Abstract
The Yalta System, which emerged as a result of the Allied victory in the World Anti-Fascist War, was ultimately dismantled by the Cold War. The discourses of the Cold War and the "New Cold War" represent different stages of the same hegemonic power, and the historical narrative after World War II has been largely rewritten by the victors of the Cold War. Therefore, to understand the current global changes, it is necessary to look back at the beginning of the Cold War, a pivotal moment in 20th-century history. George Kennan's 1946 "Long Telegram" not only articulated the actual purpose of the U.S. in initiating the Cold War—the containment of Soviet industrialization—but also constituted the historical root of current U.S. conduct. A re-examination of the "debate of the century" between Kennan and Walter Lippmann can help break through the hegemonic discourse from within the West. Only by dismantling the historical narrative constructed by the victors of the Cold War can we pave the way for peace and development in the 21st century.
This article is an authorized full publication of a condensed version that appeared in the third issue of Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping Theory Research in 2025.
The Yalta System, the Cold War, and the "Roots of U.S. Conduct" in the 21st Century
Revisiting the Kennan-Lippmann Debate on the Post-WWII World Order
(Part I)
The redeemer comes not only as a savior but also as a conqueror of the Antichrist. The only historian who can re-ignite the spark of hope in the past is the one who understands that even the dead will not be safe if the enemy wins. And this enemy, if they win, will never let go. [1] (pp.267-268)
— Walter Benjamin
Introduction: The Yalta System, the Cold War, and the "Contemporary History" of the 21st Century
The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Soviet Great Patriotic War, and the World Anti-Fascist War, as well as the 80th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. The latter was established on the basis of the tremendous national sacrifices and contributions made by the Soviet Red Army and China as the main battleground in the East. The post-war Yalta System, to a great extent, embodied the achievements of the anti-fascist war. While the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc symbolized the demise of the Yalta System, the Russia-Ukraine War represents the aftermath of this collapse. The negotiations between U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin concerning the Russia-Ukraine War have been referred to by Western media as a new Yalta Conference, which is, in fact, an internationalization of the internal issues of the former Soviet Union—a process referred to as the reconstruction of a new world order. So, where will today's "New Yalta Era" lead the world?
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine War on February 24, 2022, the Israel-Palestine War on October 7, 2023, the Israel-Lebanon conflict on September 23, 2024, and the "self-coup" 1 of U.S. President Trump since his second inauguration in 2025, it has become increasingly evident that beneath the surface of world politics, the mantle is melting, and tectonic activity is accelerating. Hot magma is rising, and the Eurasian continent is in a new process of faulting, collision, and drift, with these regional hot wars being merely the latest volcanic eruptions. The continuous cracking of the earth's surface of global politics under pressure means that if the most dangerous magma chamber were to lose control and the underground magma burst forth, it would break through regional boundaries and create the greatest political catastrophe of the 21st century. This is the source of new "hot wars" and "cold wars" on a global scale, accompanied by an ideological civil war sparked by the 2024 U.S. election and party strife, which has continued to this day and is manifested by the "coup" following President Trump's second term. In this sense, the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars are historical milestones of the 21st century. Where do these new hot wars and cold wars, which are continuously consuming lives, come from, and where are they going? What do they mean for the contemporary world? This is the question of war and peace for the 21st century.
In his 1964 book, An Introduction to Contemporary History, the distinguished British historian Geoffrey Barraclough (1908-1984) explained why "contemporary history" is a valid concept. He stated that "in the study of contemporary history, we should be more concerned with the advent of the new world than with the old world that has passed away" , and that contemporary history must be viewed as a unique historical stage of development, distinct from previous eras and possessing its own characteristics. However, eras are continuous, and generations overlap, so contemporary history is not merely the history of the living generation; its value lies in historical "depth." Therefore, contemporary history aims to elucidate the trends of change that have shaped the fundamental structures of the contemporary world. These changes are fundamental "because they constitute the framework or skeleton upon which political action takes place". It is therefore necessary to understand the major events that distinguish contemporary history from previous eras within their historical context. [2] (pp.1-7)
The day when the problems of the present-day world first emerge is also the day when contemporary history begins." Contemporary history begins with change, but not just any change. It is the kind of change that makes us, or forces us to, believe that we have entered a new era. [2] (pp.9)
Before the characteristics of one era are completely replaced by those of another, there is a long transitional phase in which the contemporary and the modern are intricately mixed. For a global history spanning the new millennium, the superimposition or displacement of the 19th and 20th centuries is precisely the hallmark of 21st-century world history. Discerning this superimposition and displacement, and mapping the topography and structure of the global trend, is how contemporary history engages with reality. Today, regardless of differing views, almost no one denies that the Russia-Ukraine War, the Israel-Palestine War, and the "coup" following the inauguration of U.S. President Trump are major events for identifying contemporary history. Any major event is also a major communicative phenomenon. The polarization in today's public discourse is a symptom of significant changes in the "framework or skeleton upon which political action takes place," indicating a major rupture in the existing world system and consensus. The continuous occurrence of major events is like an earthquake, which both destroys old geological structures and reconstructs new ones. It is on the basis of the superimposition and displacement of existing structures that humanity explores new possibilities for survival and civilization.
An Introduction to Contemporary History
Geoffrey Barraclough
Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press,2011
Existing research on the Yalta System and the Cold War is already extensive and voluminous. Different schools of thought, whether left or right, have their own positions and areas of focus, but all agree that the Yalta System provided the structural framework for the Cold War. However, looking back from the rearview mirror of today's world politics, a fundamental fact is that the purpose of the Cold War was to destroy the Yalta System. It is absurd and seemingly impossible to transform the anti-fascist alliance relationship, forged in a bloody war, into a state of hostility after the war, but Trumanism accomplished this. This is the issue of the century that we need to reflect on today.
The Cold War was, first and foremost, a massive ideological project that, through continuous propaganda warfare, constructed a binary opposition between "liberal democracy" and "totalitarian despotism" between the Eastern and Western blocs. The theory of "communist evil" is also the internal logic of today's New Cold War. At the same time, it used military and economic containment as a means to continuously push back the spheres of peaceful influence gained by the Soviet Red Army through the anti-fascist war, leading ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Finally, in the "post-Cold War" era, the continuous eastward expansion of NATO pushed the military containment front to the gates of Moscow, ultimately igniting the Russia-Ukraine War. In this sense, the Cold War, the post-Cold War, and the New Cold War are all different stages of the same hegemonic power; the Cold War has never truly ended. It was a victory of both public opinion warfare and military and economic containment, a form of "total war" that was not a full-scale hot war (local wars never ceased).
It was during this "long Cold War" process that the immense contributions and sacrifices made by the Soviet Red Army and the Eastern anti-Japanese main battleground in the anti-fascist war were systematically erased and slandered by the Cold War historical view dominated by the U.S. and the West. Meanwhile, fascist countries such as Germany and Japan were fully admitted into the "liberal democratic" camp. The result is that the history of the world since World War II has been largely rewritten by the Cold War historical view of the victors, which is the ultimate source of today's "historical nihilism."
Recent news from March 29, 2025, reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, while attending a memorial service for the war dead with Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani on Iwo Jima, stated: "The bravery of American and Japanese soldiers in the Battle of Iwo Jima will be eternally inscribed in history, on this sacred ground, and in the bond between our two nations. Their heroic deeds will never fade." On the same day, he also posted on X (formerly Twitter): "I stand with reverence on the sacred ground of Iwo Jima. More than 80,000 warriors fought here, and over 26,000 made the ultimate sacrifice. Their courage defended freedom—we honor them, we remember them, and we will never forget them." These words are a public denial of the anti-fascist war and a product of both the old and new Cold Wars. The shared "warrior spirit" embodied on Iwo Jima is the foundation of today's New Cold War: the reawakening of fascism.
In the hot war of 1940, amidst the rampant fascism of Germany, the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin saw a stunning image of the "Angel of History" at the end of his life:
He saw a single catastrophe where we see a chain of events. This catastrophe is piling up corpses and throwing them at his feet. The angel wishes to stop and awaken the dead, and to mend the shattered world. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and violently striking the angel's wings, so that he can no longer fold them. This storm irresistibly propels him into a future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. [1] (pp.277)
For Benjamin, in the heart of European civilization, the so-called engine of "progress," there is "no monument of civilization that is not also a record of barbarism". The followers of Rankean historicism always stand on the side of the victors, building only an "empathetic identification" for the winners of history. [1] (pp.269-270) Therefore, true historical materialism must cut ties with such historical narratives, and thus, this form of historiography is inherently risky, a venture on a knife's edge. [3] (pp.791) In the contemporary world, due to the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars, the fierce storm blowing from the "paradise" of civilized progress has begun to ravage valleys, fell rocks and trees, and decimate forests. 43 The wings of the Angel of History are once again lifted high. The "single catastrophe" continues, and the piles of corpses on the battlefields of Russia-Ukraine and the Gaza Strip continue to accumulate, broadcast live on social media platforms worldwide, especially TikTok. This horrifying scene shatters all historical narratives of "civilization" and "progress." The 21st century needs to once again summon historical materialists as "warriors of the blade," to cross the blockade line of darkness and light beneath the angel's feet.
Image Caption: Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus" and a portrait of Walter Benjamin.*
Looking back from the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton in March 1946, and President Truman's speech to Congress in March 1947, which called for aid to Greece and Turkey and declared the world to be divided into two hostile camps of "totalitarian regimes" and "free nations," with every country facing a choice—what kind of changes did U.S. foreign policy undergo behind these landmark events of the Cold War's outbreak? How does it relate to the sharp shift in the Trump administration's foreign policy today? This is a crucial moment in world history that needs to be re-examined eighty years later. It is the starting point for understanding the "roots of U.S. conduct" in the 21st century, particularly the nature of the Trump administration, and is also key to understanding today's century-long global transformation.
This article re-examines a "debate of the century" that took place in the U.S. during the 1940s, before and after the Cold War, a debate that is now almost forgotten. It was a polemic between the renowned political journalist Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) and the Cold War architect George F. Kennan (1904-2005) regarding the post-WWII global situation, specifically whether to initiate the "Cold War." This re-examination aims to analyze and reveal the origins of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars, the historical context of the New Cold War, and the location of the new trinity of the "roots of U.S. conduct" today. This is crucial for establishing a contemporary history for the 21st century and, more importantly, for international communication to break through the hegemonic discourse of the U.S.-Western "New Cold War." By returning methodologically to the Lippmann-Kennan dispute from the period before and after the Cold War, which was a debate among the American right wing before the Cold War had completed its hegemonic narrative, this article attempts to break through this hegemonic discourse from within. Behind the hegemonic discourse of today's Cold War victors, this debate provides an "old" perspective, yet also a "new" and obscured one—a perspective that is being revealed through the "coup" of the U.S. Trump administration.
Ultimately, the dilemma of China's international communication today is underpinned by a conflict of worldviews, a struggle for the right to narrate world history since the 20th century. Only by breaking through the historical worldview constructed by the Cold War victors can we pave the way for peace and development for humanity in the 21st century.
II. The "Pretext" for the Cold War: Revisiting Stalin's Speech of February 9, 1946
Under the shadow of the New Cold War, how did the Cold War, a 20th-century crossroads that determined the global historical landscape, actually begin? Mr. X's Long Telegram was the marker for the Cold War, and the rise of U.S. Trumanism was the key. The Cold War architect, Mr. X (Kennan), and his 1946 "Long Telegram," as well as his famous 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," are widely considered the origin of the U.S. policy of containment toward the Soviet Union and the start of the Cold War. For Trumanism, the containment strategy toward the Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan in Europe were two halves of the same walnut (Kennan played an important role in the formulation of both policies), with the shared goal of crushing the burgeoning global socialist movement before and after World War II. Any review of the anti-fascist war of WWII cannot avoid the name of Stalin.
- The Lippmann-Kennan Paradox: The Debate over U.S. Cold War Policy
Mr. X's proposals were met with a fierce counterattack from Lippmann, an opinion leader who was deeply involved in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy in World War I and World War II. While he shared the same political stance as Kennan, Lippmann criticized the policy design of Trumanism as fundamentally flawed because it would ultimately harm both Europe and the United States itself. This is the historical root of the right-wing MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement represented by President Trump today, which is to say that the root of today's U.S. conduct is the Cold War that began in 1947. This is an issue that must be loudly re-emphasized today.
The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy
Walter Lippmann
The Commercial Press, 1959
Lippmann advocated for the continuation of the post-war alliance between the U.S., UK, and Soviet Union and predicted a series of negative consequences of the "Cold War." 62This is a classic case in the field of international politics (though not in the field of journalism and communication). Strangely, this debate is rarely discussed today, whether in the field of international politics or in journalism. In the field of Western Cold War history, the collapse of the Soviet Union is widely regarded as a victory for the prophet Kennan, even though it was Francis Fukuyama who proclaimed the victory, and Lippmann's warnings were long forgotten or deemed a failure.
In 2002, as a result of his long-term teaching at Harvard and Georgetown universities, American scholar Derek Leebaert published The Fifty-Year Wound, a book that examined the cost of the U.S. Cold War. He commented on Lippmann, a participant in the debate:
In responding to Kennan's "Mr. X" article in the summer of 1947, Walter Lippmann argued that America simply did not have enough manpower, nor could it quickly and effectively apply "counter-pressure" on the Soviet Union. Lippmann could visit the head of any European country he liked on an equal footing, yet his understanding of what was happening in his own country seemed not to extend south and west of the Potomac. Although Lippmann had a sharp eye for long-term problems, his understanding of American capabilities, as Marx once said, was a classic case of financial capitalism. Like Keynes, he never truly grasped American industrial capacity. Lippmann was very familiar with the House of Morgan but was far removed from other industrial giants such as Ford, Kaiser, and Martin. Whether in 1941 or 1947, he simply did not understand the potential of his own country.(Emphasis added by the author)
The military-industrial capability of the United States, which far surpassed the rest of the world, determined its hot and cold war strategies. Lippmann's failure was his "lack of true understanding of American industrial capacity." Indeed, the U.S. emerged from the Great Depression of the 1930s through WWII. By 1944, its industrial output was twice that of the Axis powers, and by 1945, it was three times that of the Soviet Union and five times that of the UK. It accounted for half of the world's industrial output and three-quarters of its gold, and its GDP at the end of WWII reached 50% of the world's total GDP. Industrial capacity was the key to victory in the Cold War, especially when Truman held the atomic bomb, the highest achievement of military industry, and did not hesitate to drop it on Japan. The purpose was to intimidate the Soviet Union and destabilize the Eastern pattern of the Yalta System. The Korean War was an extension of this logic, a point that needs to be re-examined today. It is telling that the English subtitle of this book in 2002 was "The True Price of America's Cold War Victory," which was changed in the 2003 reprint to "How America's Cold War victory shapes our world." While the "price" disappeared from the title, today's American reality is reaping the results of the Cold War boomerang.
The question this article is concerned with is: since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, the U.S. has continued to project its "national potential" and "power" (especially its military-industrial power) into the Middle East and the former Soviet regions. Why is it that Lippmann's "curse" is gradually coming to fruition in the Trump era? To answer this, we need to revisit its past and present and understand how it happened. After the Cold War, particularly in the "post-Cold War" era, Lippmann's warnings were, in fact, inherited and carried forward by Kennan himself, creating a phenomenon I call the Lippmann-Kennan paradox. It is worth exploring and is the key to understanding today's political crisis of Trump's America.
Image Caption: Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), American journalist and political commentator; George F. Kennan (1904-2005), U.S. National Policy Adviser.*
Revisiting Mr. X's "Long Telegram" and "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" is crucial for helping us understand today's global landscape. In the new Cold War of containing China, Kennan's name is unavoidable. Kennan was one of the first generation of career U.S. diplomats who embarked on his diplomatic path based on the 1924 Rogers Act. He was indoctrinated and trained in Wilsonianism and held a strong hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union, disagreeing with President Roosevelt's active foreign policy toward the Soviets in the 1930s, and was consequently not heavily used for a long time. It was only after Roosevelt's death, when the Truman administration actively sought to change its alliance with the post-war Soviet Union—in other words, to prepare for the Cold War—that Kennan was pushed to the historical forefront. [4] (pp.36-43) In this sense, Kennan's diplomatic career actually reflects the historical continuity from Wilsonianism to Trumanism. Because of this, the Cold War is also viewed by the American New Left school of historians as an extension of Wilsonianism after the war, tracing the origin of the Cold War back to Wilsonianism. 3
The immediate cause of the Long Telegram was Stalin's speech at the voters' meeting in the Stalin Electoral District of Moscow on February 9, 1946. This speech has been widely recognized by mainstream Cold War history as evidence that the Soviet Union was the first to provoke the Cold War. Even in the ten-times-revised edition of America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-2006, a classic on the Cold War by Walter LaFeber, a historian of the Wisconsin School critical of U.S. foreign policy, the title of Chapter 2 is "Two Cold War Manifestos (1946)."
*"In early 1946, Stalin and Churchill issued their Cold War manifestoes. On February 9, in an election speech, the Soviet dictator proclaimed that the creed of Marxism-Leninism remained valid because 'the unevenness of capitalist development' would lead to 'great upheavals' and result in the 'capitalist world (dividing) into two hostile camps and warring between themselves.' As long as capitalism existed, war was inevitable. The events of the 1930s would be repeated, and the Soviet people had to prepare for this, so they must develop basic industry instead of consumer goods; in short, 'I think we need to conduct at least three more five-year plans' and make great sacrifices for this. There will be no peace at home or abroad. These words caused great alarm in Washington. One of the leaders of the American liberals, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, concluded that Stalin's speech was a 'declaration of World War III.' The New York Times reported on Stalin's speech on the front page, immediately declaring that Stalin believed 'the overture has been drawn.'" *
A careful reading of the full text of Stalin's speech makes it clear that the distortion in this passage is incredible, yet to this day, the spark of the Cold War is still traced to this speech in mainstream American academic narratives. This intentional or unintentional misreading is a pivotal point for reflecting on the entire history of the Cold War.
Today, some studies admit that the U.S. overreacted to this speech by Stalin, and that Churchill's Fulton Cold War manifesto was a "borrowed pretext" to create an excuse for the Cold War. However, some arguments still seek the reasons for the "Cold War" in Soviet "despotism." 4 In fact, the purpose of Stalin's speech was to summarize the Soviet experience of victory in the anti-fascist war and to look forward to the prospects for peaceful development in the post-war Soviet Union. This is a Cold War issue that must be re-examined today.
- The Trigger of the "Long Telegram": What Exactly Did Stalin Say?
In his speech, Stalin first defined the nature of the world war as a product of the "uneven" development of the world capitalist system. The unequal distribution of forces for the re-division of "spheres of influence" was precisely the reason why capitalism, in its imperialist stage, split into hostile camps and erupted into war. This is essentially a basic principle of Marxism-Leninism. Stalin emphasized that WWII had the character of an anti-fascist war and the significance of national liberation for oppressed peoples. These two points turned reactionary after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and should be an important perspective for explaining the Russia-Ukraine War today.
Image Caption: Speech at the pre-election voters' meeting in the Stalin Electoral District of Moscow City on February 9, 1946.
Given the serious conflict in the interpretation of this speech, more excerpts are included here for discussion. Rereading this discourse can serve as a historical lesson for war and peace in the 21st century and is the key to understanding the actions of the current U.S. Trump administration:
It would be incorrect to think that the Second World War broke out accidentally or as a result of mistakes committed by certain statesmen, although mistakes were certainly made. In reality, the war was the inevitable result of the development of world economic and political forces on the basis of modern monopoly capitalism. Marxists have stated more than once that the world capitalist economic system contains elements of general crisis and military conflicts, and therefore, modern world capitalism does not develop smoothly and evenly but passes through crises and catastrophes of war. The issue is that the uneven development of capitalist countries, after a certain period, violently disrupts the balance of power within the world capitalist system. Those capitalist countries that feel they have not received sufficient sources of raw materials and markets for their goods usually use force to change this situation and re-divide "spheres of influence" in a way that is favorable to themselves. Consequently, the capitalist world splits into two hostile camps and engages in war.
If these countries could periodically re-divide the sources of raw materials and markets through peaceful negotiations based on their economic strength, war could perhaps be avoided. But this is impossible under the conditions of the current development of the world capitalist economy.
Therefore, the result of the first crisis of the capitalist world economic system led to the First World War, and the result of the second crisis led to the Second World War.
This is not to say, of course, that the Second World War was exactly the same as the First. On the contrary, the Second World War was fundamentally different in nature from the First. It should be remembered that the main fascist states, Germany, Japan, and Italy, before they attacked the Allied countries, had completely eradicated the last vestiges of bourgeois democratic freedoms in their own countries, established a brutal regime of terror in their own countries, trampled upon the sovereignty and principles of free development of small nations, proclaimed the seizure of foreign territories as their state policy, and openly declared that they would achieve world domination and impose the fascist system throughout the world. Furthermore, the Axis powers demonstrated their resolve to turn their verbal threats to enslave all freedom-loving nations into reality with the facts of their occupation of Czechoslovakia and central China. Therefore, the Second World War against the Axis powers was different from the First World War; from the very beginning, it had the nature of an anti-fascist war, a war of liberation. One of its tasks was to restore democratic freedoms. The participation of the Soviet Union in the war against the Axis powers could only strengthen—and did strengthen—the anti-fascist and liberationist character of the Second World War.
On this basis, the anti-fascist alliance of the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain, and other freedom-loving countries was formed, and this alliance later played a decisive role in crushing the armed forces of the Axis powers.
Such were the origins and nature of the Second World War. [6] (pp.472-484)(Emphasis added by the author)
The unevenness of the world capitalist system is inevitable. The re-division of world markets and spheres of influence, and the outbreak of a general crisis and military conflicts of capitalism, are the sources of world wars. Stalin's above view of war, which criticizes the capitalist "balance of power" theory, as well as the national liberation nature of the WWII anti-fascist war, can be regarded as a classic interpretation of WWII and a warning for today's world order. Is not the constitutional crisis after U.S. President Trump's re-election destroying the "remnants of bourgeois democracy" at home? Are not Trump's naked territorial claims over Greenland, Canada, and Panama, as well as his covetousness and plundering of Ukrainian mineral resources in the midst of war, the beginning of a new fascism on a global scale? The only question is how we describe the topology of the uneven development of capitalism in the world today.
On this basis, Stalin summarized the Soviet victory over fascism, specifically emphasizing the contributions of national unity and "modernization" to the anti-fascist war. First, the victory of the anti-fascist war proved that the multinational Soviet social system had passed the test; it did not collapse as the West had expected, like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but became more solidified during the war, proving it was a state system with full vitality. He refuted the "foreign press" criticism that the Soviet Union was an "artificially created and impractical structure." He argued that "these gentlemen do not understand that it is unfounded to compare our country with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, because our multinational state did not grow up on the basis of a bourgeois system that incites national suspicion and hostility but on the basis of the Soviet system." He stated that "the Soviet system, contrary to the bourgeois system, nurtures feelings of mutual friendship and fraternal cooperation among the peoples of our country" and that "the Soviet state system is a state organization that has solved the national question and the question of cooperation among nations better than any other multinational state." [6] (pp.476)
Works of Stalin: 1934-1952
People's Publishing House, 1985
The Soviet socialist national equality and unity were the foundation for defeating fascism. The inevitable result of the Soviet Union's failure was national division and regional conflicts. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, which has been deteriorating for three years and has led to a century-long transformation, is a product of the Soviet Union's disintegration. In this sense, the victory of the anti-fascist war was not based on nationalism defined by ethnic boundaries (and the resulting ethnic cleansing) but on national solidarity and integration on a global scale. This needs a new understanding and defense today.
Stalin then praised the "modernized" Soviet Red Army for crushing the German army, which had intimidated all European armies, and refuted Western criticism of the Red Army as a "colossus with feet of clay." The Red Army's victory was a victory for the Soviet Union's path of "state industrialization." He cited detailed data to illustrate the success of the three five-year plans, which resulted in a sufficient quantity of modern equipment and well-organized, abundant supplies. To achieve this, it was necessary to have sufficient metal for manufacturing weapons, equipment, and factory facilities; fuelfor maintaining production and transportation; cotton for uniforms; and food for the army. He said that "on the eve of the Second World War, in 1940, our situation in this regard was many times better than on the eve of the First World War, in 1913." [6] (pp.478) He emphasized that this was not ordinary development but a "leap" from an "agricultural country to an industrial country" and a "miracle" that was accomplished "in only about thirteen years." [6] (pp.479)What policy did the Soviet Union rely on to create these material conditions in such a short period? It was the path of state industrialization, which was oriented toward heavy industry and was different from capitalism.
The Soviet method of state industrialization is fundamentally different from the capitalist method. In capitalist countries, industrialization usually begins with light industry. Since light industry requires less investment, has a faster capital turnover, and is easier to make a profit compared to heavy industry, light industry becomes the first object of industrialization. It is only after a long period, when light industry has accumulated profits and concentrated them in banks, that it is the turn of heavy industry, and the accumulation begins to gradually flow into heavy industry, creating the conditions for its development. But this is a long process that takes several decades, and during this period, one has to wait for light industry to develop and make do without heavy industry. The Communist Party, of course, could not follow this path. The Party knew that war was approaching, and without heavy industry, it would be impossible to defend the country, so it was necessary to quickly start developing heavy industry, and if this was delayed, it would lead to defeat. The Party remembered Lenin's words: without heavy industry, it is impossible to maintain the country's independence; without heavy industry, the Soviet system will perish. Therefore, our Communist Party rejected the 'usual' path of industrialization and began state industrialization by developing heavy industry. This was a very difficult task, but it was surmountable. In this regard, the nationalization of industry and banks helped us greatly, enabling us to quickly accumulate funds and channel them into heavy industry.
There is no doubt that without doing so, it would have been impossible to transform our country into an industrial country in such a short period."[6] (pp.480) (Emphasis added by the author)
The development of heavy-industry-oriented industrialization also required "agricultural collectivization." The small-peasant economy had to become a large-scale economy, and the development of a large-scale economy could either follow a capitalist path or an agricultural collectivization path. The former not only required an excessively long development process but also forced peasants into bankruptcy and turned them into hired laborers, which was impermissible in both reality and principle. Only collectivization could lead to "huge collective farms that are able to adopt new technologies, make use of all the achievements of agronomy, and provide the state with more commodity products throughout the country." Stalin admitted, "It cannot be said that the Party's policy did not meet with resistance," and in fact, there was strong opposition within the Party.
Not only the backward people who have always been averse to all new things, but also many prominent Party members, consistently pulled the Party back, trying by all means to pull it onto the 'usual' capitalist path of development. All the anti-Party conspiracies carried out by the Trotskyists and the right-wing, all the 'work' they did in secretly sabotaging our government's measures, were aimed at one goal: to undermine the Party's policy and hinder the cause of industrialization and collectivization. But the Party neither succumbed to the threats of some people nor to the clamor of others, but moved forward with steadfastness and without regard for anything. It is to the Party's credit that it did not compromise with the backward elements, was not afraid to go against the tide, and always maintained its position as the leading force. There is no doubt that without this unyielding spirit, the Communist Party could not have maintained the policy of state industrialization and agricultural collectivization. [6] (pp.481)
It is clear that Stalin was using this speech to legitimize the inner-party line struggle. The trinity of industrialization, rural collectivization, and the Great Purge was the most brutal trial of the 1930s in the Soviet Union. It revolved around the severe inner-party line struggle between Stalin, Trotsky, and Bukharin, with the core issue being the path of "primitive accumulation" for industrial development. Stalin used the victory of the Red Army in the anti-fascist war to defend the Party's "unyielding" and "steadfast" actions. He listed data on the contributions of the Soviet military industry during the anti-fascist war to argue that these were the only choices available in the face of "war drawing near" in order to "avoid defeat." In this way, he explained that the goal and task of the new Fourth Five-Year Plan after the war was to restore the damage from the war, abolish rationing, and "pay special attention to expanding the production of consumer goods and raising the living standards of the working people by continuously lowering the prices of all goods." [6] (pp.483)This would be the future direction of Soviet industrial development.
This is the reason for his repeated mention of the Russian proverb, "the victors are not judged." The great victory of the Red Army in the anti-fascist war itself justified the cost of the Soviet Union's accelerated heavy industrial development. This was also consistent with the logic of his speech at the voters' meeting: to explain the past, present, and future of the Soviet Union's industrial development path to the Party and the public, and to make new promises to improve the people's living standards by shifting industrial development from a wartime state. Therefore, to "ensure against all eventualities," it was necessary to raise the Soviet Union's industrial level to three times that of the pre-war period, which would require three or more five-year plans. [6] (pp.483)
Image Caption: On May 2, 1945, the Soviet Red Army raised the red flag over the Reichstag in Berlin.
At this time, Stalin envisioned a post-war situation of peaceful development. This was also reflected in the Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the Soviet Union issued on February 23, in which Stalin declared that "after the victory of the war, the Soviet people are entering a new stage of peaceful economic development." [6] (pp.486)
However, Stalin could not have foreseen that his speech, which was intended to mobilize for a new five-year plan for peaceful development, would generate great international backlash under the incitement of Washington politicians and media, becoming evidence that the Soviet Union intended to launch a third world war and was engaging in warmongering. This is the historical conclusion that has persisted in mainstream U.S. Cold War textbooks and media to this day.
- Conclusion: Stalin's WWII Legacy
In fact, Stalin's enemies, perhaps more than his own people or even sympathizers, could understand his defense of Soviet industrialization. The United States has already won the Cold War, so John Joseph Mearsheimer, the American political scientist who invented the theory of "offensive realism," does not hesitate to admit: "The rise of the Soviet Union in the 1930s—which was mainly the result of Stalin's economic policies—and the fact that the Soviet Red Army played a key role in defeating the Nazi war machine in 1941-1945, explain why there was no balance of power after World War II and the Cold War." [8] (pp.45) The success of Stalin's industrialization strategy was the decisive factor in the Red Army's victory and the reason for the U.S. policy of containment after the war.
The most important Soviet action in the 1920s was Stalin's plan to modernize the Soviet economy through forced industrialization and ruthless agricultural collectivization. Stalin's idea was largely based on security concerns. He believed that if the Soviet economy continued to lag behind the other industrial countries of the world, the Soviet Union would be annihilated in a future great power war. In 1931, Stalin said: 'We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must close this gap in 10 years. Either we do this, or we will be crushed by them.' The series of five-year plans from October 1928 onward transformed the Soviet Union from a poor great power in the 1920s into the most powerful country in Europe at the end of World War II. [9] (pp.208-209)
It is precisely because the perspective of "offensive realism" tears away the ideological veneer of the Cold War that Stalin's forced industrialization path in the 1920s and 1930s receives a relatively objective presentation—especially when compared with the discourse of Mr. X (Kennan). In this sense, it is not wrong to view Stalin's speech as the fuse of the Cold War. It was not that the Soviet Union wanted to start a Cold War, but rather that the post-war rise of the Soviet Union was the reason why the U.S. had to start a Cold War.
Today, it is precisely the two axes of world history emphasized by Stalin—the "national question" and "industrial development"—the unresolved legacy of WWII, that are drawing the entire world back into its historical vortex. The "ghost" of Stalin hovers not only over the former Soviet lands, but we will (or have to) hear his name more often. Ultimately, the mainstream U.S.-Western Cold War history is a history of entanglement with the ghost of Stalin. The struggle of discourses around the new balance of power, from hot war to cold war to new cold war, is the world historical logic that needs to be brought to light again.
Stalin's speech reiterated the classic Marxist theory that the uneven development of imperialist countries and their subsequent struggle for new spheres of influence are the sources of new world wars. Mearsheimer's theory of "offensive realism," which is based on a hegemonic perspective and argues that hegemonic wars between great powers are inevitable, actually, and unconsciously, echoes this conclusion from the opposite direction. In this sense, the Soviet Union repeatedly sought to break through the Cold War, but its ultimate inability to achieve a balance between light and heavy industry (including the dilemma of agricultural modernization) under Cold War containment was a major reason for its collapse. It is precisely the Russia-Ukraine War, triggered by NATO's eastward expansion after the Cold War victory, that is driving the world into the dangerous situation of a third world war, not the other way around.
Therefore, only by dismantling the hegemonic narrative of the Cold War victors and reopening the path for a world historical narrative of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-feudalism since the Chinese and Russian revolutions of the 20th century can we bring peace to the world. It is in this sense that we need to revisit Stalin's WWII legacy.
III. The "Faustian Bargain": Mr. X, the Theory of Civilization, and Soviet Industrialization
Regarding the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. We have decided not to nominate a candidate from this administration this year. I am afraid that the question of where such an honor should go will always cause trouble. Peace is not an abstract concept, and it should not be treated as such. It cannot be said that peace is one specific thing. From the standpoint that everyone desires peace, it can be said that Stalin is more qualified than anyone else to receive this honor. This is because he has worked much harder and with more effort than all of us to pursue the kind of unique peace he cares about. One must ask clearly: "What kind of peace?" "Whose peace?"[10] (pp.193)
— George F. Kennan, Kennan Diaries, 1948
The reason we need to re-examine Mr. X's discourse today is that it already contains two historical foreshadowings for the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War. The first is the "End of History" proclamation by the "de-communized" Cold War victors after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The second is the "clash of civilizations" and the new "balance of power" theory, which have championed U.S. military hegemony in the post-Cold War era. These two, one after the other, work together to shape today's world order, collectively building the ideological high ground for European and American knowledge production and mainstream media. This is the "framework or skeleton upon which political action takes place" that the 21st century has inherited, and it is the crux of how we can break through the Cold War ideology.
Returning to February 1946, diplomat Kennan, who was in Moscow, was asked to analyze Stalin's speech and the Soviet Union's motives for not wanting to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. [11] (pp.44-45) This is why Mr. X's Long Telegram was sent on February 16, closely following the timing of Stalin's speech. However, Kennan could not identify Stalin's speech as a war provocation. In fact, his judgment was the opposite: the post-war Soviet Union was very weak, was more concerned with its own survival and security, and did not have the willingness or ability to launch a military attack on the U.S. and the West. [11] (pp.91-92) This is also a view he repeatedly articulated later when criticizing U.S. foreign policy. However, what Mr. X was trying to prove at the time was that, despite this, the Soviet Union's hostility toward the U.S. and the West would not change. The official biographer of Kennan and standard-bearer of contemporary post-revisionist history, John Lewis Gaddis, defended this by saying that Kennan could see everything in a "single snapshot," much like a geopolitical X-ray. 5 This was the "argument" for the "containment theory."
Therefore, Mr. X's Long Telegram strategically avoided direct reference to Stalin's speech. Instead, it cited the content of a speech Stalin gave to a delegation of American workers before the war, in 1927. The message was that both socialism and capitalism would form their own world centers, and that "the struggle between these two camps for the domination of the world economy will determine the fate of the entire world, both capitalist and socialist," and that "permanent peaceful coexistence is impossible in the long run." [11] (pp.273) This was to provide a backing for his own views, although he was clearly aware of the Soviet Union's post-war stance on peace. However, Mr. X's contribution was to ideologically justify the necessity for the U.S. to adopt a long-term, patient, firm, and vigilant containment policy. In fact, both the Long Telegram and the article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" used Stalin's own logic—from the opposite direction—to incriminate Stalin and the Soviet Union after the war.
A Study of George F. Kennan's Containment Thought (Revised and Expanded Edition)
Xiaoming Zhang
World Knowledge Press, 2021
Based on the fact that a year after the Long Telegram, the article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the pseudonym "Mr. X," elaborated on the containment theory in greater detail and earned Kennan his reputation as the architect of the Cold War, this essay will perform a comparative reading of the two texts along with Stalin's speech. This analysis aims to dissect how Mr. X's ideological rhetoric, employing a "cicada shedding its skin" stratagem, attributed "containment" to Soviet internal factors. It constructed the dominant historical and ideological narrative of the Cold War from the perspective of the U.S. and the West as the initiators and victors, providing a foundation for the legitimacy of the Truman Doctrine, a narrative that continues to this day. According to Lippmann's mockery at the time, Mr. X came up with a "theory" to explain that the Soviet Union's conduct "does not reflect an abstract love for peace and stability, nor does it reflect genuine confidence in a permanently pleasant coexistence between the socialist and capitalist worlds, but rather a policy of continuous pressure to undermine and weaken all hostile forces and powers." [12] (pp.4)
This "theory" is divided into four parts in Mr. X's discourse, which I have summarized into two major themes: first, defining the nature of WWII and the nature of the Soviet regime, and second, deducing the purpose of containing the Soviet Union's path of industrial development. The essence of this was to ideologically distinguish friend from foe in order to pave the way for the containment of Soviet industrial development. The following sections will discuss these points one by one.
- The "Internal Cause" Theory of Soviet "Dictatorship": Geography, Race, and "Communization"
The first theme of the Long Telegram was to argue that the Soviet "political personality" was a product of the combination of Marxist ideology and its thirty-year geographical environment, which was a response to Stalin's judgment on the nature of World War II. It became Kennan's most famous argument: the Russian version of Marxism believed in the violence of the proletarian revolution and the fundamental opposition between capitalism and socialism because these beliefs catered to their instinctive desires. The provocative and uncompromising actions of the Russians provoked intervention from the outside world, and then they were forced to cope with the hostility they had provoked, justifying themselves by portraying the outside world as their enemy. By reducing the Russian Revolution, which was caused by the outbreak of a world imperialist war, to an internal Russian and national problem, the Soviet Union became the scapegoat for the world war.
Kennan's rhetorical focus was on emphasizing that the powerful insecurity of the Russians themselves was the source of their "dictatorship," not the hostility that the outside world imposed on the Soviet Union; in other words, the outside world had no hostility toward the Soviet Union! This argument is brilliant and worth quoting more:
In 1924, Stalin specifically defended the retention of "repressive institutions" (mainly the army and secret police). The reason was that "as long as there is a capitalist encirclement, there is a danger of intervention and all its consequences." According to this theory, from then on, all domestic opposition forces in Russia were uniformly portrayed as agents of foreign reactionary forces hostile to the Soviet regime.
For the same reason, they made a great effort to emphasize the fundamental antagonism between capitalism and communism, an early communist view. Clearly, many signs indicate that this view is untenable in reality. The reality associated with this view is obscured by the following facts: one is the existence of hostility toward the Soviet Union provoked by its philosophy and methods, and the other is the coincidence of the existence of certain military powers, especially Nazi Germany and Japan in the late 1930s, which did indeed have plans to invade the Soviet Union. However, ample facts show that Moscow's emphasis on the threat to the Soviet Union from the outside world was not based on the reality of foreign hostility, but on the justification for maintaining its domestic dictatorial rule.
Consequently, the maintenance of the Soviet power model—the establishment of supreme authority at home, accompanied by the cultivation of a near-myth of foreign hostility toward the Soviet Union that cannot be alleviated—all this successfully shaped the actual Soviet power machine we know today. [8] (pp156-157) (Emphasis added by the author)
The world war was not a capitalist problem as Stalin claimed; it was just a "coincidence" that there were anti-Soviet German and Japanese militarisms in the outside world. Did Kennan forget the fact that foreign powers, including U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, militarily intervened in the nascent Soviet regime? No, he did not. His logic in refuting Stalin was:
In fact, the disagreement between Britain and the United States was not the main contradiction in the Western world. Aside from the Axis powers, no capitalist country joined the anti-Soviet crusade to resolve its own conflicts. Far from turning an imperialist war into a civil war and revolution, the Soviet Union pledged to fight alongside the major capitalist powers for a common goal. [11] (pp.276)
If the Axis powers could be excluded, Europe would indeed not be the cradle of World War II. Kennan actually wanted to say that the U.S.-Western civilization was not the origin of the war; the Axis powers were just an exception. The reason the Soviet Union was willing to fight alongside the major capitalist powers was the need for a balance of imperial power, which proved that "the Soviet party's line was not based on an objective analysis of the situation outside Russia; it had virtually nothing to do with circumstances beyond Russia's borders; it sprang primarily from the basic needs of Russia that had existed before the war and still existed today".[11] (pp.276) Thus, the world war was not a problem of the imbalance of the world capitalist system, but an internal problem between Europe and the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was the hostility between the Soviet Union as a continuation of the Tsarist Empire and the Western Christian civilized world, and it was the traditional European balance of power theory that determined the reason for Soviet participation in the war. In this way, Kennan obscured the history of Europe as the origin of fascism and colonialism, negated that Soviet socialism itself was a product of the failure of capitalism in World War I, and ignored the seeds of fascism buried by the Paris Peace Conference led by Wilson. Thus, while acquitting Europe of starting the world war, Kennan denied the nature of World War II as a world anti-fascist war and a war of national liberation, and denied the peaceful will of Soviet socialism. This is the legacy inherited and carried forward by the new Cold War cheerleaders today in the name of new and old realism.
American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition
George F. Kennan
Social Sciences Academic Press, 2013
This paved the way for the following "diagnosis": "de-communization" cannot eliminate Moscow's "dictatorship"; the superposition of "communization" and ethnicity is the original sin of Russia. This is why, in the Russia-Ukraine war, this logic targeting the Stalin era is still the main description used by the U.S./NATO and their Western media regarding Russia's "dictatorship"—"de-communized" Russia is getting what it deserves. This is determined by another reason Kennan used to justify Soviet "dictatorship": geographical factors and national character. The unique and extremely intense fanaticism and wariness of the Russian people are incompatible with the Anglo-Saxon tradition of compromise, so a lasting separation of powers is impossible. From the Russian Asiatic world that nurtured them, a mentality of extreme suspicion toward the long-term peaceful coexistence of competing forces was formed. After centuries of skirmishes with nomadic peoples on a vast, defenseless plain, qualities such as caution, deliberation, flexibility, and deceit were revered and shared by the Russians and "Eastern peoples".
The transformation of the Chinese and Russian revolutions and socialism of the twentieth century into an "Oriental problem" of "Asiatic despotism" is a Western-centric discourse with ancient origins. The so-called "Eastern peoples" self-evidently include China, another representative of "Asiatic despotism". Kennan's understanding of China reflects a typical Eurocentric perspective. These ideas of his did not begin with the Long Telegram; in his documents and speeches in the 1930s, he emphasized the shaping of the Russian character by "tradition and environment" into "typical Oriental despotism". The vast land of Russia led to an extremist tendency in the Russians, making them unable to accept reconciliation. [11] (pp.39-40) These assertions, as a projection of the ancient European ideology of Oriental "Asiatic despotism," were not Kennan's exclusive domain but were at the core of European universalism. [13] This is why the "de-communization" from Yeltsin to Putin did not allow Russia to escape the iron cage of Cold War ideology. Kennan was the originator of transforming fascism born out of the capitalist crisis in Europe into an "Oriental problem". This is also the self-contradictory predicament of the new Kennanists who advocate for containment, especially after the large-scale rise of right-wing populism and fascism within the U.S. and the West. This is the reason why the theory of "offensive realism" came into being and stepped in to save the day.
John Lewis Gaddis's praise of Kennan is precisely this: he determined that the Soviet Union was driven by the dual wheels of Russian historical tradition and Bolshevik ideology—which was embodied in Stalin's personality—and therefore, the American postwar blueprint had to change its alliance with the Soviet Union because the U.S.S.R.'s "Soviet" regime was never a normal state willing to establish mutual international security with other countries. 7 Kennan's agenda-setting, through the continuous reproduction by mass media and Cold War historiography, led to a cognitive "iron rule"/iron curtain (stereotype) of the Cold War—post-Cold War—new Cold War, which is still projected onto today's Russia-Ukraine war and the new Cold War of the 21st century. Kennan emphasized that the internal problems of the Soviet Union-Russia were the cause of the Cold War, preemptively deflecting in the war of public opinion the international community's doubts about the U.S. launching the Cold War. Under this narrative, Russia's "dictatorship," whether or not it was communized, was inevitable. The ideological iron cage of "civilizational theory" that Kennan tailor-made for the Soviet Union/Russia was the prelude to Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech on March 5, 1946. Kennan did not represent himself, but a new force: Trumanism, which was the Anglo-American union's new imperialism-colonialism. Without the demands of Trumanism, Kennan could not have become the father of the Cold War; he filled the vacant position of the apologist for Trumanism. The contemporary rival Walter Lippmann acutely realized that Kennan's article was a major event and an "all-important document" of Truman's foreign policy. [12] (pp.4)
Image Caption: 1945, Stalin, Truman, and Churchill at the Potsdam Conference.
- The Substance of the Long Telegram: Containing the Soviet Path of Industrialization
After completing the ideological distinction between friend and foe based on the "racial theory" and geopolitical theory of Russian "dictatorship," the second major theme of Kennan's discourse was the issue of Soviet industrialization, which was also the goal of containment.
This part was the second main point of Kennan's attack on Stalin's speech, namely arguing that the Soviet Union's heavy industry-oriented industrial development path was a product of its dictatorship, not a product of the Second World War.
The Kremlin also proved that it could establish a foundation of heavy industry in Russia without regard to the interests of the people. Although this process was not yet complete, it was growing and approaching the level of other major industrial countries. Yet all this, whether for maintaining domestic political security or establishing heavy industry, was achieved at the cost of sacrificing people's lives, dashing their hopes, and an astonishing expenditure of their physical energy. It made the use of forced labor necessary on a scale unprecedented in a modern society under peaceful conditions. It has led to the neglect and harm of other aspects of Soviet economic life, especially agriculture, consumer goods production, housing construction, and transportation.
In addition, the war cost Russia more, with severe damage, huge casualties, and exhausted people. For the above reasons, the Russian people today are physically and mentally exhausted. The masses are disappointed, have doubts, and are no longer as easily influenced as before. If the Soviet regime still had a magical charm for its followers abroad, it was no longer as effective at home. The fact that the people seized with great enthusiasm the brief respite given to religion for tactical reasons during the war clearly shows that the people did not show much faith and dedication to the goals of this regime.
......
We see that the facts of Soviet economic development show amazing progress in some areas, but this development is not firm, is uneven, and unbalanced. The Russian communists who talk about "uneven capitalist development" should blush when they think of their own national economy. The proportion of certain areas of the Soviet economy, such as metallurgy and machine manufacturing, far exceeds that of other sectors. This country does not have a real road network, only a relatively primitive railway network, yet it is striving to become one of the world's industrial powers in a short period of time. Although they have done a lot to improve labor productivity and teach simple peasants how to operate machines, the problem of equipment maintenance and upkeep is a serious defect that needs immediate attention in all Soviet economic sectors. Construction is hasty and of poor quality, and depreciation is bound to be very high. It is hard to imagine that these drawbacks can be corrected in a short period by a physically and mentally exhausted and demoralized people living under the shadow of fear and coercion. If these drawbacks cannot be overcome, Russia will remain an economically fragile and, in a sense, weak country. It can export its enthusiasm and show the strange charm of its primitive political vitality, but it cannot support those exports with true material power and prosperity. [8] (pp.167-170) (Emphasis added by the author)
By using "racial theory" to deny the existence of an external threat to the Soviet Union, Kennan then attributed the Soviet Union's sacrifice for the anti-fascist war—the unbalanced economic development oriented toward heavy industry—to the "dictatorship" problem within the Soviet regime. Kennan initiated the methodology of the new and old Cold War ideological war: through cognitive transfer, he used the physical and mental price paid by the Soviet people for the world war to overthrow Stalin's defense of the Soviet Union's heavy industry-first development path, denying the decisive contribution of the Soviet Red Army to the anti-fascist war in World War II, and creating a legitimate cover for the "containment" of the Soviet industrialization strategy: the binary opposition between freedom and despotism/civilization and barbarism.
Was Kennan unable to recognize the irreplaceable contribution of the Soviet Red Army to world peace? On the contrary, this was precisely the reason why the Soviet Union had to be contained. In his diary in 1943, Kennan wrote that when a German prisoner accused the Americans of destroying European cultural values and handing Europe over to Bolshevism, "my answer was: stop talking about Bolshevism, because we did not invite the Soviets into Eastern Europe and then attack them... In any case, let's assume that even if we once again brought disaster to Europe, the fault still lies with Germany, because it was they who forced us into Europe". [10] (pp.148)Kennan was very clear that the world war was a crisis of European civilization, so why should the Soviet Union be contained? Because Christian European civilization could not be handed over to the Soviet Union.
On September 19, 1952, during his short tenure as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Kennan likened the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany in a press interview at a German airport, which led to a sharp attack by Pravda on September 26 and a public declaration of him as a persona non grata by the Soviet government on October 3. He became the only U.S. ambassador to be expelled from the Soviet Union. For his contribution to this Cold War hegemonic discourse framework, his expulsion was not unjust. It was on this basis that Kennan's official biographer and the standard-bearer of post-revisionist Cold War history, John Lewis Gaddis, further traced the U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance to a "Faustian bargain". Defending the American Cold War inevitably meant rewriting the history of the anti-fascist war of World War II :
"Containment" is the term generally used to characterize post-war American policy toward the Soviet Union. It was a series of efforts to deal with the consequences of that wartime Faustian bargain. This idea meant preventing the Soviet Union from using the power and status it gained in that conflict to reshape the post-war international order. That was a prospect as dangerous from a Western perspective as the scene that Germany or Japan would have realized had they had the chance. [14] (pp.10) (Emphasis added by the author)
When the "Faustian bargain" became the cloak for the treacherous Truman Doctrine, containment had to be explained ideologically as a time when two devils, German fascism and Soviet communism, were rising, and the U.S. needed to ally with one to defeat the other, and then destroy the final "Faust"—this laid the basic framework for the hegemonic worldview of mainstream American Cold War history, which equated German and Japanese fascism with its wartime ally, the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had to become a demon, a force more evil than German and Japanese fascism, for containment to gain legitimacy; otherwise, the narrative that the two major allies of the anti-fascist war would become enemies at the moment of victory would be an absurd one that could not be completed in the public sphere.
But the real question that needs to be answered is why such a hegemonic narrative has occupied the dominant position in world history for eighty years. It is because of this logic that the victorious outcomes of the world anti-fascist war, especially the Yalta system, were rapidly eroded after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and President Trump's public appeal for overseas territories was a matter of course. This is actually a powerful restoration of the imperialist-colonialist discourse that dominated the two world wars.
And why was the U.S. containment policy able to be built on such a flawed argument by Kennan that violated the general expectations of the international community? It was not merely because of the "relentless logic" (Gaddis's words) and clever rhetoric of Kennan's Long Telegram. The destruction of people's lives through containing the Soviet Union's industrial development was indeed a manifestation of "ruthlessness". More importantly, it was the key to controlling the rudder of history: the imperialist logic that the U.S. Empire, which rose from World War II, had the ability to contain the Soviet Union's industrial development.
The essence of the Long Telegram was to contain Soviet industrialization, to destroy its momentum, to prevent its recovery, to trap the Soviet Union in the ruins of World War II, to destroy the people's trust in the regime physically and spiritually, and to undermine the unity and efficiency of the party as a political tool. In this way, the Soviet Union would overnight change from one of the most powerful countries to one of the most fragile and pitiful. The debate over whether Kennan's "containment" policy was political or military missed the point. Because whether political or military, it must be based on seizing the industrialization frontier. Just as Kennan's own self-description: what matters is not peace, but whose peace it is; the contest for industrialization determines who is qualified to raise the banner of "peace"—on this basis, the position of standard-bearer on the ideological battlefield can be established.
In fact, Kennan was not a pacifist. In 1946, while serving as Deputy Director of the Center for Foreign Affairs at the National War College—the same time he was writing the "X" article—he explicitly argued that containing Soviet industrialization was a prerequisite for the Cold War, and if this could not be done, nuclear weapons were necessary. "If Soviet military industry progresses faster than the United States, 'it will be just for us to consider a preventive war.' Including the use of nuclear weapons: 'Ten nuclear bombs will be almost enough to destroy the Soviet Union's war potential without serious casualties or damage to the American reputation'".[15] (pp.29) In this sense, containment was a product of the militarization of the world led by the United States, and it was inseparable from nuclear deterrence.
Kennan called on the U.S. not to wait passively but to take full advantage of its post-war advantages—the military industrial advantage—to act to influence the development of Russia internally and the entire international communist movement. The decision-making power was in the hands of the United States. For this, he appealed to manifest destiny: the post-war relationship between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was a test of the value of the American nation as a world nation. Thank God for enabling the American people to accept this unchangeable challenge, as American national security depended on its own unity and the acceptance of the moral and political leadership mission that history required it to bear—a mission backed by nuclear superiority.
In a speech at Princeton University in 1954, after he was expelled from the State Department, Kennan more clearly explained the relationship between the theory of containment and industrialism. The reason for containing the Soviet Union was not that it was going to invade the West—as mainstream American media claimed—but the opposite. "I have never seen any evidence that the Soviet leaders at any time after the war (or for that matter, before the war) expected a major war to occur between the Soviet Union and the principal capitalist powers, or that they counted on such a war as a proper means to their ends".[16] (pp.47) The only reason to contain the Soviet Union was that it was the only land power with the industrial-military capability to threaten the United States that could not be controlled. The other four industrial-military power regions were sea powers that the U.S. could control.
*Today, when large-scale war means highly complex and expensive weapons and the centralized control of large numbers of people, large-scale military power, especially military power that has a land-and-sea nature and can reach and counter our power within our own country, can only be formed in a handful of regions on Earth: in those regions, a major industrial power with an ample supply of raw materials is combined with a large population of educated and skilled manpower. Our North American region is one of the centers of this military-industrial power. There are only four other such regions in the world. They are all in the Northern Hemisphere. Two of them are the United Kingdom and Japan, which are located off the coasts of the Eurasian continent and belong to the island and ocean parts of the Earth, of which we Americans are also a part. The other two are located in the interior of the Eurasian continent, one of which is composed of Germany and the industrial areas adjacent to Germany—the Rhineland, Silesia, Bohemia, and Austria. It mainly relies on the metallurgical resources of the Rhine basin, Silesia, and the Alps. The other is the Soviet Union proper, which also relies on the combination of coal from the Donbas and Western Siberia, iron ore and light metals from the Urals, and energy resources from the Volga-Caspian basin. I repeat, today there is no other place in the world besides these five regions where large-scale military-industrial power can be formed. [16] (pp.43-44)(Emphasis added by the author)
At the time, China did not have the capability for a military industry, and Kennan did not see such a prospect. "For example, China is not one of these five important places; its resources are far from this level. Therefore, it means that the core of our problem is to prevent the military-industrial potential of the entire Eurasian continent from being concentrated under the control of a single major power to threaten the interests of the island and ocean regions of the Earth".[16] (pp.44)
The logic behind containment was the European balance of power theory centered on the U.S.. On this balance of power map, the United Kingdom and Japan were both American island alliances. Japan could be seen as the Britain of the Pacific, "similar to the geographical position of the United Kingdom in the Atlantic," representing the world's military-industrial sea power that would be controlled by the post-war U.S.. The rise of the Soviet military-industrial power as a land power needed to be contained because it was outside of U.S. control. Therefore, before 1939, even with ideological differences, the Soviet Union "did not constitute a serious direct threat to the security of Central and Western Europe". "If we can no longer say this today, then this is mainly due to the fact that the Soviet Union has controlled the material, technical, and human resources of the Baltic States, East Germany, and the Eastern European satellite states".[16] (pp.45) In other words, it had the potential to compete with the U.S. on land.
Image Caption: During World War II, American geopolitical strategist Nicholas Spykman proposed controlling the Eurasian Rimland, including Britain and Japan, forming two sides of the same containment strategy as Kennan.
In other words, the containment of the Soviet Union was determined by its military-industrial capability. The post-war Soviet Union strengthened the technical and industrial foundation of its military power and actually controlled the military and political status of the heart of Central Europe and the Northeast China-Korean region. It controlled "a part of the resources necessary for the restoration of German and Japanese power, thus placing it in a favorable position to hinder and delay the revival of this power". Especially the occupation of East Germany gave the Soviet Union a military development center in the heart of Europe, while before 1939, Soviet power was blocked behind this area. "This leads us to the conclusion that, in terms of military potential, the reason Russia has recently enjoyed an arrogant position in the balance of power is mainly due to the temporary weakening of Germany and Japan in the last world war and the expansion of the Soviet Union's military sphere of influence through military actions at the end of the war".[16] (pp.45-46) In this sense, the victorious achievements of the Soviet Red Army in the anti-fascist war had to be contained.
In fact, bringing the defeated fascist nations of Germany and Japan under the wing of the U.S. to control worldwide military-industrial power was the core of U.S. hegemony after World War II. The U.S., through its participation in World War II and the subsequent Cold War, successfully built Western Europe and Japan into front-line positions against the Soviet Union and brought the world's most important industrial economic circles and the oil of the Persian Gulf into its pocket. This was the greatest imperial dividend the U.S. gained in the twentieth century. It was precisely because of the victory of anti-fascism that the Soviet Union became an object the U.S. had to contain. The essence of containment was to force the Soviet Union out of Europe and seize the land power it had gained through World War II, which meant rewriting the Yalta system that established the post-World War II world order. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, NATO's eastward expansion and peace crises in Northeast Asia, including the Taiwan Strait crisis, were extensions of this logic. In this sense, the mission of the Cold War was to destroy the Yalta system until it collapsed: 1946 was the starting point, 1991 the endpoint, and today's Russia-Ukraine war is its result, while President Trump's American coup is the latest turning point.
All of this originated from the Cold War.
(III) "Peaceful Evolution" or Mutual Destruction: The Bottom Line of Kennan's Containment Thinking
There is a "small industry" in Cold War history Kennan studies on whether and why Kennan's containment thinking shifted. [14] (pp.31,395) Perry Anderson attributed it to Kennan's volatile personal character, arguing that the containment Kennan set for American global intervention and counter-revolutionary actions was actually a "war of attrition" with no limits on scope and means. He pointed out that Kennan's right-wing conservative stance, which was critical of American democracy, had always been an internal part of the U.S. ideological machine. John Lewis Gaddis determined it was a strategic shift from comprehensive containment to selective containment, which was a manifestation of the theory of the balance of power. [14] (60-69)
Since 1949, Kennan advocated for diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union, opposed the U.S. escalating the arms race with the Soviet Union, advocated for U.S. and Soviet troop withdrawal to allow for a unified and neutral post-war Germany, opposed the continuous "militarization" of the U.S. in the Third World, opposed the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and opposed NATO's eastward expansion, among other things. All these proposals were rejected. He argued that containing "peaceful evolution" was more in the interest of the U.S. and the West, and war would only backfire. This was because Kennan found that the "military containment" the U.S. was engaged in was not opening anything but the door to a third world war for the U.S.. His Eurocentric "civilizational" instinct was awakened : "War is a process which in itself achieves no positive ends: military victory is only a necessary condition for some more positive, further achievement. Its role is to make possible, not to guarantee, that achievement. We can have the moral courage to remind ourselves that the major international violence, **in terms of its value to our civilization, is a form of our collective bankruptcy—even for those who consider themselves correct".[8] (pp.198) The Second World War was, first and foremost, the bankruptcy of European civilization, and the Third World War, if it broke out, would be the same. In this sense, he was very clear that Europe was the cradle of world wars.
This is the logic behind Kennan's repeated repentance and defense that containment was a non-military political proposal—he pleaded to prevent European civilization from being destroyed in the flames of a Third World War, and this was his bottom line. For this reason, Kennan constantly pleaded that his containment blueprint was political and economic. Politically, it was the activation of the state ideological machine—which is also why Kennan was one of the founders of Cold War ideological state agencies such as the CIA and Radio Free Europe. And Kennan's conception and promotion of the Cold War as an ideological intelligence war are still worth our "appreciation" today:
In the evening, I was invited to a discussion meeting with officials from various departments of the State Department to introduce our intelligence work to senators and discuss proposals to vigorously develop intelligence work... Our radio broadcasts should now be aimed at those who listen the most, that is, the privileged and influential figures within the ruling group. In dealing with these people, we don't need to preach our virtues to them, nor do we need to win their sympathy. They are cold-blooded animals with blood on their hands, and in normal circumstances, we don't want to associate with such people. To deal with such people, we should first instill suspicion, hesitation, and misgivings in their hearts, so that they are convinced that they have embarked on a criminal path. We must use all means to plant evil in their hearts, to make them doubt the wisdom of their leaders, the stability of their great cause, the loyalty of their comrades and superiors, and the prospect of victory. There is no denying that this is a despicable method; it is also a political war, and war is never pleasant. If we want to effectively spread ideas to the Soviets, we must do this. [10] (pp.250)(Emphasis added by the author)
In terms of the U.S. completely winning in the "despicable" "political war," Kennan had no bottom line. However, his bottom line for containment was to strangle the development of Soviet industrialization economically, rather than through mutual destruction in a nuclear war. This was also his true nature as a "realist" diplomatic politician.
However, Mearsheimer coldly denied Kennan's own "revisionism". He refuted Kennan's criticism that American leaders made mistakes by "attributing goals and intentions to Soviet leaders that they did not actually have, and hastily concluding that Soviet leaders were like Hitler and his accomplices". "Although this retrospective assessment may be correct, Kennan's 'X' article played a key role in convincing the American elite that the Soviet Union was an expansionist force as dangerous as Nazi Germany".
Although his article in Foreign Affairs did not suggest that the Soviet Union was planning to invade Western Europe, it still described the Soviet Union as a potential military threat. This is why Kennan demanded that containment, based on 'unalterable counterforce,' be implemented wherever Moscow attempted to expand. Such rhetoric would involuntarily contribute to the militarization of the U.S.-Soviet competition. Therefore, Kennan is at least partly responsible for the militarized form of containment.[8] (pp.21-22) (Emphasis added by the author)
This in fact admits that the Cold War instigators' accusation of Stalin's military offensive threat to Western Europe was nothing but a prelude to the "washing powder" incident in Iraq in the 21st century. It also proved the continuation of the U.S. Empire's Cold War-post-Cold War era logic of military intervention, with Kennan playing the role of the man holding the test tube of white powder. Subsequent defenses can no longer save the humanitarian tragedies in the war-torn Middle East, including the huge price the U.S. has paid and is paying today.
Kennan's problem was that when he activated the state machine for the containment strategy, he was "idealistic," meaning he used ideological distinctions, or in the most classical sense, a distortion of reality, as the basis for his argument. But when he discovered that this ideology had forgotten its disconnect from reality, he became a "realist". This gap between the Cold War ideology and reality was an abyss he could not cross, and Kennan thus fell into a lifelong paradox and nightmare from which he could not escape. This nightmare is the reality of the United States today.
(To be continued)
Completed in Shanghai, April 5, 2025.
References
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[5][American] Walter LaFeber. America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-2006 [M]. Translated by Niu Ke, et al., Beijing: World Book Publishing Company, 2011.
[6]Selected Works of Stalin (1934-1952) [M]. Beijing: People's Publishing House, 1985.
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[8][American] George F. Kennan. American Diplomacy: Sixtieth-Anniversary Expanded Edition [M]. Translated by Lei Jianfeng, Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2013.
[9][American] John J. Mearsheimer. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics [M]. Translated by Wang Yiwei and Tang Xiaosong, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2015.
[10][American] George Kennan. The Kennan Diaries [M]. Edited by Frank Costigliola, Translated by Cao Mingyu, Beijing: CITIC Press Group, 2016.
[11]Zhang Xiaoming. A Study of George Kennan's Containment Thinking (Expanded Edition)[M]. Beijing: World Affairs Press, 2021.
[12][American] Walter Lippmann. The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy [M]. Translated by Qiu Renda, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1959.
[13]Lü Xinyu. "'Asiatic Despotism' and the Debate on the Revolutions and Paths of China and the Soviet Union (Russia) in the 20th Century—Also on Mr. Qin Hui's 'Athens (Roman) Path' Theory" [J].
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[14][American] John Lewis Gaddis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Expanded Edition) [M]. Translated by Shi Yinhong, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2019.
[15][English] Perry Anderson. American Foreign Policy and Its Think Tanks [M]. Translated by Li Yan, Beijing: Jincheng Publishing House, 2017.
[16][American] George Kennan. American Foreign Policy: The Realities [M]. Translated by Wang Dianchen and Chen Shaoheng, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1958.
1.See Paul Krugman: Autogolpe: What's really happening beneath the Musk/Trump chaos.
2.See U.S. Department of Defense official X account; People's Daily, March 29, 2025: "U.S. Defense Secretary Praises 'Brave' Japanese Military, Arousing Public Anger: Do You Remember Who Attacked Pearl Harbor?".
3.See Donald E. Davis. The First Cold War: Woodrow Wilson's Legacy on U.S.-Soviet Relations. Translated by Xu Yihua, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007.
4.See Shen Zhihua. The Origin of the Cold War: Post-War Soviet Foreign Policy and Its Transformation. Beijing: Jiuzhou Publishing House, 2013, p. 71.
5.See John Lewis Gaddis. George F. Kennan: An American Life, New York: The Penguin Press, 2011, p. 132. The original text is: "It qualified nothing, advanced no alternatives, and made no apologies for seeing everything in a single snapshot. It was the geopolitical equivalent of a medical X-ray, penetrating beneath alarming symptoms to yield at first clarity, then comprehension, and finally by implication a course of treatment.".
6.For the discussion on whether the "containment" in these two texts is political or includes military issues, see Zhang Xiaoming,
A Study of George Kennan's Containment Thinking, pp. 61-64.
7.See John Lewis Gaddis. George F. Kennan: An American Life, New York: The Penguin Press, 2011, p. 184. The original text is: "The roots of Soviet policy lay not in that brief experience but much further back in Russian history and much more deeply in Bolshevik ideology. It was to these centers of gravity that Stalin was now returning. The Grand Alliance could not be a blueprint for the postwar world because the U.S.S.R. had never been, and as currently constituted would never be, a normal state, willing to work with others to establish a mutually satisfactory international order.".