Word: kennan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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AMERICAN LIFE IN THE fifties is remembered as dull in general, the Eisenhower administration's programs are recalled as even duller, and the nation's foreign policy can be briefly summarized as Dulles. Insofar as it deals with public life, George Kennan's second volume of memoirs does not appear to have a terribly interesting subject. But even if the period was the boring middle act of a bad tragedy, Kennan's attempts to divert the course of events into less static lines command attention, if only for the force of his personality...
...American foreign policy had become rigidly set as a military response to what was seen as a world-wide Communist challenge. Kennan's influence in the councils of the powerful waned with the departure of his bureaucratic angel, General Marshall. Dissatisfaction with prevailing powers compelled Kennan to retreat to Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies. While Dean Acheson put the finishing touches on his creation, solidifying NATO and arranging the rearmament of divided Germany, Kennan lectured, wrote, and informally negotiated with the Russians over the Korean conflict. He was unhappy with foreign policy, and destined to remain that...
Leadership of the Free World may have meant hegemony rather than empire, but Kennan's policy recommendations denied that domination was the goal. He preferred to believe the national interest lay in more modest directions, and an emotional commitment to a unified Europe that could offset a powerful Soviet state. He showed no patience for people desiring to make the world over in America's interest, and he never even acknowledged the legitimacy of their participation in American government...
...KENNAN SOUGHT POWER. He wanted his advice accepted. But he had no partisan aims and detested competitive, less knowledgeable, contributors to American foreign policy--especially the Congress. Certainly his ambition has been anything but unique among post-war Intellectuals. What surprises is that he felt so completely frustrated. The success of a Kissinger or a Rostow contrasts markedly with Kennan's failure. But to explain the different outcomes in terms of personality begs the question. Kennan's failure was rooted in an institutional bias in favor of a Cold War mentality which could not appreciate the subtleties of Kennan...
...Kennan never found much pleasure in any career separated from power, and he reacts with occasional arrogance to the pettiness of his academic colleagues. He grumbles through the second volume of his memoirs about the problem of getting good domestics in various countries (house servants are uncooperative in the Soviet Union, nonexistent in the United Kingdom). A deep-seated elitism becomes quickly transparent. Kennan has a commitment to the existence of an elect, not necessarily of the people, but of God, or at least of a natural order that distributes talents unevenly...