George F. Kennan was one of the most important U.S. diplomats of the 20th century. His famous telegram—tagged the Long Telegram—sent shortly after the end of World War II was the foundational geopolitical text for what would become known as America’s containment policy against the Soviet Union.
Eros and Civilization
Costigliola identifies early in his book a loss that would haunt Kennan throughout the rest of his life. His mother died when he was 2 months old. The loss of his mother, with whom he felt a strong bond despite never knowing her, would result in a lifelong search for an emotional opposite-sex intimacy that he would, possibly unwisely, connect through Freudian psychology.A Global Diplomat
But Costigliola doesn’t get so lost in the intimacies, or lack thereof, of the honest and rather self-deprecating man that he leaves out the most important aspect of Kennan’s life: diplomacy. Kennan’s diplomatic life is very well presented in the book. He was a hard-working (often to exhaustion), sickly, melancholy, brilliant, and insightful diplomat whose love and understanding of Russia stemmed from influential works about the country from the cousin of his grandfather.The author takes us through Kennan’s upbringing and eventual graduation from Princeton University in 1925. This includes his rejection by a woman, whose parents viewed him as a man who would accomplish nothing of note in his lifetime. The very opposite would be true.
His career soon began in the State Department, where he would eventually be stationed in the Moscow embassy. In the early months, Soviet bureaucrats regaled the Americans with parties, friendships, and close diplomatic relations. Kennan found himself enthralled by Stalin’s Russia, although not completely deceived by it.
Though he enjoyed the work, his driving work ethic would lead to his physical collapse exactly one year in. His work, well regarded by the Russian ambassador and the State Department, enabled him to take months of sick leave to recover. Shortly after his return, Kennan would no longer be enthralled, but would rather be appalled, as would the rest of the West’s diplomats and much of the world, when Stalin began his purges of the 1930s.
The author uses historical knowledge and documentation, along with Kennan’s diary, to give the reader a view into how Kennan and others responded and tried to cope with the purges, which included imprisonment, exile, and executions of their colleagues and friends. What resulted was a sort of Soviet isolationism, which left Kennan and other Western diplomats in the cold concerning diplomatic relations. Kennan, identified by the author as “always the Russian nationalist,” was hurt on a deeper level than most because of his affinity for Russia, his extensive knowledge of its history, and most emphatically his love for its people.
His work in Moscow would come to an end, at least for a time, and he was sent to Prague and then Berlin before and during the war. He would also perform as a high-ranking diplomat in Lisbon, where his reputation would rise to the point of attaining personal meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt and Portugal’s president, António de Oliveira Salazar. His differing views from Roosevelt and the Pentagon regarding Portugal, which remained neutral during the war, led him to defy, even successfully, both arms of American power.
When it comes to Kennan and Roosevelt, Costigliola tends to take the side of the president rather than playing the Portugal card of neutrality. Kennan’s criticisms of Roosevelt’s policies on the war and America’s faltering economy during the Depression are often undermined by the author.
The Push for Containment
The year after the war concluded in 1946, Kennan sent one of the most consequential diplomatic messages: the Long Telegram. It pinpointed the many dangers Stalin’s Russia posed to the West and recommended a containment policy for the ever-expanding Soviet Union, which “concluded that containment mandated a military buildup.”This moment, along with Kennan’s Foreign Affairs article with the byline “X,” is used as the crux for understanding Kennan’s diplomatic perspective of the Soviets. Costigliola makes the case by using Kennan’s own words—from his diary to diplomatic letters, interviews, and his BBC Reith Lectures—that Kennan never advocated for military confrontation. When he began to advocate for “disengagement,” the likes of Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other top brass came after him.
Costigliola presents a man who has always been viewed as the creator of the containment policy during the Cold War as someone other. It can be easy to claim the author is using a form of revisionism in this retelling, but I would disagree with that claim. If there is any “revisionism,” it seems to come directly from Kennan, who either truly never “intended, nor had ever approved, using military force to rein in Moscow’s ambitions” or had a change of perspective against military confrontation and preferred to revise his own history.
A Lauded, Yet Unheeded Diplomat
The author moves in chronological order through Kennan’s life, which lasted more than a century. His subject was one of the most accomplished and prescient diplomats the country has ever had. His recommendation for containment proved worthwhile and effective for the most part. His later recommendations for disengagement went unheeded.After he had fallen from grace in 1952 as the ambassador to the Soviet Union, his stations within the government, which included a stint as ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Kennedy administration, were few and far between. But his insight was often correct, such as his concerns about post-Cold War fallout that included potential wars in the Balkans, the tension between Russia and Ukraine, the problems with expanding NATO, the futility of trying to lure China into democracy, the repercussions of invading Iraq, and more.
It’s no wonder that he was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, a Bancroft Prize, an Albert Einstein Peace Prize, two National Book Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Also, his posthumously published biography written by John Gaddis won the Pulitzer Prize.)
Analytical and Enjoyable
Costigliola has written an enjoyable and analytical biography of a great thinker. It is a presentation of the man and the diplomat and a combination of the two: an individual torn between duty at home and duty for country; even those duties suffered dichotomies between family and the world, and America and Russia.In many ways, these dichotomies, even when disagreeable to the reader, should be understood in their context. There are moments when Kennan seems undemocratic, as his views, especially early on, were. Other times, he comes across as an elitist, which in ways he was (but he viewed himself that way compared to many people—even presidents).
Costigliola also pinpoints Kennan’s tendency toward misogyny, but the author at times inserts his own views, and in these cases, takes plain speaking or views of that day from the perspective of the modern era. But even then, Costigliola makes an effort to encourage the reader to not allow a man’s defects (or typical struggles), or even unacceptable or discomfiting views, to overshadow his brilliance, his contributions to society, and his proper place in American history.
