Not a Big Truck

Just about everyone who has taken a course on American foreign policy has read some George F. Kennan.  In light of the recent Russian conflict, I felt that it would be appropriate to read over some of Mr. Kennan’s writings. I had intended to find a few of his earlier pieces detailing the nature of Russia and describing her character.

The most pertinent of his observations, however, did not deal with Russia specifically. They dealt with humility and pragmatism in foreign affairs.

In American Diplomacy he wrote that the greatest fault in American foreign policy has been the tendency of the United States to implement a moralistic approach to foreign affairs.  He argues that it is foolhardy to think that it “should be possible to suppress the chaotic and dangerous aspirations of governments in the international field by the acceptance of some system of legal rules and restraints.” He attacks both the feeling of self-righteousness that accompanies much of US foreign policy and the international institutions that the US has traditionally supported.

I was most interested, however, in his attack on applying morality to international affairs and will focus primarily on that aspect of his writings–although his discussion on international institutions is somewhat related and similarly interesting. (In fact, he may have an even greater issue with these institutions than the moralism that caught my attention.)

Kennan argues that a moralistic view of foreign affairs is misguided because it incorrectly holds “that state behavior is a fit subject for moral judgment.” Infusing such morality into foreign affairs, of course, changes foriegn affairs from an ongoing series of limited battles for national interest into a uncompromising wars between the righteous and the unrighteous. “A war fought in the name of high moral principle finds no early end short of some form of total domination.”

Total war and ultimate victory often derive from morality in foreign affairs, so Kennan would argue. He states that prior to the more modern moralistic approach:

 wartime objectives were generally limited and practical ones, and it was common to measure the success of your military operations by the extent to which they brought you closer to your objectives. But where your objectives are moral and ideological ones and run to changing the attitudes and traditions of an entire people or the personality of a regime, then victory is probably something not to be achieved entirely by military means or indeed in any short space of time at all.

He wrote that the need of total victory that comes from moralism should be avoided by adopting “an attitude of detachment and soberness and readiness to reserve judgment.” He continues

It will mean that we will have the modesty to admit that our own national interest is all that we are really capable of knowing and understanding–and the courage to recognize that if our own purposes and undertakings here at home are decent ones, unsullied by arrogance or hostility toward other people or delusions of superiority, then the pursuit of our national interest can never fail to be conducive to a better world.

I can’t help but think that I had read these words early on during the invasion of Iraq and yet still supported the endeavor. I certainly disagree with some of Kennan’s points–especially about international institutions in part because I think they can be used effectively as tools to take some morality out of foreign affairs–but his call for a pragmatically cool and rational approach to foreign affairs seems to be exactly what is called for in this country.  We must not remove ourselves from the world, but a return to a policy that reflected greater humility is imperative, especially in light of American decline and the increasing relevance of non-state actors.

At the very least, it is safe to say that one holding Kennan’s view of the world could definitely give a big “told ya so” to Kristol, Perle, Krauthammer, Cheney, Bush…and, unfortunately, to me.