Volume 48, Number 3 · February 22, 2001
All in the Family
By Gordon S. Wood
An American Family: The Kennans—The First Three Generations
by George F. Kennan
Norton, 136 pp., $22.95
Most people know George Kennan as a diplomat, perhaps the most important American diplomat of the twentieth century. During the twenty-five years that he spent in the Foreign Service he was always at the center of things. In the early 1930s he helped to set up the first US embassy in the Soviet Union. He was in Prague during the Munich crisis in 1938 and in Berlin during the first two and a half years of World War II. As the State Department's first chief of the Policy Planning Staff in 1947 he was instrumental in setting up the Marshall Plan. At the same time in the famous 'long telegram' and the 'X' article in Foreign Affairs he warned of the dangers of trusting the Soviet Union, and set forth the idea of 'containment' as the basis for American policy toward its former ally in World War II. Few American diplomats have had that kind of career or influence on foreign policy.
Review, 3598 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |