Kennan and Chomsky

George Kennan:
"Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent."

The sound byte

It seems to me that while George Kennan is often remembered as a major foreign policy architect for the United States, his policy of Containment was not followed by the United States beyond the presidency of Truman. Rollback in Korea and certain military actions in Vietnam and Cambodia seem to me to be major violations of Containment. This sound byte explains some of Kennan's concerns which sound very much like the ideas of Noam Chomsky. Both Kennan and Chomsky warn of the strong influence a small minority have on the decision to go to war especially in the United States. George Kennan's ideas on foreign policy evolved over time and I think it would be beneficial for students to pay attention to much of what Kennan said about war and American diplomacy in his later years.