The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

felt that fate had laid hands upon him and ordained him to formulate a proper American response to the Soviet challenge. Self-confident and independent in his judgments, he could argue them persuasively both orally and on paper. He quickly assembled a small team, obtained some office space next to Sec. Marshall’s suite and got down to business. Then fol- lowed three years when he participated in the debates over most of the key issues in American foreign policy. His service coincided with an enormously formative period in American diplomacy as the United States worked to restore and secure Western Europe and to pursue stability in East Asia. During this period the policies that gave form and meaning to the containment doctrine emerged. Kennan contributed significantly to some of them while finding himself quite opposed to others. He did not play the role of a dominant, pow- erful architect whose planning pro- vided instructions for building the whole structure of foreign policy. Rather, he served as one of a number of on-site builders who contributed in important ways to the structure that eventually emerged. These builders — the policy-making core of the State Department — operated, in essence, without agreed architectural plans. They debated and then determined the nature and shape of the structure as they went along. This said, Kennan’s accomplishments in the actual making of foreign policy are striking. There is no sec- ond-level State Department official in the 20th centu- ry who could match the breadth of his contributions. Kennan first displayed his skill as a hands-on policy- maker with his work on the European Recovery Program, and he deserves an honored place among the F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 27 The young diplomat never glossed over the horror and brutality of Stalin’s regime. 2000 N. 14th Street  Suite 500 Arlington, VA 22201 Telephone (703) 797-3259 Fax (703) 524-7559 Tollfree (800) 424-9500