Alumnus, IAS professor emeritus dies after trailblazing career as diplomat

Almost a decade and a half after the Soviet Union collapsed, George F. Kennan '25, the celebrated diplomat and historian whose ideas became the foundation of American cold war policy, died Thursday in his Princeton home. He was 101.

In a 1946 wire to the State Department, called the "Long Telegram," and a 1947 article called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" and published in Foreign Affairs under the byline "X," Kennan argued for a containment policy to stop the worldwide spread of communism.

He asserted that the United States should serve as a democratic example to the world. If it successfully prevented the growth of communism through political and diplomatic measures short of direct war with the Soviet Union, he argued, the U.S.S.R. would collapse. Containment underpinned U.S. foreign policy for the next four decades.

An influential figure behind the creation of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, Kennan was also a prolific writer who won two Pulitzer Prizes and other awards. He lived in Princeton for most of his post-government life, and took up a post at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS).

Yale University professor John Lewis Gaddis, who is writing an authorized biography of Kennan, said in an interview that he will be remembered for "having set the course for American foreign policy in the second half of the 20th century with the idea of containment."

In the Foreign Affairs article, Kennan wrote: "The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a longterm, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies," a policy "designed to confront Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interest of a peaceful and stable world."

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Wilson School professor Jack Matlock, who held the George F. Kennan chair at IAS, said Kennan accurately forecasted the terms on which the Cold War ended.

"He had predicted that if we could contain the Soviet Union, eventually it would collapse," Matlock said. "He argued against military force that the effects of system would bring it down."

A Midwesterner, Kennan graduated from the University in 1925 and joined the Foreign Service. He was first assigned to Moscow in 1933 and spent two more years there in the 1930s before returning from 1944 to 1946, when he wrote the "Long Telegram" as minister-counselor under two ambassadors to the Soviet Union.

In May 1952, he was dispatched to Moscow as ambassador but was declared "persona non grata" by the Soviet government after he compared his isolation as a diplomat in Moscow to his experiences as a diplomat to Germany at the beginning of World War II.

Kennan was the first policy analyst who wrote in support of using nuclear weapons to deter aggressive action — but not in war. He publicly denounced the government's work to develop a hydrogen bomb.

Secretary of State Dean Acheson said Kennan "ought to resign from the Foreign Service and go out and preach [his] Quaker gospel, but don't do it within the department."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Though Kennan alienated Acheson and his successor, Class of 1908 alumnus John Foster Dulles, his ideas about containment and deterrence gained widespread acceptance among international relations thinkers.

Joseph Nye '58, former dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said he and other international relations theorists have used Kennan's work as the foundation for their ideas.

"Many of the ideas I eventually developed about 'soft power' had antecedents in Kennan's thoughts," Nye said in reference to his theories about the use of economic and diplomatic power — as opposed to military force — in world politics.

Kennan's career as a history scholar developed after he left the State Department in 1950 and arrived in Princeton as a visiting scholar at IAS. He became a member of the Institute in 1953 and joined its faculty in 1956.

During his career, Kennan wrote 19 books. He won the Pulitzer Prize for history and the National Book Award for "Russia Leaves the War" (1956).

He won a second Pulitzer Prize in 1967 for "Memoirs, 1925-1950" and published the second volume of his memoirs, up to 1963, in 1972.

Kennan wrote powerfully — a skill that gave him influence in Washington long after settling at IAS.

"I would argue that Kennan was one of the half-dozen most accomplished prose stylists of any Americans I know," Wilson School professor emeritus Richard Ullmanm said. "His skill with language was absolutely extraordinary."

After leaving government, he never returned, and stuck with the pen.

"After he left the government, he never held any positions whatsoever," said Johns Hopkins University professor Don Oberdorfer '51, who reported on the end of the Soviet era for the Washington Post. "And yet he was one of the major figures in guiding American foreign policy and foreign relations during this century. It showed you that a person outside of government can make himself heard."