Kennan the Reactionist

• In Event: Justice and Inequality: Democracy and Great Powers

Abstract

In the pantheon of American realism, there are few figures more revered than George Kennan. Widely considered the founding father of the policy of containment, Kennan in his many decades of both government service and scholarship provides a unique window into 20th-century US foreign policy. In addition to his incredibly long life, Kennan stands out as both an insider in the inner workings of foreign policy and its principal critic. In part due to his telling of his own story, he lays claim to be the representative of an old European tradition sadly presiding over an overly idealistic American alternative tradition. This paper proposes that while Kennan displays many important points of overlap with realism, he belongs with a new tradition of Reactionism, characterized by its recognition of the impending march of democratic equality and its revulsion at that same fact. As an American among a mainly European tradition, Kennan could style himself as a man without a country, but his contrarianism was uniquely American, particularly in the ways in which he connected international politics with the domestic. This reclassification will not only help better locate Kennan within the intellectual tradition of American foreign policy, but also clarify his relationship with his followers whom he struggled to repudiate.

Author

• Eric Andrew Fleury, Connecticut College