The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

team of midwives who successfully delivered the Marshall Plan. Kennan played a particularly crucial role in coordinating the various ideas current in the State Department into a coherent proposal, and he was most responsible for the initial American strategy of encouraging the Europeans, acting jointly, to formulate a recovery proposal for American consideration. Kennan’s work on the ERP won him Marshall’s respect and regard. Not one to dispense praise liberal- ly, Marshall wrote Kennan in light of his efforts during 1947 that, “I just want you to know in a rather formal manner how much I appreciate the splendid work you have been doing here in the department. Your calm and analytical approach to our problems is most com- forting and your judgment is a source of great confi- dence to me.” Such appreciation was pure balm for Kennan, who held his chief in the highest regard. He left no stone unturned in his efforts to serve him and considered his work with Marshall as “the greatest of privileges” of his government career. A Decisive First Step For Kennan, the Marshall Plan was the decisive first step in establishing a political balance of power in Western Europe. The essentially political/economic nature of the ERP represented the kind of contain- ment he favored. He was much less enthused about the more military expressions of containment that some of his colleagues, along with European statesmen like Ernest Bevin, pushed in 1948. He worried that a preoccupation with military affairs worked “to the detriment of economic recovery and of the necessity for seeking a peaceful solution to Europe’s difficulties.” In fact, Kennan explicitly opposed the development of the North Atlantic Alliance, and he saw the develop- ment of a separate West German state as wrong-head- ed and fraught with danger. He feared that such poli- cies “would amount to a final militarization of the pre- sent dividing-line through Europe.” Obviously he lost out in the arguments on these ini- tiatives, which essentially defined postwar Europe, to departmental colleagues like John D. Hickerson, Theodore Achilles and Robert Murphy. The negotia- tion of the North Atlantic Treaty represented a clear rejection of his strategic vision, which had focused on encouraging the Europeans to stand on their own feet. More fundamentally, Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s decision in 1949 to eschew the Kennan- sponsored efforts for German reunification, to press ahead with the formal partition of Germany and to accept the requisite division of Europe revealed the planning chief’s failure to secure the adoption of his broad plan. Kennan’s endeavors in Europe foundered ultimate- ly because he could not persuade his superiors and col- leagues that the Soviet threat was limited and essen- tially political. Kennan based his analysis on an assess- ment of Soviet intentions rather than capabilities. His fellow policy-makers found it unpersuasive, especially after the Soviets exploded an atomic weapon in 1949. They were not prepared to run the risk of being wrong and would not ignore the Soviet threat. This reality guaranteed Kennan’s defeat not only on the North Atlantic Treaty and German questions but also on other military-related issues, such as the Japanese security treaty and the development of the hydrogen bomb, which he also opposed. The adoption of NSC 68, craft- ed by Kennan’s successor Paul Nitze in 1950, served to formalize the firm rejection of the Kennan strategy. The rejection of Kennan’s more political-economic approach to containment in Europe did not mean that he lost out in all the policy debates — indeed, far from it. Kennan played the key role in forging American policy in response to Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948. He helped chart a cautious middle path for the United States between an overly eager embrace of the com- munist leader who rejected Stalin’s control and a cold rejection which might damage prospects for the “Titoism” he wanted to encourage throughout the Soviet satellite area. Eager to contest Soviet domina- tion of Eastern Europe, Kennan played a significant role in devising new and controversial weapons for the American diplomatic arsenal. He helped in developing the covert capabilities of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination under Frank Wisner. Along with his close aide and friend Robert Joyce, he even con- tributed to the planning of certain of the OPC opera- tions undertaken behind the Iron Curtain. He also played an important role in developing instruments of propaganda, among which Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe were the most significant. Additionally, Kennan had a most salient impact on the formulation of American policy toward Northeast Asia. He helped establish the quite basic premise of F O C U S 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4