The Containment of George Kennan (2022) | Hacker News Reader

The Containment of George Kennan (2022)

claremontreviewofbooks.com

22 pointshhs41 comments

Fascinating - especially this quote about AdT: "Especially in matters Kennan understood well, he thought the public should have no say. His diaries show that he was a keen reader of Alexis de Tocqueville, and while he never mentions this specific point, his insistence that foreign policy be conducted by the well born and well educated, without interference from the masses, echoes the French nobleman’s argument that aristocracies are better than democracies at diplomacy. ... Yet at least Kennan was honest about his preference for expert rule; our present elites, by contrast, insist that their expert rule actually is democracy."

If you view the early 20th century as peak-institutionalism, it's clear the pendulum has swung to populism... but how much further can it continue to swing? What was the most populist period of our history? William Jennings Bryan comes to mind but I don't have a sense for that era of populism compares to now

> Especially in matters Kennan understood well, he thought the public should have no say. His diaries show that he was a keen reader of Alexis de Tocqueville, and while he never mentions this specific point, his insistence that foreign policy be conducted by the well born and well educated, without interference from the masses, echoes the French nobleman’s argument that aristocracies are better than democracies at diplomacy.

Well, in the WWI-WWII period, most of the national leaders in Europe knew each other. In the WWI period, when the old monarchies still had some life in them, many of those on opposite sides were related. That's over by the end of WWII.

Here's the "Long Telegram".[1]

"War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other." - Valéry.

[1] https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/george-kenn...

> If you view the early 20th century as peak-institutionalism, it's clear the pendulum has swung to populism... but how much further can it continue to swing?

We aren’t anywhere near populism in foreign policy. The public has essentially no input into it. Trump tried to go in a direction the bureaucracy disapproved of, and they mostly just ignored him. Biden diverged from the consensus on Afghanistan and got crucified for it. But can anyone explain to the public why the US continues to support Saudi Arabia? Good luck to that.

The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank based in Upland, California. The institute was founded in 1979 by four students of Harry V. Jaffa. It produces the Claremont Review of Books, The American Mind, and other publications.

The institute was an early defender of Donald Trump. After Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election and Trump refused to concede, Claremont Institute senior fellow John Eastman aided Trump in his failed attempts to overturn the election results. The institute publications in recent years have frequently published alt-right and far-right opinion pieces.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute>

Yes, it’s good to know about the background and context of institutes.

Not so subtext: 'No need to read any more then'.

What's clear is that the site comes at events and history with a clear, extreme, and ideological framing.

Whether one chooses not to read, or to read with this in mind, is up to the individual.

An NY Times article about Claremont quoted one of Jaffa's sons as saying that the institute wanted to put a robe on Ayn Rand and call her Aristotle or a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call him Lincoln.

Would you have a link to that?

There's a long-form profile on Claremont posted about a year ago on 3 August 2022, "How the Claremont Institute Became a Nerve Center of the American Right"

<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/magazine/claremont-instit...>

It mentions Aristotle, and quotes Jaffe's son, Philip, but there's no mention of Jefferson Davis or Ayn Rand.

I don't find anything including those elements in a broader search (beyond nytimes.com) either.

There's a tweet which combines several of the terms though: <https://nitter.net/_strate/status/1551418137576456192#m>

Wrong newspaper: https://twitter.com/mroth78/status/1556653036566618113

Thanks!

Direct link: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-j...>

And the context around that is helpful. Apparent Jaffa was #notafan of Claremont ultimately:

Jaffa would have been disappointed but unsurprised by the institute’s fealty to Trump, according to one of his sons, Philip Jaffa, who said his late father had grown disturbed by the institute’s teachings.

Philip Jaffa said his father had harsh words for the institute, which he “repeated endlessly those last few years.”

“They did not wait to bury the teaching with the teacher,” Jaffa recalled his father saying. “What they are trying to do is put a top hat on Jefferson Davis and call it Abraham Lincoln and the dust cover of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ on ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and call it Aristotle.”

I can look tonight.

Sad to say, but yes, about half way in the piece degenerates to standard right-wing rant:

> The present ruling class, by contrast, does not appear to wish to improve the people but apparently seeks to make them worse. ...

> Today, languages are not only not required to enter the Foreign Service; once in, the teaching of them is perfunctory at best, and officers are moved around so much that it’s all but impossible for them to gain real expertise in any particular country or its traditions.

I wonder how fair a judgment this is. Fiona Hill wrote a short biography of Putin; to me, it seemed quite a good explication of the paranoid worldview held by himself and his fellow siloviki.

This writing is really awful, tumbling all over the place. The example that made me start to skim heavily:

> Kennan’s father was something of a ne’er-do-well—not a wastrel, exactly, but unambitious and, despite his expertise in what should have been the lucrative practice of tax law, inept at navigating the real world. As a result, the Kennan family was always pinched for money, though far from destitute: they lived in a big house (a gift from Kennan’s maternal grandparents) with servants and vacationed at an elegant lakeside summer retreat.

The "orientalist" section is childish. It's common for people to psychoanalyze "the Russian mindset" as if it is immutable biology even to this day. It's a useful concept to criticize, and some use the phrase "orientalism" for that concept.

The entire piece is so loaded with sections where the author is unable to contain their resentment, which can be quite legitimate, but likewise, they are unable to articulate or justify it -- making the whole endeavor useless. This is highly ironic, given it is a critique of a biography where the main point of contention is that the biographer/academy is guilty of this same offense.

> This writing is really awful, tumbling all over the place.

I read that and thought it was a good summary of his childhood. What is it you find "awful" about it? Here's an exercise for you: rewrite it so it's not awful.

What non-null portrait is being drawn here: sub-wastrel ne'er-do-well with a successful private practice who can't navigate the real world and who has servants and an elegant summer house?

So you don't want to rewrite it?

And I don't know what you mean by "non-null portrait."

Let's look that awful sentence:

Kennan’s father was something of a ne’er-do-well—not a wastrel, exactly, but unambitious and, despite his expertise in what should have been the lucrative practice of tax law, inept at navigating the real world.

It does not say "successful," first of all. It says he was expert in tax law but somehow didn't manage to turn that into serious money. "Not a wastrel, exactly" suggests that he had some wastrel-like qualities. "Unambitious" and "inept at navigating" -- also character descriptions like you'd find in fiction.

As for the servants: not that unusual in that age. Their house was "a gift from Kennan’s maternal grandparents." And it doesn't say they owned an elegant summer house; it says they "vacationed at an elegant lakeside summer retreat."

For me it IS a character portrait, sorry. I guess you don't like the author's tone, which is legitimate, but you have not indicted the writing at all.

Half of the statements contradict the other half. It's null in the sense that he's drawing an Euler diagram where the circles don't intersect. The author might have something he meant to say, but he didn't say it -- instead he seems to have just used words he likes. The only thing standing is "unambitious".

That's why I don't attempt to rewrite it. There's hardly a coherent thought for me to express differently.

Hmm. I thought it was engagingly written and enjoyed it on that level. It also contains tons of fascinating details about Kennan that I had no idea about. It's interesting simply for being neither of the two things that articles about Kennan always are: hagiographical or polemical. (It's polemical about other things, in a few passages that are best ignored—but not about Kennan.)

I'd say it's plenty polemical, throughout. In and of itself, I don't have a problem with that, regardless of whether I disagree with the polemic. But the mass of self-contradictions (what non-null portrait is being drawn here: sub-wastrel ne'er-do-well with a successful private practice who can't navigate the real world and who has servants and an elegant summer house?), and the jaded and listless manner in which those polemics are doled out, each one basically amounting to just "but what do you expect these days, everything is X, Y, Z", makes it a real trudge to get through.

Kennan is an interesting subject. I think that is safe to say, but I also think that is pretty much the limit of what I can say in unqualified agreement with the essay. In a much more qualified way, I share his criticism of the neoconservatives who still run US foreign policy, in both major parties.

I would also recommend Stephen Kinzer's book, The Brothers, about Allen and John Foster Dulles, two figures who played far more active and significant roles, the consequences of which mark the world to this day.

Self-contradictions -- that's called "human nature." And you seem to have read something other than what it says (see above comment).

It was a complicated world, but one thing hasn't changed: the qualities that get to the top of the heap are not the ones that make you intellectually interesting. He was someone that the people in power liked to listen to, now and then, but he was too mercurial to occupy their positions.

Somewhat like his father, in that sentence you hate so much.

The contradictions I'm talking about are in the writing, not in the subject. Contradictions like "he was idle and poor but he earned a lot at his successful business". The fact that he also spent a lot, so he was always tight on money, does not justify the "idle and poor" (ne'er-do-well and almost wastrel) parts. We all contain contradictions, but not "he was short but tall" ones like that.

The bits you've quoted aren't contradictory, and the contradictory bits aren't quotes, even though you put quotation marks around them.

The passage about Kennan's father is perfectly coherent. He didn't live up to the class status he married into. The career he chose could have been lucrative, but wasn't, not because of a lack of expertise but because he was inept at other things. There's nothing contradictory there and it's normal stuff for a biographical piece.

I can't understand where your criticism of this article is coming from. I could understand someone disliking it because they disagree with the author either ideologically or about Kennan, but since you say it's not that, I'm at a loss.

Personally I learned more about Kennan from it than everything else I've read about him put together. That's not saying much, as I'd only read maybe 3 or 4 things, but it's interesting, and he was a fascinating figure. The obvious thing to criticize would be the tedious bits when the author abandons his topic and becomes a harumphing curmudgeon, but at least he gets back on topic after that.

"Harumphing curmudgeon" is putting it mildly. The following example paragraph isn't even a coherent expression of a far right viewpoint by Claremont's usual standards; it's just spittle-flecked nonsense.

>The present ruling class, by contrast, does not appear to wish to improve the people but apparently seeks to make them worse. How else to explain policies that encourage poverty, joblessness, obesity, and illegitimacy? Or teaching children to hate their ancestors, their country, and themselves—and then encouraging them to self-mutilate while punishing parents who try to stop them? The government and its corporate allies have morphed into a kind of nationwide crime syndicate pushing drugs, gambling, sexual degeneracy, and every imaginable form of vice. The next step on the road to national dissolution, it is now clear, will be expropriation, a.k.a., racial “reparations.” One wonders what comes after all that money is spent on an attempt to square “the debt that can never be repaid”?

Although there is some interesting information in the article, I do have to wonder whether I should believe a word of the analysis beyond the barest biographical facts. Knowing little about Kennan, I would rather turn to sources that are less prone to wild exaggerations and fabrications. (Anton has past form here, for anyone who cares to check.)

Of course I was putting it mildly, because it's exactly the least interesting part of the article and the whole idea of discussion here is to optimize for what's interesting.

I wasn't criticizing you for putting it mildly – especially given your role in the site. However, I think it's also legitimate to point out that sloppy passages like the one I quoted undermine the author's overall credibility. Most people are (like me) reading this casually and won't have the time or resources to independently verify the more interesting claims. If someone makes up patent nonsense about the present day, how far can I trust them to accurately report far more obscure historical facts?

I wish you had written the essay, as that aspect about class status is coherent, but not found in the section at hand. All I get from the author is disdain, with a hint that it's centered on the subject's lack of ambition.

Of course I have other critiques, but to borrow a strange phrase from the movie JFK, is it worth picking gnat shit out of pepper?

The editor fell asleep at the wheel by the looks of it.

Hm, the book, "Kennan: A life between worlds", though, is an interesting read.

I would probably agree. Aside from my own interest in the topic and in Kennan, Michael Anton has made such a poor showing for himself and his critique, that even in my ignorance, Costigliola seems positively glowing in comparison.

This is dedication:

>having authored a short book and over 40,000 posts on internet bulletin board Styleforum.net

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Anton

>George Kennan —patron saint of the liberal internationalists— was an isolationist.

It's a sad state of affairs that only conservative snobs oppose forever wars.

We could discuss the article's style - I'll admit to generously skate-reading that until it finally got to the actual political matter. But it is odd that no one is addressing his rather damning characterization of the current ruling class and their feelings for Americans. So that is the "sad state of affairs" that has engendered the disappointing irony that you note.

For me it's sadder that preventing genocide has to be perceived as a forever war. That "liberal internationalist forever war" is the reason you there hasn't been another Srebrenica. At minimal US cost.

Forcing people into military service and sacrificing them in a hopeless offensive cannot be the answer either, even if it is minimal cost for some people.

>[Kennan] envisions all of humanity destined to “melt into a vast polyglot mass,” with only the Chinese, Jews, and blacks remaining apart. “Could this mean that these three minorities are destined to subjugate and dominate all as an uneasy but unavoidable triumvirate the rest of society — the Chinese by their combination of intelligence, ruthlessness, and ant-like industriousness; the Jews by their sheer determination to survive as a culture; the Negroes by their ineradicable bitterness and hatred of the whites?”

https://newrepublic.com/article/117174/george-f-kennans-diar...

This is the title of that piece: "U.S. Cold War Policy Was Designed by a Bigot"

That's a much better article than you make it seem with that quote, and that its headline writer made it seem with that title. I read it and quite enjoyed it. Thanks!

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