George Kennan. “long telegram” and Containment Thesis: Cold War Lecture Points

George Kennan, the American charge d’affaires in Moscow, sends an 8,000-word telegram to the Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state. Kennan’s analysis provided one of the most influential underpinnings for America’s Cold War policy of containment.

Kennan was among the U.S. diplomats to help establish the first American embassy in the Soviet Union in 1933. While he often expressed respect for the Russian people, his appraisal of the communist leadership of the Soviet Union became increasingly negative and harsh. Throughout World War II he was convinced that President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s spirit of friendliness and cooperation with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was completely misplaced. Less than a year after Roosevelt’s death, Kennan, then serving as U.S. charge d’affaires in Moscow, released his opinions in what came to be known as the “long telegram.”
The lengthy memorandum began with the assertion that the Soviet Union could not foresee “permanent peaceful coexistence” with the West. This “neurotic view of world affairs” was a manifestation of the “instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.” As a result, the Soviets were deeply suspicious of all other nations and believed that their security could only be found in “patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power.” Kennan was convinced that the Soviets would try to expand their sphere of influence, and he pointed to Iran and Turkey as the most likely immediate trouble areas. In addition, Kennan believed the Soviets would do all they could to “weaken power and influence of Western Powers on colonial backward, or dependent peoples.” Fortunately, although the Soviet Union was “impervious to logic of reason,” it was “highly sensitive to logic of force.” Therefore, it would back down “when strong resistance is encountered at any point.” The United States and its allies, he concluded, would have to offer that resistance.
Kennan’s telegram caused a sensation in Washington. Stalin’s aggressive speeches and threatening gestures toward Iran and Turkey in 1945-1946 led the Truman administration to decide to take a tougher stance and rely on the nation’s military and economic muscle rather than diplomacy in dealing with the Soviets. These factors guaranteed a warm reception for Kennan’s analysis. His opinion that Soviet expansionism needed to be contained through a policy of “strong resistance” provided the basis for America’s Cold War diplomacy through the next two decades. Kennan’s diplomatic career certainly received a boost–he was named U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1952.
After leaving government service, Kennan served on the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study until his death in 2005 at the age of 101.
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The 'Long Telegram' was sent by George Kennan from the United States Embassy in Moscow to Washington, where it was received on February 22nd, 1946. The telegram was prompted by US inquiries about Soviet behavior, especially with regards to their refusal to join the newly created World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In his text, Kennan outlined Soviet belief and practice and proposed the policy of 'containment,' making the telegram a key document in the history of the Cold War. The name 'long' derives from the telegram's 8000-word length.

US and Soviet Division

The US and USSR had recently fought as allies, across Europe in the battle to defeat Nazi Germany, and in Asia to defeat Japan. US supplies, including trucks, had helped the Soviets weather the storm of Nazi attacks and then push them right back to Berlin. But this was a marriage from purely one situation, and when the war was over, the two new superpowers regarded each other warily. The US was a democratic nation helping put Western Europe back into economic shape. The USSR was a murderous dictatorship under Stalin, and they occupied a swathe of Eastern Europe and wished to turn it into a series of buffer, vassal states. The US and the USSR seemed very much opposed.
The US thus wanted to know what Stalin and his regime were doing, which was why they asked Kennan what he knew. The USSR would join the UN, and would make cynical overtures about joining NATO, but as the 'Iron Curtain' fell on Eastern Europe, the US realized they now shared the world with a huge, powerful and anti-democratic rival.

Containment

Kennan's Long Telegram didn't just reply with insight into the Soviets. It coined the theory of containment, a way of dealing with the Soviets. For Kennan, if one nation became communist, it would apply pressure on its neighbors and they too might become communist. Hadn't Russia now spread to the east of Europe? Weren't communists working in China? Weren't France and Italy still raw after their wartime experiences and looking towards communism? It was feared that, if Soviet expansionism was left unchecked, it would spread over great areas of the globe.
The answer was containment. The US should move to help countries at risk from communism by propping them up with the economic, political, military, and cultural aid they needed to stay out of the Soviet sphere. After the telegram was shared around government, Kennan made it public. President Truman adopted the containment policy in his Truman Doctrine and sent the US to counter Soviet actions. In 1947, the CIA spent considerable sums of money to ensure the Christian Democrats defeated the Communist Party in elections, and, therefore, kept the country away from the Soviets.​
Of course, containment was soon twisted. In order to keep nations away from the communist bloc, the US supported some terrible governments, and engineered the fall of democratically elected socialist ones. Containment remained US policy throughout the Cold War, ending in 1991, but discussed as something to be reborn when it came to US rivals ever since.