[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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