Die Zeit (see selection 1):
Poor old West: succumbing feebly, day by day, to its own decadence, sliding into debility on the slime of its own self-indulgent permissiveness: its drugs, its crime, its pornography, its pampering of the youth, its addiction to its bodily comforts, its rampant materialism and consumerism—and then trembling before the menace of the wicked Russians, all pictured as supermen, eight feet tall, their internal problems all essentially solved, and with nothing else now to think about except how to bring damage and destruction to Western Europe. . . .
He expresses similar views in other writings. On the danger of Soviet aggression or pressure against neighboring states, he expresses a strong conviction that Western "military enthusiasts" are guilty of confusing intentions and capabilities, making totally unwarranted "worst case" assumptions about the former and congenitally exaggerating the latter.
In his most recent book, The Cloud of Danger, published in 1977, Kennan takes positions slightly less extreme than those he expressed in recent articles and interviews in which he seemed to say that it was more important for the West to reform itself than to defend itself. He does recognize the existing fears in Western Europe that our side might be overbalanced in conventional arms by the power of the Soviet Union and its satellites; and, while regarding such fears as irrational ("We have to treat our European friends as a species of psychiatric patient with hallucinations"), he concludes that the American military presence in Europe might have to be increased—to humor the Europeans.
Perhaps the essence of his thinking on military matters is expressed in the passage dealing with intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union as they are perceived by many Western military experts:
The assumptions with relation to Soviet strength are as exaggerated as are those that relate to Western European weakness. The belief that stronger powers dominate weaker ones and dictate terms to them simply by the possession of superior military force, or by demands placed under threat of the use of such force, has extremely slender support in historical experience.
Taken together, these revisions of Kennan's thinking come close to something we used to call "isolationism," though Kennan did himself a disservice in describing his own position as basically isolationist (see selection 2). That he is no longer a believer in "containment" should come as no surprise: he has long parted company with those who believed that approach to be a viable prescription for American foreign policy.
What, then, is his current body of beliefs?
This modest collection seeks to assess to what extent Kennan's current thinking represents a coherent whole, which can be compared with his thinking of thirty years ago. We believe—or at least hope-that the clash of ideas will generate light. The Ethics and Public Policy Center takes no position on the merits of either side of the debate. We believe the reader will be able to grasp the essence of Kennan's current views from the excerpts printed here. We also believe we are giving adequate space to his intellectual adversaries to set forth what they believe to be today's dictates of national security in dealing with Communist states, which have become more numerous and varied since Kennan first wrote about Communism, but which still, in the view of the critics, show tendencies of wishing to "encroach upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world."
From the outset of this project I have enjoyed the support, encouragement, and practical assistance of Dr. Ernest W. Lefever, Director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He has himself made some difficult selections, for instance from Kennan's Cloud of Danger. Without his advice and guidance this project could not have been brought to fruition.
I also thank Ambassador Kennan for permission to reproduce portions of his book, and express appreciation to him and our other contributors for permission to include their essays from various periodicals which are fully identified at the beginning of each selection.
MARTIN F. HERZ, Editor
Washington, D.C.
September 1978
