Talk:George F. Kennan

message: OK, guys, in less than a month, we get to add this guy to the entry Centenarian.
Annaliese Sorenson is not a Norwegian name. Suggest Anne Lise Sørensen or Anne-Lise Sørensen, or Sørenson. Håkon Rua, Norway
:Kennan's NYT obituary uses the spelling "Annelise Sorensen."  Kennan uses the spelling Soerensen in his memoirs. Russil Wvong 19:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Centenarian 

message: The article says "Kennan was married to Grace Kennan Warneke",
without saying whether this was before or after
"he married the Norwegian Annaliese Sorenson",
or whether and when he divorced either of them.
:Grace Kennan Warnecke is one of his daughters, not his wife. The error appears to have been introduced by a misreading of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel obituary. Russil Wvong 19:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  polygamy 

message: Can we discuss the section on Kennan's influence here, before adding it to the article?  I have a number of comments:
:Trying to summarize Kennan's influence on US foreign policy is going to be a major undertaking, because (a) Kennan was such a prolific writer, and (b) untangling the influence of different individuals on policy is always difficult.   Besides the numerous obituaries, a good starting point would be Wilson Miscamble's George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950.
:In particular, the first paragraph makes use of a misleading quotation] from PPS/23.  It's simply wrong to describe this as Kennan's most significant idea.
:I think the reference to "John Gaddes" is supposed to be "John Lewis Gaddis."
Russil Wvong 23:50, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's kind of bad form to delete wholesale if the addition was made in good faith, which it looks like it was, irrespective of accuracy. It usually works better to prune mistakes and have a sketchier section, than to try and achieve perfection outside of the article and add it all at once. A summary would only be a major undertaking if it were long, and unless you have such a one waiting in the wings, we can just make do with fixing the anon's verbiage. Stan 01:27, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the feedback, Stan (I'm new to Wikipedia).  I'll restore the section and edit it there. Russil Wvong 18:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section on Kennan's influence 

message: Excellent article by 172.
I did notice some minor errors.  For example, the X article was signed "X", not "Mr. X". Russil Wvong 01:17, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article by 172 

message: Even though I did not knew much of Kennan I added some words after reading about his death. Within a few days the article evolved and expanded just like that! This is really impressive - and makes one believe this site can both produce quantity and quality. Ulflarsen 18:20, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  This strange place called Wikipedia seems to work... 

message: Less Gaddis and more Kennan would improve both the content and, to my taste, the style. Septentrionalis 01:40, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  General comment 

message: I just corrected The Long Telegram and Sources of Soviet to WikiSource. I have no idea how to make an interWiki link.Paul, in Saudi 04:17, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  InterWiki Links needed 

message: "So far as I could see, we were expecting to be able to gain our objectives... without making any concessions thought, only "if we were really all-powerful, and could hope to get away with it. I very much doubted that this was the case."  (I wasn't sure where to put the missing quotation mark.)  Eric 09:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incomplete quotation 

message: Is Kennan's last name pronounced KEN-AN or KEEN-AN, or something else? Thanks Jimaginator 12:09, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
:It's KEN-an. Russil Wvong 17:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name Pronunciation 

message: Just a few small modifications to the language and punctuation.  No problem if they're kept or rolled back.  192.115.144.17 17:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical assessment 

message: I feel some portion of these quotes should be included in the article:
QUOTE 1 
Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction...
...In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be linked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague--and for the Far East--unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better
:Memo by George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff. Written February 28, 1948, Declassified June 17, 1974. George Kennan, "Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy, Policy Planning Staff, PPS No. 23. Top Secret. Included in the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, volume 1, part 2 (Washington DC Government Printing Office, 1976), 524-525.  Full text found on wikisource. 
QUOTE 2 
In March 1950, the State Department's expert on Soviet Affairs, George Kennan, flew to Rio de Janeiro to meet with U.S. ambassadors in South America. After a wide-ranging and often outspoken survey of world events, Kennan outlined how Latin America fit into U.S. policy: 
::1. The protection of our [sic] raw materials; 
::2. The prevention of military exploitation of Latin America by the enemy; and, 
::3. The prevention of the psychological mobilization of Latin America against us. 
If Europe turned anti-U.S., he observed, "Latin America would be all we would be all we would have to fall back on." Unfortunately "our relations with the Latin America were not sufficiently good to stand a serious rocking of the boat elsewhere." Under no circumstances, Kennan warned the ambassadors, must Communists be allowed in power :
 "The final answer may be an unpleasant one, but...we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This is not shameful since the Communists are estentially traitors...it is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by Communists."  
:Walter Lafeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (1993 W. W. Norton & Company). p 108-109  
: From 2nd Regional Conference of U.S. Chiefs of Mission, Rio ... 1950," Inter-American Economic Affairs Committee, 1945-1950, Box 5, National Archives, Record Group 353.
:Last "unpleasant" quote also quoted in: 
::Robert A. Pollard Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945-1950 April 1985, p 212 
:: Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945-8 Conjuncture Leslie Bethell; Ian Roxborough Journal of Latin American Studies Vol. 20, No. 1 (May, 1988), p. 183
 
Signed:Travb 07:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kenan quotes 

message: It doesn't seem like the "long telegram" actually is 8000 words long, as stated in this article and on numerous other places. I copied it (from here) into MS Word, and checked its statistics, which said 5328 words. This is also confirmed here: http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/web_exclusives/plus/plus_042005telegram.html. Vints 14:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not 8,000 words 

message: From the section "Differences with Acheson":
"As a result of these criticisms, he lost influence with Acheson, who in any case relied much less on his staff than Marshall had. Acheson finally replaced Kennan with Nitze as director of policy planning in 1950, who was far more comfortable with the calculus of military power. "
This is not correct! Nitze was appointed Director of the Policy Planning Staff in January 1, 1950,  before the Korean War and before the NSC-68 was written. NSC-68 was written by Paul Nitze February-April 1950. Vints 11:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote the correct dates of Kennans resignation (Dec 49) and Nitzes appointment (Jan 50). See here and here. Maybe the paragraph needs to be rearranged now. Vints 16:50, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NSC-68 

message: I doubt that the statement in the lead: "During his term as the U.S. State Department's first director of the Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s, his writings gave rise to the Truman Doctrine" is correct.  Kennan was appointed director of Policy Planning Staff in April 1947 and Truman's speech to the Congress was in March 12. This article (John O. Iatrides, George F. Kennan and the Birth of Containment: The Greek Test Case) calls Kennan's role in the formulation of the Truman Doctrine marginal, and Miscamble writes: "Kennan played a tangential role and unsuccessfully objected to the sweeping language of the message drafted for President Truman to deliver to Congress on March 12, 1947." Vints 15:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Moreover, as the article itself quotes Kennan as saying: "My thoughts about containment were of course distorted by the people who understood it and pursued it exclusively as a military concept; and I think that that, as much as any other cause, led to [the] 40 years of unnecessary, fearfully expensive and disoriented process of the Cold War." You could say that Kennan's ideas were taken up in part and adapted, but it would be more accurate to say that Kennan's ideas were ignored than that they gave rise to the Truman Doctrine. 94.192.97.173 (talk) 22:45, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Gave rise to the Truman Doctrine"? 

message: "Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch." Should "diploma" be changed to "Truman Doctrine"?--Vints 14:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diploma? 

message: John Lukacs on George Kennan: The Conscience of America
Posted 1 May 2007
Yale University Press has published a small gem of a book, John Lukacs's George Kennan: A Study in Character. Reading it was both a delight and surprise. 
See complete article at http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/conscience.html
I found Kennan's letter to his nephew particularly fascinating. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.19.14.37 (talk) 09:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  George Kennan: The Conscience of America 

message: I have removed four proponents of various smelly little orthodoxies who hopped on Kennan's funeral car to use him as a stock figure in their several melodramas.   
This article is already long. If Wikipedia really needs to discuss the views of the likes of John Lewis Gaddis, Walter L. Hixson, Carl Estabrook, or Alexander Cockburn (or, for that matter, John Lukacs, above) it should do so in their own articles; doubtless in a century, readers will need to consult an encyclopedia to find out who people like Gaddis or Cockburn were. Some of them are quoted as seeing Kennan as an amoral Realist and so a Hero; others as an amoral realist and so a Villian. None of them are useful here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not familiar with these historians, but what exactly is the problem with referring to their assessments on Kennan's policy in this article? Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 16:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I echo Nishkid64's query.  Plus, I am not an expert on Cold War history, but I know that John Lewis Gaddis at least is one of the preeminent Cold War historians; his views were standard reading during my A-level history course in the UK.  As a result, I am hesitant to cast off lightly his opinions on Kennan, and the same may go for the other historians noted. Otumba (talk) 01:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: All three with articles are strongly, and contrastingly, opinionated (and it reads like the other two are too, although I haven't seen their works). None of what they say is (or is likely ever to be) consensus, on either side. A's construct about B belongs in A's article, not B's. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Political cruft 

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thread_title:  Fair use rationale for Image:Kennantito.jpg 

message: George Kennan was born in 1904. To call his mother Florence James at that date is to imply that she was an extraordinary suffragette, or that Kennan was illegitimate. I doubt either is intended, but if either is, it should be explained. (And, before 1926, the correct spelling is Cassell, which should redirect). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:51, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mother's name 

message: Ideas Man; The Legacy of George F. Kennan Review by Nicholas Thompson January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs 
99.19.44.155 (talk) 16:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  potential resource, book by [[John Lewis Gaddis]] 

message: Referring to Franco's regime as a fascist one is an easy and unfair cliché that seems inappropriate for a featured article. Franco's regime was the result of an atrocious fight against communism, in its peculiar spanish version. It was certainly dictatorial and authoritarian, but also deeply traditionalist and anti-revolutionary, and a transitional regime too, bound to end with Franco's death, hopefully having spanish people got ready to live in a mature and predictable democracy. I kindly suggest to substitute 'fascist' for 'dictatorial', 'anticommunist', or other qualifier fit to the truth.
--88.15.71.61 (talk) 09:52, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It's reasonably standard in the RS: see Fascism in Spain, 1923-1977 by Professor Stanley G. Payne (1999); Latin fascist elites: the Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar regimes by Paul H. Lewis - 2002; "The Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, for example, is often considered fascist because of his armed conquest of power in the Spanish Civil War with the overt aid of Mussolini and Hitler." says Robert O. Paxton. The Anatomy Of Fascism  - 2005 p 149. Payne says, "His regime was an eclectic mixture of a right-wing military elite, a fascist state party (the Falange, or FET)". Rjensen (talk) 14:06, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fascist Spain? 

message: I am somewhat surprised that in this biography of Kennan there is nothing about his contribution to the active operation of "rolling back" Communism that was initially started inside the State Dept. and later continued by the OPC under Frank Wisner and Co.  Although I don't have the references at hand, there is a book, I believe entitled "Roll Back," about his role.  I also found on the net, although I don't currently have it, a recommendation signed by Kennan to help the former Nazi ambassador to the Soviet Union find asylum inside the United States with his family, part of the larger effort to provide Nazi officials with a soft landing inside the U.S.  While I wouldn't go so far as to call him an opportunist, Kennan could trim his sails with the best of the other office seekers in Washington, and it seems that these facts should also be included in any biography.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.173.30.18 (talk) 06:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: the current view on the left is that Kennan did NOT call for rollback. see  Rjensen (talk) 08:16, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This "current view on the left" is not widely shared, nor is it supported by a wider review of the literature, nor even a review of Kennan's own writings (official and otherwise) with all of their inconsistencies. "In later years Kennan would represent his conception of containment as a political strategy of limited geographical application...and contrast it as a stance of prudent defence with the adventurist notions of 'rollback' advocated by Dulles, and 'flexible response' by Kennedy. Legend has since canonized the image of a sober adviser whose counsels of moderation and wisdom were distorted into a reckless anti-communist activism that would bring disasters against which he spoke out.... The reality was otherwise." In other words, the policy of containment that Kennan advanced in the State Department was in fact every bit as interventionist and aggressively militarist as what became policy after his departure from government. This article demands a more thorough engagement with the historical literature that is critical of Kennan, rather than the mainstream CFR-type hagiography of the man, a genre that owes its existence to tortuous efforts to legitimize the Cold War.C5magee (talk) 21:17, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  The "other" Kennan 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Terms dumped on the user at key spots in the article ("Legacy") w/o explanation. What does "strongpoint" mean as a POLITICAL term? It's not a vernacular word, it's not helpful to use it in a general-interest place like Wiki. Is the (now wikilinked) MILITARY meaning the intended one?
This is screaming for elaboration:
# what is global containment, 
# what strongpoint containment,
# how do they contrast as political doctrines? Arminden (talk) 12:33, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Global containment is the policy of combating expansion everywhere. Strongpoint containment restricts opposition to more limited regions. Some of it is covered in the Differences with Acheson section. DrKay (talk) 11:03, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Global vs strongpoint containment: explain! 

message: Huge parts are unsourced. Especially some sentences that I assume may be subject to controversy such as "he argued that the United States should become an authoritarian, if not fascist, state and that women, immigrants and African-Americans should be stripped of the right to vote, as he felt only American-born white males had the necessary intelligence to vote"
"Published works" should probably be at the end. And I don't understand why "Kennan had a low opinion of President Roosevelt" is in this section. A455bcd9 (talk) 15:27, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: This article already glosses over how Kennan was intensely racist and sexist, and his hatred of democracy. — Red XIV (talk) 17:41, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know whether your comment was an answer to mine but the issue I pointed out is the lack of references. a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 19:21, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

text: I don't think it glosses over it as much as it is unintentionally buried under heaps of "in the weeds" reflexive discourse and minutiae.  In other words, it's in there but the article needs some serious editing.  Also, and I think it really needs to be said, a lot of high-level politicians like him were racist, sexist, and anti-democratic, and to be honest, this hasn't really changed all that much in US politics today.  Viriditas (talk) 23:27, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:URFA/2020]]