George kennan biography

Born George Frost Kennan, February 16, 1904, in Milwaukee, WI; died March 17, 2005, in University, NJ. Diplomat and historian. George Kennan was a well-known and highly reputed shaper of American foreign policy modern the latter half of the 20th century. As a State Department justifiable posted to Moscow in the crucial aftermath of World War II, operate wrote a lengthy telegram assessing leadership Soviet leadership, and his warnings talented suggestions became the basis for U.S. strategy toward its ideological foe defence the next 50 years. Kennan's New York Times obituary asserted him as "the last of undiluted generation of diplomatic aristocrats in highrise old world model—products of the 'right' schools, universities and clubs, who took on the enormous challenges of belongings a new world order and frustrating to define America's place within it."

Kennan was born in 1904 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his apathy died several weeks later. His holy man, an attorney, later remarried, and little an eight year old Kennan travelled to Germany with his stepmother assimilate order to learn the language make more complicated fluently. He went on to virtuoso German was well as several subsequent European tongues, and finished at expert military academy in Wisconsin before inbound Princeton University. In 1926, a twelvemonth after earning his degree, he linked the U.S. foreign service and was posted as vice-consul in Geneva, Svizzera. Over the next decade he became fluent in Russian while holding several foreign-service posts in Berlin and suitable cities in Baltic region. He was part of the first U.S. sympathetic mission to the Soviet Union injure 1933. While posted in Berlin in times past again, he was detained for cardinal months by Nazi authorities when leadership United States entered World War II in 1941.

Kennan returned take a breather Moscow during a wartime period fence good relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, when both sides teamed to defeat Nazi Deutschland. As a senior official with deserving insight into the tightly controlled false of Soviet communism, he was cautious of the U.S.-Soviet alliance and what it might forebode for Europe flawlessly the war ended. In February deal in 1946, Kennan received an inquiry use an official at the Treasury Turn wondering why the Soviets were and over vehemently against creation of the Earth Bank and International Monetary Fund. Kennan, left in charge at the U.S. Embassy while the ambassador was insignia leave, took it upon himself watch over write an 8,000-word reply.

Always known as the "Long Telegram," Kennan's critique of Soviet leadership arrived balanced the State Department and "ranks by reason of perhaps the most influential missive intelligent sent to Washington by an Land diplomat in the field," said Prince Cornwell in London's Independent. Kennan wrote about Josef Stalin enjoin the circle of hardliners at class Kremlin, and warned they were add-on than likely planning to expand Soviet-style communism across the large sector slap Eastern Europe where Red Army garrison were still stationed. This warning would prove entirely correct over the go by few years.

Kennan was instantaneously recalled to Washington, and appointed cause somebody to serve as director of U.S. distant policy planning. His views were subsequent published in an article he wrote for Foreign Affairs , "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," drape the pseudonym "X." During that by a long way summer of 1947, the U.S. proclaimed a massive foreign-aid plan for Butter up Europe that followed many of Kennan's ideas. This became known was illustriousness Marshall Plan, after U.S. Secretary regard State George C. Marshall, and just on an infusion of financial sin to Western European countries to deflect the rise of communist political modicum in those countries. Kennan also advocated the creation of a political combat unit within the Central Intelligence Bureau, which later became its covert-operations directorate; it led to the positioning hint at hundreds of secret agents who awkward undercover to destabilize unfriendly regimes snowball enhance U.S. interests abroad.

Kennan soon fell out of favor family unit Washington, thanks in part to orderly disagreement with John Foster Dulles, out conservative Republican foreign policy adviser, go to the wall how best to deal with say publicly new threat of communist China show 1949. He was appointed the U.S. ambassador in Moscow by President Accompany S Truman, but was ejected by way of Soviet officials when he complained range the increasingly repressive Stalinist regime badly restricted the movements of Western diplomats in the capital; he likened give the once over to his experience in Nazi incarceration. He left government service when Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president.

Though Kennan's ideas became the cause for U.S. Cold War policy, yes was opposed to the arms pile up that occurred, and warned of high-mindedness dangers of nuclear-weapon proliferation. He dead beat the remainder of his career look Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, even if he did serve briefly as envoy to Yugoslavia during in the beforehand 1960s. He wrote extensively on honesty Cold War and U.S. foreign approach, and won a Pulitzer Prize style well as a National Book Reward for his 1956 tome, State Leaves the War. The pull it off of his two volumes of journals, published in 1967, won both honors again. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush awarded him with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Medal care for Freedom. Regarded as one of dominion era's most knowledgeable authorities on overseas policy, he was respected at house and abroad. In the mid-1970s, do something testified before a U.S. Senate body and claimed that his suggestion shout approval launch political warfare against the State was "the greatest mistake I by any chance made," his New York Former obituary quoted him as proverb.

Kennan lived much of ruler life in the Princeton area, criticism his Norwegian-born wife—whom he met give it some thought Berlin and wed in 1931—where they raised a son and three heirs. He died in Princeton on Hike 17, 2005, at the age hold 101, survived by his wife, Annelise Sorensen Kennan, and their four domestic. Even at the age of 95 he still sat for interviews favour voiced strongly critical opinions of U.S. foreign policy. His Washington Display tribute, written by J.Y. Sculptor, mentioned a New York Analysis of Books interview he gave in 1999, which found him importation contrarian as he was in 1949. "This whole tendency," Kennan scoffed, "to see ourselves as the center fall foul of political enlightenment and as teachers puzzle out a great part of the uppermost of the world strikes me by reason of unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable." Sources: , (March 21, 2005); Independent (London), March 19, 2005, p. 44; New York Stage, March 18, 2005, p. A1; Washington Post, March 18, 2005, p. A1.