# Posted 2:32 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

GEORGE KENNAN, 1904-2005: Emerson said that to be great is to be misunderstood. By that standard, George Kennan was surely the greatest American diplomat of the 20th century.

Kennan's name is inseparable from the doctrine of containment that influenced American foreign policy throughout the Cold War. Kennan gave the doctrine its name in his legendary essay in Foreign Affairs entitled The Sources of Soviet Conduct.

Yet within just a few short years, Kennan began to denounce what was being done in the name of his doctrine. The NYT obituary of Kennan captures an important dimension of this dissent by observing that

Mr. Kennan was deeply dismayed when the policy was associated with the immense build-up in conventional arms and nuclear weapons that characterized the cold war from the 1950's onward.

Yet long before the military build-up initiated during the Korean War, Kennan became infuriated by President Truman's division of the world into totalitarian and democratic realms as well Truman's commitment to spread democracy across the globe.

The NYT misses this point entirely. It never provides its readers with even the faintest suggestion that Kennan was fundamentally opposed to democracy promotion as a matter of principle. In contrast, the WaPo obituary of Kennan quotes him as saying that

"I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. I submit that governments should deal with other governments as such, and should avoid unnecessary involvement, particularly personal involvement, with their leaders."

Mind you, Kennan's statement has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he was a lifelong Democrat and that, these days, democracy promotion is a Republican agenda item. I can make this assertion with such confidence because Kennan's statement above is from 1999.

Yet while the Post deserves credit for recognizing the anti-democratic elements of Kennan's thinking (including his reactionary sexism and racism -- also ignored by the NYT), its provision of a quote from 1999 fails to inform readers that Kennan's opposition to promoting democracy was a six decade-long affair.

When asked to propose a US strategy for Latin America in the late 1940s, Kennan insisted that the United States must abandon its aversion to establishing firm alliances with right-wing dictators both because they were anti-communists and because the people of Latin America weren't ready for democracy.

The purpose of pointing all this out is not to expose the flaws of an otherwise great man. Rather, the purpose is to point out that these often-ignored aspects of Kennan's thinking were integral to everything that stood for. Because Kennan was a "realist".

Amazingly, neither the Times nor the Post describes Kennan as such. Yet it is this label that best identifies the intellectual movement to which Kennan belonged and to which he contributed so much. Although labels tend to oversimplify, it is very meaningful to say that George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger were realists, whereas Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were not. They were idealists.

Realists believe that violent conflict is an inevitable aspect of international relations. That is a sensible thing to believe. Realists also believe that the best way to avoid violence is to recognize and respect the sovereign authority of foreign governments, provided that they acknowledge the sovereignty of others as inviolable.

Thus, no matter how cruel or authoritarian a government is, serious realists such as Kennan insist that the United States should not attempt to reform it. Certain idealists might respond to such an argument that it is immoral. And it is.

But the far greater flaw of this sort of realist analysis is its failure to recognize how often the United States can best enhance its national security by also promoting its values. Even though the occupations of Germany and Japan demonstrated that point quite conclusively in the 1940s, Kennan was unable to grasp this simple fact.

Today, we are learning once again in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Lebanon that our values are not an albatross around our necks but rather the greatest weapon in our arsenal.

For all his flaws, I recognize George Kennan as a great thinker and a great American. Yet at this critical moment, we cannot afford to let the celebration of his life prevent us from remembering the price of being "realistic". (0) opinions -- Add your opinion