Kennan.

This is coolbert:

George Kennan, the man who I have described as an esteemed American diplomat, can be considered to be one of the most significant Americans of the latter half of the 20th Century?

Works for me. A man, little known outside of certain select circles, but having an influence that cannot be underestimated!

Kennan [Mr. X] was the man who developed, who espoused, who enunciated the policy of "containment"! The policy of "containment" as it applied to the Soviet Union in the years immediately after World War Two [W2]. A policy that was followed by the U.S. for the entire duration of the Cold War [forty five years], until the dissolution of the Soviet Union!

"By 1944, Kennan was already counseling that Soviet-American diplomatic collaboration was impossible . . . he proposed, in despair, that the United States might as well divide Germany, partition Europe into spheres, and define 'the line beyond which we cannot afford to permit the Russians to exercise unchallenged power or to take purely unilateral action.' This was the containment doctrine in embryonic form."

"His [Kennan] 'Long Telegram' from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct' argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be 'contained' in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War"

A policy [containment] that:

1. Recognized the Soviet Union as: "expansionist, malevolent, warlike, and uncompromising"! Malevolently evil perhaps is a better description! A threat of an uncompromising nature against the entire "western" world and "western" civilization!

2. A policy that advocated the resistance to further Soviet expansionism whenever the Soviets threatened further movement in areas OF STRATEGIC INTEREST TO THE UNITED STATES! Containment within the boundaries of the Yalta Accords, certain other specific areas and NO FURTHER!

And a recognition that the Soviets did not follow or abide by the GENERALLY ACCEPTED RULES of behavior and competition that the various nation-states of the world adhered to. The Soviet employing secret warfare, subversion, "boring from within/infiltration" as A PREFERRED MEANS to debilitate the "west"!! COVERT as opposed to OVERT! Eventually leading to Soviet triumph and world-domination!

Kennan, and others like him, also recognized that the communist system, where ever it exists, has A BUILT-IN self-destruct mechanism. Given enough time, Moloch would collapse of it's own accord due to various inherent contradictions.

Moloch - - an ancient evil god from the Bible. A god with an insatiable appetite for human child sacrifice.

"In modern English usage, 'Moloch' can refer derivatively to any person or thing which demands or requires costly sacrifices"

"besmeared with blood, Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears." - - Milton.

KENNAN TOO, WAS NOT ABOVE CONSIDERING A PREEMPTIVE ATOMIC ATTACK UPON THE SOVIET UNION!! THIS AT A TIME WHEN FOR A PERIOD OF FOUR YEARS SUBSEQUENT TO THE END OF WW2, THE U.S. WAS THE SOLE POSSESSOR OF NUCLEAR WEAPONRY!!

PREEMPTION AS A POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES DID NOT BEGIN WITH THE CURRENT BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ!!

Kennan, in discussion with General Spaatz, the diplomat, NOT a military man, having a very idea of the preemptive war was to be fought, with what weaponry, and directed against what targets.

"It is unclear whether or not Kennan in 1946 was mulling over the possibility of preventive war by the United States. He had given some thought to the prospects of actual war, and how it should be fought, if it occurred. Meeting during the summer [1946] with General Carl Spaatz, the chief of staff of the air force, Kennan said that the war, in the summary words of a minutes-taker's notes, should be 'conducted by the U.S. [as] an air war in the strictest sense of the term.' According to Kennan, there were only 'about ten vital points' in the Soviet Union to be bombed in order to cripple the Soviet Union and force its speedy defeat. They were not primarily cities but production areas and railroads."

And where did Kennan get this idea that ONLY about ten strategic points within the Soviet Union needed to be struck with atomic bombs to render the Soviet impotent? Perhaps it was intelligence gleaned from the Gehlen Organization. A furtherance of German WW2 plans of the "Iron Hammer" variety?

"A bombing raid [German] was to destroy twelve turbines in water and steam power-plants near Moscow, Gorky, Tula, Stalinogorsk and under the Rybinsk Reservoir, as well as to attack certain substations, transmission lines and factories. If the attack were to succeed in destroying just 2/3 of the turbines it would have knocked out about 75% of the power used by the Soviet defence industry. Only two smaller energy centers behind the Urals and in the Soviet Far East would have been left intact. At this time the Soviet Union had no turbine manufacturing capabilities and the only repair facility (in Leningrad) had been heavily damaged."

"In mid-1946, when Kennan met with Spaatz, the United States only possessed about five or eight A-bombs, though Kennan, like many American officials, was not allowed to know the top-secret number."

[this figure of only "about five or eight A-bombs" seems low to me. I know that at the time of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks, the U.S. for several months subsequent WOULD HAVE NO MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO BE DROPPED!! The intention was that a grand total of about seventy atomic bombs would be need to end the war in the Pacific, if an invasion of Japan was required. Bombs, nuclear, to be used in a tactical manner in some cases!!]

Preemptive atomic attack was considered, or the subject at least broached, but never materialized. And once the Soviets had their own nuke, such discussion became verboten!!

coolbert.