Policy by Hunch

Dean Acheson, mustache bristling with indignation, strode into the State Department pressroom one day last week. Correspondents, scrambling to their feet at the unusual visitation, did not have to ask the reason. The Secretary of State had news: Moscow had just asked the U.S. to recall Ambassador to Russia George F. Kennan.

Diplomat Kennan had talked to reporters in Berlin three weeks before and had made a statement: the life of a U.S. diplomat in Soviet Russia is little better than existence was in Nazi Germany, where he had been briefly interned after Pearl Harbor. This line of talk, said a note from Moscow to the State Department, was "a rude violation of generally recognized norms of international law."

Dean Acheson angrily told his audience in the pressroom that it was Russia itself which had broken the "norms" by its long-standing campaign of vituperation against the U.S.* Nevertheless, there was no choice: Kennan would be called home for "consultation." A new Ambassador to Moscow will probably not be appointed till next year.

Those are the surface facts of the Kennan case. The facts behind it are more interesting, and throw a sharp light on the Administration's "containment" policy toward Russia.

Why He Went to Moscow. Kennan was appointed Ambassador to Moscow last February because Secretary of State Dean Acheson and his top advisers, notably Kennan himself, had become persuaded that there might be a chance for a new and better phase in U.S.-Russian relations. Kennan, who served in Russia before (1933-37, 1944-46) and speaks the language fluently, seemed to be the man to make the most of a chance for negotiations, should it come. Just why Acheson and Kennan thought that the Russians were about ready for a settlement is not clear: there was no concrete evidence. Senior State Department officials now admit that it was just a hopeful hunch.

The hunch was an outgrowth of the containment policy, the essence of which is that if the Russians are kept from further expansion they will eventually become easier to deal with. Kennan, principal author of the containment policy, tends to see the Politburo as a projection of historical Czarist policy, gives a lesser place in his appraisal to the dynamics of Communism's drive for world conquest. Shortly before he went to Moscow last May, Kennan said: "I will be happy if the work at Moscow gives me a chance to make a contribution to the reduction of existing tensions and the improvement of the international atmosphere. These are objectives which seem to me urgently desirable and I see no reason why they should not be within the realm of possibility if the other party is willing."

When Kennan arrived in Moscow, he was shocked by a violent "hate-America" campaign in the Russian press, and said so in his reports to Acheson. That Expert Kennan should have been surprised was surprising, for the campaign had gone on for 18 months before his arrival in Moscow, and had been reported by the U.S. press and by U.S. Government experts.

Why He Is Coming Home. Kennan, who favored keeping the channels open for negotiation with Russia, found the channels plugged: he got virtually no chance to talk privately to any Russian officials. Early last month, Acheson seemed to give up hope that his original hunch was right. In a Kansas City speech, he said that the Soviet hate campaign "contradicts [Russian] pretensions of peace and pushes off still further a beginning upon the peaceful settlement by negotiation of problems between the Soviet Union and the outside world." When they heard that passage in Acheson's speech, some Washington hands predicted that Kennan would soon ask for another assignment.

Then, in mid-September, Kennan traveled to London for a conference of U.S. Ambassadors. Stopping in Berlin, he made his statement to the press about his life in Moscow. It was even impossible, said Kennan. to speak to Russians in the street: they had orders not to have anything to do with Americans. Even personal servants were hostile. A U.S. diplomat in Russia lived like a prisoner.

The statement was true enough, but hardly news; former U.S. Ambassadors in Moscow had undergone similar treatment. Furthermore, it was not in character: Kennan rarely talks this freely to newsmen. Kennan could hardly have been surprised at the Russian reaction to his remarks. Pravda promptly blasted him as an "ecstatic liar."* Kennan may have had an idea that the Kremlin would ask for his recall; although an important Communist congress was to open in Moscow this week (see FOREIGN NEWS), he did not hurry back to his post, instead went to visit his daughter in Switzerland.

The ban on Kennan does not greatly change U.S.-Russian relations. It is just another instance where the wishful thinking at the heart of the containment policy turned out to be wrong.

*But not usually carried on by its ambassadors. A few days before the Kennan news broke, the new Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., Georgi Zarubin, presented his credentials to Harry Truman and uttered some impeccable, if spectacularly false sentiments about an improvement of U.S.-Russian relations.

*It also painted a sinister picture of Kennan on V-E day in Moscow, alleging that he told a British Communist reporter: "Ha! They think the war has ended, and it is really just beginning."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.