"DAVID GERGEN: So in your view, though, we might have avoided a Korean War?
GEORGE KENNAN: I think we might have avoided it, and avoided the whole great Korean problem had we done this.
DAVID GERGEN: But did you--you wrote in your book that you felt that Vietnam also had its roots in the containment policy--
GEORGE KENNAN: That's right. And this was unnecessary. I don't--these are not my own ideas, but John Davies, who is a formidable expert on China's affairs, Davies always told us, don't kid yourself, Ho Chi Minh is a nationalist, not a Communist. Communists are going to try to use him but that he's too smart, and they can't do it.
DAVID GERGEN: All right. For my generation, it's a surprise to hear those interpretations because I learned growing up that the containment policy had been a great success, that--and I believed that we were right in Korea, and I believed we were right in Vietnam, but you're really arguing a very different perspective.
GEORGE KENNAN: It was a success in Europe.
DAVID GERGEN: Uh-huh.
GEORGE KENNAN: And it led to the possibility of a Marshall Plan."
It is important to take that Kennan was for a more positive role for the US in the world with policies such as the Marshal Plan. Kennan sought a political containment not a militaristic one.
He also makes clear that the policy of containment was meant only for Europe and that it did not have anything to do with Asia.
What matters, however, was the real impact of his words, not his true intent. Washington would pursue various degrees of aggressive policies in acting against the USSR int he Cold War.
One Washington leader who provides a good comparison to Kennan is Robert McNamara. In the following video, it reveals how the misinterpreting of Kennan's policy of containment almost led to mutual anihilation of both the US and the USSR.
This post is very interesting and I intend to use the information from it in my final essay about George Kennan and the evolution of the idea of containment through out the Cold War. It is always interesting to hear an individual look back 40 years and discuss how a concept that was created by he/she has been manipulated over time. In the case of containment, it seems the Kennan was opposed to the fact that the U.S. decided to take a more militaristic route rather then providing aid to countries in need and therefore influencing those countries to reject Communism. This militaristic approach obviously spread from Europe to Asia through the Vietnam War and other encounters, another point which Kennan regrets about the path of containment. What is most interesting is how he claims that the failed path of containment is what ultimately led to the threat of mutual annihilation, an interpretation that many would not agree with.
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