In February 1946 the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, who had lived in Russia since 1933, wrote a telegram advising the US President of what his policy to the Soviet Union should be. His advice formed the basis of the US's policy of containment, and was remarkably prophetic. However, much of what he wrote also seems to be very pertinent to today's China. He wrote that:
• Russia was hostile, but the reasons for hostility arose out of the Russian government’s long-term feeling of insecurity, which went back for hundreds of years and included a fear of its own people and what might happen if they found out about the outside world.
• Communist ideology did not create this insecurity, but it fitted in with it very well as Marxism teaches that conflicts in society cannot be solved peacefully. This helped the Russian governments to justify the kind of relentless hostility to the outside worlds which they had always felt anyway.
• The effect of this insecurity was that no Russian government would try to make a peaceful settlement with the USA and, therefore, that attempts such as those made under Roosevelt and afterwards to bring the USSR in to a long-term partnership were futile.
• The way to defeat the Soviets was by “a policy of firm containmentâ€, because although the USSR would try to fill any space they could they wouldn’t push if they found immovable resistance. In other words, the bad news was that the USSR would never stop trying to take over the world; the good news was that they weren’t in any hurry, and could be stopped at any one point of pressure.
• However, contrary to what the Soviet leaders believed, their rule would collapse one day with an internal struggle for control, which would transform the USSR “overnight from one of the strongest to one of the weakest and most pitiable of national societiesâ€. Therefore the USA only had to contain the USSR when and where it was aggressive, and wait for the USSR to collapse.
Only difference between this and the Wolfowitz Doctrine seems to be that the latter is much more aggressive and seemingly designed to provoke a winnable war to permanently cripple potential hegemonic contenders...
Konran ago
...but this is an obvious example of cognitive dissonance.
The author, Kennan, is saying that to stop these nations from taking over the world, the US must bascially be first to take over the world.
Or to put it another way; because Russia and China are 'hostile', the US must also be hostile in its foreign policy.
Another point is it's also very easy to transpose the US into the same position as USSR in this essay - taking the penultimate paragraph and replacing the USSR with USA we see;
Not that much out of place I reckon.
pitenius ago
Thanks for the info, which was new to me.
Is China hostile? I don't think so. It's greedy, thuggish, and most of all -- DUMB. They don't like other people enough to dominate them. As Kennan wrote, though, they are insecure both politically and culturally. People are not as homogenized as they believe and their ties to the professed culture are weak.
I think Communism was born from a position of insecurity, manipulation and constant dissatisfaction. This fit with Russia but ideology is a hard-sell in China. Particularly foreign ideology. What persists today is not very Communist.
China will accept any settlement that means they have no responsibility to others and which makes them richer. They're looters, at this point. They don't have an image of authority to protect.
The way to defeat China? Stop buying their crap or race to the bottom in currency devaluation. Their internal commitments and 4-2-1 families are eating their base. China cyclically tears itself apart and reforms. This is part of why ties to past cultures are so weak. When I've asked if China may do this again, Chinese people have told me "No, we decided not to do that in the 90s." So much for the long view of history. Whereas America fails on long-term commitments first and short-term commitments keep getting "kicked down the road," trouble will arise when China fails at mid-range commitments (pensions, etc.). They're already notorious for failing in the short term (wages, etc.) Just wait: they'll collapse. To hasten it, I'd try to enlist everyone else's aid: I can't think of an Asian country that has any respect for China. Not even Vietnam or the Koreas.