[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
GEORGE KENNAN'S WISDOM
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I would like to bring to the attention of my
colleagues a speech recently delivered by Ambassador George F. Kennan
on the occasion of his receipt of the first George F. Kennan Award for
Distinguished Public Service.
Ambassador Kennan, a self-described man of this century--and I would
add, one of the century's most visionary statesmen--offers some
perspectives on the 100 years. I was particularly struck by the fact
that Ambassador Kennan, who defined the overriding theme of the cold
war period--containment--does not believe a central policy thrust is
definable at this time. He says: ``What we need is not any single
policy. That would be quite impossible at this point. What we need is a
variety of policies.''
I would like to extend my congratulations to Ambassador Kennan, for
whom I have the highest regard, for his speech and for his award.
Without objection, I would ask that the full text of Ambassador
Kennan's speech be printed in the Record at this point.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
Address of Ambassador George F. Kennan on the Occasion of His Receipt
of the First George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service
Waldorf-Astoria, New York City
October 17, 1994
Ambassador George F. Kennan: Mr. Flynn, Doctor Schwab,
ladies and gentlemen: I think you will all know without my
laboring the point how deeply I appreciate this honor. I feel
very inadequate to know how to acknowledge it. It would be
difficult for anyone, I think, to respond to the honor itself
and to the lovely things that have just been said. If the
task of this committee is, as I have always assumed it to be,
to promote sound and constructive thinking about the problems
of American foreign policy, then the conferring of this award
enables me to think that my own efforts of these past years
have been at least supplementary to those of the committee,
and that in itself gives me deep satisfaction and
encouragement.
When Dr. Schwab first spoke to me last spring about the
possibility of such an occasion, I told him that honored as I
would be, of course, by the award, I could not, for reasons
of age and health, contemplate giving an address. This
remains, for better or for worse, the situation, but I have
been told recently that there were expectations in one
quarter or another that I would say something about my view
of what should constitute the general thrust of American
foreign policy in this post cold war era, and this I will try
do do, although necessarily very briefly.
I must say, before I begin my remarks, that this is a very
intimidating group of people I have before me. I see a great
many people who know a lot more than I do about the things
I'll be talking about, and I feel a certain hesitation in
saying anything at all about our policy of the present day. I
am, after all, a man of this past century, and what we are
getting into now is the century that is about to dawn on us.
At times I thought I knew something about the century that
will soon pass; but I'm sure that I do not know nor can I
foresee a great deal about the century that is coming.
Nevertheless, I will say a few words.
If the suggestion is that I outline a central thrust of
American foreign policy to replace that which preoccupied us
during the period of the cold war, then I can say only that
this is a very difficult thing for me to respond to. I don't
think there is any central thrust of policy possible at this
time. It is a varied, very confused, very unbalanced, and
uncertain world that we face. What we need is not any single
policy. That would be quite impossible at this point. What we
need is a variety of policies. But perhaps there is one
unifying factor that could bring these things together, and
that is the question of motivation, of purpose, and what we
conceive ourselves to be doing. This question, I think, can
take two forms: One is a very natural traditional and
unavoidable concern for our military and political security
and for the security of our closest allies. The other is the
hope, endemic, I think, to all generations of Americans, that
we, as a great democratic people, will be able to play a
useful and effective role in promoting peace, stability, and
humane government in other parts of the world.
In the years since communism broke down, our military
security, providentially, has not been seriously threatened.
That is true for most though not all of our allies. So
perhaps it was only natural that we should have concentrated
a large part of our attention on and invested a large part of
our efforts in being helpful to others in troubled situations
involving, for the most part, countries other than those in
the advanced areas of Europe and the Far East. I have in
mind, of course, such places as Korea, Iraq, the Balkans, the
Near East, Somalia, and now Haiti.
I have few criticisms to make of the way in which we have
handled these situations. I have only admiration and pride
for the way in which our armed forces have conducted
themselves in performing the tasks to which they have been
assigned, tasks that, in many instances, were quite the
limits of their traditional training. I think that they have
been models of what military people can do in difficult
circumstances.
With the exception of Somalia and the still unfinished
intervention in Haiti, I do not see that our government had
any choice but to respond to those situations in the way that
it did. And, finally, after all the political wrangling and
jousting and mutual denunciations about foreign policy that
have gone on here at home, I consider that both
administrations, that of Mr. Bush and that of Mr. Clinton,
have handled these various situations diplomatically in a
reasonably sound and creditable manner. I hope that when
these involvements have been liquidated in a way that is
consistent with the preservation of the honor and dignity of
this country (and, in this instance, that is going to be, I
am afraid, a very long time), we will not be in too much of a
hurry to replace those involvements with others.
All that being said, I still have some anxieties to voice
about various ventures. But, first, I must say (and some of
you may find this hard to believe) that I have anxieties
about the highly dangerous and urgent problems, social,
political, and economic, that we have right here in our own
country. They are problems that the media have found it hard
to recognize and that the politicians have found it hard to
admit but I hope that these problems will soon become the
subject of national debate, that they will receive the
attention and the discussion that they deserve, and for this
it is desirable that we be not too distracted with the
involvements and problems beyond our borders.
Second, we have our relations with the other great powers,
and we must not permit our preoccupations with the less
developed world to distract us from doing justice to the
importance of those relations. We have before us in this
respect a situation, a providential situation, I think,
namely, that for the first time in modern history--the first
time that I can think of--there is a group of major powers to
which we belong whose relations are not marked by any great
and serious conflicts, by no conflicts, at least, that cannot
be alleviated by patience, understanding, negotiation, and
compromise. We have every reason to appreciate this
situation, to cherish it, and to do all in our power to
perpetuate it, remembering that good relations with great
powers, like those with small ones, require constant
attention and nurturing not only in crises but at all times.
Here too we must be careful not to take our relations with
great powers for granted, not to allow ourselves to be too
heavily distracted by involvements in other parts of the
world.
There is one other thing that I would like to mention about
the various involvements that we have been concentrating on
in the last two or three years. That is a very difficult one
for me to talk about, for it's one on which one can be easily
misunderstood: We have had a tendency to focus most of our
efforts (or, it seems to me, a great many of them) on
attempting to ensure democracy and human rights in other
parts of the world. Though this ideal does credit to our own
life and to our own aspirations and is one with which no one
can argue, I must say that I don't think that all of the
world is going to become democratic in our time no matter
what we do. And I'm always a little afraid, a little
disturbed, when I hear Americans talking to others about
democracy and human rights because I always hear an undertone
of self-congratulation, which I don't like. I don't like
speaking down to people. In many instances the problems of
other countries have been as severe as ours. And while we can
tell them or can show them by example the way that we feel
about these things, I think we should be very careful about
telling them how to behave. One of the things that bothers me
is that we have had a tendency to cast so many of these
involvements in terms of our own struggle for democracy and
human rights and done this in instances in which what we
really should have been talking about (but which, for some
curious reason, Americans never like to talk about) is simply
our own national interest.
Not least among the problems that we have to handle in our
relations with the major powers and some of the others as
well is the continuing widespread development, cultivation,
and proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of
mass destruction. That is not merely a regional problem;
it is a global one that involves a little less than the
whole future of humanity and its stake in the future of
civilization. I have never forgotten Robert Oppenheimer's
reply when Ed Murrow asked him in a television interview
whether humanity could survive a major nuclear war. ``I
don't know, I don't know,'' Oppenheimer replied. ``But it
would take the greatest act of faith to believe that what
might survive it would be human.'' That remark, if
anything, remains as true today as it was when Oppenheimer
made it, for the control of this form of weaponry now
rests in a larger number of hands. I believe that we, as
the first country to have developed those weapons and the
only one to use them against another population, and a
largely helpless one at that, have a great and special
responsibility and even a duty to take the lead in
bringing those weapons under eventual control either
through international organs or in having them eliminated
from national arsenals.
Meeting this responsibility will require us to persuade
others and to impose no small measure of restraint and
scrutiny on our own words and actions. I welcome and commend
the measures that we, the Russians, and others have
undertaken recently. They are encouraging developments but
are far from sufficient to meet the need. I greatly hope that
we will now take a new look at this entire problem and will
give to it the attention that it warrants. This is the least
we can do for our children and our grandchildren.
There you have it: a voice from the century that is now
passing to the inhabitants of the one about to begin. As
always, when an older person tries to talk to younger people
(and, believe me, practically everyone in this hall is
younger than I), much of what he or she says is boring, for
older people have a tendency to repeat themselves and talk
about things seemingly removed from the interests and
thoughts of their listeners. But it has been known to happen,
here and there, that a small portion of what an oldster has
had to say had relevance for the future as well as for the
past. In this instance I leave that for you to judge. I
cannot. I thank you for your attention.
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