LIVING WITH THE BEAR

Abstract

George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis. The Penguin Press, 2011. 784 pages, $40.

Keywords:

• Russia
• Soviet Union
• Cold War
• George F. Kennan

Notes

1. Material quoted in An American Life is cited in the context of the biography rather than using the original source. All other material is cited from the original source.

2. George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (New York: Pantheon, 1967), p. 4.

3. John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), p. 80.

4. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 28.

5. Telegram, George Kennan to James Byrnes [“Long Telegram”], February 22, 1946, Harry S. Truman Administration File, Elsey Papers, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, <www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/index.php?documentdate=1946-02-22&documentid=6-6&studycollectionid=&pagenumber=1>.

6. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 190.

7. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, for example, referred to Kennan as “childlike” in his lack of understanding of bureaucratic politics and personalities: Gaddis, An American Life, p. 244.

8. Gaddis, An American Life, p. xii.

9. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 138.

10. Telegram, George Kennan to James Byrnes [“Long Telegram”].

11. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 176.

12. As cited in Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, “Putin and the Uses of History,” National Interest, January 4, 2012, <http://nationalinterest.org/article/putin-the-uses-history-6276?page=show>.

13. Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation, “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” July 12, 2008.

14. Thomas Graham, “The Sources of Russia's Insecurity,” Survival 52 (February-March 2010), pp. 55–74, <www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00396331003612471>.

15. Bobo Lo, “China and Russia: Common Interests, Contrasting Perceptions,” CLSA, May 2006, p. 5. According to Lo, Russia-China trade increased six-fold between 1999 and 2006, and Russia is sensitive to the fact that it may be both directly and indirectly assisting the modernization of a potential future adversary.

16. Gaddis, An American Life, pp. 100–01.

17. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 292.

18. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 291.

19. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 174.

20. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 18.

21. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 291.

22. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 185.

23. Gaddis, An American Life, pp. 171–72.

24. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 260.

25. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 197.

26. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 217.

27. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 390.

28. British Broadcasting Corporation, “New START,” an episode in Putin, Russia, and the West a BBC Two series, February 9, 2012, <www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBQmHb8eVN4>.

29. Kennan, Memoirs, p. 303.

30. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 231.

31. Thompson, for example, portrays Kennan in this light because he was never appointed Secretary of State and was continually haunted by his personal loneliness and lack of charisma.

32. Gaddis, An American Life, p. 402.