Containment in Moscow?

"The individuals who are the components of [the Soviet] machine," wrote George Kennan, "are unamenable to argument or reason . . . from outside sources . . . Thus, the foreign representative cannot hope that his words will make any impression on them . . . even those at the top are not likely to be swayed by any normal logic in the words of bourgeois representatives."

Last week the word trickled out from Washington that Career Diplomat Kennan, 47, once the State Department's leading policymaker in the fight against Soviet Communism, will probably replace Admiral Alan G. Kirk (who wants to be relieved) as Ambassador to Moscow.

Kennan, now on leave from the State Department at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, will be unable to take the job until May. Explained Harry Truman: "He'd make a good ambassador. He certainly knows his way around there."

Manual of Cold War. Kennan, who speaks fluent Russian, went to Moscow in 1933 with Ambassador William Bullitt (as Third Secretary) and has at various times spent five years in the Russian capital.

It was just after World War II that Kennan, the Russian expert, came into his own. As Counselor of the Moscow embassy, he coached Ambassadors W. Averell Harriman and Bedell Smith. Back in Washington, he became head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in 1947. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X," he wrote, in Foreign Affairs, his famous article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." Destined to be the field manual of cold-war diplomacy, the article outlined the "containment" policy which has been the basis of U.S. strategy. "Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world," said Mr. X, "is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points."

In his recent book American Diplomacy, Kennan shows that he knows Russian Communism far better than he understands the U.S. and its present position in the world.

Interest & Law. Kennan chides the "shallow self-righteousness" of the U.S. attitude toward foreign nations, the over-emotionalism of the U.S. public. Again & again, he holds to admiration of 19th Century European diplomacy with its delicate balances and limited objectives based upon national self-interest. He contrasts this diplomacy favorably with what he calls the "legalistic-moralistic" American approach. Diplomat Kennan, however, does not seem to recognize the full implications of the difference between the 19th and 20th Century worlds. The delicate 19th Century diplomacy of national self-interest functioned in a world where a basic international order prevailed. The 20th Century cannot return to that kind of diplomacy until basic rules are again in force. Thus the first diplomatic task ahead is one of creating and restoring law. Until that is done, the pursuit of naked national interest by Old World diplomacy is futile, dangerous and irrelevant to the U.S. mission in the 20th Century world.

Kennan, however, correctly points out that the Communist leaders are impervious to outside persuasion, and Kennan's possible defects as a top planner of U.S. policy would not be defects in a U.S. Ambassador to Russia. That job is primarily one of analyzing Russian policies and motives--at which Kennan is one of the best living practitioners. He is so good at it, in fact, that last week brought reports that the Kremlin would refuse to accept Kennan as the U.S. Ambassador.

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