| George F. Kennan was an advisor, diplomat, political analyst, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. During his term as the State Department's first director of the Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s, his writings gave rise to the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionistic 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, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan. Shortly after the doctrine had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005. |
