During the mid-1940s, George Kennan, the "father of containment" and the U. Ambassador in Moscow, understood and relayed the Russian Marxist way of thinking better then any American. In February of 1946, Kennan sent an extraordinarily "Long Telegram" (8,000 words) to the U.S. State Department, underscoring the centuries-old "Russian sense of insecurity" and opportunism that welded the Kremlin, expressing and legitimating Washington's new and resolutely anti-Soviet policy. He cautioned that freedom in Europe would be dangerously compromised unless the United States forged strong Western alliances.
The telegram warned the officials in Washington that, "The USSR still lives in antagonistic capitalist encirclement with which there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence." Kennan argued that the solution to the dealing with the Soviets was to contain them. Just six months after the USSR and America fought on the same side in World War II, the telegram contributed to the chilling of relations between the two countries and the onset of the Cold War. .
Kennan assumed that the Soviet regime was inherently an expansionist and had to be "contained," and stopped from expanding in places of vital importance to the West. Since the Russians were thought to be fanatics, they were considered impossible to speak with. Stopping the regime meant the abandonment of real diplomacy and the sudden outbreak of "frustration" by the Soviets, who could never be made to see "Western reason." Kennan also highlighted that "real democracy" was the characteristic mark of the cold war. .
Many people like to think of the US as a amiable nation, wishing no harm on other nations and seeking free trade where it can be found, but our history shows a more violent diplomatic policy. .
