Seeking the Essential Kennan

Abstract

The latest full-length study of the life of US diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904–2005) attempts to rectify what its author, Professor Frank Costigliola, believes to be the shortcomings of John Lewis Gaddis’s authorised biography, published in 2011. As a treatment of Kennan’s early life and career, of his post-State Department role as a commentator and ‘sage’, and in particular of its subject’s personal life and character, the book is unlikely to be matched. For all its virtues, however, it has a striking and rather surprising deficiency: readers must look elsewhere for a full account of its protagonist’s role as a policymaker in the years 1946–50. One need not agree with Costigliola’s assessment of Kennan’s historical stature to believe there is profit to be had in imagining what his message would be today on a range of subjects: the environment, the future of Ukraine and US–Russia relations, European strategic autonomy and the fragility of American democracy.