American foreign policy

Review: George F. Kennan

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George F. Kennan: An American Life, John Lewis Gaddis. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.

Summary: The authorized biography of this diplomat and strategic thinker who articulated the Western strategy of “containment” that curbed and ultimately resulted in the end of the former Soviet Union.

He grew up in modest surroundings in a quiet Milwaukee neighborhood, bereft of his mother, who died in early childhood. After a college career at Princeton, he entered the foreign service and became one of the first Russian specialists when the Soviet Union was closed to the United States. He was one of the first Russia experts to go to Russia when the U.S. opened an embassy in 1933. As the Nazi threat rose, he took assignments in Prague, and then Berlin, leading to his internment during the first months of the war. Later, he returned to Moscow under Ambassador Harriman.

It was while Harriman was away that a request came in 1946 to Kennan as deputy to explain certain aspects of Soviet behavior. Kennan long had bemoaned the lack of “grand strategy” on the part of the U.S., particularly in the post-war situation where the once-ally was now an ideological adversary once more. He sent an 8,000 word telegram, known as the “Long Telegram” that articulated both Kennan’s assessment of the Soviet outlook, and what he thought the appropriate American response, one of containment, checking Soviet threats while projecting a peaceful intent and strengthening western Europe until the Soviets could no longer control their satellites. Kennan perceived the unsustainability of the Soviet state.

Later, this was expanded into a Foreign Affairs article by “X.” What he had done was nothing less than articulate the strategy the United States would follow, with variations, for the next forty-five years. He soon was called upon to help establish the War College, as deputy director, an advanced training school for rising officers in the services. He also was called on to form the Policy Planning Staff, which over the next years, during the Truman administration, published policy papers for nearly every part of th world, including one on Yugoslavia, recognizing that communism often was a nationalist movement not necessarily aligned with Moscow.

Over his life, Kennan went on to a post at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he wrote Russia Leaves the War, winning multiple awards including the Pulitzer Prize in History and a second Pulitzer years later for the first volume of his memoirs. He was an early opponent of the nuclear arms race, an early advocate for the environment, he proposed the reunification of Germany, he opposed the Vietnam war, testifying in 1966 to its folly before Congress.

Yet Kennan never held positions any higher than an ambassadorship in Moscow that last merely five months before undiplomatic remarks led to him being declared persona non grata. Under Kennedy, he served as ambassador in Yugoslavia for two years. A recurring complaint was that no one was listening, and in a profession where diplomacy was the name of the game, he could be quite undiplomatic. Acheson as Secretary of State was an admirer and friend but thought him utterly impractical.

He was a person of incredible rectitude, always elegantly dressed, articulate and well-spoken, and elegant in writing. He lived under the shadow of another George Kennan, also an ambassador to Russia, his grandfather’s cousin, with whom he shared a birthday. Recognition was important to this man who grew up without a mother and a distant father. When things became stressful, he suffered from a variety of illnesses including ulcers. He was married to Annelise until his death at 101, yet also had several affairs, and then suffered under a Calvinist-formed conscience.

In sum, he was a complicated individual–understanding the Soviet Union better than almost anyone, yet despairing for the character of his own country, particularly the “counter-culture” of which he spoke critically. He was prescient, and at times incisive, and at others, a bit of a wool-gatherer and one to whom others turned a deaf ear. John Lewis Gaddis, selected by Kennan to write his authorized biography, explores not only the extraordinary career of Kennan but the complexities of his character. This biography is a model of erudition, one that captures as fully as any biography I’ve read, the character as well as the accomplishments of its subject. Closing the circle, Gaddis followed his subject in winning the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle award for this work. This is a profound work not only in understanding Kennan, but also American foreign policy since World War II.

Review: A Force So Swift

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A Force so Swift

A Force So Swift, Kevin Peraino. New York: Crown, 2017.

Summary: A study of how the Truman adminstration, under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, framed America’s response to the rise of Mao as the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek fell to Communist forces in 1949.

The role of the People’s Republic of China as a world power is an accepted reality in today’s global landscape. Threats to Taiwan, seizure of coastal islands, influence throughout east and southeast Asia, and economic growth and trading relationships with the U.S. regularly are subjects of the evening news. What is often less understood are the events nearly 70 years ago that helped shape current realities.

In 1949 the world was recovering from war. China invaded by Japan in World War II, nominally was under control of a Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek. Beginning in the spring of 1949, Communist forces under Mao Zedong rapidly conquered Nationalist controlled territories, leading to a situation where the fate of Chiang’s government, which had enjoyed American support, was increasingly in doubt.

Kevin Peraino, using recently declassified information as well as Russian and Chinese sources, studies the U.S. response to what many viewed as a cataclysmic event. China under Chiang had been an object of American mission efforts as well as trade and a wartime alliance, all of which was in jeopardy. For that reason, the Truman administration faced significant factions who pressed for continued efforts to prop up the failing regime, led by one-time Truman ally, Warren Judd. These efforts were also fostered by Madame Chiang, who took up residence in the U.S., probably the most effective ambassador Chiang could have employed.

Louis Johnson, Truman’s Secretary of Defense favored efforts to support Chiang while Dean Acheson, as Secretary of State was much more doubtful of Chiang’s ability to survive, even on Taiwan. Acheson also recognized that China and Russia may not have had as much in common as was projected. There were even reasons to support rather than resist this new government. In the end, it wasn’t to be, even though there was good reason for the suspicions that the relationship between Russia and Communist China was an uneasy alliance at best. Instead, the U.S. extended its policy of containment, withholding recognition to the People’s Republic of China until the late 1970’s, and becoming involved in conflicts first in Korea and then in Indochina, leading to our Vietnam ordeal.

Peraino’s book explores how foreign policy is often constrained by the politically possible at home as well as by other global actors. Fears of Communism, of atomic war, and the concern not to be the administration that “lost” China placed great pressures on the Truman administration, which resulted in a compromise between acceptance of the new reality and the effort to project a strong response shaping events for at least a generation, and perhaps down to the present day. One wonders what might have happened if early American recognition and support of Mao had been possible. Would China have gone through the ordeals of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? Would we have been embroiled in Korea and Vietnam? At the same time, would the vibrant, indigenous Chinese Christian movement have arisen, now estimated to number more than 100 million adherents?

It is not given to us to know “what if.” But Peraino helps us understand what happened and what resulted and how that has shaped the international landscape down to our own day. We see both the necessity of intelligent foreign policy in the careers of people like Acheson and George Kennen, and the limits even very bright people face. We see both the pressures and the folly involved in backing failing governments. And we see how Truman’s ideals of achieving the “federation of the world” of Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” come smack up against the realities of the Cold War, one that really hasn’t ended to this very day.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.