"Unceasing Pressure for Penetration": Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan's Formation of the Cold War

Abstract

In the New York Times Book Review of April 7, 1996, Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, reviewed the latest book by George E Kennan, the ninetytwo-year-old former diplomat and author of the containment doctrine. Zakaria began his review by praising the clarity and the gripping, declarative prose of Kennan's famous long telegram from Moscow in 1946.1 In that 5,540-word telegram, Kennan laid out the argument for deemphasizing negotiations with Moscow on issues arising from World War II and for instead emphasizing the containment of the Soviet Union. Ever since Kennan's cable reached the State Department a half century ago, officials and scholars have been pointing to Kennan's prose-without, however, examining why his appeared so clear and so gripping or how his emotions and rhetorical strategies infused his writings, particularly the long telegram (LT), with such persuasive force. A close reading of Kennan's writings demonstrates that the is neither transparent nor value-free, and that Kennan's figures of speech-which scholars have quoted as colorful language but have not fully analyzed emotionalize and condition the interpretation of his ostensibly realistic prose.