Candle in the Wind: George F., Kennan and Arms Control, 1945-1990

Program year: 1990/1991Digitized from print original stored in HDRGeorge Frost Kennan, like the Russian history and culture to which he has dedicated over sixty years of study, is often viewed as an enigma of sorts. Once described as "impossibly learned yet commonsensical, stern in his judgments yet gentle, drawn to the spotlight yet private and shy, a shaper of this century who increasingly feels himself a visitor from another," Kennan possessed a unique duality of nature which eminently qualified him to develop a postwar American foreign policy designed to contain the expansionist tendencies of the Soviet government he detested, while minimizing the harm done to the Russian people he loved. In order to achieve such a delicate balance, Kennan-one of the State Department's first Russian experts, head of the Policy Planning Staff from 1947 through 1949, and Ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952-consistently recommended the use of political and economic means, as opposed to military force. Although Kennan recognized the need to maintain adequate armed forces, he always envisioned a distinct lack of military emphasis in American efforts to curb Soviet expansionism based on the belief that the Soviet threat was primarily a political one and should therefore be countered politically, Kennan's postwar doctrine of "containment" advocated strengthening Western society to combat the perceived onslaught of Communism. The most successful implementation of this approach was "the Marshall Plan for European economic recovery," which, beginning in 1948, provided billions of dollars in aid to many of the decimated countries of Europe. Early in his tenure with the Policy Planning Staff, Kennan "forged the intellectual framework" for this program, which Secretary of State Dean Acheson "later described as 'one of the greatest and most honorable adventures in history’.” Regrettably, the great adventure was destined to last for only a short time. The Marshall Plan was inexorably replaced by the militaristic orientation which has marked American relations with Europe ever since and which has been a continual source of concern for Kennan. For it was this emphasis on military force which led almost inevitably to the development of weapons of immense destructive capacity, as well as more accurate ways to deliver them, and finally, to a reliance on those weapons in the areas of both national security and foreign policy. While Kennan has written on a multitude of subjects over the last forty-five years, including environmental and societal issues and diplomatic history, a significant portion of his work has concentrated on armaments and their effect on East-West relations. Although his most eloquent and impassioned prose deals with nuclear weaponry, Kennan also has extensively analyzed several related issues, including conventional forces, the philosophy of war, arms negotiations, Soviet behavior and intentions, and the role of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Kennan is not, of course, the only person ever to write on these topics. He does, however, possess the advantage of having served as a major participant in many of the great events which he has so brilliantly chronicled. The varying perspectives which he is therefore able to present offer a glimpse of the patterns in which armaments and politics, among other things, have interacted to produce the international climate which exists today