Cold War Origins: A U.S. Perspective

Historians have minutely examined the events and issues that led to the Cold War, and much has been written about which side, the Soviet Union or the United States, was more to blame for causing it. One thing is certain, however: 1946 was a pivotal year in Soviet-U.S. relations. Until then, despite wartime disagreements over military strategy and emerging differences about the postwar settlement in Europe, many statesmen and diplomats sought cooperation, not confrontation, between the two emerging superpowers. During 1946, however, attitudes hardened. Negotiations over nuclear arms control failed in June, and the Paris foreign ministers’ conference over Eastern Europe ended with very sharp words in August. By the end of the year moderates such as U.S. Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace and the Soviet career diplomat Maksim Litvinov had both been removed from office. Leaders on both sides now saw little chance that further Soviet-U.S. conflict could by avoided.

Within the U.S. administration one document in particular articulated this bleak assessment of Soviet-U.S. relations in 1946. Written in February by the Moscow-based career diplomat George Kennan, what came to be known as the Long Telegram profoundly influenced U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the immediate postwar era and throughout the Cold War. Its author, born into a strict Protestant household in Milwaukee in 1904, entered U.S. Foreign Service directly after graduating from Princeton in 1925. Having mastered Russian through studies at the University of Berlin, he served in Moscow, Berlin, and Prague before returning to Moscow in 1944 as a special advisor to the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman. In early February 1946 he received a directive from the State Department to analyze a recent speech by Joseph Stalin that Washington considered confrontational and hostile. Kennan, an advocate of a hard line against the Soviet Union, used the opportunity to compose what is arguably the best-known such dispatch in the history of the U.S. Foreign Service (you can read excerpts from the Long Telegram by clicking here). The Long Telegram was read by State Department officials, cabled to U.S. embassies around the world, and made required reading for hundreds of military officers. In 1947 an edited version of the telegram was published as an article by “X” in the journal Foreign Affairs.

In 1947 Kennan was appointed head of the State Department’s newly created policy planning staff with the responsibility for long-range foreign policy planning. His opposition to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to increased military spending, and to U.S. involvement in the Korean War led to his resignation in 1951. Afterwards, with the exception of brief ambassadorships to the Soviet Union in 1952 and to Yugoslavia between 1961 and 1963, he devoted himself to research, writing, and university teaching on foreign policy and Soviet affairs before his death in 2005 (to think this is someone who literally saw World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and September 11, 2001!).

After reading excerpts from the Long Telegram, I would like you all to consider and discuss the following: What views of capitalism and socialism are articulated, according to Kennan, in official Soviet propaganda? What does Kennan consider the most notable characteristics of the Russian past? How, according to Kennan, has this past shaped the policies and views of the Soviet government since in 1917? In Kennan’s view, what role does communist ideology play in shaping the Soviet government’s policies? According to Kennan, what strengths and weaknesses does the Soviet Union bring to the anticipated conflict with the United States? What, according to Kennan, are the implications of his analysis for U.S. foreign and domestic policies? What must be done to counter the Soviet threat? Your thoughts…