[PEN-L:1593] George Kennan

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Wed Dec 16 09:46:45 PST 1998



>Re Brad's: "The passage quoted from Kennan is *attacking* the "dovish"
>position within
>the Truman Administration. It is not an illustration of the dovish
>position."
>
>Please refresh my memory: With Henry Wallace gone from the scene, who
>were the Administration's advocates of the dovish position in 1948?
>
>Carl Remick

Oh, there were a lot of people who took the ideals of decolonization, democracy, human rights, and economic development very, very seriously indeed--practically everyone except the realist cabal in the State Department, in fact. An administration that believed that "we should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization" wouldn't have pursued the Marshall Plan; the creation of the IMF and the World Bank; the GATT to allow foreign exporters access to U.S. markets; much of U.S. post-WWII foreign policy up until the launching of the Korean War wa smade by people who considered objectives such as "human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization" to be very, very real.

That is what Noam Chomsky is trying to hide by claiming that George Kennan--a flint-eyed realist if there ever was one--was the "dovish wing" of the post-WWII American foreign policy establishment. He is trying to keep people from noticing that there ever was a guy named Harry Dexter White. He's trying to throw down the memory hole the historical memory of a powerful--and very effective--group that took very seriously indeed the ideals that Kennan thought naive.

Chomsky's trying to hide the ball, and keep you from knowing the history as it really happened...

Brad DeLong



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