Thursday, February 23, 2012

George F. Kennan: An American Life

Biography of George Kennan (X, Long Telegram) by John Lewis Gaddis - George F. Kennan: An American Life (NYT review).

Kennan’s idea that the United States should seek to contain rather than appease or roll back the Soviet Union got noticed. (The words “contain” and “containment” did not appear in the Long Telegram.) As the official history of the Council of Foreign Relations, the publisher ofForeign Affairs, later summarized it:

"Perhaps no single essay of the twentieth century can match the X article for its impact upon the intellectual curiosity of a confused nation, upon the mindset of equally confused policymakers and scholars, upon national policy in at least seven presidential administrations to come.* It ran only 17 pages; its tone was scholarly, elegant but practical; only three sentences used the magic word that came to define American policy for half a century."


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