George F. Kennan : an American life

by John Lewis Gaddis

  He was glad he had not gone to Milwaukee: “I hope never to go there again until McCarthyism has burned itself out there and people are thoroughly ashamed of it.” Even Jeanette and her family, in Highland Park, could offer no refuge. The day would soon come when they “will be afraid and embarrassed to have me in the house, when my presence will bring unpleasantness and danger to them, when—if I came—they would want me to sneak in and out in the middle of the night.”25

  That was hardly the response, however, of his University of Chicago audience: “Respectable at the start, attendance grew most alarmingly.” By the third lecture, students were sitting on the floor and in the aisles, requiring that the fourth be moved to an auditorium, where Kennan worried that he was only “a remote silhouette and a canned, electrified voice.” But they still kept coming: “I was surprised, delighted, and yet in a sense sobered, by the success of the undertaking.” One cause for concern was that he had not yet written the final lecture, scheduled for April 20. On learning of this that morning, the editors at the university press, which would be publishing the series, summoned him to “a great office clattering with a dozen typewriters, and with my letter of acceptance lying reproachfully before me, I was put to work to produce some sort of publishable document.”

  Only one who has faced many lecture audiences knows . . . that peculiar sense of tension and desperation that can overcome the unprepared lecturer as the hour of the lecture inexorably draws nearer and his mind is whipped by the realization that within so and so many minutes he must get up there and say something, but he does not yet know what he wants to say.

  The panic seared itself so deeply into his consciousness, Kennan recalled two decades later, “that I continue even now to relive it as a recurring nightmare.” But a young professor who attended the lectures detected no signs of unease. Kenneth W. Thompson remembered Kennan’s “marvelous melodic flow.” Listening to him was “like an experience on the road to Damascus.” One evening, at a fraternity house, Kennan sat talking with students until the early hours of the morning. It was “an absolutely elevating experience for everyone.”26

  Except Kennan. By April 16—the day his lecture was moved to accommodate the hundreds who wanted to hear it—he had concluded that with his combination of personal and public problems, it would be a miracle if “anything remained for me personally in life.... This will be a time for leadership or for martyrdom or for both. I may as well prepare myself for it.” And on the seventeenth:

  Myths and errors are being established in the public mind more rapidly than they can be broken down. The mass media are too much for us. . . . McCarthyism has already won, in the sense of making impossible the conduct of an intelligent foreign policy. The result is that there is no place in public life for an honest and moderate man. . . . I should not have signed up with the Ford Foundation.... I should not have started the enterprise to help Soviet fugitives. Some day we will have to give it up out of sheer embarrassment and humiliation over the conduct of our country.... I should not be speaking out here in Chicago. It will do no good—any of it. I must stop this public speaking, this writing for publication.

  Farming would be the only salvation. He would finish his work at the Institute “for consistency’s sake” and to get Joan through school. He would retire from the Foreign Service as soon as his pension was earned “or forfeited”—here he had in mind the plight of his colleague Davies, whose loyalty investigation was still under way. But all of these plans were problematic because war would probably break out within two years: “Except for the little boy, the best thing that could happen would be that I should go with the services and get myself killed.”27

  Kennan never said, explicitly, what lay behind all of this, but diary fragments provide hints:

  June 19, 1951: More and more I feel myself becoming a receptacle for the confidence of other people. Am I not deceiving them all? . . . . [They] believe that I am an honest man and are thereby relieved. Have I any right, in these circumstances, to accept their confidence?

  August 3, 1951: I was annoyed with myself for my habit of staring after women. What could they give me? Nothing but trouble and disillusionment and dissipation of valuable strength. I must teach myself to remember that I do not really want them: that this habit is a sort of echo of youth, and a very misleading one at that. In this endeavor, . . . I have the best of all possible allies: increasing age.

  Undated: Physical desire, in a man my age, is often like the experiment the teachers of psychology used to use as an example: where a finger pressed to the brow for a time is removed, but the sensation, and the illusion of its presence, lingers after.

  September 5, 1951: I am ill, of course, with the old malady which is a condition and not a disease. But I am resolved that this time I will not cure it by flying from reality—by running away to the phoney protectedness of a hospital bed and a nurse’s uniform.... Let the damned sore do its worst, burn through to the surface if it must. Perhaps then we will finally get some clarity and harmony into this warring combination of flesh and spirit.

  Also September 5, 1951 (contradicting what he had told himself in April): Write, you bastard, write. Write desperately, frantically, under pressure from yourself, while God still gives you the time. Write until your eyes are glazed, until you have writer’s cramp, until you fall from your chair for weariness. Only by agitating your pen will you ever press out of your indifferent mind and your ailing frame anything of any value to yourself or anyone else.28

  Given Kennan’s tendency to blame himself for so much, the offense could have been almost anything: a covetous glance, a casual dalliance, a full-blown affair. Did Annelise know? Nothing in George’s diary confirms that she did, but she didn’t miss much. If she suspected something, or even if she knew a lot, she would not have let whatever it was imperil the marriage or hurt the family. That was the way of a wife who saw no contradiction in simultaneously loving her husband and anchoring him.

  George, at this point, badly needed anchoring, for the upheavals of April 1951 had come close to overwhelming him. He was lecturing on history in Chicago, having been told, by historians, that he was not yet one. He was carrying the weight of a personal crisis as wrenching as the ones he had gone through in Vienna in 1935 and at Bad Nauheim in 1942. His audiences were expanding as his texts were diminishing. He spoke at a moment when the part of the country from which he came seemed to be sinking into dementia. And he was filling his diary with despair: perhaps his ability to do that, together with Annelise’s anchoring, was what got him through this bad month—although never beyond the bad dreams.

  VI.

  One of Kennan’s better dreams had been the possibility that he might represent the United States—alone, on a top-secret basis, using his knowledge of the Russian language and of the Soviet system—in some form of direct negotiations with the U.S.S.R. looking toward a relaxation of Cold War tensions. Stalin’s sabotage of the Smith-Molotov initiative killed any chance of this while Kennan was on the Policy Planning Staff, and he himself opposed approaching Moscow after the Chinese intervened in Korea at the end of 1950. By May 1951, however, the situation had changed. Truman had sacked MacArthur. The new U.N. commander, General Matthew B. Ridgway, had halted Mao’s offensive in the vicinity of the 38th parallel. And an opportunity for diplomacy had arisen—strangely—from a high-level hitchhike.

  With the permanent headquarters of the United Nations still under construction alongside New York’s East River, the Security Council had been meeting in temporary quarters at Lake Success, on Long Island. The drive into Manhattan could take almost an hour, and at the end of a session on May 2, two American diplomats, Thomas J. Cory and Frank P. Corrigan, found themselves without transportation. A large Chrysler drove up, stopped, and its occupants offered a ride. They turned out to be Jacob Malik, the chief Soviet representative at the United Nations, and Semyon K. Tsarapkin, his deputy. The Russians were in an unusually good humor, and after pleasant exchanges about American automobiles
, military bases, imperialist ambitions, capitalist profiteers, and warmongers, the conversation turned to how the Korean War might be settled. The four men agreed that some sort of Soviet-American consultation would have to take place, whereupon Malik, returning to the theme of warmongers, asked what had become of George Kennan.

  Cory explained that Kennan was “engaged in advanced study at Princeton.” Kennan had had “a great and unfortunate influence,” Malik observed: no doubt his voice was still heard in Washington. When Cory protested that Kennan admired the Russian people and hoped to write Chekhov’s biography, Malik was unimpressed. But by the normal standards of Soviet diplomacy, the two Americans reported to their superiors, he had been “a charming and cordial host.”29

  Their account set off speculation within the State Department as to whether the pickup had been deliberate. Cory thought not but added that he had suggested dinner sometime and that Malik had agreed. “The question,” Davies wrote Nitze, “is whether we should follow up on Malik’s evident willingness to talk about American-Soviet relations. I think we should.” Stalin might be planning another trick, but the risks would be minimal “if our representative is someone [who] . . . although not a high American official, is in a position to speak with authority and in confidence for the Government. That person is Kennan.”30

  As Davies probably knew, Kennan was thinking similarly. He had advised Acheson in March that as the military front stabilized in Korea, the time would come to deal with the Russians. The talks should take place “through informal channels” and in “complete secrecy,” using “some intermediary who could be denied in case of necessity.” They would acknowledge a simple reality: that the situation in Korea was unsatisfactory to both the Soviet Union and the United States. There should be, then, “a mutuality of interest” that might make a settlement possible.31

  That made sense to Acheson, who had come through the difficult winter of 1950–51 with renewed admiration for Kennan. And so, when the Malik report came in, the secretary of state accepted Davies’s suggestion. “On Friday, May 18,” Kennan wrote in his own report of the events that followed,

  having been called to Washington by P, I talked with O in the presence of P and two other persons. O asked me whether I would be willing to undertake the project in question, and I told him that I would. It was agreed that arrangements would have to be made by E in New York, and that I should see him when I was up there the following week.

  P was Doc Matthews, then serving as deputy under secretary of state. O was Acheson. E was Malik’s passenger, Tom Cory. E agreed to suggest to X—not Kennan, who had given up pseudonyms, but Tsarapkin—that it might be useful for him to talk with the former Mr. X, but there was no reply. Whereupon Kennan wrote to Tsarapkin on the twenty-sixth, asking him to tell Malik that it might be useful “if he and I could meet and have a quiet talk some time in the near future. I think that my diplomatic experience and long acquaintance with problems of American-Soviet relations should suffice to assure you that I would not make such a proposal unless I had serious reasons to do so.”32

  Three days later Kennan’s secretary at the Institute received a cryptic telephone message informing her that the “gentleman Mr. Kennan had asked to see” could receive him on the afternoon of the thirty-first at a Long Island address. This turned out to be the Soviet U.N. delegation’s dacha, an estate in Glen Cove, to which Kennan drove himself alone. Malik began the conversation nervously, upsetting a tray of fruit and wine. After each man had expressed regret about the isolation of diplomats in the other’s country, Kennan explained that he had come to explore the possibility of a Korean cease-fire, roughly along the current line of military operations, to be supervised by some international authority. Malik said he would think about it, which Kennan took to mean consulting Moscow. When asked if it would be useful to meet again, Malik replied “that it was a good thing in general for people to talk things over and that he would always be happy to receive me and to pass the time of day.”33

  They did meet again, at Glen Cove on June 5, and Malik was ready with an answer: the Soviet Union wanted to end the Korean War at the earliest possible moment, but because its forces were not involved it could take no direct part in any cease-fire negotiations. The United States should contact the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists. Kennan promised to pass this message to Washington, noting however that it would be difficult to rely on anything those adversaries might say. The Soviets, in contrast, “took a serious and responsible attitude toward what they conceived to be their own interests.” Malik deflected this compliment with the complaint that a Wall Street conspiracy dominated American life. “You see our country as in a dream,” Kennan replied. “No, this is not [a] dream,” Malik insisted, “this is the deepest reality.”

  Kennan concluded from these meetings that the Soviet leadership did indeed want a cease-fire, that it had instructed the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists to accept an American proposal for one, and that it was willing to see the talks proceed without bringing in such wider issues as the future of Japan or Taiwan. “I hope that we will not hesitate to grasp at once the nettle of action.... We may not succeed; but I have the feeling we are moving much closer to the edge of the precipice than most of us are aware, and that this is one of the times when the dangers of inaction far exceed those of action.”34

  The precipice he had in mind, Kennan wrote Acheson in a personal letter on June 20, was the possibility of war with the U.S.S.R. While Stalin had no appetite for such a conflict, he would view with “mortal apprehension” any U.S. military presence along the Soviet or the Chinese border with North Korea. That was why he had encouraged Mao to cross the Yalu and hurl MacArthur’s forces back. Now that the Chinese offensive had stalled, the Russians feared another American drive north. If that happened, they would have no choice but to intervene themselves, and a catastrophe would result. The whole Korean experience had been, for the Kremlin leaders, “a nerve-wracking and excruciating experience, straining to the limit their self-control and patience.” That explained Malik’s response, which the United States should not reject. For even though it might not seem so at the moment, “our action in Korea, so often denounced as futile, may prove to have . . . laid the foundation for the renewal of some sort of stability in the Far East.”35

  Three days later, as if on cue, Malik made his cease-fire suggestion public. Talks began in July between the opposing military commanders in Korea, even as the fighting continued. It would take two years to achieve an armistice, partly because of disagreements over repatriating prisoners of war, partly because Stalin, reassured now that the war would be limited, was in less of a hurry to see it end. When it did finally in July 1953, shortly after his death, the terms were close to what Kennan had suggested.

  His role in the Korean War, Kennan wrote later, had been “relatively minor,” but that was an understatement. For on several issues—his recommendation to deploy the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, his concerns about crossing the 38th parallel, his warnings about MacArthur, his advice against negotiating after the Chinese had intervened, his reversal of that advice after the Chinese had been contained, and his delicate conversations with Malik—he won a degree of respect within the government that he had not enjoyed since 1947.36 Which is probably why Acheson asked Kennan, on July 23, 1951, if he would like to become the next U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

  VII.

  “I did not turn it down cold,” George wrote Annelise from Washington—she and the family were in Kristiansand. “I said I would not be available, in any case, before completion of the next Institute term.” He would write Acheson a fuller response, “but [I] want to talk to you first.” The Kennans had sailed to Norway on the SS Oslofjord in late June, with George traveling on Ford funds since, as he had explained to Hoffman, “I would otherwise not be able to go at all.” He would use the opportunity to make contacts useful to the foundation. He had remained depressed through most of the voyage, despite his recent diplom
atic achievements. “My children would laugh at me,” he wrote in his diary while still at sea, “but it is true. The adult world is a broken-hearted world, . . . because there is no leadership in it, and no inspiration.”37

  As the ship neared the Norwegian coast, however, George’s mood brightened. On the Fourth of July, he watched children parading around the deck waving American flags, listened as the ship’s orchestra played “The Star Spangled Banner,” and at the captain’s invitation made a speech, linking what had happened in his country 175 years earlier with what Annelise’s had experienced at the hands of the Nazis: who could really appreciate the value of freedom “who hasn’t seen it attacked by a foreign invader and occupier on his own soil”? He even praised NATO—Norway had been a founding member. The alliance’s commitment to interdependence, he reminded the ship’s passengers and crew, meant that there was “really no such thing as a purely national independence day any more in this area.”38

  The ship called at Bergen early the next morning, and then navigated the rugged coastline to the south. “Norway simply took my breath away,” George recorded,

  not just, or even primarily, the colors of the mountains and sea and sky, but rather the places where the hand of man had softened and ordered this hard nature: the little docks, the villages at the foot of the rocks, the white cottages, the hay drying on fences around the tiny green pastures, the old stone monastery-church on the treeless, rocky island near the sea—stubborn, hard, defiant, braving century after century, the long winter bleakness, the gales, the loneliness, the rain and the cold—living the poetry of wind-swept rock and sky and only that.