George F. Kennan: An American Life (2011) by John Lewis Gaddis

According to no less an authority than Henry Kissinger: “George Kennan came as close to authoring the diplomatic doctrine of his era as any diplomat in our history.” John Lewis Gaddis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the great twentieth century statesman is absolutely brilliant, start to finish. Weighing in at nearly 700 pages, no aspect of Kennan’s career and his evolving strategic vision of the Cold War are left missing.

Kennan was many things: historian, teacher, philosopher, and diplomat. Yet what made his reputation and left his greatest legacy was his work as a grand strategist. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, “What Kennan had hoped to do,” according to Gaddis, “was to lay the intellectual foundations for an American grand strategy that would counter the Soviet Union’s challenge to the postwar international system, without resort to war or appeasement.” His strategy came to be known as containment. “[O]nly by a long term policy of firmness, patience, and understanding, designed to keep the Russians confronted with superior strength at every juncture where they might otherwise be inclined to encroach upon the vital interests of a stable and peaceful world, but to do this is so friendly and unprovocative a manner that its basic purposes will not be subject to misrepresentation.” This doctrine was articulated via several famous policy papers and articles, from the so-called “Long Telegram” to the “X article,” all of if bolstered by Kennan’s nearly non-stop lecturing and speaking engagements.

Kennan’s weaknesses were many – prolixity, solipsism, fragility and a more-or-less permanently negative outlook on affairs both foreign and domestic. He was a brilliant writer. His personal diary, which Gaddis quotes from extensively, is positively poetic in prose. His policy papers were florid and urbane, reminiscent of Edward Gibbon, an historian whose writings had a profound affect on Kennan’s outlook on imperialism and, one presumes, his style. Yet, one gets the sense that Kennan could overdo it. Gaddis concludes: “There was passion, luminosity, vigor, and originality in almost all of his prose, so much so that its vividness at times obscured the meanings he meant for it to convey.”

He may have been the legendary founder of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, but his success as policy advisor to the secretary is questionable, according to Gaddis. The more direct and declarative style of his deputy and eventual successor (and lifelong intellectual nemesis), Paul Nitze, was arguably more effective. One sympathizes with Under Secretary of State David Bruce who, in 1952 when Kennan was ambassador to Moscow, complained that Kennan’s reports, “were so long-winded and so blatantly seeking to be literary rather than provide information.” It also partially explains why Kennan’s direct influence when out of government was so marginal.

Gaddis also argues that Kennan had a difficult time removing himself from his own analyses. “He viewed the world through himself,” he writes, “not as something apart from himself.” The outcome was an often bleak and foreboding image of society and its future. He was also notoriously thin skinned, not a quality that helps one succeed in Washington policy circles.

Finally, Kennan was profoundly pessimistic about his homeland. He viewed Americans as myopic, materialistic and self-absorbed, unworthy of the mantle of international leadership that had been thrust upon them. Gaddis is quick to point out, however, “[Kennan] understood the Soviet Union far better than he did the United States.” He lacked the successful politician’s grasp on the temper and mood of the citizenry. Moreover, Kennan evidently loathed just about every presidential administration, both Democrat and Republican, from FDR to George W. Bush with the notable exception of John F. Kennedy.

Gaddis’ Kennan is a dyspeptic, vain but undeniably brilliant thinker whose influence on Cold War strategy and policy is unrivaled. In many ways, he was an original. Never before or since has there been someone quite like him.