by CKR
I’ve seen several tipping points in the past couple of weeks. One was that far too many people I admired and loved died. So when it came George Kennan’s turn, I just didn’t have anything more in me to say, although I wanted very much to. I’ve found a couple of good tributes in the blogosphere. I don’t agree with everything in these tributes (ZenPundit, The Daily Demarche), nor with everything in those two blogs, but perhaps that in itself is a tribute to Kennan.
Kennan’s genius was in finding—not so much a middle way—but a balance point in the competition of powers and then defining that balance in practical ways. This is particularly important now, when discussion and much thinking has been flattened out into “good” and “evil.” It has become more difficult to think about nuanced diplomacy or the values of treaties in the shadow of the overemphasis on military action.
I had a conversation today with someone who spends a fair amount of time on foreign affairs. “Why couldn’t the US flatten North Korea with a few nukes?” he asked. I pointed out that the fallout would devastate South Korea and Japan, that North Korea can bluster about its putative nukes because it holds those two countries hostage. And then we went on to his concept that an outlaw like Saddam Hussein could invalidate any extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Kennan’s so-called errors came out of his search for balance, hence his trepidations about admitting the Baltic States into NATO. Much as I appreciate the value of extending this military umbrella to people I love, I can also see that repercussions of this decision may eventually be more negative than positive. We haven’t seen the full outcome yet, and I just don’t know that Kennan won’t be proved right.
He was here for 101 years. I’ll miss him along with Ray and Larry and Hans Bethe and, yes, Hunter Thompson and Sandra Dee.