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    George Kennan On Russia

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    George Kennan, known as the "father of containment" predicted in a 1998 interview that NATO expansion would begin a new Cold War with Russia. Kennan believed NATO expansion was a mistake as it would provoke a negative reaction from Russia. He argued the Senate debate ignored Russian history and would damage relations. Future historians, Kennan said, may view this period as one of "midgets" rather than the "great statesmen" who had the courage and imagination to help end the Soviet Union without conflict.

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    George Kennan On Russia

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    didoltanev
    451 views2 pages
    George Kennan, known as the "father of containment" predicted in a 1998 interview that NATO expansion would begin a new Cold War with Russia. Kennan believed NATO expansion was a mistake as it would provoke a negative reaction from Russia. He argued the Senate debate ignored Russian history and would damage relations. Future historians, Kennan said, may view this period as one of "midgets" rather than the "great statesmen" who had the courage and imagination to help end the Soviet Union without conflict.

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    George Kennan on Russia

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    George Kennan on Russia

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    George Kennan, known as the "father of containment" predicted in a 1998 interview that NATO expansion would begin a new Cold War with Russia. Kennan believed NATO expansion was a mistake as it would provoke a negative reaction from Russia. He argued the Senate debate ignored Russian history and would damage relations. Future historians, Kennan said, may view this period as one of "midgets" rather than the "great statesmen" who had the courage and imagination to help end the Soviet Union without conflict.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    451 views2 pages

    George Kennan On Russia

    Uploaded by

    didoltanev
    George Kennan, known as the "father of containment" predicted in a 1998 interview that NATO expansion would begin a new Cold War with Russia. Kennan believed NATO expansion was a mistake as it would provoke a negative reaction from Russia. He argued the Senate debate ignored Russian history and would damage relations. Future historians, Kennan said, may view this period as one of "midgets" rather than the "great statesmen" who had the courage and imagination to help end the Soviet Union without conflict.

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    Russia: Other Points of View: George Kennan's Prediction

    Page 1

    Russia: Other Points of View


    January 12, 2009

    George Kennan's Prediction


    In this 1998 NYT interview, George Kennan, a former US Ambassador to the USSR best known as "the father of containment" and the author of "Long
    Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, reacted to the Senates ratification of NATO expansion. He predicted that this was the beginning of a new cold war. To our
    dismay, his predictions remain relevant and timely 10 years later.

    by Thomas Friedman, New York Times, May 2, 1998


    Foreign Affairs; Now a Word from X
    His voice is a bit frail now, but the mind, even at age 94, is as sharp as ever. So when I reached George Kennan by phone to get his reaction to the Senate's ratification of NATO
    expansion it was no surprise to find that the man who was the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union and one of the great American statesmen of the 20th
    century was ready with an answer.
    ''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I
    think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over
    in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion]
    was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''
    ''What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was,'' added Mr. Kennan, who was present at the creation of NATO and whose anonymous 1947 article
    in the journal Foreign Affairs, signed ''X,'' defined America's cold-war containment policy for 40 years. ''I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to
    attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who
    mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.
    ''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in
    1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia,
    and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''
    One only wonders what future historians will say. If we are lucky they will say that NATO expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic simply didn't matter, because the
    vacuum it was supposed to fill had already been filled, only the Clinton team couldn't see it. They will say that the forces of globalization integrating Europe, coupled with the new
    arms control agreements, proved to be so powerful that Russia, despite NATO expansion, moved ahead with democratization and Westernization, and was gradually drawn into a
    loosely unified Europe. If we are unlucky they will say, as Mr. Kennan predicts, that NATO expansion set up a situation in which NATO now has to either expand all the way to
    Russia's border, triggering a new cold war, or stop expanding after these three new countries and create a new dividing line through Europe.
    But there is one thing future historians will surely remark upon, and that is the utter poverty of imagination that characterized U.S. foreign policy in the late 1990's. They will note that
    one of the seminal events of this century took place between 1989 and 1992 -- the collapse of the Soviet Empire, which had the capability, imperial intentions and ideology to truly
    threaten the entire free world. Thanks to Western resolve and the courage of Russian democrats, that Soviet Empire collapsed without a shot, spawning a democratic Russia, setting
    free the former Soviet republics and leading to unprecedented arms control agreements with the U.S.
    And what was America's response? It was to expand the NATO cold-war alliance against Russia and bring it closer to Russia's borders.
    Yes, tell your children, and your children's children, that you lived in the age of Bill Clinton and William Cohen, the age of Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, the age of Trent Lott
    and Joe Lieberman, and you too were present at the creation of the post-cold-war order, when these foreign policy Titans put their heads together and produced . . . a mouse.
    We are in the age of midgets. The only good news is that we got here in one piece because there was another age -- one of great statesmen who had both imagination and courage.
    As he said goodbye to me on the phone, Mr. Kennan added just one more thing: ''This has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end.''
    Photo source: www.nytimes.com
    Posted on January 12, 2009 at 02:10 PM in Democracy Issues, NATO, Policy towards Russia, Russia Foreign Relations | Permalink
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