Kennan, Nitze and the NSC 68

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Question 4: “NSC 68 was written by Paul Nitze in the spring of 1950 and implemented over the course of the year. How does the definition of the containment policy in NSC 68 compare to George Kennan’s original ideas? How does NSC 68 show continuity with the earlier policy and what about is new?

I. BACKGROUND

“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” Foreign Affairs, 1947, explains the difficulty of summarizing Soviet ideology. For more than 50 years, the Soviet concept held the Russian nations hypnotized, discontented, unhappy, and despondent confined to a very limited Czarist political order. Hence, the rebel support of a bloody Revolution, as a means to “social betterment” (Kennan, 567). Bolshevism was conceptualized as “ideological and moral, not geopolitical or strategic”. Hoover declares that… “five or six great social philosophies were struggling for ascendancy” (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 20).

Therefore, establishing anti-Bolshevism in the United States was Robert F. Kelley’s mission. Kelley an Irish Catholic trained by Russian refugees ran the Eastern European Affairs division in the State Department (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 19). Kelley’s intense dislike for the Bolsheviks demands that his aides join actively in his views. One of his service officers is George F. Kennan who joins in the close observation of Bolshevik destabilizing and expansionist activities that cause unrest in Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Spain and Greece (Leffler, The Specter of Communism, 19). Was Kennan’s containment strategy thinking set off with Kelley’s training? Was Kennan’s awareness of the ongoing Russian Communist activities the basis for his ideas? History proves that George Kennan’s ideas on containment were the basis of NSC-68 and...

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...“our technical superiority” to fend off further Soviet invasions; only negotiating with the Soviet Union when it agrees with the intentions of the United States and its allies; and, for President Harry Truman to support a massive build-up of both conventional and nuclear arms. NSC 68 wants to contain expansionism through a more aggressive military stance—be ready to stop it immediately. NSC 68 does not consider “behavior modification” just action.

Neither, Kennan’s containment strategy or NSC-68 makes for a poor quality policy. Both met the needs of the United States during that time. However, Kennan’s recommendations required time and not immediate action. NSC-68 requested immediate action and not wasting any time. Improving on Kennan’s recommendations by Nitze’s expertise, in my opinion, this made the Cold War Containment Policy valid for the era it was written.

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