Portrait of George F. Kennan (1947), then-Director of Policy Planning in the United States State Department. Photographer, Harris & Ewing.
At LewRockwell.com, Taki Theodoracopulos remembers George Kennan’s view of Russian relations and how different they might be to the approach taken by the current administration in Washington, D.C. He writes:
I’ve never had much use for diplomats, nor did my father, who called them gigolos and freeloaders living high on the hog off taxpayers like him. “Except for George Kennan,” I used to tell him, and Dad would reluctantly agree. For any of you young whippersnappers unfamiliar with George Kennan, he was the author of America’s Cold War policy of “containment,” in which the U.S. would try to constrain the expansion of communism after World War II without confronting a nuclear Soviet Union directly. In a famous Long Telegram as America’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Kennan articulated his containment policy in 1946 and in subsequent pseudonymous articles in Foreign Affairs. The idea made him famous among those who wanted peace with the Russian Bear, and even with warmongers who were aware of the price a nuclear war would cost.George Kennan died at age 105, depriving us of his conclusions about Western involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Kennan held a fascination for the Russian language and culture, and thought of the modernity of his native America “the world’s spiritual and intellectual dunce.” Kennan’s unorthodox view of the Cold War showed great wisdom and restraint, and if anyone’s opinion is badly needed nowadays, it is his. (Another trait I greatly admired was Kennan’s unrelenting womanizing, as well as his ability to stay happily married for over sixty years.) “The world is closer to a nuclear confrontation than it has been in decades, and with it the potential for billions to perish.”
How badly needed is a Kennan view regarding Russia today? The answer is: very, very badly. Let’s begin with the worst scenario, a nuclear confrontation. The world is closer to one than it has been in decades, and with it the potential for billions to perish. Just think of it, billions of human beings are roasted in a massive fireball in heat so intense that concrete surfaces explode, metal evaporates, and humans convert into carbon. The heat is millions of degrees hotter than the center of the sun. And yet we keep arming Zelensky, Macron the warrior is thinking of sending troops to fight the Russkies, and Putin sits back knowing full well that if pushed beyond a certain point he will not hesitate to you-know-what. Over on our side I think of the brain-dead race-hustling Kamala; Biden, the elderly used-car salesman; and then of my two children and four grandchildren—and I lose sleep. Our government rushed us into the nuclear age without giving extensive thought to whether this would end human civilization. Until today humanity has been lucky, no one has attempted to nuke an enemy; but now we are pressing our luck.
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