George Frost Kennan's "Long Telegram" of February 1946 was a seminal document in American Cold War foreign policy; the idea of "containment" introduced by Kennan became the main thrust of US policy toward the Soviet Union from the late 1940s to the 1980s. Containment, argued Kennan, was necessitated by the Soviet Union's inherent expansionism. While the United States could not in good faith work with the Soviet Union, owing to the latter's quest to take advantage of American vulnerabilities, the Soviet did not pose an imminent military threat to the United States, according to Kennan.
The Harry S. Truman administration drew heavily on Kennan's ideas in its formulation of a policy toward the Soviet Union, but much to Kennan's chagrin, the administration militarized the concept of containment. If taken at his word, Kennan intended the economic and diplomatic containment of communism and bemoaned the dramatic increase in American military expenditures and the nuclear arms race. Both NSC 68 and Eisenhower's farewell speech can be seen within the context of Kennan's idea of containment and its militarization by the Truman administration during the early postwar years. By this time, military containment was a given.
When comparing the three sources, one might also consider the way each characterizes the Soviet Union (and its intentions) and the vigor, vitality, and values of American society. Despite an emphasis on the need for American military might, Eisenhower clearly had some concerns about the growth of the influence of the federal government and the military-industrial complex and the implications of that influence for the domestic front and American democracy.
Links to all three sources are provided below.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=90&page=transcript
No comments:
Post a Comment