George F. Kennan : an American life

by John Lewis Gaddis

  4 GFK to Oppenheimer, November 16, 1962, GFK Papers, 56.

  5 Oppenheimer to GFK, December 4, 1962, Oppenheimer Papers, Box 43.

  6 GFK to KWK, February 8, 1963, JEK Papers; GFK interview by Labalme, August 30, 1989, p. 14; White House Press Release, May 17, 1963, GFK Papers, 57.

  7 Hessman interview, pp. 1, 17; Goodman interview, December 10, 1987, pp. 1–4, 7, 15, 30. See also “Kennan Leaves Belgrade and Retires,” New York Times, July 29, 1963.

  8 GFK to KWK, February 8, 1963, JEK Papers; Princeton University press release, November 13, 1963 (courtesy of Cyril E. Black); Ullman interview, p. 11; Goodman interview, pp. 29–32; GFK interview by Labalme, February 27, 1990, pp. 19–22; GFK to Richard Challener, handwritten response to letter of May 25, 1970, GFK Papers, 4:12.

  9 GFK, On Dealing with the Communist World, pp. viii–ix, 15, 45, 51. See also Constance Moench to Cass Canfield, July 2, 1964, conveying GFK’s intentions regarding the book, GFK Papers, 57.

  10 GFK lecture to the International House of Japan, June 19, 1964, published as “The Passing of the Cold War” in its Bulletin 14 (October 1964), 71–72.

  11 GFK, “Fresh Look at Our China Policy,” New York Times Magazine, November 22, 1964, pp. 27, 140–47; Moskin, “Our Foreign Policy is Paralyzed,” p. 27.

  12 GFK to David Mark, March 12, 1964, GFK Papers, 57.

  13 Carlton Savage notes, GFK meeting with the Policy Planning Staff, February 8, 1961, in FRUS: 1961–63, V, 62–63. See also Chapters Thirteen and Sixteen, above.

  14 GFK, “Japanese Security and American Policy,” Foreign Affairs 43 (October 1964), 14–28. For evidence that MacArthur did at one time think this, see Gaddis, Long Peace, pp. 79–80.

  15 William P. Bundy interview, pp. 21–23; GFK to Chihiro Hosoya, December 15, 1964, GFK Papers, 21:3. Bundy’s address, delivered in Tokyo on September 29, 1964, is in Department of State Bulletin 51 (October 19, 1964), 534–42.

  16 GFK interview, August 26, 1982, p. 10. Millay’s sonnet is “I Being Born a Woman and Distressed.”

  17 GFK to Dobrynin, January 28, 1964, Dobrynin to GFK, March 3, 1964, GFK to David Klein, January 13, 1965, GFK Papers, 11:9.

  18 GFK Desk Diary, July 6–7, 1964.

  19 “Account of Trip from Bergen to Kristiansand,” July 1964, GFK Papers, 236:2.

  20 Taplin interview, December 5, 1987, pp. 3, 15; Dilworth interview, p. 2; GFK Diary, July 4, 1976.

  21 David Klein to GFK, January 7, 1965, GFK to Klein, January 13, 1965, GFK to Klein, February 1, 1965, GFK Papers, 11:9; GFK interviews, August 26, 1982, p. 10, and September 4, 1984, pp. 1–2.

  22 GFK Desk Diary, June 21–29, 1965; GFK interview, September 4, 1984, p. 2; “Kennan, Once Barred in Soviet, Feted There,” New York Times, June 26, 1965; GFK, Memoirs, I, 281–83; GFK, Decision to Intervene, p. 469; GFK, “History as Literature,” pp. 13–14.

  23 GFK Desk Diary, January 20, 1965; GFK interview, September 4, 1984, pp. 12–13.

  24 Ibid., p. 12; GFK Desk Diary, May 19, 21, 1965; GFK to Mumford, June 5, 1965, GFK Papers, 149:5.

  25 GFK Diary, June 14, 1965. See also Leroy F. Aarons, “Culture is King at Arts Festival; Lowell Controversy Mars Event,” Washington Post, June 15, 1965; President’s Daily Diary, June 14, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson Library; and, for his own lengthy account, Goldman, Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, pp. 495–563.

  26 GFK to Joze Smole, February 15, 1962, GFK Papers, 56; Moskin, “Our Foreign Policy is Paralyzed,” p. 27; GFK, “Passing of the Cold War,” pp. 62, 69–70; GFK to Woodward, March 4, 1965, GFK Papers, 58; GFK to ASK, May 9,1965, ibid., 24:5.

  27 Bundy to Johnson, June 26, 1965, in FRUS: 1964–68, III, 52; GFK to Coffin, August 27, 1965, GFK Papers, 58.

  28 GFK, “An Authority on Communism Says We’re Letting This One Area Disbalance Whole Policy,” Washington Post, December 12, 1965, pp. E1, E4.

  29 GFK to KWK, December 19, 1965, JEK Papers; GFK Desk Diary, February 7–9, 1966.

  30 GFK’s testimony is in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Supplemental Foreign Assistance Fiscal Year 1966—Vietnam, quoted portions at pp. 333, 335–56, 380. See also “Scholarly Diplomat,” New York Times, February 11, 1966; Murrey Marder, “Kennan’s Testimony: A Profound Challenge,” Washington Post, February 11, 1966; Flora Lewis, “CBS News Executive Morale Upset By Issues That Made Friendly Quit,” ibid.; and for the origins of the Fulbright hearings, Woods, Fulbright, pp. 402–5.

  31 Fischer to GFK, February 13, 1966, GFK Papers, 13:8; Johnson press conference, February 11, 1966, Public Papers of the Presidents: Johnson, 1966, Document 65; Johnson telephone conversation with U.Alexis Johnson, February 11, 1966, in FRUS: 1964–68, IV, 220–22; notes on White House meeting, February 26, 1966, ibid., p. 261; Reedy to Johnson, February 17, 1966, ibid., pp. 235–37.

  32 GFK to Llewellyn Thompson, April 5, 1966, GFK Papers, 59; GFK interview, September 4, 1984, p. 10; Art Buchwald, “Audience Is Live, if TV Isn’t,” Washington Post, February 17, 1966; Woods, Fulbright, pp. 405, 409–10.

  33 GFK sermon, “Why Do I Hope?” February 13, 1966, GFK Papers, 264:5.

  34 GFK to ASK, May 5, 1965, GFK Papers, 24:5.

  35 Mary Bundy interview, p. 35; GFK, “Why Do I Hope?” p. 3; GFK to JKH, January 3, 1931, GFK Papers, 23:10, further quoted in Chapter Three, above; JKH interview, pp. 18, 27; CKB interview, p. 10.

  36 Dilworth interview, p. 3; William and Mary Bundy interview, pp. 34–35.

  37 ASK interview, August 26, 1982, pp. 8, 16–17.

  38 Fosdick interview, p. 2; ASK interview, December 14,1987, p.10; GFK Diary, April 19,1981. See also, for some perceptive psychological speculation on these matters, Harper, American Visions of Europe, pp. 148–54.

  39 GFK interview, August 25, 1982, pp. 4–6.

  40 GFK Diary, February 13–May 12, 1965, translation by Igor Biryukov.

  41 The letter, unfinished, is in the GFK Diary for November 1987 with a note: “evidently written (clearly by myself) at some time in the 1960’s.” GFK showed it to his editor, Ted Weeks, who thought it “searching and excellent,” but it was never published.

  42 GFK diary fragment, July 5, 1964 [misdated 1960]; GFK Desk Diary, June 10, 1965 [begun on blank pages running from May 17]. The letters to ASK are in the GFK Papers, 24:5.

  43 GFK Desk Diary, January 14, 1965; Gellhorn to Nikki Dobrski, June 14, 1964, in Moorehead, Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, p. 310; GFK, Memoirs, I, 90–91; GFK to Gellhorn, May 21, 1965, GFK Papers, 16:6. Gellhorn’s many letters are in this file.

  44 GFK Diary, September 27, 1959. For Hatzfeldt, see GFK’s dictated 1998 memorandum on their relationship, GFK Papers, 19:10; and GFK to Hatzfeldt, January 10, 1997, ibid.

  45 Goodman interview, pp. 8–10; GFK interview, December 13, 1987, pp. 35–37; Alliluyeva, Only One Year, pp. 218–21. I have also relied, here, on the State Department documentation in FRUS: 1964–68, XIV, 462–63, 467–73; and the extensive coverage in The New York Times, especially “Short Cab Ride in India Began Her Odyssey,” April 22, 1967.

  46 GFK and ASK interview, December 13, 1987, p. 38; Alliluyeva, Only One Year, pp. 312–13, 327–29; GFK to Louis Fischer, April 24, 1967, GFK Papers, 13:8; JEK to GFK, July 23, 1967, JEK Papers.

  47 “Pravda Denounces the U.S. Over Mrs. Alliluyeva,” New York Times, May 27, 1967; also Foy Kohler’s report of a conversation with Yuri N. Tcherniakov, the Soviet chargé d’affaires in Washington, May 31, 1967, in FRUS: 1964–68, XIV, 488–90.

  48 Alliluyeva, Only One Year, pp. 435–36; William P. Bundy interview, pp. 17–18.

  49 Alliluyeva to GFK, April 28, 1976, GFK Papers, 38:5. Nicholas Thompson first alerted me to this letter in Hawk and the Dove, pp. 257–58.

  50 GFK and ASK interview, December 13, 1987, pp. 37, 39; JEK unpublished memoir; Taplin interview, pp. 21–22.

  51 Lewis Nichols, “Visit with George Kennan,” New York Times, October 29, 1967. What follows is from GFK’s “Account of Trip to Africa, May–June, 1967,” GFK Papers, 237:1. For
Hochschild, see Hochschild, Half the Way Home.

  52 GFK to JEK, June 28, 1967, JEK Papers. See also GFK to Dönhoff, March 15, 1965, GFK Papers, 58.

  53 GFK “Account of Second African Journey,” ibid., 237:2.

  54 GFK to Waldemar Nielsen, October 19, 1967, ibid., 60. See also, for a fuller version of this argument, GFK, “Hazardous Courses in Southern Africa.” Foreign Affairs 49 (January 1971), 218–36

  55 GFK interview, September 5, 1984, p. 1; Goodman interview, pp. 20–21; GFK to JEK, June 26, 1967, JEK Papers; GFK to KWK, December 21, 1966, and October 16, 1967, ibid. See also, for an early comment on Cold War revisionist history, GFK to Gar Alperovitz, January 11, 1965, GFK Papers, 58.

  56 Nichols, “Visit with George Kennan.”

  57 GFK to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., February 17, 1993, handwritten, copy provided by GFK. John Lamberton Harper has emphasized the Adams-Kennan connection in his American Visions of Europe, especially chap. 4. See also, for the suggestion that Kennan was the better writer, Lukacs, Kennan: Study of Character, p. 6.

  58 The passages referred to here are in GFK, Memoirs, I, 98–88, 109–12. See also Chapter Seven, above; Thompson, Hawk and the Dove, pp. 237–38; and, for the Ramparts article, Saunders, Cultural Cold War, pp. 381–90.

  59 Lukacs, Kennan: Study of Character, p. 44.

  60 See D. W. Brogan’s introduction to Adams, Education of Henry Adams, 1946 reprint edition, pp. xi–xii.

  61 GFK address, “The Library and the Student Radical,” Swarthmore College, December 9, 1967, GFK Papers, 265:3.

  62 GFK interview, September 4, 1984, pp. 13–14; GFK, Democracy and the Student Left. See also “Head of Swarthmore Dies During Protest,” New York Times, January 17, 1969.

  63 GFK, Democracy and the Student Left, pp. 121, 124–26, 132–33, 136–37, 140–41, 153–54, 160–63, 190–93, 199, 208.

  64 Dilworth interview, p. 1; GFK to William C. Sullivan, October 22, 1968, and December 11, 1970, GFK Papers, 46:17; GFK to J. P. Trinkaus, November 9, 1970, ibid., 52:19.

  65 GFK to JEK, November 25, 1967, JEK Papers.

  66 GFK Diary, August 19, 1968; ibid., August 5, 1956.

  67 GFK “Account of Cruise to Denmark, July 31–August 5, 1968,” quoted in GFK, Sketches from a Life, p. 225; GFK to JEK, August 18, 1968, JEK Papers.

  TWENTY-THREE ● PROPHET OF THE APOCALYPSE: 1968–1980

  1 GFK memorial service address, February 25, 1967, GFK Papers, 264:10; GFK interview by Labalme, August 30, 1989, p. 3: GFK, Russia, the Atom and the West, p. 50. See also Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, pp. 3–5; and “600 at a Service for Oppenheimer,” New York Times, February 26, 1967.

  2 GFK interview, September 4, 1984, pp. 21–22; “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–2006,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (July–August 2006), 66. GFK’s early views on containment are discussed in Chapters Twelve and Thirteen, above.

  3 Schlesinger interview, p. 6. Kennan’s elections are reported in The New York Times, January 28, 1965, and December 9, 1967. For the history of the Academy, see its website, at www.artsandletters.org/about_history.php, accessed November 2010.

  4 GFK Diary, December 21, 1967; GFK opening address, American Academy of Arts and Letters and National Institute of Arts and Letters, May 28, 1968, GFK Papers, 265:8.

  5 GFK Diary, undated but August 1968, also October 4, 1968; Henry Raymont, “Kennan Book Recalls 1938–1939 Crisis,” New York Times, August 25, 1968; “Kennan Decries Talk of Détente,” ibid., September 22, 1968.

  6 GFK to JEK, October 31, 1968, JEK Papers.

  7 GFK Diary, May 6, 1966, November 7 and December 4, 1968.

  8 “Kennan Analysis Coolly Received,” New York Times, December 4, 1968; “A Hit and Myth Gathering of Intellectuals,” ibid., December 8, 1968; Walter Goodman, “Liberal Establishment Faces: The Blacks, The Young, The New Left,” New York Times Magazine, December 29, 1968. Excerpts from Kennan’s speech ran in the December 4, 1968, issue of The New York Times.

  9 GFK to JEK, September 21/22, 1968, JEK Papers; GFK interview by Labalme, August 30, 1989, pp. 13–14; George Urban, “From Containment to. . . Self-Containment: A Conversation with George F. Kennan,” Encounter 47 (September 1976), 43.

  10 GFK Diary, March 6 and 29, 1969.

  11 GFK to JEK, January 31, 1969, JEK Papers; Crossman Diary, January 31, 1969, in Crossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, pp. 353–54. I owe this reference to Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.

  12 GFK, Marquis de Custine, p. 124.

  13 GFK, “Interview with George F. Kennan,” conducted by Charles Gati and Richard Ullman, Foreign Policy 7 (Summer 1972), 5–21; GFK Diary, October 12, 1969. See also Bernard Gwertzman, “Kennan Now Advocates Closer Ties with Soviet,” New York Times, May 28, 1972.

  14 GFK to Kissinger, September 19, 1973, GFK Papers, 26:11. See also the transcript of a GFK-Kissinger telephone conversation, September 14, 1973, Kissinger Telephone Conversations KA 10845, Digital National Security Archive.

  15 “Kennan Decries Talk of Détente,” New York Times, September 22, 1968; GFK, “Between Earth and Hell,” New York Review of Books, March 21, 1974; Robert and Evgenia Tucker interview, September 4, 1984, pp. 11–16.

  16 GFK interview, October 31, 1974, pp. 6–7. See also GFK Diary, March 9, 1973. I have discussed the analogies between the Nixon-Kissinger strategy and Kennan’s concept of five vital power centers in Strategies of Containment, pp. 278–79.

  17 “Kennan Says ABM Could Peril Talks,” New York Times, February 7, 1970. See also GFK, Nuclear Delusion, pp. xxiii–xxiv.

  18 For background on the Helsinki Conference, see Gaddis, Cold War: A New History, pp. 184–88; also, much more thoroughly, Thomas, Helsinki Effect, and Morgan, “Origins of the Helsinki Final Act,” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 2010.

  19 GFK to Patricia Davies, August 9, 1975, GFK Papers, 10:12.

  20 GFK, “United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1976,” Foreign Affairs 54 (July 1976), 686–88; GFK Diary, August 30, 1976; Urban, “Conversation with George F. Kennan,” p. 39; Alliluyeva to GFK, September 21, 1976, GFK Papers, 38:5.

  21 Galbraith’s review appeared in The New York Times Book Review, October 8, 1972.

  22 GFK interview by Labalme, February 27, 1990, pp. 2–19; Dilworth interview, p. 13; GFK to Edwin O. Reischauer, March 12, 1973, and David Riesman, March 27, 1973, GFK Papers, 149:1. See also, Israel Shenker, “Dispute Splits Advanced Study Institute,” and “Foes at Institute Dig In For a Fight,” New York Times, March 2 and 4, 1973, and, for general background, John H. Elliott interview December 7, 1992. Kaysen’s tenure as Institute director is briefly covered in Regis, Who Got Einstein’s Office?, pp. 202–7.

  23 GFK Diary, March 13, 1978; GFK interview, September 5, 1984, pp. 4–7; GFK to Harriman, October 8 and 28, 1972, Harriman Papers, Box 1012.

  24 Ullman interview, pp. 19–20.

  25 Undated Harriman note; Harriman to GFK, November 3, 1972; GFK to Harriman, November 18, 1972, all in Harriman Papers, Box 1012.

  26 GFK to Harriman, December 4, 1975, ibid. On the elder Kennan’s biography of the elder Harriman, see Chapter Nine, above.

  27 GFK to Harriman, May 10, 1978, Harriman to GFK, May 22, 1978, ibid.; “Columbia Gets Harriman Gift of $11 Million,” New York Times, October 22, 1982.

  28 GFK interview, September 5, 1984, pp. 4, 6; Black interview, p. 28. See also Taplin interview, pp. 28–32. Of course if Kennan, half a century earlier, had followed through on his idea of starting an airborne express company—“I’ll be the Harriman of commercial aeronautics”—the roles might have reversed. Chapter Two provides the context.

  29 GFK Diary, January 28, October 12, 1982. See also McGeorge Bundy interview, December 17, 1986, p. 9.

  30 GFK to Mimi Bull, September 21, 1971, Bull Papers; GFK to Avis Bohlen, January 20, 1974, GFK Papers, 5:16.

  31 “Verses by G. F. Kennan on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday,” February 16, 1974, ibid., 325:5; GFK Diary, January 1, 1975.

  32 GFK Diar
y, January 8, 1975.

  33 Ibid., April 24, May 4, 6, 7, 1975.

  34 Ibid., May 12, 1975.

  35 “Trip to Helsinki,” July 1975, GFK Papers, 24:6.

  36 Urban, “Conversation with George F. Kennan,” pp. 10–43; GFK Diary, August 23, 1976. Acheson’s comment, relating to GFK’s 1952 expulsion from the Soviet Union, is in Present at the Creation, p. 697.

  37 Thompson, Hawk and the Dove, pp. 1, 247; GFK, “United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1976,” p. 682; GFK interview, August 26, 1982, p. 3; Nitze, Tension Between Opposites, p. 131. 1.

  38 Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 353–54; Thompson, Hawk and the Dove, pp. 262–63.

  39 GFK Diary, February 3, 1977; GFK, Cloud of Danger, p. vii.

  40 Goodman interview, p. 16; GFK to Mimi Bull, September 29, 1977, Bull Papers; Philip Geyelin, “A Grand Design for Peace,” Washington Post, June 26, 1977; GFK, Cloud of Danger, p. 204, also pp. 3–26, 228–234; James Reston, “Kennan on Carter’s Diplomacy,” New York Times, April 3, 1977; GFK Diary, June 30, 1977.

  41 The text of Kennan’s November 22 speech appeared in The Washington Post on December 11, 1977.

  42 GFK interview, August 26, 1982, p. 3; Nitze interview, p. 15.

  43 Marilyn Berger, “An Appeal for Thought” [interview with GFK], New York Times Magazine, May 7, 1978; Paul H. Nitze, “A Plea for Action,” ibid.; GFK to S. Frederick Starr, May 15, 1978, GFK Papers, 155:1. 1.

  44 Lee Lescaze, “Solzhenitsyn Says West Is Failing as Model for World,” Washington Post, June 9, 1978; “Diary Notes, Summer, 1978,” p. 13, GFK Papers, 239:4. An abridged text of Solzhenitsyn’s address appeared in The Washington Post two days later.

  45 Eugene V. Rostow, “Searching for Kennan’s Grand Design,” Yale Law Review 87 (June 1978), 1527–48.

  46 GFK Diary, August 19, 1978; GFK to Reston, November 28, 1978, GFK Papers, 41:9.

  47 Thompson, Hawk and the Dove, p. 313. For evaluations of the archival evidence, see Zubok, Failed Empire, pp. 227–64; Ouimet, Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy; and Westad, Global Cold War, especially pp. 218–41, 250–88, 299–330.