Word: kennans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...following article, by Azinna Nwafor, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies, is a response to an article by George Kennan which attacked "simplistic solutions" of "foreign critics" to the problem of apartheid in South Africa...
WITH ALL due respect to Professor Kennan's formidable distinction, his "Fresh Thoughts on South Africa" (The New York Times, 18 Dec., 1970), should more appropriately. have been entitled, "Stale Thoughts on South Africa." Professor Kennan spiritedly argues against the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force against the tyranny of South Africa-one hears, in the italicized words, echoes of Kennan's celebrated "X" article of 1947-as the only dialogue possible with the rulers of that country. Instead, he has now urged the need for anyone troubled by the tragedy of South Africa to "hold the white rulers...
Professor Kennan should turn at random to the annual debates in the General Assembly of the United Natiohs. These documents are enlightening for their records of verbal exorcism of apartheid by friend and foe alike. Consider, for instance, the session of Autumn 1963 in which the South African system was seen by the United States Government as 'toxic,' by the Soviet Union as 'shameful,' by England as 'abhorrent,' by Belgium as 'thoroughly repugnant,' by India as 'hateful,' by Guinea as 'inhuman,' by Bolivia as 'the negation of all social purpose,' by Japan as 'fundamentally immoral,' by Canada as 'degrading...
PROFESSOR KENNAN'S apologia is ultimately bewildering for one who has attentively followed his admirable views on the establishment of NATO as a military defense against an attack no one was planning. Kennan informs us that he was opposed to the formation of NATO because, in his own words: "It was perfectly clear to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Russia of that day, that the Soviet leaders had no intention of attempting to advance their cause by launching military attacks with their own armed forces across frontiers." Such a procedure, he argued, "fitted neither with the requirements...
...Kennan faults Reich for his "departure from the voice of reason" and his failure to take account of the "problems, or even the concept, of representative government." Alas, Mr. Kennan sounds rather more romantic than Reich sounds utopian. To call for "frank recognition" and "public discussion" of our problems (and the sketch Kennan offers is every bit as bleak as Reich's), for legislative reforms and basically political solutions, is romantic. Recognition and reform will not come without a change of consciousness; with a change of consciousness they are inevitable...