Kennan and The Cold War

Though American diplomat George F. Kennan had emphasized the irreconcilable differences that greatly challenged US-Soviet relations in his famous "Sources of Soviet Conduct" article published anonymously in Foreign Affairs Magazine in 1947, he spent much of his later career stressing how American policy makers had gravely misinterpreted his works and consequently formulated an overly militaristic foreign policy in order to defeat its rival superpower.

In an interview in 1972, Kennan was asked if he had regretted writing the article given the subsequent misinterpretation of his policy recommendations. The following is a link to his response: http://books.google.com/books?id=g4FuZSjALN8C&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=George+Kennan+misinterpretation&source=bl&ots=xu9FgX1mVx&sig=f5V7F3CuGedm1E85RaS9uFaLDR0&hl=en&ei=gx7KSe7yM8zJtgfa5_meAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA143,M1

As stated in his answer, Kennan did not regret writing the article as a whole, but was regretful of how he had exactly worded his opinions. Kennan argued that he never meant to make war sound inevitable in order to solve our differences with the Soviet Union, and emphasized that the press had overly stressed and overestimated the Soviet threat in an unnecessary, militaristic light. As Kennan states, "What we need mostly to do is to free ourselves from some of our fixations with relation to the military competition - to remind ourselves that there is really no reason why we and the Russians should wish to do frightful things to each other and to the world."