[Zack note: I don't know how to set up a post so that it hides most of the text (I did look for awhile but have other papers to work on). This paper is about George Kennan's article about Soviet motives and containment theory. I found it quite interesting, but maybe you won't my beloved readership. This one was quite long, read it if you wish, if not scroll down to something else. I will get back to normal blogging in a few weeks I promise, one more term paper to go before I graduate.]
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“It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies[1],” is perhaps the most famous line written by American foreign policy strategist George F. Kennan. The line comes from his article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”, popularly known as “Article X” because Kennan signed the article “X” for publication to maintain some anonymity due to his position as a government official and thus avoid the misconception that Kennan’s paper laid out concrete government foreign policy.
Article X’s main thesis was that the Soviet Union and the United States, two countries with different economic systems that are diametrically opposed to each other, must be viewed as constant rivals rather than as anything approaching potential allies. Writing from the American perspective Kennan argues that the Soviet Union is motivated by socialist ideology to bring about the communist revolution over capitalism, and that the Soviets are constantly working towards the goal of spreading Communism. Consequently the United States must act with a policy of containment of the Soviet Union that keeps the Soviet Union from expanding power. The United States must also during this time maintain pressure which might in time bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union by exacerbating the numerous social, economic and political problems the Soviet Union faced because they practiced an oppressive form of government.
Article X and the ideas it contained were not without criticism. It has been called ignorant of Soviet history[2] and overly idealistic, to the point that Derek Leebaert said that “the article wound down with a gloss that could have been signed with equal sincerity by Pollyanna and the elder Field Marshall von Moltke[3].” The policy of containment that it famously advocates is itself subject to debate, concerning whether it advocates all or a combination of political, economic, and military intervention. It has been argued that what it advocated was misunderstood (most notably by Kennan himself) leading to numerous interpretations and assertions concerning the often vague language of the article. The vague language has been interpreted in numerous ways leading to many diverse opinions about the article, some calling it the “theoretical justification for the Truman Doctrine[4]” while others, such as long time diplomat Dean Acheson, suggested the dismissal of most of Kennan’s writings as coming from someone with a “marshmallow mind[5].”
Whether it was right or wrong, the impact of Article X cannot be denied in the history of American foreign political thought. It articulated the philosophical reasoning for U.S. foreign policy for almost half a century, perhaps to the current day. Kennan might not have been advocating military intervention with his article, but it was read that way in certain circles. Indeed the language of the article is so vague that anyone reading it can interpret it how they wish. The article could mean anything to anyone, depending on what that reader already desired. It served a mine from which many foreign policy ideas could be extracted and as a well from which many foreign policy actions could be fueled.
The Long Telegram
Considered by many to be the most influential message in American Foreign Service history, the Long Telegram began Kennan’s commentary on Russian motivation[6]. Originally written while serving as a deputy head of the United States mission to the Soviet Union, Kennan’s response was an expansion on a question about why the about why the Soviets were not supporting the World Bank or World Monetary Fund[7]. Frustrated (to the point of threatening resignation) by a lack of interest from Washington in his opinions about Soviet motivation, Kennan dictated (because he had been ill for a few days) more than five thousand words of cable that was to become, as one historian said “the most influential cable in the history of the American Foreign Service[8].” In it he proposed two main ideas, that the United States must use force to stop further Soviet expansion and that the United States must forge an alliance with Western powers (particularly Britain) for that purpose[9]. The Long Telegram was not the first time Kennan had said such a message, but it was the first time when Washington was ready to listen[10], quite possibly a circumstance that was to repeat itself when he wrote Article X the next year. Kennan wrote in his memoirs that:
The effect produced in Washington by this elaborate pedagogical effort was nothing less than sensational. It was one that changed my career and my life in very basic ways. If none of my previous literary efforts had seemed to evoke even the faintest tinkle from the bell at which they were aimed, this one, to my astonishment, struck squarely and set it vibrating with a resonance that was not to die down for many months[11].
The Long Telegram was Kennan’s first real noteworthy event in the American foreign policy community, being read by numerous important government officials, such as the President (and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, who would commission Article X a few months later[12].) The Long Telegram was significant not only because it advocated the message of containment of the Soviet Union with a western alliance, but also because it unified the thinking of various advocates of firmness against the Soviet Union[13]. Coming out of the glow of writing the powerful Long Telegram, Kennan went to Washington to work as part of a Policy Planning Committee.
Article X
“Article X” was published under the formal title “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine[14]. Its origins can be found in private correspondence between Kennan and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal while Kennan was working at War College in the winter of 1946. Forrestal asked Kennan to write a response to a paper concerning Marxism and Soviet power written by a member of Forrestal’s staff, to which Kennan responded with his own paper on the issue rather than to simply comment on the original paper[15]. The result Kennan said was “a literary extrapolation of the thoughts which had been maturing in my mind, and which I had been expressing in private communications and speeches for at least two years[16],” a paper that Forrestal liked and said would suggest that the Secretary (presumably the Secretary of State) should read.
The article might have died at that point if Kennan had not been solicited for a paper by the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, after Kennan delivered a speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in January 1947. Armstrong was impressed with Kennan’s speech and asked if he had anything in writing along the lines of his speech that could be published in Foreign Affairs. Kennan, having spoken without notes, asked Forrestal if he could publish the paper he had sent him, a request that Forrestal had no objections too. Kennan consequently submitted the article to the Committee on Unofficial Publication for clearance, which was granted April 8th. Kennan signed it “X” to create a level of anonymity for himself and did not think much about the paper until it was published a few months later[17].
Article X was written divided into four parts. Part I laid out Kennan’s ideas about the evolution of the Soviet Union’s political personality. Kennan argued that Soviet power was a product of ideology that Soviet leaders inherited from the movement in which they had their political origin and the circumstances of power that they exercised in Russia[18]. The ideological concepts were difficult to summarize because of the constant process of evolution in Russia’s communist projection, but Kennan summarized the main principles of Communist thought as: man being the central factor in life and determines the system and manner in which material goods are dealt with, that capitalism is a nefarious system that leads to the exploitation of the working class by the capital owning class, that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction and will eventually lead to a revolution transferring power to the working class, and that “imperialism, the final phase of capitalism, leads directly to war and revolution[19].”
Kennan, having created a basic framework for dealing with the Soviet Union, proceeds to deliver a brief history of the Russian revolutionary movement elements and their desire to get rid of the Tsarist regime. He notes that the revolutionaries were:
Frustrated, discontented, hopeless of finding self-expression—or too impatient to seek it—in the confining limits of the Tsarist political system, yet lacking wide popular support for their choice of bloody revolution as a means of social betterment, these revolutionaries found in Marxist theory a highly convenient rationalization for their own instinctive desires[20].
Kennan is saying that the Bolsheviks found Socialism a convenient ideology because it advocates a revolution, something they wanted because it was seen as the best way to remove the Tsarist regime, a regime long noted for stifling political freedom and democratic reform, from power. Kennan then writes that the successful socialist revolution and the aftermath of civil war and foreign intervention to remove the socialists from power “made the establishment of dictatorial power a necessity.[21]”
Having established dictatorial power and fresh from winning the bloody Russian civil war, the socialists insisted on the submission or destruction of all competing power driven by skepticism that rival forces could exist for any length of time peacefully[22]. This desire to secure and maintain absolute power at home was viewed by Kennan as a primary interest of the Soviet and thus a motivating factor in their behavior, because the Soviet regime viewed any behavior, either from internal elements or outside intervention meant to aid dissidents within Russia, as suspect. Consequently, concerns by the Soviet leadership about the loyalty of all peoples within Russia, even the most seemingly loyal communists, created a sense of insecurity about Russian security. That insecurity must also have surely been exacerbated by the internal knowledge of Soviet leadership that their movement was not a popular uprising, but a seizure of the government by a minority political movement that took power through force and had to use force to maintain power. Thus Kennan wrote that “the security of Soviet power came to rest on the iron discipline of the party, on the severity and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the uncompromising economic monopolism of the state[23].”
Part II describes the Soviet Union’s (circa 1946-47) modern political personality. Kennan argued that, “Belief is maintained in the basic badness of capitalism, in the inevitability of its destruction, in the obligation of the proletariat to assist in that destruction and to take power into its own hands[24].” The innate conflict between capitalism and socialism, argued Kennan, had profound implications for Soviet conduct because it assumed a constant conflict (or at least possibility of conflict) always existed between capitalist and socialist states. The fundamental incapability of the two economic systems meant that the Soviets would always be suspicious of capitalist countries. That suspicion, particularly of countries such as the United States with superior force must have fed the Soviet insecurity. The only solace for Soviets, according to Kennan, was the theory that capitalism would inevitably fall[25]. This assumption meant that the Soviet Union only had to survive, a theory that further pushed the Soviet desire for security and complete control of the State.
The second concept Kennan listed, along with the conflict between capitalism and socialism, as important Soviet outlook was “the infallibility of the Kremlin[26].” A side effect of the Soviet desire to maintain absolute control via a dictatorship of power and state organizations (such as secret police forces) was that the Communist Party leadership became the sole source of truth in Russian society. This idea that the Communist Party is always right created a symbiotic relationship with the state organs created to make sure that discipline was maintained. As Kennan wrote:
On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist Party. In fact, the concepts are mutually self-supporting. Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance of discipline. And the two go far to determine the behaviorism of the entire account: namely, the fact that the leadership is at liberty to put forward for tactical purposes any particular thesis which it finds useful to the cause at any particular moment to require the faithful and unquestioning acceptance of that thesis by the members of the moment as a whole. This means that truth is not a constant but is actually created, for all intents and purposes, by the Soviet leaders themselves[27].
This reality where truth is subject to change and yet requires absolute loyalty and submission at the behest of Soviet leadership seems particularly unsettling to a country, the United States, where freedom of expression and constant political truths (such as those articulated in the Constitution and other founding documents) creates a situation according to Kennan in which containment is the only option for controlling the Soviet Union. The ability of the Soviet Union to change policy in reaction to any given set of circumstances in order to exploit and gain power, or to not react and instead act cautiously makes the Soviet Union a very unpredictable and dangerous state. Kennan wrote that “caution, circumspection, flexibility, and deception are the valuable qualities” in the pursuit of Communist purposes[28]. These traits combined with the pursuit of goals that require no time table but only results suggest in Kennan’s mind that “it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies[29].”
In Part III Kennan, having discussed Soviet motivations and having come to the conclusion that the Soviet threat should be contained, examines the reality of the Soviet Union’s realistic positions compared to the ideological thesis of Communism. Part III of Article X further looks at the Soviet Union and areas where weakness might exist, allowing containment to pressure the Soviet Union into change. As Kennan wrote:
It will be clearly seen that the Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and the maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence. The Russians look forward to a duel of infinite duration, and they see that already they have scored great successes[30].
With the idea that containment must be practiced by the United States in order to contain an expansionistic Russia, a Russia determined to fulfill its strategic goals and yet not restrained by any time table other than eventual achievement of socialism’s triumph over capitalism, the Russian threat would appear quite menacing. To soften the ideology of Russian conquest Kennan examines various realities that stand in the way of Russian hegemony over the United States.
The basic arguments that Kennan lays out in Part III are the material realities the Soviets face and which might be used to undermine Russian gains. Among these realities is that the Soviet Union, in building their heavy industry and in maintaining, wasted human lives and energy because of the use of forced human labor[31]. In addition, the Soviets were exhausted, both in spirit and in materials by the toll of destruction from World War II, leaving them highly disillusioned with Soviet power and ideology[32]. Finally the Soviets were limited by their economic development, which was “spotty and uneven,[33]” a reality that should have made communists who harped about “uneven capitalist development” blush from hypocrisy[34].
The upshot of all of these shortfalls between the Russian ideology and the reality of the Soviet’s situation creates weaknesses that might be exploited by the United States via containment. Kennan draws attention to the economic reality of Russian backwardness, noting that despite the economic growth in industry the Russians are poor in terms of transportation, construction and other forms of infrastructure, all of which is highlighted by the reality that Russian peasants have nothing like the productive capabilities of the skilled western worker[35]. Despite the supposed “invulnerability of the Kremlin” and the notion that the Communist Party held absolute sway was the reality that political leadership changes within the Soviet Union’s brief history were violent messy affairs. Stalin came to power in a transfer of authority that took twelve years to complete and “cost the lives of millions of people and shook the state to its foundations[36].” The matter of whether or not a smooth change in leadership could happen (something certain to happen eventually, and did happen with Stalin’s death in 1953) was certainly an issue that could be exploited by the United States by pressing the Soviet Union. Foreign containment could certainly, by sheer pressure, create cracks in something even as rock solid as the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. Keenan thus concluded that “the future of the Soviet power may not be by any means as secure as Russian capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men of the Kremlin[37].”
Part IV of the article serves as a conclusion that says that the United States must continue to view the Soviet Union as a political rival rather than a potential partner because of the difficulty in establishing a “permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist and capitalist worlds[38].” In this line of the thinking the United States should act with a policy of “firm containment” in order to control the Soviet Union, the weaker party who, unable to measure up directly to United States military or economic power, will try to act in a highly flexible manner to encroach upon the non-Soviet spheres of influence[39]. Within this policy of containment America should not be content to simply hold the line, but to also “create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problem of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time[40].” In effect the United States must not just contain the Soviet Union through political, economic, military and all other means; they must also proactively create an image of American invincibility to counter the threat of Communist ideology.
A Firm Policy of Containment
On of the greatest legacies of Article X must be the articulation that a foreign policy of containment must be used by the United States against the Soviet Union. Containment theory was not created by Kennan or original to Article X, but the popularity of the “X” article and his famous line that “the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment[41]” did much to popularize the term, especially publicly due to the reprinting of the article in mainstream magazines such as Life and Reader’s Digest. Article X’s popularity, particularly in many sectors of government (both political and military) but also in the mainstream public via popular magazines, helped popularized the theory of containment at a time when the Cold War was certainly intensifying, coming just a few months after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947. As historian Melyvn P. Leffler wrote “waging a worldwide struggle against totalitarian communism was something the American people could understand and support[42].”
Containment theory was a policy by the United States to use political, military, and economic power to contain Communism while increasing American power and security abroad to prevent a “domino theory” in which countries fell under Communist control. In theory those countries would be far more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than to the United States, weakening the U.S. while strengthening the Soviet Union strategically. Containment was implemented both through the Marshall Plan and through the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan functioned as the soft (economic) side of containment by building up countries susceptible to communism economically to help them resist communism while the Truman Doctrine acted as the hard (political and military) side, with the United States acting to resist aggressive communism and break up possible Soviet penetration[43]. Kennan’s article, in the opinion of Thomas G. Paterson, “seemed to provide the theoretical justification for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan[44].” It seems clear that perfect storm of ideas happened in 1947 where “the globalism in Kennan’s thinking comported well with the administration’s political needs[45].”
Melvyn P. Leffler wrote in A Preponderance of Power that:
Kennan’s analysis was appealing because it provide a unifying theme o U.S. foreign policy. Rather than tackle deep-seated problems in disparate parts of the globe, Kennan urged policymakers to view Soviet Russia as their enemy and to approach all other issues from the viewpoint of competition with the Kremlin.[46]
Containment policy was attractive because it simplified the debate about how to handle American security. Rather than dealing with the numerous security issues along the Soviet borders as individual problems that could only be solved with solutions unique to the circumstances on the ground, containment theory was a simple solution for every problem. The simplicity of the solution became another problem however because American foreign policy strategists often failed to see the underlying problems of attempting to aid countries in their bids to avoid falling under communist regimes. Chief among those problems were small countries aversion to foreign rule (in any form because of the stigma of imperialism), the moral issue of America backing brutal right-wing regimes, and the fact that America often ignored the desires of the “pawn countries” on the Soviet periphery while only looking toward the grand strategy that existed in the conflict between the two superpowers. The lack of thought toward the desires and interests of those tiny countries caught between the interests of Soviet and American strategy created numerous instances where America rarely received full pay for their aid because the countries often looked to their own interests (particularly maintaining their sovereignty from both America and Soviet power) rather than adhering to strict American aims.
A major issue of containment was for historians concerning Article X was whether Kennan meant global or regional policy of containment. In his memoirs Kennan singled out Eastern Europe as one of the area he should have specified in Article X[47]. That he did not was on based on the reasoning that he did not want to open up an issue that would “confuse the thesis [he] was developing, and carry the paper beyond its intended scope[48].” Despite Kennan’s spirited defense of his position that he advocated only a regional containment policy, writers such as Walter L. Hixson in his biography of Kennan said that:
Kennan’s contention that he meant to limit containment to the five industrial regions of the world [the United States, Great Britain, the Rhine Valley, the Soviet Union, and Japan] was inconsistent with his later actions, however. Although he did warn against offering military and economic aid “on a grand scale” and often referred to the primacy of containment in industrial regions, when it came time to make decisions on the implementation of containment in areas beyond the five industrial regions—in the Near East, in Korea, in Southeast Asia, and in Latin America—he advocated the assertion of American power. Containment, as it evolved in Kennan’s own thinking, was, as we shall see, global in scope[49].
Kennan might have been able to argue that he meant regional rather than global containment, but his other speeches and writings suggest that he advocated global containment and only spoke against that argument in a revisionist attempt to avoid being marked with the stigma that comes with being one of the architects of an overly broad foreign policy scheme.
Whatever Kennan meant personally is somewhat irrelevant because once Article X hit it took on a life of its own. The lack of specification in the article’s language created much grey area subject to interpretation. That grey area was an area that could easily be filled with the preconceptions that any government official held about how to control the Soviet Union.
The other issue in Kennan’s writing about containment was whether he meant global or regional containment. The vagueness of Kennan’s language is one of the true shortcomings of Article X, but Kennan cannot be viewed as totally innocent in his lack of clarity. One historian said about Kennan and the use of military force as a control mechanism that:
Kennan conceded a great deal to the military point of view. Secretary Forrestal, his initial patron, was widely recognized as one of the most military-minded men in Washington. Kennan could not have been ignorant of the uses to which Forrestal was putting his ideas. Furthermore, it is a truism in international relations that to be effective political and economically a great power must have a hefty military punch. Kennan himself had frequently spoken of an “adequate military posture[50].”
This quote, along with the statements Kennan previously made (such as the statement in the Long Telegram that the Soviets respond to force rather than logic[51]) suggests that Kennan was hawkish despite his later claims to support political and economic containment only. Despite Kennan’s own writings (particularly his Long Telegram claim) historians such as Melvyn Leffler have argued that Kennan’s government colleagues, if not the public, knew that he was addressing only political containment because the Soviet military was so much weaker it could not realistically challenge the United States with force, but only through “economic dislocation, social unrest, political turmoil, and revolutionary nationalist upheaval.[52]” This seems to stand in face of Kennan’s writings, but it must be left up to the reader to decide if Kennan was discussing military or political economic containment. The main problem lies in Kennan’s liberal use of vague and undefined terms, which can be open to any of a number of interpretations, many of which would depend on the already preconceived opinions and foreign policy ideas of a given reader.
Kennan and the Aftermath of Article X
The publication of Article X, despite under the anonymous moniker “X”, rapidly launched Kennan (who was soon unmasked as the author of Article X by Arthur Crock who had seen the article in Forrestal’s Office[53]) to a position of fame. Kennan wrote in his memoirs that:
It was not long…before the authorship of the article became common knowledge. Others began to write about it, to connect it with the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, to speculate on its significance. It soon became the center of a veritable whirlpool of publicity. Life and Reader’s Digest reprinted long excerpts from it. The term “containment” was picked up and elevated, by common agreement of the press, to the status of a “doctrine,” which was then identified with the foreign policy of the administration. In this way there was established—before our eyes, so to speak—one of those indestructible myths that are the bane of the historian.[54]
The publication of the article caused a minor sensation. Kennan was quite overwhelmed to be a celebrity, feted over at parties in Paris[55]. Kennan’s public recognition created some conflict for him with his superior, General Marshall, for breaking the principle that “planner’s don’t talk[56]”, and he was questioned by his superior for the breach in protocol. General Marshall was only satisfied when Kennan explained that the article had been cleared for publication by the official committee.
Kennan had other problems besides bureaucratic protocol to deal with as Article X grew in popularity. To Kennan it was quickly becoming clear that his article, which he meant to be an analysis of Soviet character, was being seen as a prescription for U.S. foreign policy[57]. Unfortunately Kennan was quite unable to clear up the problems created by the vague language of his article, and was left “feeling like one who had inadvertently loosened a large boulder from the top of a cliff and now helplessly witnesses it’s path of destruction in the valley below[58].” Despite the problems Kennan supposedly saw in X Article, he reprinted the article verbatim in his 1951 book American Diplomacy 1900-1950 without any additional comments or alterations to refine his thinking away from any sort of military force in containing the Soviet Union[59]. This reprint without any attempt to fix any perceived errors in the paper creates a mixed message from Kennan. On the one hand he laments not being more precise with his original prose, but on the other he took no action to update the paper, only writing about the mistakes that were made in interpretation of the paper.
Walter L. Hixson said in his biography of Kennan that “after serving for years as an outsider and critic, he had been summoned to Washington to play a prominent, perhaps even indispensable, role in establishing the intellectual framework for postwar national security policy[60].” For one moment in time, Kennan was the darling of many government officials for producing the paper that justified their actions. But Kennan’s success was fleeting. He thought that the pendulum, which he had shoved mightily with the Long Telegram and Article X had swung too far toward militarism, and consequently he began to fall out of favor in Washington[61].
His rise to the top of diplomatic circles was just as sharp as his return into diplomatic exile. He was rather inept in the Washington social circles and grew frustrated as his article continued to be misinterpreted and used for things beyond what he had originally intended it to, and felt that his ideas had been “vulgarized, coarsened, and distorted by the failure of policy makers to understand essential nuance[62].” He thought that containment was working and that the United States should move toward the next phase, that of mutual arms deduction[63]. Unfortunately he fell out of favor as Dean Acheson, who held him in nowhere the regard as George Marshall had, came to be the Secretary of State. That fact, along with the Berlin Crisis in 1948 and the 1949 acquisition of the Atomic bomb by the Soviet Union militarized the debate significantly, leaving Kennan somewhat out in the cold. Kennan never reached the height of influence he held in 1947-48 again, and except for two short stints as ambassador (to Russia in 1952 and to Yugoslavia in 1961-63) he effectively retired from public service to take up academic positions where he wrote many histories of the Soviet Union, primarily at the Institute for Advanced Study.
The long term effects of the X Article probably cannot fully be appreciated because it is truly unknown if the containment policy effected United States policy or if the arguments Kennan made simply came at a convenient time and were seized by the administration to bolster the Truman Doctrine of combating communism. It is rather irrelevant at this point which theory affected which, as they both helped each other. The X Article provided philosophical justification for containment by shedding light on Soviet motivations, namely the belief in a communist triumph over capitalism. Whether it was correct or not is somewhat irrelevant to the point of whether it was believed to be correct. It would appear that it was, given that Marxism preached a message of revolution over capitalism and that a struggle seemed inevitable in a world quickly being divided by two super powers. Some policy of containment of the communist threat seemed natural and needed in the evitable struggle that was going to come between capitalism and communism. In turn the Truman doctrine of combating communism aggressively was practical application of the theory advocated in Article X. Making containment a reality rather than just another discarded theory from a policy think tank meant that documents outlining containment were elevated and their writers along with them. Kennan, if only for a brief time, was the star of the foreign policy world, and his article was the reason he reached that position.
In time much of Article X would be more heavily scrutinized and the various points disentangled and shown to be flawed, particularly in terms of Soviet history and also the idealistically naive prose Kennan used to woo his audience, but Article X’s main point, that of containing the Soviet Union, was used for the Cold War policy. Many major actions undertaken during the second half of the twentieth century by the United States, such as wars in Korea and Vietnam and coups in Iran and South Guatemala were about containing communism. The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was undertaken in part as a counter to the Soviet Union in Europe. Economic pressure was put on the Soviet Union as well with arms races and battles to open markets in geographic hot points such as Eastern Europe and Asia. Containment, it cannot be denied, was American foreign policy during the Cold War, and Article X played a part in bringing that policy into being.
[1]George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Dynamics of World Power: Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Volume III: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Edited by Walter LaFaber, 330-343 (New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1973), 337.
[3]Derek Leebaert, The Fifty Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Victory Shapes Our World (Boston, MA: Little, Bown, and Company, 2002), 36.
[14]X, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July, 1947, 566-82.
[15]George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 354.
[18]George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Dynamics of World Power: Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Volume III: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union., 330.
[19]George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Dynamics of World Power: Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Volume III: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union., 330-331.
[38] George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Dynamics of World Power: Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Volume III: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 341.
32George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” in Dynamics of World Power: Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Volume III: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 337.
[44]Thomas G. Paterson, Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), 131.
[54]George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 356.
[55]Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends And The World They Made (New York, NY: Simon & Shuster Inc., 1988), 420.
[60]Walter L. Hixson, George F. Kennan: An American Iconoclast (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 45.
