This compilation of observations and policy ideas about Russia by George F. Kennan is part of Russia Matters’ “Competing Views” rubric, where we share prominent American thinkers’ alternative takes on U.S.-Russian relations, Russia itself and America’s policies toward this country.
U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
New and original Cold Wars:
- The military policies and even more the rhetoric of these two great countries are on a collision course, and I feel quite helpless in the face of this situation. About the Soviet Union, I can do nothing. These people have indulged themselves for 60 years in the habit of polemical exaggeration and distortion. It is as Russian as boiled cabbage and buckwheat kasha. But what about my own government and its state of blind militaristic hysteria? It has not only convinced itself of the reality of its own bad dreams, but it has succeeded in half-convincing most of our allies, and that to such an extent that anyone who challenges that view of the world appears to them as dangerously subversive. … Our respective views of reality are simply incompatible.” (Entry dated 04.16.81, “The Kennan Diaries,” 2014)
- [T]he lone battle I was waging in those years [1948-1958]—a battle against the almost total militarization of Western policy towards Russia—was one which, had my efforts been successful, would have, or could have, obviated the vast expenses, dangers and distortions of outlook of the ensuing Cold War. (Entry dated 05.02.00, “The Kennan Diaries,” 2014) [….]
- On NATO expansion: The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking … Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the START II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry. (New York Times, 02.05.97)
- On rationale of NATO expansion: Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the Cold War, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict? (New York Times, 02.05.97) Läs artikel