our new guide to a dangerous world

IN FEBRUARY 1946In the middle of winter in Moscow, an American diplomat sent a remarkable telegram to Washington. On paper, George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ was an answer to a question about the Soviet worldview. In reality, Kennan proposed a strategy to manage competition among superpowers – an approach he later called “containment.” The Soviet Union had no interest in friendship, but was not interested in World War III, Kennan explained. Communist rulers were impervious to the ‘logic of reason’ but understood the ‘logic of force’ and knew that their regime was weaker than a united West. If Soviet expansionism were fought worldwide, a “general military conflict” could be avoided, until one day USSR softer or crumbled.