American diplomat Kennan predicted a new Cold war because of US policyThe new biography of the "father of deterrence policy" George Kennan raises questions about the chances of avoiding both the first Cold War and the one that the United States and Europe are now starting with Russia and China, writes FP.
Kennan predicted that the policy of NATO expansion will restore the atmosphere of confrontation between the West and the East.
Michael HirshEven at an advanced age, George Kennan did not stop arguing that the Cold War was not inevitable — it could at least be mitigated.
Ten years after the end of this 44-year conflict, the father of the American deterrence strategy wrote in a letter to his biographer John Lewis Gaddis that during Stalin's lifetime, a way out of the situation could have been found faster.
As demonstrated by Stalin's note of March 10, 1952 — Moscow's proposal to negotiate the appearance of post—war Europe - the United States ignored the possibility of achieving peace through real negotiations, and not a public demonstration of intentions, Kennan wrote in 1999.
These words still resonate today. Because a public demonstration of intentions is exactly what we are seeing when the United States unexpectedly slides into a new cold war with China and Russia. Nevertheless, there is no debate or discussion about this policy in Washington. When it comes to a challenge from China, which has replaced the USSR as the main geopolitical threat to the United States, Republicans and Democrats see a political advantage in imposing the toughest possible position on Beijing. As a result, there is a long-term struggle for global power and influence, which can easily drag on for a longer period than the first Cold War.
At the same time, after the summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November 2022, President Joe Biden insisted that “there should not be a new cold war.” The upcoming visit of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Beijing in a few weeks will be an attempt to restore diplomatic relations, which were almost completely suspended after last year's visit to Taiwan by former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Kennan's correspondence with Gaddis appears in a new biography by Frank Costigliola titled "Kennan: A Life Between Worlds." In Gaddis' authoritative work, "George F. Kennan: American Life" (2011) she is missing. The new book was written on the basis of access to Kennan's personal papers and other sources, showing how passionately he wanted to ease the tensions of the Cold War when it threatened to turn into a hot one, as well as his further opposition to the rapid expansion of NATO's borders to the east. Shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, Kennan predicted that this policy would only strengthen nationalist and anti-Western sentiments in Russia and “restore the atmosphere of the Cold War.”
Gaddis' account of Kennan's life aroused mild sympathy from Costigliola, a historian at the University of Connecticut, because of the lack of attention to efforts to mitigate the effects of the Cold War. The true story of Kennan's career “demands that we rethink the Cold War as an era of opportunities for dialogue and diplomacy, and not as an inevitable series of confrontations and crises that we used to see in it.”
Today, a fresh look at Kennan's views is needed more than ever. The great diplomat and one of the most influential strategists in the history of the United States did not attribute the ability to secure a way out of the Cold War to negotiations, but only said that an attempt is not torture. Washington did not try very hard then, and it seems that it is not trying very hard now, despite the opportunities that have opened up to it. Kennan's lesson in understanding the cold war of the 20th century and defusing the explosive tensions of the 21st is that seemingly intractable conflicts can be resolved no matter what, writes Costigliola.
If Putin has removed the possibility of rapprochement by conducting a special operation in Ukraine, then China seems to be still open to diplomatic negotiations. Xi Jinping and the recently inaugurated Foreign Minister Qin Gang are probably hinting at the possibility of moving away from the atmosphere of fierce confrontation that characterized the first two years of the Biden administration. In the annual New Year's message, Xi Jinping seems to have somewhat softened his hitherto aggressive tone towards Taiwan. Qin, in an article in The Washington Post, said that Sino-American relations should not resemble a tug of war, where one side surpasses the other or thrives at its expense. He added that he was leaving the post with confidence that the door to Sino-American relations would remain open. In recent weeks, Beijing has also shifted the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, known for his anti-American rhetoric, to a less prominent position.
Undoubtedly, there are much more differences than similarities between the Cold War conflict that pitted the USSR and the United States against each other and the current tension between Beijing and Washington. And yet they can give the parties a chance not to slide into a long-term Sino-American conflict. Unlike the era when the Soviet Union and the United States existed in completely different spheres of influence, the current world economy is perfectly integrated, and for the most part the United States and China owe their prosperity to trade and investment in it. Xi Jinping rediscovered this last year when China's economy slowed sharply and the population shrank. In addition, new challenges requiring sustained international cooperation, in particular the fight against global warming and future pandemics, have become more urgent. There is a high probability that these threats are much more serious than the strategic threat that China and the United States pose to each other.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which surrounded itself with compliant controlled governments, China is actually surrounded by US allies or pro-Western states, representing a counterbalance to its growing military power. The Biden administration has already developed a tough political approach to China, including assistance in arming Australia and Japan; the formation of a quadrilateral security dialogue with Japan, India and Australia; and the organization of an unprecedented separation of high-tech trade with China, including an openly protectionist industrial policy aimed at stimulating U.S. competitiveness.
