Now, much of that change may be, and doubtless is, subjective today we exaggerate our dangers and have a tendency to rate our own abilities less than they actually are. But the fact remains that much of this change is also objectively real; in 1900 the political and military realities were truly such that we had relatively little to fear in the immediate sense, whereas today we have a situation before us which, I am frank to admit, seems to me dangerous and problematical in the extreme.".
I believe Kennan accurately points out the shortcomings in American attitudes towards Asia and how that carried over to World War I, World War II and the Cold War. He points out that the American feeling at the time was that the problems that eventually lead to the World Wars were silly "jealousies" and at times "were not worthy of our attention." The United States underestimated the drive and power of Russia, Japan and other nations who were trying to expand their influence. Kennan continues to accurately dissect things when he says that Americans were and remain to be very narcissistic and felt they were above everyone else and how that helped fuel the situation with the Soviets. Instead of embracing other nations" differences and working together, Americans look down on other nations which, in the case of Stalin, create heads of nations to become suspicious of us. He continues to accurately point out that our lack of sensitivity puts us in a difficult situation in diplomatic matters and does nothing but aggravate heads of state and they become more stubborn and less incline to cooperate instead of the other way around. Kennan is not afraid to go against the grade and question our approach to other nations. He says that we must learn that every nation has their own agenda and we must learn to work with them because we should not be in the business of picking governments.
