Key Figure in the Cold War - Essay Example

George Kennan and the Cold War For scholars and analysts alike, the end of the Cold War is as controversial and significant as its origins and its most critical point. There was just a drastic shift and transformation in the international order that the people responsible for it has been credited with its consequences – the triumphal hegemony of America and the disintegration of the USSR and the fall of the Soviet Communism. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev became the prominent faces that represented this upheaval. However, there are several personages who were pivotal in setting the series of events leading to the Cold War’s demise in motion. For this paper, I will be writing about George Kennan, a foreign policy expert who have outlined the strategy of containment formulated in 1946 based on the idea that denied new conquests, the inherent weaknesses of Soviet Communism ultimately would bring it down. This doctrine was responsible for the American triumph in the Cold War as it influenced triumphalist policies adopted by the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Background Kennan’s theories, particularly his attitude towards the USSR including his contributions and criticisms of the US foreign policy towards the country during the Cold War is a consequence of his background. Kennan served in the military, attended Princeton and joined the US Foreign Service by 1926. He was sent to the Soviet Union in 1933 and was stationed in Moscow from 1944-1946. Along his training as a Soviet specialist in Riga in the late 1940s, this post during the crucial years of the 1940s in the USSR allowed him contacts with Russian émigrés and had observed first-hand the rise of Stalin and the ruthless consolidation of his power in the Soviet Union. In 1947, he was catapulted to the American consciousness after the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs published his article that was based on an intensive analysis of the sources of Soviet conduct that he had sent to the State Department in Washington. Kennan’s warnings, wrote Griffiths, Roach and Solomon (2009), concerning the expansionist drives of the Soviet Union and the need to contain it, struck a responsive chord in the United States and led to his appointment as head of the newly created Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. (p. 36) He remained in service until he retired in the 1950s continuing on his contributions and criticisms over US policy towards the USSR throughout the Cold War. Kennan would, henceforth, spend the rest of his working life at the Princeton University Institute for Advanced Study, where he was able to produce numerous pieces – books and articles – in regard to the American foreign policy, the Soviet Union and the effect of nuclear armaments on the world order during the Cold War. Role in the Cold War Policy I chose Kennan because he was pivotal in the American supremacy over the USSR during the Cold War. He was able to articulate and, in effect, lay the foundation of the American strategy that culminated in the Reagan – Gorbachev meeting in Geneva ending decades of hostility. George Kennan prescribed “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of peaceful and stable world.” With this strategy, Kennan predicted ten to fifteen years of maximum danger during the course of the Cold War and afterwards, the threat would diminish and disappear. The Soviet regime for Kennan promotes Marxist-Leninist cause abroad because of the need to justify the domestic issue of the regime’s monopoly of power by the Communist Party. Hence, by containing the expansionist ambitions of the USSR, the US is internally eroding the empire. Kennan’s doctrine became the basis for the policy enshrined in NSC 68, a 1950 position paper that described the Soviet threat to the world peace: The issues that we face are momentous… involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself…A basic conflict between the idea of freedom under a government of laws, and the idea of slavery under grim oligarchy of the Kremlin… In the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere… Unwillingly, our free society finds itself mortally challenged by the Soviet system… It demands that we make the attempt, and accept the risks, inherent in it, to bring about order and justice… The Kennan doctrine or what others referred to as the containment doctrine and triumphalist perspective found its adherents in the policymakers the administrations of Harry Truman and, finally to Ronald Reagan. For the latter’s administration, we have the cases of Casper Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, Richard Pipes, Richard Pearle and Edward Rowney – officers who advocated the hard-line triumphalist perspective of abandoning the bi-polar status quo approach preferred by the Carter administration. As history have shown, the policy turned the tides and the Reagan administration saw the demise of the Cold War and the fall of USSR. In his book, Reviewing the Cold War: approaches, interpretations, and theory (2000), Odd Arne Westad wrote that the Reagan administration used all the means, short of actual warfare, to the bring the Soviet empire down. To quote: A number of secret policies between 1981 and 1987 – military, economic, political, and psychological… were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet empire and victory of the West. (p. 344-345) From the stream of articles and books produced by Kennan, one sees a pattern of an outlook that demonstrated a conservative and, at times, aristocratic take on the revolutionary changes in world politics. His perspectives are also demonstrated his fondness for the eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe with its political experiences and strategic policies. Most importantly, in the context of the Cold War, Kennan’s attitude towards the USSR and his view in regard to how the US deal with the country is particularly reflective of his personal experiences in his stint as a soldier, as a diplomat and as a foreign policymaker. All in all, George Kennan would always be credited to have guided the American success in the Cold War. His doctrine was tested, shunned and vindicated as the Cold War spanned the administrations eight American administrations – as some used a substantial portion of his vision and some none like Carter’s. References Griffiths, M., Roach, S., and Solomon, S. (2009).Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. 2nd ed. Taylor and Francis. Kennan, G. (1947). The Sources of Soviet Conduct. Foreign Affairs 24, no. 4: 566-582. NSC 68. (1950). Foreign Relations of the United States. Washington D.C.: Department of State. April 14, 1950. vol. 1 Westad, A. (2000). Reviewing the Cold War: approaches, interpretations, and theory. Routledge. Read More