Hawk and Dove

An exclusive excerpt from Nick Thompson's new book on two unlikely bedfellows -- Paul Nitze and George Kennan -- and their Cold War.

BY NICHOLAS THOMPSON | SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

It is hard to serve 10 presidents in a row. There aren't that many people, after all, who moved from Clinton to Bush or from Bush to Obama. The world moves more quickly now, ideas turn over faster, and partisanship makes it hard to switch from Republican to Democrat administrations, or vice versa. Fame and influence are now more likely to blow away in 15 minutes -- or, in an age of Twitter, maybe 140 characters.

But a couple of generations ago, two men emerged in the foreign-policy establishment who exercised influence over 50 years of debate: Paul Nitze and George Kennan. Nitze, with his bureaucratic skills and nimbleness, worked under every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush. Kennan conceived of the policy of containment that guided America after WW II -- and then spent the next five decades as a powerful, disillusioned voice combating what containment had become.   

Both men died five years ago. But their legacy endures. Many young men who served with and under Nitze remain influential today. (In 1969, for example, his crop of interns included Edward Luttwak, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz.) Kennan's realist attitudes, and the ideas behind containment, connect to many of the policies of the Obama administration.

But really to understand the genesis and subtleties of their enduring impact, one must first understand the towering personalities behind these two men -- and their unique friendship and rivalry.

 

The Policy Planning Staff (PPS) at the State Department was the ideal environment for George Kennan, perhaps the deepest -- and gloomiest -- thinker ever to serve the United States government. The offices were sparse: The conference room had one round table, scattered with ashtrays, and comfortable chairs. There were no inboxes or outboxes. On the walls hung two maps: one of the United States and one of the world. It was a place for Kennan to contemplate and to hold forth.

Kennan took over PPS in 1947 and for much of his first two years in the office he got his way. His country pursued a policy of containing the Soviet Union through political pressure, just as he famously advocated in his "X Article," "The Sources of Soviet Conduct." The Marshall Plan, quietly establishing a department of covert action, limited support for the corrupt Chinese Nationalists, extensive peaceful support to rebuild Japan -- all these were the fruit of Kennan's ideas for how to counter Soviet influence and ambition.

Eric Schwab/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS:
 

Nicholas Thompson is a senior editor at Wired and the author of The Hawk and The Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan and the History of the Cold War.

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ANTEUP

12:10 PM ET

September 17, 2009

I was born in a most joyous

I was born in a most joyous time. Indeed, as I watched from my crib, the Evil Empire tumbled. And I can say, from experience, that coming into this world at the end of history is really quite something.

Glibness aside, I never lived under the threat of the bomb. I do not know that fear and barring a disastrous jack-knife in the international order, I never will.

Why then should I have found the above excerpt so engaging? Partially it is that there are few windows into the whirring machinery that is our government. That the intersection of interests and relationships functions as one is demonstrated in Kenneman and Nitze in a way that is unusually compelling.

The other is wondering who within today's debates occupy these archetypes?

 

ANTEUP

12:11 PM ET

September 17, 2009

Needless to say, I'll be

Needless to say, I'll be buying this book.

 

MOTAMANX

1:12 PM ET

September 17, 2009

What WOULD LBJ tell Obama?

The headline doesn't match the article. I hate when that happens.

 

GLOBALODYSSEY

3:05 PM ET

September 17, 2009

LBJ & Obama

The headline is "What would LBJ's ADVISORS say to Obama" LBJ's advisors were Nitze and Kennan. Kennan being the crux of the Policy of Containment that led us through the struggle of the Cold War and the fight with Cuba and the ensuing Embargo. It's not "What would LBJ (himself) say to Obama" it's what would his ADVISORS (who are discussed at length in the article) say to Obama.

Thus, the headline accurately matches the article and brings it into current day. Creating a link where there possibly wouldn't have been one before.

 

JAY GETTY

12:00 PM ET

September 19, 2009

If you know what people tell each other, Whats OBL telling AlQae

Virtually all people with a high IQ that simply seek clarity on the current market conditions and the implications; have a constantly evolving world view!

 

MARXMARVELOUS

3:55 PM ET

September 19, 2009

advice

"it's what would his ADVISORS (who are discussed at length in the article) say to Obama."

If they could view the world today or had the vision that was given to Nixon and Kissinger they would know that the 70 years of the communist experiment of creation were over and the next phase was for capital to move to the empires that have controlled Labor--that APPEAR to view labor compassionatly.
That phase would expose the error of vaporizing either the producers or consumers for a time. Though since the vaporizing powers have been carefully preserved in this containment of Communism and protector of Capitol we have some time to consider the patiece ane efficacy of thinkers who sometimes think in formative periods of 70 years and believe in an end of time.

 

MARXMARVELOUS

4:03 PM ET

September 19, 2009

correction

in the last sentence plelase change patiece to patience and period of formation to period of indetermination

 

AVRAM

12:24 PM ET

September 21, 2009

Wolfowitz, Perl

The good wisdom of Nitze also gave us the chief archetects of Iraq War as his students in the same year!!!! What was he smoking in that year!!!! Nitze was always wrong in his vision and outlook, but capable as a bearaucrat. He was also adept at picking not so brilliant people to work for him.

 

ADMMIRALKUZNETSOV@YAHOO.COM

7:07 AM ET

October 10, 2009

Nitze's fundamental mistake

"To Nitze capabilities did matter, perhaps even more than intentions."

It is precisely this that turned US military thinking into a senseless numbers game. War cannot be divorced from political life, the realm of intentions; and whenever this occurs in our thinking about war, the many links that connect the two elements are destroyed and we are left with something pointless and devoid of sense.

Nitze did us great harm. Half a century of his bureaucratic success destroyed our ability to really think about our interaction with the world.