Word: kennan
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...about, through a combination of diplomacy, economic assistance and military alliances, to create an international environment that would "contain" the Soviet empire within its own boundaries, forcing the Marxist-Leninist-Stali nist system to stew in its own poisonous juices. The author of that strategy, George Kennan, believed Soviet Communism "bears within it the seeds of its own decay." Containment, he wrote in 1947, could eventually lead to "the gradual mellowing of Soviet power." But until then, he stressed, "there can be no appeal to common purposes...
...Afghanistan may turn out to be part of something much more welcome. It may mark the beginning of the end of Soviet imperialist outreach. And it may have come about not just because of American counterpressure but also because of ferment within the Soviet power structure itself. In short, Kennan's original prediction of the eventual "mellowing" of Soviet power may finally be coming true...
Thus, according to Kennan's original criteria, there perhaps can, finally, be an "appeal to common purposes" in Soviet-American relations beyond the elemental one of mutual survival. Until now, avoiding nuclear war has been the only common purpose on which the superpowers could continually agree. That is why arms control has been such a central element in superpower relations. Attempts to reconcile the deeper political disputes over the relationship between the individual and the state -- or between the Soviet state and the rest of the world -- have always failed. For example, in 1972 the superpowers signed a "code...
...West were quick to denounce the invasion as a first step toward the seizure of the oil fields and warm-water ports of the Persian Gulf, ) and as part of a continuing overall Soviet design for the conquest of the world. More moderate experts, like Diplomat and Historian George Kennan, the father of the doctrine that the U.S. and its allies must "contain" Soviet expansionism around the globe, had another explanation. They believed that Leonid Brezhnev and the other Kremlin gerontocrats were seeking a buffer zone against Islamic ferment in Iran, much as Joseph Stalin had erected the Iron Curtain...
...these cases, the Soviets want to play both sides against the middle -- and against the U.S. if they can get away with it -- but apparently not at the cost of greatly increased regional tensions, much less global ones. Armacost recalls that George Kennan, in formulating the concept of containment four decades ago, predicted that over time the Soviet Union would pay more attention to reform at home and consolidation of its position abroad than to expansionism and adventurism. Concludes Armacost: "To some degree, that's what's at work here." And if that is the case, then Gorbachev represents...