Mark Danner’s article, “Marooned in the Cold War: America, the Alliance, and the Quest for a Vanished World,” which was published in the fall 1997 issue of this journal, elicited a strong response from prominent writers in government and out. An exchange of letters between Richard Holbrooke, former assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and Mr. Danner appeared in our winter 1997/98 issue. In the following pages, we are pleased to publish letters in response to “Marooned in the Cold War” addressed to Mr. Danner by the eminent historian and diplomat George F. Kennan, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, and Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on International Relations, along with Mr. Danner’s replies.


From George F. Kennan:

I have read the article twice, once upon receiving it and again just a short time ago, before writing this letter. It is hard for me to express, without pressing the border of the fulsome, my reactions to it. Let me just say that I have seen no finer treatment than this one, both as a summary of the salient features of the conduct of American policy in earlier decades of this century, and as a treatment of the bewilderments into which we are now heading. What a pity, I find myself thinking, that this article could not be given the wide exposure it deserves and allowed to serve as corner-stone for a national debate on the problems and directions of American policy at this crucial post-Cold War moment. To put it briefly, the article is, to my way of thinking, in all respects excellent.

That neither this article, nor any other broad and thoughtful treatment of the questions you write about, could serve the purpose I have just mentioned, is obvious. It would be drowned in the cacophony created by the television, computer, and advertising industries which, each in its way, if they were to take any notice of it at all, would do so only in order to tear it to pieces and to exploit individual pieces as over-simplified sound-bites, here today and gone tomorrow. In itself, as I am sure you would agree, what is at stake in this sad state of affairs is a problem of tragic and momentous importance; for the situation now prevailing stands firmly in the way of the creation in influential American opinion of any quiet thoughtful concepts of American policy and hence of any really useful and constructive employment of the great and unique potential weight of this country in world affairs. But the national political establishment, as now existing, has shown itself totally incapable even of understanding the true dimensions of this problem, and much less in tackling it effectively; and one cannot now look to it for anything more than what it is capable of giving.

This was the reason why, in one of my books (Around the Cragged Hill) I urged the establishment of a wholly nonpolitical but prestigious advisory body, totally outside the boundaries of the political process, to address some of the deeper problems of the country and to let its advice, conclusions, and recommendations be pondered by presidents, Congresses, state and local governments, and people at large. But never, I am sure, have any of my words ever met with less resonance than did the pages on which that suggestion was put forward; and with this total indifference facing me, I have seen no reason to press it further.

So much for the article in general. Now for one nit-pick and a couple of comments.

You refer to the Russians, on page 18, as having “accepted” the expansion of the NATO borders. Whether this is or is not a correct understanding depends on the meaning you give to the word “accepted.” If it be taken to mean that one accepts something highly unwillingly and regretfully, persuaded that one has no other alternative, that is one thing. But if one accepts it in the sense that one has become persuaded of its merits, approves of it, welcomes it, and would not wish things to be otherwise, that, of course, is something else.

No one in authority in Russia today would, I am sure, accept the NATO expansion in the latter of these two senses. In the former? Yes, the vast majority would see it that way. What, after all, could they do about it? They could not oppose it by force of arms. The NATO leaders had said that they would not discuss it. They repeatedly emphasized that their decision was final, and that was that.

Yeltsin personally would probably accommodate himself to this state of affairs more easily than others would have done. He was plainly disinclined to make a serious issue of it in his relations with NATO, and with the United States in particular. But he too, has repeatedly stated publicly (and most recently only in the last few days) that he could not accept the expansion. On the contrary he regretted and deplored it. And in other sections of the regime, in the Parliament and among the military leadership, feelings were plainly angry and resentful. Neither of these circles, after all-neither the Parliamentarians nor the military leaders-had been, so far as the outsider can see, consulted or allowed to participate in the recent meetings between Yeltsin and Western leaders where these questions of the NATO expansion were discussed. The military, in particular, have felt themselves humiliated and demeaned in their professional dignity by this unilateral decision on the part of the Western powers, and have seen it as a shameful exploitation of a temporary and quite abnormal weakness in their own military posture.

The American authors of the expansion, disquieted, I suspect, by some of the adverse reactions their initiative has unleashed, have been at pains to persuade us that the Russians have actually accepted it voluntarily, that they are now quite happy about it, and that it will cause no serious difficulty. The nationalist elements in the Russian public, they point out, consist primarily of older people, now a passing generation, who have never had great electoral support. The youth, they would say, have for the most part supported Yeltsin. And the common people don’t care.

Perhaps, perhaps. But the military have not yet been heard from. And aside from that, a process has now been put in motion that can hardly be stopped until NATO has come to take in practically all of Europe except the Balkans, at the risk of making of itself a dangerous absurdity rather than a meaningful alliance.

But enough of that. There is one more comment that I should like to make. Madame Albright is quoted as saying that NATO’s foundation, 50 years ago, “gave Europe confidence in economic recovery.” I would have to challenge that statement quite flatly. It was not at all the foundation of NATO but rather the Marshall Plan, put forward one to two years earlier, that had this effect. The foundation of NATO was actually a detraction from the beneficial effect that the Marshall Plan was at that time having on European opinion and particularly on the confidence of the Europeans in their own economic recovery. The foundation of NATO demanded that very large sums, which otherwise could have gone into the economic recovery process, were now to be diverted into the building up of armed forces in the center of Europe. And this, a number of us felt, was not only unnecessary, given the circumstances of that moment, but directly detrimental to certain of the positive developments which the Marshall Plan had put in motion.

The wider and more lasting basis for my own opposition to the NATO expansion will be visible to you, I think, from the enclosed copies of two of the final pages of my own last book (At a Century’s Ending), pages that were written, I seem to recall, at the end of the year 1994.

My congratulations, once more, on the qualities of your article, not the least, if not the most important, of which was the excellence of the writing.

—October 15, 1997

—October 3, 1997

—October 3, 1997

That said, however, I must admit that (as you suspect) I do not agree with your final point-that by now the “risks of proceeding with NATO enlargement are less than the risks of not proceeding.” Though I have heard versions of this phrase put forward many times, I have never heard an adequate or persuasive expression of what ex-actly these great “risks of not proceeding” actually are. Certainly such risks, whatever they are, seem not even in the same realm of importance as “keep[ing] relations with Russia on course.”

Quite frankly, it seems to me that if this policy is burdened with the weaknesses that you and I both see in it, one is obliged to make a strong argument to support this point-that is, that it is nonetheless better to go ahead with enlargement, simply because it has become too difficult or risky to turn back. Despite the eloquence of your letter, I do not find that you make such an argument. “Turning back” certainly would be unpleasant and embarrassing in many ways but no one has yet convinced me that these difficulties are not of a different, and palpably lesser, order than the contradictions, risks and obscurities of the policy itself.