Word: kennan
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...NUCLEAR DELUSION by George F. Kennan; Pantheon; 208 pages; $13.95 WITH ENOUGH SHOVELS by Robert Scheer; Random House; 285 pages...
George F. Kennan's answer is that these deployments have become such a dangerous fact of life because American leaders have too often failed to think realistically about their consequences. Even a "limited" nuclear conflict would, in his opinion, quickly lead to a transcendent catastrophe. "There is no issue at stake in our political relations with the Soviet Union ... which could conceivably be worth a nuclear war," writes the dean of American Kremlinologists. Therefore the vow to retaliate against Soviet aggression with the American nuclear arsenal quite simply does not make sense to him. It is either a bluff...
...Kennan, now 78, will probably be best remembered by future historians for the 1946 cable he wrote while a diplomat in Moscow, urging that the U.S. dedicate itself to the containment of Soviet expansionism. He published a version of the cable in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym "X." He has spent much of his life since then criticizing the way in which eight successive Presidents have followed his advice. Significantly, he has not included that famous Long Telegram in this collection of past writings. Instead, he reprints a 1950 memorandum to Dean Acheson warning against putting much faith in nuclear...
...Mount Holyoke President Elizabeth Kennan, a medievalist, believes that the "genuine integration" of humanities and sciences will strengthen the liberal arts. Says she: "The heart of a liberal arts education is concern with the world we find ourselves in, our ability to comprehend it and make moral judgments about our action...
...That power seemed so predatory and implacable that the Western democracies believed their only hope was to band together and deter further Soviet expansionism. The idea of actively coaxing the U.S.S.R. toward a more humane social order seemed out of the question. The author of the containment doctrine, George Kennan, held out the dim hope that if the Soviet aggressive drive were held in check, perhaps the regime might mellow. But that would happen only very gradually. Because of the internal dynamics of the Soviet Union, Kennan argued, American influence on that country's evolution could only be oblique...