George F. Kennan Quotes
Containment
The memorandum articulating the new proposed policy is referred to as “the containment memo.”
George F. Kennan, 1904-2005, Historian & U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Yugoslavia, Originator of the term to describe a foreign policy, Memorandum to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, 1946
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This editorial marked what most people agreed was the end of the Cold War.
In 1992 Russia was in terrible economic shape after the fall of the Soviet Union. Keeping up with the United States military expenditures had bankrupted the Russians. The United States which had strategically increased its defense spending to break the Russian economy if they tried to keep up. However, the U. S. expenditures had forced America into a deficit spending period which produced a national deficit greater than all the previous cumulative deficits in our history. So the American economy was not in great shape either. Meanwhile, Japan, whose constitution (imposed by America after WWII) forbade having a military and funding a military. The result was the Japanese economy was growing at a much more rapid rate, and did not have the unbalanced budget of the United States and Russia. Hence, Tsongas’ observation.
This was the most famous public use of the term "iron curtain" in the cold war. Churchill had used the term privately in an even earlier cable to President Truman. However, the phrase "iron curtain" was used by T. St. Vincent Wallace Troubridge even a few months earlier. Also, it appears to have been used earlier than that by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in Das Reich {601664}. But George Washington Crile used the phrase in a political context in 1915 {598870}. And Viscountess Snowden used the phrase in her memoirs of a Past WWI trip to Russia {616546} It is not known whether Troubridge or Churchill were familiar with those works.
He was right. Before WWII Russia was not considered a very important country in the world, but having emerged from WWII, Russia was stronger than ever and counties like Germany and Italy were in ruins.
George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
