20 Years After 9/11, Reimagining George Kennan’s Containment Strategy
With the U.S. departure from Afghanistan, perhaps there is new meaning in the philosophy and words of George Kennan, the preeminent American diplomat and foreign policy historian whose diplomatic worldview played such a prominent role during the early Cold War years. Following the 9/11 attacks, American foreign policy institutions — government agencies and think tanks alike — had found a unifying theme that had been largely absent following the immediate end of the Cold War in the early 1990s.
Kennan is best known for his articulation of the growing threat of Soviet expansionism in the final years of World War II and the post-war years; the U.S. needed to counter those expansionist tendencies with diligence, realism and diplomacy.
His telegram in February 1946 (the Long Telegram) to Secretary of State James Byrnes enumerated the core underpinnings of Soviet foreign policy priorities and motivations, i.e., deep-rooted Russian insecurity about its neighbors were a main driver of post-war Soviet foreign policy. His July 1947 article, The Sources of Soviet Conduct, published in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym “X” articulated a containment strategy using “[the] adroit and vigilant application of counter force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points … [a] vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”
Though not fully articulated in his writings at the time, Kennan foresaw a complex intermix of political, diplomatic, economic, social, military and intelligence resources (including covert activities) that would be utilized and calibrated by policymakers as they sought to contain Soviet expansionism.
To Kennan, containment should be light on its feet, both at home and abroad. When President Biden announced in April the American withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan he was making a Kennan-esque policy decision that acknowledged a complex balancing act among several factors: maintaining an adequate level of protection against the threat of international terrorism, withdrawing from a costly nation-building endeavor that had no end game while also maintaining engagement in the Middle East and southwest Asia in order to maintain relative status quo stability. To Kennan, crises along the periphery of the Cold War required attention, analysis and creative solutions short of sustained ground operations by American forces.
“The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
― George F. Kennan, 1948
Kennan today would likely advocate for an American counter-terrorism policy that would see the Middle East, North Africa and southwest Asia security challenges as a series of shifting threats, some tactical some strategic, each with unique drivers but all requiring American leaders to see what indigenous facts on the ground can help sustain American policy priorities.
A new containment in 2021: monitor and confront the threat from dangerous terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra operating in Syria’s Idlib and ISIS in several MENA countries while acknowledging the Arab Spring has helped contribute to countless local armed groups in the MENA region, many of whom are interested in fighting local wars about local issues. And working with the Taliban? When asked on September 1 about cooperation with the Taliban on combatting ISIS and its ability to wage terror attacks, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley said, “It’s possible.”
President Biden was seemingly channeling Kennan in his April Afghanistan withdrawal announcement: “You know, we’ll be much more formidable to our adversaries and competitors over the long term if we fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20.” That sentiment closely echoes the words of Kennan who spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1966 as American military involvement in Vietnam grew more contentious. Though he opposed a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, Kennan was unambiguous about the lack of a genuine national interest in fighting a war in a remote part of southeast Asia: “[T]here is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.”
In a final media interview conducted in September 2002 (he passed away in 2005 at age 101) as the Bush administration began planning for a war in Iraq, Kennan presciently noted the peril that lay ahead for the United States if a strategic policy debate grounded in core American interests gave way to a rushed tactical battle plan grounded in the shared national trauma of 9/11. “In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it … you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”
