Never a man for causes.(George Kennan: A Study in Character)(Book review)

From: Modern Age | Date: March 22, 2008| Author: | Copyright information

George Kennan: A Study in Character by John Lukacs (Yale University Press, 2007). 224 pp.

For a few years, from 1946 to 1949, George Frost Kennan was at the center of world events. He also lived long and wrote much, and he remains a puzzle to many. Liberals have admired his public dissent over the militarization of his containment ideas (he would have been loath to have called them a "doctrine"). Yet Kennan was skeptical about liberalism's reliance on governmental solutions. As he said in his fascinating "personal philosophy," Around the Cragged Hill, government "always ...

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