Word: kennan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...seldom stir up much of a fuss. But a pseudonymous piece appearing in the quarterly's winter issue is kicking up a storm. Titled "To the Stalin Mausoleum," the pessimistic assessment of the Soviet Union's ability to transform itself both economically and politically is obviously modeled after George Kennan's famous 1947 Foreign Affairs essay, in which Kennan outlined the concept of containment of the Soviet Union. While Kennan wrote under the byline "X," the Daedalus author identified himself -- or herself -- only...
...years there has been dissenting wisdom in the West. Most notably, George Kennan, the intellectual godfather of the original concept of containment, has objected to the way it was applied; he has cautioned against demonizing the adversary, overestimating enemy strength and overmilitarizing the Western response...
...early as 1947, Kennan suggested that Soviet power "bears within it the seeds of its own decay" and that the U.S.S.R. might turn out to be "one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societies." But unlike the little boy in the fable, Kennan was largely ignored by the crowd when he dared to say out loud that perhaps the emperor in the Kremlin was not quite so resplendent in his suit of armor. Now along comes Gorbachev to announce his nakedness to the world, and Yakovlev to confide that he too feels a chill...
...Kennan's view and his recommendations had prevailed, the world would probably at least still be where it is today, beyond containment, and perhaps it might have arrived there considerably sooner and at less expense...
...Soviet Union had ever been as strong as the threatmongers believed, it would not be undergoing its current upheavals. Those events are actually a repudiation of the hawkish conventional wisdom that has largely prevailed over the past 40 years, and a vindication of the Cassandra-like losers, including Kennan...