6 ms·

The Ghosts of Kennan

32 points by Thevet 4y ago

cafard 4y ago
His memoirs are well worth reading, as is Sketches From a Life.
- ArtWomb 4y ago
  IAS houses the Kennan collection, and no doubt there are hidden treasures, like Oppenheimer's file: https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/2604 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/2604 Kennan was pivotal I think in helping to "go" the Manhattan Project: Oral History Interview of George F. Kennan, February 27, 1990 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/627 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/627
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    > The Cold War might not have taken the forms it did if we had known what the other people were really doing instead of acting on the basis of our own worst fears. And I've become convinced that our government is not a government in which things should be done in secret, for better or for worse. If that's a limitation, it's a limitation that comes from the nature of our society. — GFK (Linebarger also has some sorrow concerning over-secrecy in his Psychological Warfare) ==== also an interesting discussion of the role of money ("the golden rule") in US politics, ca. 1950s ==== > I don't see quite the same number of really great and revered older scholars that seemed to be around when I first came [to IAS]. Of course, we owed a lot of those to Hitler and to Stalin who pushed them out into our society. They were really great European scholars. There are not so many of those, it seems to me, in this country. — GFK
    - euroderf 4y ago
      > The Cold War might not have taken the forms it did if we had known what the other people were really doing instead of acting on the basis of our own worst fears. And I've become convinced that our government is not a government in which things should be done in secret, for better or for worse. If that's a limitation, it's a limitation that comes from the nature of our society. — GFK Does (did) he have an opinion on the record about Iran-Contra ?
      - 082349872349872 4y ago
        Given that the interview took place in 1990, post-1986, I think that was his on-the-record opinion about Iran-Contra. (assuming, which I believe we can, his opinions are consistent enough for particular instances to have the same valence as general platitudes?)
miguelazo 4y ago
>What he did understand was diplomacy and statecraft. There are few, if any, people left in the federal government who understand these things. Least of all in the upper echelons of the State Department. They are mostly just careerist technocrats who have bought into the arrogant neocon illusion best captured by Karl Rove: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” These days we get better diplomacy and restraint from the Pentagon leadership, ironically.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  (a) interesting that he wished to unfreeze the Cold War. Unlike Kennedy and Khrushchev*, however, Kennan managed to avoid getting cancelled. (b) viewing action as its own virtue was one of Mussolini's tropes: neo- something other than -con. * the pair of whom, in a different time line, might have managed it? > ... a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. — JFK [Edit: looks like the wake of McCarthy caught Kennan. So he may not exactly have been cancelled, but reading between the lines I suspect that's how he wound up an academic (the modern equivalent of sent to a monastery?)]
- thriftwy 4y ago
  Whoa, that's the landscape monologue from Russian DMB movie! What year was that? …while the enemy is plotting their assault, we change the landscape, even manually. When the attack starts, the enemy is lost on unfamiliar terrain and loses ability to fight. That's the reason, that's our strategy…
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    if it was the original ДМБ, that was 2000; "Rove" was 2004 (I don't know if he's admitted ownership) As mentioned in a sibling comment, however, elevating "men of action" over "eggheads of reality" has the sort of history that Ezra Pound celebrated in the mid-1900s. IIRC there was a substantially-sized war fought over the principle at the time?
AlbertCory 4y ago
Quite interesting. I'm not left with any strong impression of what Kennan actually would have done had he attained any power. "Inchoate yearnings" seems to best describe his thoughts. Creating an unelected council of wise men because the people aren't capable of governing themselves -- if that was his best idea, you can see why he left the government and was continuously unhappy about everything, even being proven right in 1989. As for diplomacy and negotiating, JFK said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." I think that sums it up pretty well.
- pphysch 4y ago
  > Creating an unelected council of wise men because the people aren't capable of governing themselves -- if that was his best idea, you can see why he left the government Bilderberg Group, Atlantic Council, World Economic Forum, and Trilateral Commission all popped up within a decade of him leaving government. While he didn't implement "his" idea, the next generation certainly did.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    and your point is... ? We can go back to Plato for an earlier expression of that idea. Those groups you cited all have unofficial power, and they're all intensely controversial.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      Yeah, but only because giving them official power would be horrible optics in America particularly. Those organizations are de facto where Western policy has been shaped for 50+ years.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        That's a matter of opinion, I'm afraid. We may have hit the limits of useful discussion here. It's like saying "Big business controls our foreign policy." Or maybe, "International Zionism controls our foreign policy." You're welcome to think that, but I'm not going to engage.
samhyde69 4y ago
[dead]
hackandthink 4y ago
Who would be today's George Kennan in U.S. diplomacy, foreign policy? From a distance you can only see war-loving naivetes.
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  John Mearsheimer

32 points by Thevet 4y ago

cafard 4y ago

His memoirs are well worth reading, as is Sketches From a Life.

ArtWomb 4y ago
IAS houses the Kennan collection, and no doubt there are hidden treasures, like Oppenheimer's file: https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/2604 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/2604 Kennan was pivotal I think in helping to "go" the Manhattan Project: Oral History Interview of George F. Kennan, February 27, 1990 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/627 https://albert.ias.edu/handle/20.500.12111/627
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  > The Cold War might not have taken the forms it did if we had known what the other people were really doing instead of acting on the basis of our own worst fears. And I've become convinced that our government is not a government in which things should be done in secret, for better or for worse. If that's a limitation, it's a limitation that comes from the nature of our society. — GFK (Linebarger also has some sorrow concerning over-secrecy in his Psychological Warfare) ==== also an interesting discussion of the role of money ("the golden rule") in US politics, ca. 1950s ==== > I don't see quite the same number of really great and revered older scholars that seemed to be around when I first came [to IAS]. Of course, we owed a lot of those to Hitler and to Stalin who pushed them out into our society. They were really great European scholars. There are not so many of those, it seems to me, in this country. — GFK
  - euroderf 4y ago
    > The Cold War might not have taken the forms it did if we had known what the other people were really doing instead of acting on the basis of our own worst fears. And I've become convinced that our government is not a government in which things should be done in secret, for better or for worse. If that's a limitation, it's a limitation that comes from the nature of our society. — GFK Does (did) he have an opinion on the record about Iran-Contra ?
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Given that the interview took place in 1990, post-1986, I think that was his on-the-record opinion about Iran-Contra. (assuming, which I believe we can, his opinions are consistent enough for particular instances to have the same valence as general platitudes?)

miguelazo 4y ago

>What he did understand was diplomacy and statecraft. There are few, if any, people left in the federal government who understand these things. Least of all in the upper echelons of the State Department. They are mostly just careerist technocrats who have bought into the arrogant neocon illusion best captured by Karl Rove: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” These days we get better diplomacy and restraint from the Pentagon leadership, ironically.

082349872349872 4y ago
(a) interesting that he wished to unfreeze the Cold War. Unlike Kennedy and Khrushchev*, however, Kennan managed to avoid getting cancelled. (b) viewing action as its own virtue was one of Mussolini's tropes: neo- something other than -con. * the pair of whom, in a different time line, might have managed it? > ... a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. — JFK [Edit: looks like the wake of McCarthy caught Kennan. So he may not exactly have been cancelled, but reading between the lines I suspect that's how he wound up an academic (the modern equivalent of sent to a monastery?)]
thriftwy 4y ago
Whoa, that's the landscape monologue from Russian DMB movie! What year was that? …while the enemy is plotting their assault, we change the landscape, even manually. When the attack starts, the enemy is lost on unfamiliar terrain and loses ability to fight. That's the reason, that's our strategy…
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  if it was the original ДМБ, that was 2000; "Rove" was 2004 (I don't know if he's admitted ownership) As mentioned in a sibling comment, however, elevating "men of action" over "eggheads of reality" has the sort of history that Ezra Pound celebrated in the mid-1900s. IIRC there was a substantially-sized war fought over the principle at the time?

AlbertCory 4y ago

Quite interesting. I'm not left with any strong impression of what Kennan actually would have done had he attained any power. "Inchoate yearnings" seems to best describe his thoughts. Creating an unelected council of wise men because the people aren't capable of governing themselves -- if that was his best idea, you can see why he left the government and was continuously unhappy about everything, even being proven right in 1989. As for diplomacy and negotiating, JFK said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate." I think that sums it up pretty well.

pphysch 4y ago
> Creating an unelected council of wise men because the people aren't capable of governing themselves -- if that was his best idea, you can see why he left the government Bilderberg Group, Atlantic Council, World Economic Forum, and Trilateral Commission all popped up within a decade of him leaving government. While he didn't implement "his" idea, the next generation certainly did.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  and your point is... ? We can go back to Plato for an earlier expression of that idea. Those groups you cited all have unofficial power, and they're all intensely controversial.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    Yeah, but only because giving them official power would be horrible optics in America particularly. Those organizations are de facto where Western policy has been shaped for 50+ years.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      That's a matter of opinion, I'm afraid. We may have hit the limits of useful discussion here. It's like saying "Big business controls our foreign policy." Or maybe, "International Zionism controls our foreign policy." You're welcome to think that, but I'm not going to engage.

samhyde69 4y ago

[dead]

hackandthink 4y ago

Who would be today's George Kennan in U.S. diplomacy, foreign policy? From a distance you can only see war-loving naivetes.

epicureanideal 4y ago
John Mearsheimer