George F. Kennan Quotes
We cannot operate with one foreign policy objective in one area, and with a conflicting one next door.
George F. Kennan, 1904-2005, Historian & U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Yugoslavia, U.S. Foreign Policy: Review of Current Trends, February 24, 1948
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The “entangling alliances” phrase was first used by Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address. He had been Secretary of State in George Washington’s cabinet. The phrase is often misattributed to Washington. The sentiment was definitely his also however.
This resolution was bad enough for its overt racism. Ironically, the major victims of Japanese aggression have been Asians—China, Korea, Manchuria, and others. “White” empires had economic interests in throughout Asia and this was what Britten and many others were concerned with protecting. This quotation is important for another reason. At the very moment Britton introduced the resolution, Charles Evans Hughes our Secretary of State was welcoming a new, very high level ambassador to Washington. The administration had decided on a negotiating initiative and Britton and other Congressmen cut the legs out from under the administrations diplomatic efforts. It was particularly bad because one of the Japanese complaints about America and other white nations was their racism and discrimination against Asians. Congress undermining Administration diplomatic efforts has an all too frequent history in America.
This proverb operates with the force of law and in a sense is the doctrine of contributory negligence. I have a right to compensation for damage you have done me unless I have done something which impinges on your rights. If your camel destroys my crops, my rights have been violated, but if had used your camel without your permission, and he got out of control. I right is cancelled out. In a larger sense, this principle is used globally in international disputes. The Israeli right to live in peace has been, in the view of some Arabs, “cancelled out” by the fact that the Israelis have taken others land.
The Spanish had been beaten and bloodied by England, but no one else until Napoleon would come along later. So it was easy for Spain to bully and dominate the non-English countries.
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".
