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The Sources of Soviet Conduct
G. F. Kennan had been stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as minister-counselor since 1944. Although he was highly critical of the Soviet system, the mood within the U.S. State Department was friendship towards the Soviets, since they were an important ally in the war against Nazi Germany.
In February 1946, the United States Treasury asked the U.S. Embassy in Moscow why the Soviets were not supporting the newly created World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In reply, Kennan wrote the Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; it arrived in Washington on February 22, 1946. Among its most-remembered parts was that while Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, it was highly sensitive to the logic of force.
In February 1946, the United States Treasury asked the U.S. Embassy in Moscow why the Soviets were not supporting the newly created World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In reply, Kennan wrote the Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; it arrived in Washington on February 22, 1946. Among its most-remembered parts was that while Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, it was highly sensitive to the logic of force.
17 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1947
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About the author
George F. Kennan
127 books116 followersFrom Wikipedia:
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
In the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet Union policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan.
Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch. By mid-1948, he was convinced that the situation in Western Europe had improved to the point where negotiations could be initiated with Moscow. The suggestion did not resonate within the Truman administration, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized—particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. As U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more aggressive and militaristic tone, Kennan bemoaned what he called a misinterpretation of his thinking.
In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State, except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia, and became a leading realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005.
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
In the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet Union policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan.
Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch. By mid-1948, he was convinced that the situation in Western Europe had improved to the point where negotiations could be initiated with Moscow. The suggestion did not resonate within the Truman administration, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized—particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. As U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more aggressive and militaristic tone, Kennan bemoaned what he called a misinterpretation of his thinking.
In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State, except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia, and became a leading realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 9, 2020
Eerily prophetic and insightful.
September 27, 2017
Không học thì cũng chả bao giờ rớ tới mấy thứ này, nhưng quả là một tài liệu đáng đọc. Mặc dù khó nhằn, nhưng đọc tới đâu khâm phục đầu óc nhận định vĩ mô và lý luận của tác giả tới đó.
May 20, 2023
Seriously though, is this the best the US could offer? Singling out traits of all superpowers as something exclusively Russian/USSR? My life would be better spent watching a rerun of Empresses in the Palace. This is how unimpressive the overall acumen of Kennan I've found — less than our national pastime TV drama.
Let us play a mind game: to those who hasn't read the text, please try to decide which 10 of the following 12 quotes are from Kennan, describing "hot-war-ready" then USSR, and which 2 of them written by yours truly, describing contemporary "itching-for-a-new-cold-war" America:
1) Please note that premises on which [?]'s ideology is based are for most part simply not true. Experience has shown that peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible.
2) What does this indicate? It indicates that [?]'s ideology is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond [?]'s borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of [?]; that it arises mainly from basic inner-[?] necessities.
3) At bottom of [?]'s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive [?]'s sense of insecurity.
4) While [?]'s top officials would make it a priority to expand the military-industrialization, out of their sense of insecurity, its citizens may hold disagreement in private.
5) Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of [?] power.
6) [?] will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending [?] power or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. [?] sees in UN not the mechanism for a permanent and stable world society founded on mutual interest and aims of all nations, but an arena in which aims just mentioned can be favorably pursued. As long as UN is considered here to serve this purpose, [?] will remain with it. But if at any time they come to conclusion that it is serving to embarrass or frustrate their aims for power expansion and if they see better prospects for pursuit of these aims along other lines, they will not hesitate to abandon UN.
7) Despite the outlook, most emphasis on [?]'s ideology from both the government and the citizens are lip service. The propaganda machine of [?] is equally skilled in deceiving other nations and deceiving its own. The ideal of [?] is of upmost importance until it gets in the way of personal want or an opportunity of expansion in influence.
8) In the name of [?] they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability.
9) With respect to cultural collaboration, lip service will likewise be rendered to desirability of deepening cultural contacts between peoples, but this will not in practice be interpreted in any way which could weaken security position of [?]'s peoples.
10) Where individual governments stand in path of [?] purposes pressure will be brought for their removal from office.
11) It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw — and usually does — when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.
12) Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to spelt redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society. Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc.
I bursted into laughter when I reached the end. Kennan literally ended his text with this:
Yeah yeah save it to yourself.
—————————————————————
But let's turn to something interesting, namely how these American strategists should have been ended up to be once the Cold War was over. There is a quote that came to me time and time again when I was reading the Long Telegram:
The part that is actually relevant to Kennan et. al. is the "bring it to the end" part of an achievement. I understand that Western mind tends to associate a certain telic nature in achievements: they will their manifestation and growth, and after they reached their full potential they would exist forever "ideally". This association is understandable inasmuch as it takes time — years, decades, even centuries — to observe the aftermath of an achievement continuously. It's understandable but fundamentally wrong.
By pointing out the "brought to the end" phase of an achievement, Yongzheng is exactly demanding achievements be brought down or dismantled at the right time. For what's once accelerating would become a hindrance, what's once favorable could become a fault. Times change. This is especially true when applied to the Kremlinists-turned-core-politicians in America: instead of allowing them to the core of Power, the wise thing to do is to disenfranchise them politically. With the fall of USSR a new mindset is needed, a new tradition should be formed within the US government, for the simple reason that time's changed. Those victorious veterans cannot provide such innovations exactly because they won. Instead the beneficiaries of Cold War turned into impediments of contemporary America: they prevented America from taking the right course, the one most profitable for its national interest, in the face of a new "rival". Befriending Russia in 2010s is the geopolitically correct thing to do for the US. This is obvious. What is equally obvious is the Cold-War-veterans grew too influential in their seats and too incorrigible in their minds that they pushed the US to the exact opposite direction.
This, like most of the things Kennan reported, is indeed common with the human nature. Not a Soviet thing. Not an American thing. But a human thing.
Let us play a mind game: to those who hasn't read the text, please try to decide which 10 of the following 12 quotes are from Kennan, describing "hot-war-ready" then USSR, and which 2 of them written by yours truly, describing contemporary "itching-for-a-new-cold-war" America:
1) Please note that premises on which [?]'s ideology is based are for most part simply not true. Experience has shown that peaceful and mutually profitable coexistence of capitalist and socialist states is entirely possible.
2) What does this indicate? It indicates that [?]'s ideology is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond [?]'s borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of [?]; that it arises mainly from basic inner-[?] necessities.
3) At bottom of [?]'s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive [?]'s sense of insecurity.
4) While [?]'s top officials would make it a priority to expand the military-industrialization, out of their sense of insecurity, its citizens may hold disagreement in private.
5) Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of [?] power.
6) [?] will participate officially in international organizations where they see opportunity of extending [?] power or of inhibiting or diluting power of others. [?] sees in UN not the mechanism for a permanent and stable world society founded on mutual interest and aims of all nations, but an arena in which aims just mentioned can be favorably pursued. As long as UN is considered here to serve this purpose, [?] will remain with it. But if at any time they come to conclusion that it is serving to embarrass or frustrate their aims for power expansion and if they see better prospects for pursuit of these aims along other lines, they will not hesitate to abandon UN.
7) Despite the outlook, most emphasis on [?]'s ideology from both the government and the citizens are lip service. The propaganda machine of [?] is equally skilled in deceiving other nations and deceiving its own. The ideal of [?] is of upmost importance until it gets in the way of personal want or an opportunity of expansion in influence.
8) In the name of [?] they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability.
9) With respect to cultural collaboration, lip service will likewise be rendered to desirability of deepening cultural contacts between peoples, but this will not in practice be interpreted in any way which could weaken security position of [?]'s peoples.
10) Where individual governments stand in path of [?] purposes pressure will be brought for their removal from office.
11) It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw — and usually does — when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.
12) Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to spelt redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society. Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc.
I bursted into laughter when I reached the end. Kennan literally ended his text with this:
After all, the greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.
Yeah yeah save it to yourself.
—————————————————————
But let's turn to something interesting, namely how these American strategists should have been ended up to be once the Cold War was over. There is a quote that came to me time and time again when I was reading the Long Telegram:
凡人臣，图功易，成功难；成功易，守功难；守功易， 终 功难。[...] 若倚功造过，必致反恩为仇，此从来人情常有者。
Whoever a (public) servant would find it easier to aspire to achieve something, but harder to obtain the actual achievement; easier to obtain the achievement, harder to preserve it; easier to preserve it, yet harder to bring it to the end . If one commits wrongdoings on the ground that they have achievements, the gratitude of the master will turn into resentment. This is common with human nature.
— Emperor Yongzheng (1678-1735)
The part that is actually relevant to Kennan et. al. is the "bring it to the end" part of an achievement. I understand that Western mind tends to associate a certain telic nature in achievements: they will their manifestation and growth, and after they reached their full potential they would exist forever "ideally". This association is understandable inasmuch as it takes time — years, decades, even centuries — to observe the aftermath of an achievement continuously. It's understandable but fundamentally wrong.
By pointing out the "brought to the end" phase of an achievement, Yongzheng is exactly demanding achievements be brought down or dismantled at the right time. For what's once accelerating would become a hindrance, what's once favorable could become a fault. Times change. This is especially true when applied to the Kremlinists-turned-core-politicians in America: instead of allowing them to the core of Power, the wise thing to do is to disenfranchise them politically. With the fall of USSR a new mindset is needed, a new tradition should be formed within the US government, for the simple reason that time's changed. Those victorious veterans cannot provide such innovations exactly because they won. Instead the beneficiaries of Cold War turned into impediments of contemporary America: they prevented America from taking the right course, the one most profitable for its national interest, in the face of a new "rival". Befriending Russia in 2010s is the geopolitically correct thing to do for the US. This is obvious. What is equally obvious is the Cold-War-veterans grew too influential in their seats and too incorrigible in their minds that they pushed the US to the exact opposite direction.
This, like most of the things Kennan reported, is indeed common with the human nature. Not a Soviet thing. Not an American thing. But a human thing.
July 1, 2025
As a historical piece (that barely takes 20 minutes to read), this is a very brief diplomatic telegram from Ambassador to Moscow Kennan to the State Department detailing the type of adversary that the U.S. was dealing with in the aftermath of the Second World War. In this telegram, Kennan outlines the Soviet Union as an ideologically consolidated power capable of and with the confidence to contest American power on all fronts. Most insightfully, he attributes this confidence to the Soviet belief that the antagonism between capitalism and socialism will inherently resolve in favor of the communists, as Marx wrote. This also looks at the Kremlin and Stalin as a united Party line, uncontested in its legitimacy and validity among the Russian people (and the Eastern Bloc).
However, Kennan's insight shines when he contrasts Stalin with Hitler and Napoleon. This text is foundational due to its early establishment of the idea of a "pacing threat" (then the Soviet Union, now China) and the fact that the Soviet Union could afford to be patient and persistent in its iron will to achieve its objectives. He also successfully predicts many of the American responses to the Soviets, arguing that these powers would be locked in ideological and military struggle until one of them gave in, seizing on the weakness of the failing system. He frames this battle as an existential, all-encompassing, almost Biblical crusade against a way of life antithetical to American values - paving the way for the excesses of the Cold War (e.g. McCarthyism, Vietnam, CIA interventions around the world) but also the ultimate victory of capitalism and the United States.
However, Kennan's insight shines when he contrasts Stalin with Hitler and Napoleon. This text is foundational due to its early establishment of the idea of a "pacing threat" (then the Soviet Union, now China) and the fact that the Soviet Union could afford to be patient and persistent in its iron will to achieve its objectives. He also successfully predicts many of the American responses to the Soviets, arguing that these powers would be locked in ideological and military struggle until one of them gave in, seizing on the weakness of the failing system. He frames this battle as an existential, all-encompassing, almost Biblical crusade against a way of life antithetical to American values - paving the way for the excesses of the Cold War (e.g. McCarthyism, Vietnam, CIA interventions around the world) but also the ultimate victory of capitalism and the United States.
August 11, 2024
While Kennan's insight and analysis are astute, and he does seem to have empathy, the writing is still so often Orientalist and chauvinistic, and while he acknowledges that many among the Soviet leadership genuinely believe in the rightness of their cause, he still bases his analysis largely on the presumption of "rightness" of the US and "wrongness" of the Soviet Union. Although this article reiterates many of the ideas of his "Long Telegram," its tone is more chauvinistic.
June 3, 2016
Even after 70 years (here reprinted by Foreign Affairs), the X article still has power to show Kennan's analytical ability and policy formulations. A key document in the development of the American response to the beginning of the Cold War.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews