George Kennan and American Grand Strategy During the Cold War.

• Author: Sempa, Francis P.
• Position: Brief article

Text:

George Kennan and American Grand Strategy During the Cold War

By John Lewis Gaddis, Professor, Yale University

Video: http://www.usnwc.edu/Gaddis

Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa, Contributing Editor

John Lewis Gaddis is perhaps the greatest historian of the Cold War. His new biography of the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan has just been released. In a recent lecture at the Naval War College, Gaddis discussed the influence of classic historical and literary works on George F. Kennan's approach to the grand strategy of the Cold War.

Kennan's influence on U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union was profound during the early years of the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow and his "X" article in Foreign Affairs helped develop and explain the policy of containment that guided almost every U.S. administration during the Cold War. Gaddis credits Kennan with accurately predicting that the Soviet Empire would collapse from within; that it carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. Kennan gained this insight, Gaddis believes, from his reading of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Kennan's...