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Kennan: A Life between Worlds
A definitive biography of the U.S. diplomat and prize-winning historian George F. Kennan
The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy--and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola's authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and ambition whose idea of containing the Soviet Union helped ignite the Cold War but who spent the next half century trying to extinguish it. Always prescient, Kennan in the 1990s warned that the eastward expansion of NATO would spur a new cold war with Russia.
Even as Kennan championed rational realism in foreign policy, his personal and professional lives were marked by turmoil. And though he was widely respected and honored by presidents and the public, he judged his career a failure because he had been dropped as a pilot of U.S. foreign policy. Impossible to classify, Kennan was a sui generis thinker, a trenchant critic of both communism and capitalism, and a pioneering environmentalist. Living between Russia and the United States, he witnessed firsthand Stalin's tightening grip on the Soviet Union, the collapse of Europe during World War II, and the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
An absorbing portrait of an eloquent, insightful, and sometimes blinkered iconoclast whose ideas are still powerfully relevant, Kennan invites us to imagine a world that Kennan fought for but was unable to bring about--one not of confrontations and crises, but of dialogue and diplomacy.
The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904-2005) ranks as one of the most important figures in American foreign policy--and one of its most complex. Drawing on many previously untapped sources, Frank Costigliola's authoritative biography offers a new picture of a man of extraordinary ability and ambition whose idea of containing the Soviet Union helped ignite the Cold War but who spent the next half century trying to extinguish it. Always prescient, Kennan in the 1990s warned that the eastward expansion of NATO would spur a new cold war with Russia.
Even as Kennan championed rational realism in foreign policy, his personal and professional lives were marked by turmoil. And though he was widely respected and honored by presidents and the public, he judged his career a failure because he had been dropped as a pilot of U.S. foreign policy. Impossible to classify, Kennan was a sui generis thinker, a trenchant critic of both communism and capitalism, and a pioneering environmentalist. Living between Russia and the United States, he witnessed firsthand Stalin's tightening grip on the Soviet Union, the collapse of Europe during World War II, and the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.
An absorbing portrait of an eloquent, insightful, and sometimes blinkered iconoclast whose ideas are still powerfully relevant, Kennan invites us to imagine a world that Kennan fought for but was unable to bring about--one not of confrontations and crises, but of dialogue and diplomacy.
656 pages, Paperback
First published January 17, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 18, 2023
I have to admit, I was feeling 3/5 on this Kennan biography for awhile because no matter how good it is one cannot escape that the author was more interested in the Freudian mindscape of his subject than on the policy impact...particularly after Kennan's heyday. His important (and quite enjoyed, apparently) stint as ambassador to Yugoslavia gets a very short treatment while his surprising ability to be extremely horny for most of his life never ceases to be covered. But, by the end, Costigliola had won me over for his ability to ermphasize aspects of Kennan few other historians ever talk about. There is a nuance to the man's views that is lost on even people who claim to be his fans. And they are not be found in Gaddis' more famous work which custom builds a narrative around that author's neoconservatism.
By critically-yet-sympathetically examining Kennan, Costigliola gives us both a more human and more balanced picture, and a welcome reappraisal of how diplomatic history and foreign policy commentary alike often miss the point of Kennan's work and actual legacy.
By critically-yet-sympathetically examining Kennan, Costigliola gives us both a more human and more balanced picture, and a welcome reappraisal of how diplomatic history and foreign policy commentary alike often miss the point of Kennan's work and actual legacy.
February 10, 2023
"Oooops, I didn't mean that!" might have been the motto of George Kennan's life. No one of his generation, not even the president of the United States, did more to launch the Cold War and no man did more to try and diffuse it, if not stop it. Once upon a time, Kennan was so famous that his book RUSSIA LEAVES THE WAR, 1917, became a huge best-seller. Born into a family of Russophiles (his great-uncle once met Leo Tolstoy and debated the merits of pacifism with him) Kennan's post-war essay on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" provided every administration from Truman to Reagan (and beyond, as we shall see) with both a Bible and a Boy Scout Manual on how to contain communism. Kennan agreed with Churchill that "Russian national interests", not Marxism, is what drove Soviet foreign policy. (Unlike that fool John Foster Dulles, who boasted he kept a copy of Stalin's PROBLEMS OF LENINISM on his desk. We may be sure Stalin did not.) Yet Kennan insisted that after 1945 the two had been conjoined. The Soviets would consolidate their foothold over Eastern Europe and look for points of weakness to exploit elsewhere in the world. Thus, the U.S.S.R. must be contained, but not defeated, for defeat would entail nuclear war. What Kennan always maintained, throughout his long life, is that he never argued for MILITARY containment of communism. A more subtle approach was needed, combining diplomacy with economic promises and punishments for the Soviets. Kennan never bought the Moscow-Beijing axis theory either, so beloved of Truman-Acheson and Eisenhoweer-Dulles. Communism was not monolithic. Kennan took umbrage when first John F. Kennedy and then later Lyndon Johnson cited him in justifying the U.S. war in Viet Nam. He opposed the war while the "Wise Men" of American foreign policy, above all Dean Acheson, urged greater U.S. commitment to Indochina. After the end of the Cold War he just as stridently railed against the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton, and American military intervention from Haiti to Somalia. Kennan died in 2005, a modern-day Cassandra. A prophet whose pronouncements were right yet destined not to be listened to.
March 22, 2023
Another great and insightful biography that I was most reluctant to finish! Professor Costigliola is to be praised for offering such a balanced work on an important – if often difficult and challenging to understand – man whose views on Russia, the United States, and the uses of true diplomacy still have much to teach us today.
When I was a young man in graduate school in the mid-1960s, Kennan had already made many significant contributions to not only US foreign policy during and after World War II but was now in the process of transitioning from his foreign service career – and not happily, at that – into the second half of his long life as primarily a scholar and teacher, although he never gave upon efforts to influence successive administrations and their foreign policy.
If he is remembered at all today, it is probably for his role in forming the US response to the Cold War that so quickly followed the termination of the Second World War – that of containment. Ironically, to the end of his life he remained irritated that this was so, since he consistently maintained that his proposal to contain the Soviet Union’s further post-war expansion westward was unfortunately interpreted to mean primarily a policy of military preparedness rather than the mix of economic, political, and military assistance he had in mind. To that end, it is less remembered that Kennan was the originator of what became known as the “Marshall Plan,” the prodigious effort by the United States to offer generous economic assistance to the countries of Europe that had been left so devasted by the world war.
An opinion piece in the March issue of The New Republic by a revisionist historian argues that Kennan, in retrospect, was not really all that important – since there were so many other factors and players that helped formulate policy – but also that Kennan and those who praised him fall into the unfortunate position of supporting the “great man” theory of history. That is, that the “course of history” can be understood to be heavily influenced by what a relatively few “great men” in positions of power (or in positions able to influence those holding power) do rather than by the larger economic, social, and political forces at work.
Personally, while I think the macro “course of events” is determined by those larger mass forces (in the framing, not a rigid causal, sense), I also recognize how certain people – because they are in the “right place at the right time” – effectively have considerable sway in initiating, responding to, or worsening situations. Just think of how differently the course of history might have played out if, say, Lincoln, FDR, or Hitler had not come along in the way they did.
As this book makes clear, Kennan was a complicated man, hard to truly comprehend, often vain, and – despite his considerable early achievements – one who always yearned to play yet greater roles and to have more influence on major actors and their policies. Like other persons of amazing abilities I have encountered – either personally or through my study of history – it is striking how people of considerable intelligence and accomplishments so often are bothered by deep feelings of inadequacy or of being unappreciated and unrecognized.
Costigliola’s subtitle – A Life between Worlds – is interesting, for Kennan really was pulled throughout his life between what he called “civilization” and “eros,” that is, between the many social conventions we humans have developed to allow us to function well together and the powerful tug of wanting – and needing – to fulfill those desires that by themselves would transgress such conventions. In particular, Kennan struggled constantly with his “wandering eye” until the steady progression of old age solved the problem for him.
In explaining his responses to this tug of dualities, Kennan – in his diary but also in candid conversations with others – became very adept at rationalizing his behavior as his attempt to achieve a reasonable “balance” that would allow him to better fulfill his nature. (As a person who once practiced this kind of self-justification himself, I understand the allure of this kind of “reasoning.”)
Kennan also felt between the two worlds as represented by Russia and the United States. As a boy he fell in love with all things Russian and, like the historian Richard Pipes whose works I also read in the ‘60s, believed that the peoples of Russia and the United States actually had many things in common. As a consequence, he worked hard all of his life to bring the two peoples closer together. This helps explain why he was sympathetic to what he believed was Stalin’s legitimate security interests in having “friendly nations” along his western border. It was also why the “containment policy” he hoped for was to be primarily an economic and political one that, while accomplishing the halting of further Russian westward expansion, would also allow for a “cooling off” period after which a more peaceful stance between Russia and the West could again be brought about.
While he was wary of Stalin’s seeming paranoia – as a diplomat in the Soviet Union in 1934-36 he had witnessed the horrific cost wrought by Stalin when he turned against former Bolshevik allies – he also thought that Stalin ultimately decided upon policy moves rationally and, thus, over time, would come to understand that Russia was under no danger from the West. Unfortunately, as US policy quickly hardened into a military one prompted by a rigid us v. them understanding, the stand-off turned into the long-lasting Cold War.
Like many other knowledgeable citizens in the early years of the 20th century, Kennan early came to value the many insights that he thought modern psychological developments offered. Unfortunately, though, Kennan had a life-long tendency to apply psychological terms not only to individual’s motives, but also to those of entire nations! Thus, folks such as the Germans, or the French, or the Russians, or the Americans – all had certain notable characteristics and inclinations that differentiated them from one another. As but one consequence, Kennan often spoke of how he had learned to follow his “gut instincts” about a person, situation, or even how a given nation might respond in a certain situation. These were often – but not always – quite adept and accurate, but really quite dubious in method.
Kennan was an early champion of what today we would call environmentalism or of the conservation of the world’s precious natural resources and its varied life-forms. A good part of the reason for this is that Kennan loved the land and loved the relationship he maintained with it – and the simpler ways of living and doing things that accompanied it – because he owned and, in his spare time, worked a modest farmstead. Kennan also did not much care for many “modern” developments, including automobiles and the intrusive roadways that such demanded. Reading him on occasion makes him seem something of a Luddite plunked into the 20th century.
But his respect for the natural world was deeply held and it was his fondest hope that Russia and the United States would find a way to put aside their differences in order to work for a restoration of the natural order before it was too late. Long before global warming – and Al Gore – Kennan was trying to be heard.
Kennan was also an early and constant critic of American adventurism in foreign policy. He thought the Korean War was a huge mistake, especially the decision to plunge deeply into North Korean (which ended up bringing the predicable response by the Chinese that almost destroyed South Korean and American forces). He was one of the earliest critics of the Vietnam War and he also believed that the US “obsession” with the Middle East to be a great mistake.
In sum, this was a book that not only brought me to a better understanding of Kennan as a truly good and great man – albeit, like all of us, in many ways a damaged one – but also helped me to see that many of our current problems have deep roots, indeed.
Unlike seemingly most public figures today – and not to mention any of the idiot “influencers” or alternative “news” sources – Kennan deeply believed in diplomacy. And diplomacy above all requires that you:
Respect your opponent in fact and in demonstrated attitude;
Listen carefully to them;
Understand their point of view (without necessarily sharing it);
Clarify, clarify, clarify!
Always exercise patience and good will; and
Constantly seek a win-win outcome.
Kennan still has much to teach us, and Costigliola’s lovely exploration of his life helps us to hear.
When I was a young man in graduate school in the mid-1960s, Kennan had already made many significant contributions to not only US foreign policy during and after World War II but was now in the process of transitioning from his foreign service career – and not happily, at that – into the second half of his long life as primarily a scholar and teacher, although he never gave upon efforts to influence successive administrations and their foreign policy.
If he is remembered at all today, it is probably for his role in forming the US response to the Cold War that so quickly followed the termination of the Second World War – that of containment. Ironically, to the end of his life he remained irritated that this was so, since he consistently maintained that his proposal to contain the Soviet Union’s further post-war expansion westward was unfortunately interpreted to mean primarily a policy of military preparedness rather than the mix of economic, political, and military assistance he had in mind. To that end, it is less remembered that Kennan was the originator of what became known as the “Marshall Plan,” the prodigious effort by the United States to offer generous economic assistance to the countries of Europe that had been left so devasted by the world war.
An opinion piece in the March issue of The New Republic by a revisionist historian argues that Kennan, in retrospect, was not really all that important – since there were so many other factors and players that helped formulate policy – but also that Kennan and those who praised him fall into the unfortunate position of supporting the “great man” theory of history. That is, that the “course of history” can be understood to be heavily influenced by what a relatively few “great men” in positions of power (or in positions able to influence those holding power) do rather than by the larger economic, social, and political forces at work.
Personally, while I think the macro “course of events” is determined by those larger mass forces (in the framing, not a rigid causal, sense), I also recognize how certain people – because they are in the “right place at the right time” – effectively have considerable sway in initiating, responding to, or worsening situations. Just think of how differently the course of history might have played out if, say, Lincoln, FDR, or Hitler had not come along in the way they did.
As this book makes clear, Kennan was a complicated man, hard to truly comprehend, often vain, and – despite his considerable early achievements – one who always yearned to play yet greater roles and to have more influence on major actors and their policies. Like other persons of amazing abilities I have encountered – either personally or through my study of history – it is striking how people of considerable intelligence and accomplishments so often are bothered by deep feelings of inadequacy or of being unappreciated and unrecognized.
Costigliola’s subtitle – A Life between Worlds – is interesting, for Kennan really was pulled throughout his life between what he called “civilization” and “eros,” that is, between the many social conventions we humans have developed to allow us to function well together and the powerful tug of wanting – and needing – to fulfill those desires that by themselves would transgress such conventions. In particular, Kennan struggled constantly with his “wandering eye” until the steady progression of old age solved the problem for him.
In explaining his responses to this tug of dualities, Kennan – in his diary but also in candid conversations with others – became very adept at rationalizing his behavior as his attempt to achieve a reasonable “balance” that would allow him to better fulfill his nature. (As a person who once practiced this kind of self-justification himself, I understand the allure of this kind of “reasoning.”)
Kennan also felt between the two worlds as represented by Russia and the United States. As a boy he fell in love with all things Russian and, like the historian Richard Pipes whose works I also read in the ‘60s, believed that the peoples of Russia and the United States actually had many things in common. As a consequence, he worked hard all of his life to bring the two peoples closer together. This helps explain why he was sympathetic to what he believed was Stalin’s legitimate security interests in having “friendly nations” along his western border. It was also why the “containment policy” he hoped for was to be primarily an economic and political one that, while accomplishing the halting of further Russian westward expansion, would also allow for a “cooling off” period after which a more peaceful stance between Russia and the West could again be brought about.
While he was wary of Stalin’s seeming paranoia – as a diplomat in the Soviet Union in 1934-36 he had witnessed the horrific cost wrought by Stalin when he turned against former Bolshevik allies – he also thought that Stalin ultimately decided upon policy moves rationally and, thus, over time, would come to understand that Russia was under no danger from the West. Unfortunately, as US policy quickly hardened into a military one prompted by a rigid us v. them understanding, the stand-off turned into the long-lasting Cold War.
Like many other knowledgeable citizens in the early years of the 20th century, Kennan early came to value the many insights that he thought modern psychological developments offered. Unfortunately, though, Kennan had a life-long tendency to apply psychological terms not only to individual’s motives, but also to those of entire nations! Thus, folks such as the Germans, or the French, or the Russians, or the Americans – all had certain notable characteristics and inclinations that differentiated them from one another. As but one consequence, Kennan often spoke of how he had learned to follow his “gut instincts” about a person, situation, or even how a given nation might respond in a certain situation. These were often – but not always – quite adept and accurate, but really quite dubious in method.
Kennan was an early champion of what today we would call environmentalism or of the conservation of the world’s precious natural resources and its varied life-forms. A good part of the reason for this is that Kennan loved the land and loved the relationship he maintained with it – and the simpler ways of living and doing things that accompanied it – because he owned and, in his spare time, worked a modest farmstead. Kennan also did not much care for many “modern” developments, including automobiles and the intrusive roadways that such demanded. Reading him on occasion makes him seem something of a Luddite plunked into the 20th century.
But his respect for the natural world was deeply held and it was his fondest hope that Russia and the United States would find a way to put aside their differences in order to work for a restoration of the natural order before it was too late. Long before global warming – and Al Gore – Kennan was trying to be heard.
Kennan was also an early and constant critic of American adventurism in foreign policy. He thought the Korean War was a huge mistake, especially the decision to plunge deeply into North Korean (which ended up bringing the predicable response by the Chinese that almost destroyed South Korean and American forces). He was one of the earliest critics of the Vietnam War and he also believed that the US “obsession” with the Middle East to be a great mistake.
In sum, this was a book that not only brought me to a better understanding of Kennan as a truly good and great man – albeit, like all of us, in many ways a damaged one – but also helped me to see that many of our current problems have deep roots, indeed.
Unlike seemingly most public figures today – and not to mention any of the idiot “influencers” or alternative “news” sources – Kennan deeply believed in diplomacy. And diplomacy above all requires that you:
Respect your opponent in fact and in demonstrated attitude;
Listen carefully to them;
Understand their point of view (without necessarily sharing it);
Clarify, clarify, clarify!
Always exercise patience and good will; and
Constantly seek a win-win outcome.
Kennan still has much to teach us, and Costigliola’s lovely exploration of his life helps us to hear.
March 29, 2025
It is a bit difficult to evaluate this biography of the diplomat George F. Kennan without comparing it to the earlier, authorized biography of him by Gaddis, having read both in the same year. I won't claim one is better than the other but they each have different strengths that I found made them both worth reading.
I will say up front that Gaddis' biography of Kennan was more focused on Kennan as he was commonly associated, with the Long Telgram and the 'X' article, which were significant pieces that influenced policy during the early Cold War. Where the Costigliola biography signifcantly diverges from Gaddis' is with how in treats Kennan after his career in the State Deparment ended in humiliation when he was forced to leave Moscow as the ambassor to the USSR. I would also add that the title of Costigliola's biography is noteworthy: 'A Life between Worlds' signals a different approach to the subject than Gaddis' title which was 'An American Life'. Costigliola's title is certainly more fitting, I think, since, for one thing, much of Kennan's life was spent as 'between worlds' and, as one will find from reading either or both biographies, Kennan became quite discontent with American life, both socially and politically.
In both biographies, much of the latter half of the biography's attention is given to how Kennan became overtly critical of US foreign policy, despite being widely honored in the political establishment. Where they differ is focus. In Costigliola's book, more attention is given to Kennan's inner demons, especially his stuggles with the Freudian concept which Kennan accepted as fact being 'Eros' and 'Civilization,' his bigotries, his inclinations towards pessimism, and, especially, his frustrations with the politcal establishment for ignoring him, despite how they always expressed respect for him. Many of his deplorable qualities stain his image as a man, and he comes across a difficult to like a lot of the time. Yet, Kennan maintained a very admirable quality: he never quit, and stayed active almost all the way until the end during his 101 years of life.
Both Costigliola's and Gaddis' biographies of Kennan are great; if you know little or read very little about Kennan, however, I would recommend Gaddis' biography over this one to start, simply because it is more concerned with how Kennan did affect the world, whilst Costigliola's gives much more focus to how he wished he could affect the world, but could not. Costigliola's biography however higlights a side to the man that Gaddis' does not, and it makes for really good reading.
I will say up front that Gaddis' biography of Kennan was more focused on Kennan as he was commonly associated, with the Long Telgram and the 'X' article, which were significant pieces that influenced policy during the early Cold War. Where the Costigliola biography signifcantly diverges from Gaddis' is with how in treats Kennan after his career in the State Deparment ended in humiliation when he was forced to leave Moscow as the ambassor to the USSR. I would also add that the title of Costigliola's biography is noteworthy: 'A Life between Worlds' signals a different approach to the subject than Gaddis' title which was 'An American Life'. Costigliola's title is certainly more fitting, I think, since, for one thing, much of Kennan's life was spent as 'between worlds' and, as one will find from reading either or both biographies, Kennan became quite discontent with American life, both socially and politically.
In both biographies, much of the latter half of the biography's attention is given to how Kennan became overtly critical of US foreign policy, despite being widely honored in the political establishment. Where they differ is focus. In Costigliola's book, more attention is given to Kennan's inner demons, especially his stuggles with the Freudian concept which Kennan accepted as fact being 'Eros' and 'Civilization,' his bigotries, his inclinations towards pessimism, and, especially, his frustrations with the politcal establishment for ignoring him, despite how they always expressed respect for him. Many of his deplorable qualities stain his image as a man, and he comes across a difficult to like a lot of the time. Yet, Kennan maintained a very admirable quality: he never quit, and stayed active almost all the way until the end during his 101 years of life.
Both Costigliola's and Gaddis' biographies of Kennan are great; if you know little or read very little about Kennan, however, I would recommend Gaddis' biography over this one to start, simply because it is more concerned with how Kennan did affect the world, whilst Costigliola's gives much more focus to how he wished he could affect the world, but could not. Costigliola's biography however higlights a side to the man that Gaddis' does not, and it makes for really good reading.
May 2, 2025
Kennan: A Life between Worlds by Frank Costigliola is a provocative, if far too long, study of a diplomat/scholar whose peculiar mix of talent, industry, and fantasy rendered him famous and admired and scorned and exiled. The picture here is of a man vigorously asserting the correctness of his projections and needs and often proving right in his intuitive judgments.
Kennan was wildly attached to Russia and felt more at home there than in the U.S. He believed his sense of the place and people, and knowledge of Russia’s history and culture, justified grand judgments about the USSR’s intentions and policies. He did a lot of basic work as a Foreign Service Officer at various posts, including Berlin, Moscow, and elsewhere. Costigliola properly spends little time on this aspect of his diplomatic career. When Kennan was able to spread his wings as a thinker and writer, he was regarded as brilliant. His famous “Long Telegram,” which I reread this morning, conveys a series of generalizations about the USSR’s intentions that are well-stated but require the reader to take it on faith that Kennan was right. That was one of his strengths. He always believed he was right about the USSR/Russia, and he knew enough to be a powerful advocate for his own views over the views of anyone else.( The Long Telegram strikes me as overwritten and pretty pompous.) Back then, after WWII, Kennan nonetheless managed to shape Washington’s understanding of the USSR without necessarily shaping U.S. policy. As Averell Harriman observed, George didn’t seem to know much about the US. As a consequence Kennan’s international insights didn’t turn into the edicts he thought they should be; politics got in the way, and Kennan was no politician. His other famous post-WWII piece, the Mr.X analysis of Soviet perspectives and proclivities published in Foreign Affairs, is a much more polished and powerful effort than the choppy, blunt “Long Telegram.” Kennan was a gifted thinker. He offered a subtle interpretation of the USSR’s evolution and interests, which he concluded needed to be “contained.” This book makes clear—over and over again—that Kennan did not mean the USSR needed to be contained by military force; he meant contained in political and economic terms. Where it showed up, it should be rebuffed, challenged, put in its place, contradicted, exposed, etc. The Cold War wouldn’t really have been a war at any temperature if others in Washington didn’t militarize containment. But Kennan exaggerated the Soviet threat at his own peril; he loosed a genie others put to work in ways that appalled him.
Kennan was an odd bird. He did things that undermined his own interests repeatedly. He grew so emotional at not being able to converse with Soviet counterparts when he was US ambassador in the early 1950s—they simply wouldn’t talk to him or let other Russians talk to him—that he complained his way, publicly, into persona non grata status and had to be recalled and replaced and effectively drummed out of the Foreign Service where he had been a superstar as the first director of the office of policy analysis supporting then-Secretary of State George Marshall.
For all of Kennan’s internal demons, his self-analysis, his personal sturm und drang, he nonetheless managed to become an acclaimed historian and important public intellectual. He opposed the Vietnam War and got that right, and he opposed many other examples of Washington overreach and dumb-think in the world of foreign policy. Question: did we need to take on all of Afghanistan in the hunt for bin Laden? Question: did we need to depose Saddam over weapons of mass destruction he did not possess? Question: Was Kennan right when he predicted many years ago that there would be bloody conflict over the status of Ukraine because Russia would never accept its independence without a fight? Question:Was Kennan right criticizing the eastern expansion of NATO?
This book examines these and many other questions. Again, it is too long, it is repetitive. It praises Kennan but is no hagiography.
Kennan was wildly attached to Russia and felt more at home there than in the U.S. He believed his sense of the place and people, and knowledge of Russia’s history and culture, justified grand judgments about the USSR’s intentions and policies. He did a lot of basic work as a Foreign Service Officer at various posts, including Berlin, Moscow, and elsewhere. Costigliola properly spends little time on this aspect of his diplomatic career. When Kennan was able to spread his wings as a thinker and writer, he was regarded as brilliant. His famous “Long Telegram,” which I reread this morning, conveys a series of generalizations about the USSR’s intentions that are well-stated but require the reader to take it on faith that Kennan was right. That was one of his strengths. He always believed he was right about the USSR/Russia, and he knew enough to be a powerful advocate for his own views over the views of anyone else.( The Long Telegram strikes me as overwritten and pretty pompous.) Back then, after WWII, Kennan nonetheless managed to shape Washington’s understanding of the USSR without necessarily shaping U.S. policy. As Averell Harriman observed, George didn’t seem to know much about the US. As a consequence Kennan’s international insights didn’t turn into the edicts he thought they should be; politics got in the way, and Kennan was no politician. His other famous post-WWII piece, the Mr.X analysis of Soviet perspectives and proclivities published in Foreign Affairs, is a much more polished and powerful effort than the choppy, blunt “Long Telegram.” Kennan was a gifted thinker. He offered a subtle interpretation of the USSR’s evolution and interests, which he concluded needed to be “contained.” This book makes clear—over and over again—that Kennan did not mean the USSR needed to be contained by military force; he meant contained in political and economic terms. Where it showed up, it should be rebuffed, challenged, put in its place, contradicted, exposed, etc. The Cold War wouldn’t really have been a war at any temperature if others in Washington didn’t militarize containment. But Kennan exaggerated the Soviet threat at his own peril; he loosed a genie others put to work in ways that appalled him.
Kennan was an odd bird. He did things that undermined his own interests repeatedly. He grew so emotional at not being able to converse with Soviet counterparts when he was US ambassador in the early 1950s—they simply wouldn’t talk to him or let other Russians talk to him—that he complained his way, publicly, into persona non grata status and had to be recalled and replaced and effectively drummed out of the Foreign Service where he had been a superstar as the first director of the office of policy analysis supporting then-Secretary of State George Marshall.
For all of Kennan’s internal demons, his self-analysis, his personal sturm und drang, he nonetheless managed to become an acclaimed historian and important public intellectual. He opposed the Vietnam War and got that right, and he opposed many other examples of Washington overreach and dumb-think in the world of foreign policy. Question: did we need to take on all of Afghanistan in the hunt for bin Laden? Question: did we need to depose Saddam over weapons of mass destruction he did not possess? Question: Was Kennan right when he predicted many years ago that there would be bloody conflict over the status of Ukraine because Russia would never accept its independence without a fight? Question:Was Kennan right criticizing the eastern expansion of NATO?
This book examines these and many other questions. Again, it is too long, it is repetitive. It praises Kennan but is no hagiography.
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August 11, 2023Sometime in the early 1990s, in the lofty precincts of the White House and the State Department, there commenced what came to be known as the “Kennan Sweepstakes.” As the first post-Cold War President, Bill Clinton vouchsafed his senior officials a solemn task: come up with a single phrase that would characterize the goals of US foreign policy and replace the Cold War’s grand strategy of “containment.” It was diplomat George Frost Kennan, former ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Yugoslavia, who famously had coined that term in his celebrated “Long Telegram” from Moscow setting out US policy, and it was containment that had seemed to triumph on November 10, 1989, when the Berlin Wall gave way before the overwhelming press of freedom-seeking Germans. With the Soviet Union gone, what would take containment’s place as the lodestar of US policy? At a State Department dinner honoring the nonagenarian diplomat—as Frank Costigliola, Kennan’s latest biographer, recounts—Secretary of State Warren Christopher conveyed the president’s request. The Great Man was not amused. He took the opportunity to caution against employing a “bumper sticker” that would encourage “great and misleading oversimplification of analysis and policy.” President Clinton, informed of this grave admonition, laughed with delight. “Well,” he said, “that’s why Kennan’s a great diplomat and scholar and not a politician.”
Throughout his long life (he died in 2005 at the age of 101), Kennan was pulled between the poles of “Eros and Civilization,” or so Frank Costigliola assures us with wearying frequency. By this he means that the stalwart, conservative Midwesterner was whipsawed between the erotic, creative life (he had extramarital affairs and suffered endless guilt over them, he longed to be “free” to be a poet or novelist) and the demands of duty to his country and to the rational give-and-take of diplomacy. Perhaps. But it may be that Clinton, with his quicksilver intelligence, came closer to suggesting the dichotomy that turned Kennan’s lofty abilities and even loftier ambitions into tragedy. Kennan certainly achieved vastly more than all but a very few diplomats of the last century; but he wanted more, he wanted “to drive American policy” and in particular to put an end to the Cold War, and in that task, after his drafting of the Long Telegram in 1946 and the “X article” that followed the next year, he was forced to judge his life a failure. What’s more—and here is the hamartia of the tragedy—he’d failed because he’d trapped himself in his own success. “The containment of Kennan by the containment doctrine,” as Costigliola neatly puts it, had frustrated his ambition to negotiate an end to hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union: Kennan’s much touted grand strategy had produced a half-century Cold War that wasted trillions of dollars and perpetuated the risk of Armageddon. This—and especially the world-threatening reliance on nuclear weapons—Kennan deeply deplored.
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Throughout his long life (he died in 2005 at the age of 101), Kennan was pulled between the poles of “Eros and Civilization,” or so Frank Costigliola assures us with wearying frequency. By this he means that the stalwart, conservative Midwesterner was whipsawed between the erotic, creative life (he had extramarital affairs and suffered endless guilt over them, he longed to be “free” to be a poet or novelist) and the demands of duty to his country and to the rational give-and-take of diplomacy. Perhaps. But it may be that Clinton, with his quicksilver intelligence, came closer to suggesting the dichotomy that turned Kennan’s lofty abilities and even loftier ambitions into tragedy. Kennan certainly achieved vastly more than all but a very few diplomats of the last century; but he wanted more, he wanted “to drive American policy” and in particular to put an end to the Cold War, and in that task, after his drafting of the Long Telegram in 1946 and the “X article” that followed the next year, he was forced to judge his life a failure. What’s more—and here is the hamartia of the tragedy—he’d failed because he’d trapped himself in his own success. “The containment of Kennan by the containment doctrine,” as Costigliola neatly puts it, had frustrated his ambition to negotiate an end to hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union: Kennan’s much touted grand strategy had produced a half-century Cold War that wasted trillions of dollars and perpetuated the risk of Armageddon. This—and especially the world-threatening reliance on nuclear weapons—Kennan deeply deplored.
If you would like to read more of this review by Mark Denner, subscribe to the Book Post substack. Book Post is a by-subscription book review service, bringing snack-sized book reviews by distinguished and engaging writers direct to your in-box, as well as free posts from time to time to those who follow us.
September 26, 2023
"It is a marvelous story and on the whole Costigliola tells it well. Apart from an annoying tendency to chide Kennan with anachronistic complaints about misogyny and other contemporary failings—rather than illuminating, the author condescends— Costigliola writes well and is well attuned to Kennan’s frustrations and his triumphs. His main problem is one he shares with all biographers whose subjects write better than they do. It is the quotations that stand out gorgeously with elegance and clarity. “The problem with George,” as his great adversary Dean Acheson put it in an oft-repeated quip, “is that he writes so damned well that he can convince you of anything, including some of the worst ideas.” So he could. Kennan writes captivatingly with a kind of weathered, grainy American prose that smacks of Henry Adams. From policy telegrams to descriptions of his beloved Moscow to diary excerpts about the mother he never knew, his prose glints and sparkles. He was cantankerous, dismissive of modernity, poisoned by racism and anti-semitism and other common sins of his generation; but reading so much of him, experiencing at first hand his precise and inquisitive and questing intelligence, his deep identification with the natural world and his eloquence about its destruction, gives a great lift to the narrative." -Mark Danner
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-m...
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-m...
June 19, 2023
I haven't finished this yet but I can say some things about it so far. His life story is pretty interesting but Kennan sounds like a big jerk basically and it's hard to really get into his bio when you don't like him. The author also keeps repeating many themes and beating you over the head with them, like "Eros" vs. "Civilization" (saying Kennan was forever torn between these two forces). Also the author doesn't really provide much historical background and context (at least in the beginning part of the book). We're supposed to think Kennan is such a great guy but he was really an elitist, democracy-hater, ordinary person-hater and hated women, blacks, immigrants etc. and sympathized with fascism. He was also a big whiner and complainer and hypochondriac (God knows how he lived to be so old). We have to read over and over about him being miserable for whatever reason (he just seemed like a malcontent no matter what was going on). It's too bad cause it should have been really interesting.
December 20, 2024
He had a few good ideas, but it's difficult to see beyond what an insufferable piece of $hit he was.
April 2, 2025
I suppose a good alternate title would be: Kennan for Dummies.
I picked this up by mistake. This is not the Pulitizer Prize winning Biography by Gaddis. This is a shorter, more leftwing, and dumber version of kennan's life. Its not all bad, but its mostly boring. And when not chiding Kennan for holding politically incorrect attitudes toward women or homosexuals in 1930 or 1950, Costigliola is defending the USSR or FDR. Or getting upset at Kennan for not being a good little Leftist.
In his section on Roosevelt and Kennan, the author pretends that FDR was a healthy man in 1944, a serious student of foreign policy, and that FDR had a post-war strategy for USSR- USA relations and the rebuilding of Europe. None of this is true. FDR was a dying man, and didn't give a fig about the postwar world. His only strategy in 1944-45 was to give Stalin everything he wished, so that the Red Army would help destroy Hitler.
As for postwar Germany, FDR wanted to implement the Morgenthau plan and force the Germans to eat out of soup kitchens for 20 years. Y'know, to teach them a lesson. And FDR expected France to explode in Civil war and go communist, which was OK with him.
Kennan of course, did have a post-war strategy for USSR-USA relations and for Europe.
I picked this up by mistake. This is not the Pulitizer Prize winning Biography by Gaddis. This is a shorter, more leftwing, and dumber version of kennan's life. Its not all bad, but its mostly boring. And when not chiding Kennan for holding politically incorrect attitudes toward women or homosexuals in 1930 or 1950, Costigliola is defending the USSR or FDR. Or getting upset at Kennan for not being a good little Leftist.
In his section on Roosevelt and Kennan, the author pretends that FDR was a healthy man in 1944, a serious student of foreign policy, and that FDR had a post-war strategy for USSR- USA relations and the rebuilding of Europe. None of this is true. FDR was a dying man, and didn't give a fig about the postwar world. His only strategy in 1944-45 was to give Stalin everything he wished, so that the Red Army would help destroy Hitler.
As for postwar Germany, FDR wanted to implement the Morgenthau plan and force the Germans to eat out of soup kitchens for 20 years. Y'know, to teach them a lesson. And FDR expected France to explode in Civil war and go communist, which was OK with him.
Kennan of course, did have a post-war strategy for USSR-USA relations and for Europe.
August 5, 2023
This book should be chosen as the best biography of the year 2023. It is about a very unusual man ,who was lucky to have lived from 1904-2005. Kennan was a versatile writer, superble read and well eductaed who spoke some languages perfectly, inluding Russian. He was the American ambassador to Russia(and lated to yugoslavia during the JFK Presidency) and had the chance to be witness to major events that happened during his long life. Among these were the horrors of the Stalinist regime, the Rise and Fall of the Cold War-for which he warned his administration in his two most famous 1946 Long Telegram and the "X" article in 1947, his detest of modernity, his call to amend American society and its values and his battle to preserve the environment, for which he cared a lot and his call to stop the Vietnam War and the arms race.
Kennan also had a prolific academic career and wrote tens of thousands of books, articles, diaries, personal notes, etc.
This book is a stunning achievement,and includes also many chapters about the happy and sad moments of Kennas private life and his love for Russian writers, especially Anton Chekhov.
Please read this book. You will NOT be disappointed. Each and every page is a gem in itself. I wish I could grant it 10 stars!
Kennan also had a prolific academic career and wrote tens of thousands of books, articles, diaries, personal notes, etc.
This book is a stunning achievement,and includes also many chapters about the happy and sad moments of Kennas private life and his love for Russian writers, especially Anton Chekhov.
Please read this book. You will NOT be disappointed. Each and every page is a gem in itself. I wish I could grant it 10 stars!
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