34 GFK to John Paton Davies, December 6, 1984, GFK Papers, 10:12 (emphases in the original). Kennan wrote Davies after receiving a query from the historian Bruce Cumings, who seemed “very anxious to stage an academic-journalistic coup” by showing that the CIA had planned assassinations “under the influence of the diabolic State Department. Since you and I appear to be almost the only survivors of that period who had anything to do with OPC, I would like to nip this firmly in the bud.” The fullest account of Pash’s activities is in Simpson, Blowback, pp. 152–55, which sees them as providing a justification for subsequent confirmed CIA assassination plots, but does not contradict what Kennan claimed in his letter to Davies.
35 Robert Joyce to Carlton Savage, April 1, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, V, 12–13; Minutes, Under Secretary of State Staff Meeting, August 31, 1949, Department of State, Executive Secretariat Files, Box 13; Acheson memorandum, conversation with Bevin, September 14, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, V, 316: GFK interview, September 7, 1983, p. 23. Corke, U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy, especially pp. 55, 75, 84, makes the case for GFK’s culpability in the Albanian fiasco; for a less accusatory view, see Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 207–9.
36 PPS/59, “United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe,” August 25, 1949, in PPS Papers, III, 130, 134. See also GFK Diary, October 4, 1949.
37 PPS/59, August 25, 1949, in PPS Papers, III, 133. For Stalin’s purges in Eastern Europe, see Mastny, Cold War and Soviet Insecurity, pp. 72–74; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, pp. 172–79; and, for post-Stalin developments, Gaddis, Cold War: A New History, pp. 104–15.
38 NSC 34/2 (based on PPS/39/2), February 28, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, IX, 494–95; Acheson executive session testimony, March 18, 1949, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Historical Series, p. 30; Jacob Beam memorandum, Acheson-Bevin conversation, April 4, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, VII, 1140–41.
39 Goncharov, Lewis, and Xue, Uncertain Partners, pp. 33–34; Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, pp. 167–68.
40 Acheson to Truman, July 30, 1949, as published in The New York Times, August 6, 1949; Beisner, Dean Acheson, pp. 187–88. For GFK’s suggestions on what Acheson should have said—not greatly different from what he did say—see GFK to Jessup, July 29, 1949, PPS Records, Box 33, “Chronological 1949” folder.
41 PPS/53, “United States Policy Toward Formosa and the Pescadores,” July 6, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, IX, 356–64; GFK interview, September 8, 1983, p. 6; Davies interview, December 8, 1982, p. 8. Theodore Roosevelt, of course, never did anything like this.
42 Davies to GFK, December 12, 1984, GFK Papers, 10:12; Rusk interview, p. 4. I have discussed the “defensive perimeter” strategy and the Taiwan independence movement in Long Peace, pp. 73–81; but see also Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 233–34.
43 GFK lecture, Fourth Joint Orientation Conference, September 19, 1949, GFK Papers, 299:30.
44 Minutes, PPS meeting, May 18, 1949, PPS Records, Box 32.
45 Minutes, PPS meeting, June 8, 1949, ibid.
46 Minutes, PPS meeting, June 13, 1949, ibid.
47 Jebb to GFK, April 7, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, IV, 290–91.
48 Minutes, PPS meeting, June 13, 1949, PPS Records, Box 32; Thompson interview, pp. 6–7. Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 281–84, discusses the thoroughness with which GFK approached this problem.
49 Tufts interview, p. 6. For more on the use of consultants, see Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 283–84.
50 PPS/55, “Outline: Study of U.S. Stance Toward Question of European Union,” July 7, 1949, in PPS Papers, III, 82–100.
51 GFK Diary, July 18, 1949; GFK, Memoirs, I, 456–57.
52 Nitze interview by Wright, October 2, 1970; Nitze interview, December 13, 1989, p. 7; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 85–86. See also Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 286–87; and the biographical information in Thompson, Hawk and the Dove.
53 GFK interview, September 8, 1983, p. 2; GFK Diary, August 23 and September 7, 1949. See also Hogan, Marshall Plan, pp. 261–62, and, on the policy of supporting the noncommunist left in Europe, Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 149–52.
54 GFK interviews, August 25, 1982, p. 13, and September 8, 1983, p. 2. See also Hogan, Marshall Plan, pp. 262–64, and Beisner, Dean Acheson, p. 81.
55 GFK Diary, September 26 and 28, 1949.
56 GFK to Messersmith, July 7, 1949, ibid., 140:1. See also Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 288.
57 James E. Webb to C. Ben Wright, October 16, 1975, Wright Papers, Box 1; GFK Diary, September 16 and 19, 1949. See also GFK, Memoirs, I, 465–66.
58 Hickerson to GFK, October 15, 1949, PPS Records, Box 27, “Europe 1949” folder; Bohlen to GFK, October 6, 1949, Bohlen Papers, Box 1, “Correspondence 1946–49: K” folder, National Archives; David Bruce to Acheson, October 22, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, IV, 343. I have purloined portions of this paragraph and the next two from Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 69–70.
59 GFK to Bohlen, November 7, 1949, GFK Papers, 140:1.
60 Bohlen to GFK, undated but November 1949, ibid.; GFK to Bohlen, November 17, 1949, ibid.
61 GFK Diary, November 19 and 22, 1949.
62 GFK Diary, August 30, September 1–2, 1949; Acheson handwritten comment on GFK to Acheson and Webb, September 2, 1949, PPS Records, Box 33, “Chronological 1949” folder.
63 GFK Diary, October 4, 13, 24, November 7, 1949.
64 Ibid., November 12, 1949.
65 Ibid., November 16 [misdated 15], 1949; GFK to Dodds, December 29, 1949, ibid., 140:1.
66 GFK to Charles James, December 10, 1949, Douglas James Papers.
67 Lovett to Bohlen, October 21, 1949, and Bohlen to Lovett, December 19, 1949, Bohlen Papers, Box 2, “Correspondence 1949–July 1951: L” folder, National Archives; Hoyer Millar to Makins, December 10, 1949, Makins to Hoyer-Millar, December 15, 1949, British Foreign Office Records, FO 371/74160/AN3813; Hoyer-Millar to Makins, December 23, 1949, ibid., FO 371/81614/AU1017/4. See also “Kennan Maps Rest from U.S. Duties,” New York Times, December 11, 1949.
68 Acheson National War College remarks, December 21, 1949, Webb Papers, Box 20 (courtesy of Michael Devine and Sam Rushay); GFK to Acheson, December 21, 1949, Acheson Papers, Box 64, “Memos—conversations December 1949” folder, Truman Library; GFK National War College lecture, “Where Do We Stand?” December 21, 1949, pp. 32–33, GFK Papers, 299:32.
69 Mary Bundy interview, December 6, 1987, p. 10; Acheson National War College remarks, December 21, 1949, Webb Papers, Box 20; Alsop to GFK, December 31, 1949, Joseph and Stewart Alsop Papers, Part 1, General Correspondence, Box 5, “November–December 1949” folder. These paragraphs draw on Beisner, Dean Acheson, especially p. 654, as well as my review of it in New Republic 235 (October 16, 2005), 32.
SIXTEEN ● DISENGAGEMENT: 1950
1 GFK National War College lecture, “Where Do We Stand?” December 21, 1949, GFK Papers, 299:32. The Adams brothers’ prophecies were in Brooks Adams, America’s Economic Supremacy, and in The Education of Henry Adams (completed in 1905), especially p. 494. The Thoreau quotation is from Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, p. 440.
2 GFK to Acheson, July 18, 1946, in FRUS: 1946, I, 864; GFK lecture to the National Defense Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, January 23, 1947, p. 4, GFK Papers, 298:23; question and answer transcript to GFK’s lecture, “Russia’s National Objectives,” at the Air War College, April 10, 1947, pp. 13–14, ibid., 298:32. Kennan’s own account of his early thinking on atomic weapons is in Memoirs, I, 310–12, and in GFK, Nuclear Delusion, pp. xiv–xvi.
3 GFK to McGeorge Bundy, March 14, 1980, GFK Papers, 7:10; GFK untitled lecture to “Selected Leaders of Industry,” January 14, 1948, p. 27, ibid., 299:2; GFK Diary, March 18, 1949.
4 R. Gordon Arneson memorandum, “Tripartite Negotiations Chronology,” undated, in FRUS: 1949, I, 506–7.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff report, “Evaluation of Effect on Soviet War Effort Resulting from the Strategic Air Offensive,” May 11, 1949, is excerpted in Etzold and Gaddis, Containment, pp. 360–64. Nuclear stockpile figures are from Norris and Kristensen, “Nuclear Notebook,” p. 66. For GFK’s lack of access to this information, see Bundy, Danger and Survival, p. 201.
5 PPS/58, “Political Implications of Detonation of an Atomic Bomb by the U.S.S.R.,” August 16, 1949, in PPS Papers: 1949, pp. 122–23; GFK to JLG, October 1, 1993, JLG Papers.
6 GFK Diary, September 13, 19, 20, 23, 24, 1949.
7 Ibid., September 27, 1949; Rhodes, Dark Sun, pp. 374–77. Botti, Long Wait, pp. 1–64, covers the history of these negotiations. For the significance of Fuchs’s espionage for the Soviet bomb project, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 220–23.
8 Rhodes, Dark Sun, pp. 252–54, 374–75, 381. In fact, the Soviet Union had been working on its own “super” since 1946. See Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 295.
9 PPS minutes, November 3, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, I, 573–76; Beisner, Dean Acheson, p. 230. See also GFK Diary, October 12, 1949, GFK Papers, 231:18. GFK’s meeting that day was with “Eisenhower’s colonels,” a group of officers recruited by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, now the president of Columbia University but still a consultant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the purpose of thinking about national security issues on a five- to ten-year time scale.
10 Oppenheimer to GFK, November 17, 1949, in FRUS: 1950, I, 222–23; GFK draft statement, November 18, 1949, Oppenheimer Papers, Box 43, “Kennan” folder. See also Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, p. 425.
11 Nitze to Acheson, December 19, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, I, 610–11. See also Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 87–91; and Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 303–4.
12 GFK memorandum, “The International Control of Atomic Energy,” January 20, 1950, extracts published in FRUS: 1950, I, 22–44. The Shakespeare is from Troilus and Cressida, Act I, Scene 3. See also the Lilienthal Diary, December 18, 1949, in Lilienthal, Journals of Lilienthal, II, 610; and GFK, Memoirs, I, 472. I have borrowed portions of the above paragraphs from Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 77–78.
13 GFK to Lucius Battle, January 24, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, I, 22; GFK, Memoirs, I, 474. Acheson’s comment is from an April 9, 1963, interview by David McLellan, quoted in his Acheson, p. 176. GFK confirmed that Acheson never said this to him, in a letter to George Krol, February 9, 1981, GFK Papers, 1:2.
14 Report by the Special Committee of the National Security Council, “Development of Thermonuclear Weapons,” January 31, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, I, 513–17. See also Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 306–7.
15 Nitze interview, p. 3.
16 Rusk interview, p. 5; Acheson National War College remarks, December 21, 1949, Webb Papers, Box 20.
17 GFK National War College lecture, December 21, 1949, GFK Papers, 299:32, pp. 27–28. For the riots in Bogotá, see Pogue, George C. Marshall, pp. 385–93. GFK’s 1948 National War College lecture is discussed in Chapter Fourteen, above.
18 GFK Diary, February–March 1950. See also GFK, Memoirs, I, 476–484, and Memoirs, II, 65–70. Ilya Repin’s painting, Easter Procession in the Region of Kursk, is in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
19 GFK to Acheson, March 29, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, II, 598–624. I have also drawn, with reference to GFK’s views on Guatemala, on an April 3, 1950, memorandum from Edward W. Clark, of the Office of Middle American Affairs, to Edward G. Miller, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, describing GFK’s views, DSR-DF 1950–54, Box 608, “123 Kennan” folder.
20 For the first interpretation, see Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, pp. 316–17 ; Mayers, Kennan and the Dilemmas of U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 261–66; Beisner, Dean Acheson, p. 571; Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy, pp. 162–65; and Trask, “George F. Kennan’s Report on Latin America.” For the second, see Hixson, George F. Kennan, pp. 70–71; LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, pp. 107–8; and Smith, Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, pp. 65–73.
21 I owe this phrase to the physicist Murray Gell-Mann.
22 GFK speech, “Current Problems in the Conduct of Foreign Policy,” Milwaukee, May 5, 1950, GFK Papers, 251:13. Most of the speech was published in the Department of State Bulletin 22 (May 15, 1950), 747–61.
23 See, for example, GFK’s off-the-record address to the Pentagon Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, April 17, 1950, pp. 12–14, GFK Papers, 299:39. Acheson’s National Press Club speech of January 12, 1950, “Crisis in Asia—an Examination of U.S. Policy,” is in Department of State Bulletin 22 (January 23, 1950), 111–18. It followed NSC 48/2, “The Position of the United States with Respect to Asia,” approved by Truman on December 30, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, VII, 1215–20, which in turn grew out of the PPS/39 series, dating from September 1948.
24 Beisner, Dean Acheson, pp. 281–306, provides a vivid account of these events. For McCarthy’s speech, see Oshinsky, Conspiracy So Immense, pp. 108–12.
25 Davies interview, December 8, 1982, pp. 12–13. See also GFK, Memoirs, II, 196–97, 200–203; Corke, U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy, pp. 78–80; and Kahn, China Hands, pp. 244–46.
26 GFK to Webb, March 30, 1950, in FRUS: The Intelligence Community, 1950–1955, pp. 5–8.
27 The lecture, delivered on May 5, 1950, is in GFK Papers, Box 2, “May 5, 1950” folder, along with the handbill. For GFK’s complaint, see the Summary of Daily Meeting with the Acting Secretary, May 8, 1950, Department of State, Summaries of the Secretary’s Daily Meetings, 1949–52, E 393, Box 1 (courtesy of Thomas Schöttli).
28 ASK to GFK, February 23, 1950, JEK Papers.
29 PPS minutes, October 11, 1949, PPS Records, Box 32. For GFK’s earlier thinking on conventional deterrence, see PPS/33, “Factors Affecting the Nature of the U.S. Defense Arrangements in the Light of Soviet Policies,” June 23, 1948, in PPS Papers, II, 281–92; and GFK, Memoirs, I, 311–12.
30 GFK draft memorandum to Acheson (substance conveyed orally), February 17, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, I, 165; Hammond, “NSC-68,” pp. 291–92.
31 Nitze to Acheson, December 19, 1949, in FRUS: 1949, I, 610–11; GFK to Acheson, February 17, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, I, 165; Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 753; GFK to Ellis O. Briggs, November 2, 1948, GFK Papers, 140:2. See also Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 96–97, and Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 91–92.
32 GFK interview, August 26, 1982, pp. 1–2; Nitze interview, p. 6.
33 See May, American Cold War Strategy. For Davies’s contribution, see Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 94.
34 Hammond, “NSC-68,” pp. 310–15; Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 291.
35 Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 374–75; GFK interview, October 31, 1974, p. 5.
36 Hammond, “NSC-68,” pp. 317–18; Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 347; Davies interview, pp. 9–10. This paragraph parallels closely one in my Strategies of Containment, p. 85. See also Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 99.
37 ASK to KWK, January 3, 1950, JEK Papers; GFK to Ralph Jarvis, January 9, 1950, GFK Papers, 139:8.
38 JEK unpublished memoir.
39 GFK to Oppenheimer, February 13, 1950, Oppenheimer Papers, Box 42, “GFK” folder; GFK to Joseph H. Willits, February 16, 1950, GFK Papers, 139:8; GFK, Memoirs, I, 485; GFK Diary, November 22, 1949.
40 Ibid., September 22, 1949; Acheson to GFK, October 17, 1949, GFK to Palmer, November 1, 1949, both in GFK Papers, 251:12; GFK, “Is War with Russia Inevitable? Five Solid Arguments for Peace,” Reader’s Digest (March 1950), 1-9. See also, on publicity, GFK Diary, November 12, 1949.
41 GFK to Oppenheimer, June 5, 1950, Oppenheimer Papers, Box 43, “GFK” folder; GFK Diary, June 10 and 15, 1950; JKH interview, p. 25; GFK, Memoirs, I, 469–70; Alsop with Platt, “I’ve Seen the Best of It,” pp. 306–7.
42 The best account of the o
rigins of the Korean War is now Stueck, Rethinking the Korean War, pp. 11–83.
43 GFK, Memoirs, I, 484–85; Alsop, “I’ve Seen the Best of It,” pp. 306–7; Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 402; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 101–2. See also GFK interview by Paige, August 1, 1955, p. 1.
44 Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 86; GFK, Memoirs, I, 486–87.
45 GFK Diary, June 25, 1950; GFK interview by Paige, p. 3. See also Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 86–87.
46 GFK Diary, June 27, 1950.
47 Alsop, “I’ve Seen the Best of It”, pp. 308–9; GFK Diary, June 27 and 29, 1950.
48 Ibid., June 26, 30, July 1, 10, 12, 17, 25, 1950; GFK background press conference, August 22, 1950, GFK Papers, 299:41. See also Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 291.
49 GFK Diary, June 29, July 11, 25, 1950.
50 Ibid., July 17, 31, 1950.
51 Ibid., June 28, July 21, 31, 1950. See also the PPS draft memorandum of July 22, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, VII, 449–54; Bohlen, Witness to History, pp. 292–93; and Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 107.
52 Allison to Nitze, July 24, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, VII, 460–61; GFK Diary, June 29 and August 14, 1950; GFK to Acheson, August 23, 1950, Acheson Papers, Box 65, Memoranda of Conversations, “August, 1950” folder, Truman Library. See also, on the 38th parallel debate, Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 97–99.
53 GFK to Acheson, August 21, 1950, in FRUS: 1950, VII, 623–28; Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 446.
54 Nitze interview, p. 8; Berlin interview, pp. 12–13.
SEVENTEEN ● PUBLIC FIGURE, PRIVATE DOUBTS: 1950–1951
1 Quoted in Adam Begley, “Lonely Genius Club,” New York Magazine, January 30, 1995, 61-67. See also GFK, Memoirs, II, 17–18. Regis, Who Got Einstein’s Office?, provides an informal history of the Institute but never mentions Kennan. The Institute prepared its own shorter unpublished history on its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2005, entitled simply Institute for Advanced Study.
2 Dodds to GFK, January 3 and February 14, 1950, GFK to Dodds, February 16, 1950, GFK Papers, 11:1. See also Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, pp. 371–72, 431–32.
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