the 'Long Telegram', 22 February 1946

Question 1

George Kennan (1904-2005)

Answer 1

he is often attributed with the responsibility for persuading Truman to commit the USA to the containment of communism and to controlling the international power of the USSR. He later rejected this link

Question 2

who was George Kennan?

Answer 2

the charge d’affaires in the US embassy in Moscow

Question 3

what did George Kennan do?

Answer 3

he sent a lengthy despatch to the US State Department in Washington aka the ‘Long Telegram’

Question 4

what did historians, such as John Gaddis, regard the Long Telegram as?

Answer 4

that this message was fundamental in the shaping of US policy towards the Soviet Union and ultimately determining the USA’s role as a global power

Question 5

what had Kennan long favoured the USA to do?

Answer 5

he wanted the USA to adopt a hard line against the USSR

Question 6

what had Kennan supported before Yalta?

Answer 6

he supported the idea of splitting Europe into spheres of influence and defining a line across which Soviet and communist influence couldn’t cross

Question 7

what did Kennan fail to recognise after Yalta?

Answer 7

the failings of FDR’s grand plan for international cooperation and the creation of a democratic post-war world structure

Question 8

how did Kennan feel about communism?

Answer 8

he felt communism was uncompromising in its ideological threat to the free world

Question 9

what did he believe that Stalin wanted to do?

Answer 9

replace, in the minds of the Soviet people, the fear of Germany and Japan with the fear of the USA and Britain

Question 10

what did this mean for the USA?

Answer 10

that the Stalinist regime would be legitimised and any attempt at compromise with Stalin would be futile

Question 11

what did Kennan believe was inevitable?

Answer 11

the collapse in East-West relations

Question 12

who did Kennan believe was the primary culprit for the collapse of East-West relations?

Answer 12

the Soviet Union due to its intent to demonise the West for domestic political reasons

Question 13

what did Kennan emphasise about the USSR?

Answer 13

that the USSR viewed the West as hostile and menacing

Question 14

what did he draw some clear conclusions on?

Answer 14

the direction of US foreign policy

Question 15

what did he argue that the USA should do?

Answer 15

that the USA must be prepared to threaten the use of force and ensure unity among its allies

Question 16

what did he urge the USA to adopt?

Answer 16

a proactive role, particularly in Europe

Question 17

what did Kennan add to his initial thoughts?

Answer 17

by producing the ‘X’ article

Question 18

what was in the ‘X’ article?

Answer 18

he called for a systematic and focused containment of Soviet expansionist tendencies

Question 19

how did Kennan’s analysis, founded on the conclusion that Soviet foreign policy was aggressive and ideologically driven, resonate with Truman?

Answer 19

It resonated with Truman’s growing certainty that the Soviet Union was not only an enemy of Western democratic values but also a threat to the USA’s security

Question 20

what happened in September 1946?

Answer 20

the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Nikolai Novikov, concluded that US foreign policy was based on economic imperialism and that the aim of the USA was to use its economic power to make states dependent upon it to establish its own global supremacy

Question 21

what happened to the USA’s security by early 1946?

Answer 21

the USA’s security had become as powerful a force in the emerging post-war international relations as that of the Soviet Union

Question 22

what wasn’t the way to protect the USA’s vital national interests?

Answer 22

isolationism

Question 23

economic imperialism definition

Answer 23

the idea that a state could use its economic power to ensure that an economically weaker state becomes dependent upon it; this dependency would be used by the stronger state to exercise influence over the weaker one

Question 24

isolationism definition

Answer 24

an approach to foreign policy favoured by the USA before its intervention in WW2; it was based on minimal involvement in external affairs, beyond those seen to relate to US interests in places geographically close to the USA