To scholars of the Cold War, Kennan's Long Telegram to the Secretary of State in 1946 still holds a certain resonance. It seemingly foresaw the bipolar divisions of the Cold War within Stalin's rhetoric and post-war reticence in global economic cooperation. Kennan discusses three key issues in his Long Telegram, namely the basic motivating factors behind Soviet foreign policy and its historical antecedents; the projection of this long-reaching outlook on policy at both official and unofficial levels; and the practical consequences for US foreign policy.
Kennan acknowledges that the motivating factors behind the post-war Soviet outlook are complex, but at the heart of the Kremlin's foreign policy was ideology. Underlying the Soviet view was the impossibility of a "peaceful coexistence" between capitalism and socialism, with the USSR living in an "antagonistic 'capitalist encirclement'". Whilst this entrapment of socialism created conflict with outside capitalist states, the "internal conflicts of capitalism" also created a situation where intra-capitalist war was inexorable. Thus, Kennan believed that Soviet policy would seek to destabilise the West through exploiting internal conflict for revolutionary means.
Kennan makes two distinctions of this outlook. Firstly that this view is not in any way "natural" to the Soviet people, but it emanates from the apparatus of "power-party, secret police, and Government", and secondly, that it is simply an untruth as history has shown that capitalist and communist states can survive in a "peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence". The insecurities of the Kremlin thereby originate not from any "objective analysis of the situation" but from a "neurotic view of world affairs" that is specific to the Russian history of originally neighbouring fierce nomads and later being privy to "more competent, more powerfully, more highly organized" societies. Rather than an inherent advantage in the doctrines themselves, Kennan saw Marxist-Leninist ideology as the "perfect vehicle for a sense of insecurity" of the ruling elite as it provided a clear justification for fears of the outside world.
Kennan came to the conclusion that the projection of this outlook on policy would lead to the USSR attempting to strengthen their power in the international environment through overt and covert means. Officially, the USSR would seek to strengthen bases of military, economic, and psychological1 power at home; advance the limits of their official power in certain strategic points and further afield to colonised areas; and deepen diplomatic ties to, and official cultural contact with the West. In concert with these overt actions, Kennan feared the promulgation of localised Communist parties throughout the West, "a concealed Comintern tightly coordinated and directed by Moscow", who could go on to dominate a wide range of national institutions ranging from labour unions to liberal magazines to sympathetic national governments. Kennan bluntly states the goals of these policies - "to undermine general political and strategic potential of major Western powers" to achieve the "total destruction of rival power."
The final section of the Telegram outlining the practical consequences for US foreign policy urged the US to confront "a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure". If however, situations were properly handled "showdowns" could be avoided as the Soviet leadership lacked Hitler's adventurism and were weaker militarily. Kennan's closing advice on dealing with Russia is both vague and broad reaching. He suggests a cool rationality, education against "hysterical Anti-Sovietism", and strengthening the "health and vigor" of American society in general, rather than any specific policy.
Whilst Kennan has become synonymous with the introduction of the concept of "containment" into the geopolitical lexicon, the vagueness of the actions mentioned in the Telegram and the militarisation of containment policies suggest that the themes of Kennan may have been followed subsequently, but Kennan's ideal of political-ideological containment was misconstrued. Although Kennan went on to discuss containment further in his "X" article, it seemingly failed to influence policymakers towards demilitarised containment strategies. Gaddis aptly suggests that military containment is inseparable from ideological containment as military losses are psychologically devastating; and US credibility would be at stake if it were successfully challenged2, thus perhaps reconciling Kennan's ideals.
Kennan's use of ideology as a determinant of foreign policy is also debated. Fakiolas contests the belief that Kennan's analysis tended towards a "monolithic and mechanistic view of Soviet behavior by placing overwhelming emphasis on Marxist dogma and, thereby, ignoring to focus on the influence of Realpolitik in the formation of Soviet policy"3. In the Long Telegram there is little focus on the content of Marxist dogma, rather the focus is on its deployment as a justification for action and predetermined by existing insecurities4. This too denies complexity in foreign policy formation, as it sees the sources of conflict as static.
Whilst Kennan did mention that many of the Soviet's capabilities were at the time weaker than the West, in hindsight Kennan's fears of well-coordinated communist parties subverting Western nations from within were overstated. Kennan later justified this overstatement was due to his perception of Western Europe and Japan being socially, politically and morally destabilized by the experience of World War 2 and therefore highly vulnerable5. However, if this vulnerability existed it could have been exploited by either side equally, and Kennan himself argues that during the post-War period there was a Russian thirst for peace and stability - rather than a threat to the status quo.
With the subsidence of the Cold War, Kennan's ideological-political threat was contained peacefully, and the US maintained a level of "health and vigor" as Kennan prescribed. The policy legacy pursued by the US however diverged critically from Kennan's ideal, yet maintained the same end - survival.
Footnotes
- Kennan notes internal policy may be devoted to "great displays to impress outsiders; continued secretiveness about internal matters, designed to conceal weakness and keep opponents in the dark." Kennan's Long Telegram
- John Lewis Gaddis, "The Evolution of Containment", in Terry Deibel and John Lewis Gaddis (eds) Containing the Soviet Union, Washington: Pergamon, 1987, p.3
- Efstathios T. Fakiolas "Kennan's long telegram and NSC-68: a comparative theoretical analysis". East European Quarterly, Jan 1998 v31 n4, p416.
- Fakiolas comments that "Soviet behavior was determined by a peculiar messianic amalgam of the communist ideology and the Russian aggressive nationalism" rather than a more pure form of Marxism, p.417
- George Kennan, "Reflections on Containment", in Deibel and Gaddis, p.16