In many respects the debate about how the West should react to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its ongoing threat to eastern Ukraine mirrors the debates of the cold war.
For President Obama and those of a more hawkish frame of mind, Russia’s sudden absorption of the Crimean peninsula is a direct threat to the “international order” and the ideals of freedom and democracy everywhere. Other Russian specialists have argued, however, that at least some of the blame lies with the West: for pushing the expansion of Nato to the east, for trying to lure the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova into the western European economic and security orbit, and for failing to recognise Russia’s legitimate interest in these regions.
Proponents of this view argue that the West has failed to consider a possible third alternative to outright hostility or simple acquiescence in Russia’s seeming attempt to reconstitute its hold on some of the territory of the former Soviet republics, an alternative based on the idea that we should regard Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as essentially neutral – tied to both Russia and the West – so that these states might serve not as a barrier but as a bridge between Russia and its European neighbours.
The one voice missing from this important debate about the future of Russia's relations with the West is that of George F Kennan, the author of the cold-war doctrine known as containment and widely regarded during his long career as the United States' foremost authority on Russia and the Soviet Union. We cannot know for sure what Kennan would make of the present crisis, but thanks to the publication of The Kennan Diaries, edited by Frank Costigliola, it is possible to venture an educated guess.
Kennan spent a lifetime thinking about Russia’s place in the world. He was the first to recognise the all-important links between Soviet and Russian ambitions, and, even though he is credited with providing the West with the strategic underpinnings of the cold war, he was certainly no hawk.
Indeed, as the diaries make clear, Kennan deplored the militarisation of US foreign policy under the guise of containment, was against the expansion of the Korean War north of the 38th parallel and was adamantly opposed to US involvement in Vietnam. He also pressed for the neutralisation of Germany during the critical years of the early 1950s, arguing that the best means to secure German unification and avoid what he saw as the division of Europe into two armed camps was for both sides to pursue a policy of “disengagement” through the withdrawal of all US and Soviet forces from German territory.
Deeply frustrated by his inability to convince his colleagues within the US national-security establishment to adopt a more flexible and less militaristic policy towards the Soviet Union, Kennan resigned from the United States Foreign Service in 1953 to take up an academic position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
From there he would continue to comment and offer advice (and service) to both the State Department and the White House – sometimes solicited and sometimes not – on a range of foreign-policy issues, especially US relations with Europe and its vast neighbour to the east.
'Colossal blunder'
Most interesting from the perspective of today's crisis about Crimea, Kennan was opposed to the expansion of Nato in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In May 1990, on the eve of the final collapse of the Soviet empire, he wrote in his diary: "I thought it always a mistake to take advantage of the momentarily weakened position of another great power to obtain advantages one could not have obtained under normal circumstances. To do this, I said, was something that always revenged itself at a later date."
By 1997, when it became clear that the expansion of Nato to the east had become settled policy, Kennan spoke out publicly against it, noting in his diary in January that year that the “deep commitment of our government to press the expansion of Nato right up to the Russian borders is the greatest mistake of the entire post-Cold War period”. He regarded this “colossal blunder” as “the final failure of the effort to which I have given so large a portion of my life: the effort to find a reasonable area of understanding and sympathy between the great Russian people and our own.”
The Kennan Diaries make for fascinating reading, and not only because of our renewed focus on Russia's place, or lack thereof, in the international community. They also offer the reader a profound glimpse into the personal and professional frustrations and doubts of a keen observer of life in the 20th century.
Kennan often despaired of that life. His deep conservatism often led him to question the merits of existence in the modern world – even at a very young age. In December 1927, for example, while working at the US consulate in Hamburg, Kennan expressed regret “that I did not live fifty or a hundred years sooner”. Life, he wrote, “is too full in these times to be comprehensible. We know too many cities to be able to grow into any of them . . . we have too many friends to have any real friendships, too many books to know any of them well, and the quality of our impressions gives way to the quantity, so that life begins to seem like a movie, with hundreds of kaleidoscope scenes flashing on and off our field of perception, gone before we have time to consider them”.
Kennan also frequently questioned the merits of his work and his ability to shape events. In the spring of 1928, as he prepared to return to Europe after taking leave in Washington, he reflected that his impressions of the city, highlighted by “the cold shaft of the Monument and the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial in the moonlight”, formed more than a thousand memories, which “return now to taunt me for the homage I have done them. They sear like fire, for in every one of them lies the glow of failure!”
Even after securing his reputation as the United States' foremost expert on the Soviet Union, winning two Pulitzer Prizes for his work as a scholar and memoirist, serving as US ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Kennedy administration and receiving numerous other accolades for the quality of his work and writing during what can only be described as an extremely distinguished career, Kennan never ceased to be surprised at the honours he received. He also remained deeply frustrated by what he perceived as his own lack of influence on the execution of US foreign policy.
Outsider
Near the end of his life Kennan concluded that he had always been and would always remain something of an outsider, a man who from the perspective of his colleagues "hovered uncertainly in the horizon, a strange occasional social phenomenon, over-intense, seldom relaxed", whose work and life could "be fitted into no known category", an individual "to be approached with a certain respect, but also a certain wariness. You never knew, they thought, when I would fall out of the proper tone, or in some other way violate the rules. And they were not wrong. I never know it myself."
Costigliola’s excellent selection and editing render this a profoundly interesting and moving book. If there is one shortcoming – and it is a small one – it may be the lack of editorial comment or historical context provided. But given the highly personal nature of the diaries, Costigliola can be forgiven for this, for in the end it is Kennan and not the editor who must provide the context. As much of the diary describes the internal musing of a deeply reflective man, Costigliola if anything erred on the side of caution by keeping his own voice and observations to a minimum.
George F Kennan’s prescience regarding what we might term “the Russian problem” would certainly be welcome today. One gets the sense, reading his diaries, that he would have favoured a much earlier and more serious engagement with the Kremlin about how best to manage Russia and Europe’s interests in Ukraine and the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova.
One also gets the sense that we would do well in this fast-paced globalised world to spend a bit more time reflecting on the nature and quality of life, lest it pass us by too quickly, before we have had the chance to make our mark on those around us. As Kennan the diplomat observed nearly a century ago: “Sometimes I am afraid that we are all expatriates, we humans, no matter where we reside. I am afraid that we are expatriates from another more kindly, more genuine world, the memories of which fade from us with our childhood.”
David B Woolner is senior fellow and resident historian of the Roosevelt Institute and coeditor of FDR's World: War, Peace, and Legacies and FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933-1945.
