From George Kennan, author of the Cold War containment doctrine: Writing in 1997 at age 92, he declared that expanding NATO to the east “ would be the most fat

From George Kennan, author of the Cold War containment doctrine: Writing in 1997 at age 92, he declared that expanding NATO to the east “ would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” “Such a decision,” he went on, “may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations.”