George Kennan The Historian

March/April 2007 · Historically Speaking 11 George Kennan The Historian* John Lukacs Recognized as one of diis nation's most distinguished diplomats, George Kennan (1904-2005) was also a remarkable historian . His thinking was saturated with history, and his respect for history was allied to that exceptional kind of nostalgia that involves a respectful longing for times and places well before one's childhood or youth.1 However, such a taste for history does not necessarily result in an attempt to write it, just as a gourmet is not necessarily a cook (and a mental appetite for history is something else than intellectual gourmandise). But beginning in 1 950—in the midst of the turmoil of his life and career and beset with so many duties— Kennan took up another self-imposed task: that of writing history, something that, with interruptions, he continued until the very last years of his life. Such were the inclinations and die powers of his mind. The first such book, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950, may be his best known one, having been assigned reading in many college and university courses soon after its appearance . It consisted of six lectures delivered at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1951. These Chicago lectures form one grand historical essay. Kennan stated his purpose at the very beginning. "I would like to say a word about die concept of these six lectures. The concept stems from no abstract interest in history for history's sake. It stems from a preoccupation with the problems of foreign policy we have before us today." In other words, writing about the past for the sake of the present. That is not "pure" history—but is there such a thing at all? The purpose of any and every history book in its writer's mind is never simple, but in this case, at least, Kennan's main purpose is easily detectible. It was educational. This is evident from the above-cited first paragraph of his first chapter to the concluding chapter, entided "Diplomacy in the Modern World"; but in their way the other five chapters, or lectures, are dedicated to that, too. Their theme is the repeated shortcomings of the conduct of foreign policy, particularly of American foreign policy, by and within a democracy. But there is more in this short book than admonition or exhortation. The contents of its five main chapters reveal a stunning amount of * This essay is abridged from a chapter inJohn Lukacs's latest book, George Kennan: A Study of Character (Yale University Press, 2007). historical knowledge and of historical insights. What Kennan must have read before and during his writing of these chapters is amazing—perhaps especially keeping in mind the wearisome and agitated conditions of his life in the months before and durGeorge Kennan talking to reporters. © Bettmann/CORBIS. ing their composition. The successive chapters of American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 examine the War with Spain; John Hay's Open Door; America and die Orient; World War I; World War II; and die concluding admonitory chapter . Students and established scholars of each of these important topics would, even now, profit from rereading these essays written more than a half-century ago. The 1898 War with Spain could have been avoided, and how easily. The American occupation and incorporation of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc. were unnecessary; they came about almost by accident. John Hay's 1900 proclamation of an Open Door policy in China was the outcome of anodier odd coincidence. The protracted American illusions about China and a consequent conflict widi Japan were not unavoidable. World War I was the greatest catastrophe of Western civilization, which the United States should have recognized earlier—and in different ways—than it did. World War II was fraught with disaster, since the Western democracies from its very beginning could not defeat Germany without Soviet Russia. These are not summaries of his chapters; they are, rather, those of his insights. His anxious convictions shine through them, again and again. "I am talking about the behavior of the United States of America. History does not forgive us our national mistakes because they are explicable in terms of our domestic...