The Long Telegram, 22 February 1946

• George Kennan, the charge d’affaires (2nd ranking officer) in the US embassy in Moscow, sent a lengthy despatch to the US State Department in Washington 
• Historian John Gladdis regarded this message as being fundamental in shaping US policy towards the USSR and ultimately determining the USA’s role as a global power
• Keenan had long favoured the USA adopting a hard line against the USSR
• Pre-Yalta, he had supported the idea of splitting Europe into spheres of influence and defining a line across which Soviet and comm influence couldn’t cross
• Post-Yalta, he recognised the failings of FDR’s grand plan for international co-operation and the creation of a democratic post-war world structure 
• For Kennan, communism was uncompromising in its ideological threat to the free world 
• Believed Stalin wanted to replace, in the minds of the Soviet people, the fear of Germany and Japan with the fear of the USA and Britain 
• This would legitimise the Stalinist regime but it meant that any attempt at compromise with Stalin would be futile 
• Almost an inevitability about the collapse in East-West relations 
• Primary culprit for the collapse was the USSR due to its intent to demonise the West for domestic political reasons 
• Emphasised that the USSR viewed the West as hostile and menacing 
• He drew some clear conclusions on the direction of US foreign policy 
• Argued that the USA must be prepared to threaten the use of force and ensure unity among its allies
• Significantly, he urged the USA to adopt a proactive role, particularly in Europe 
• His telegram referred to the urgency for action by the USA
• Kennan added to his initial thoughts by producing the so-called ‘X’ article 
• He called for a systematic and focused containment of Soviet expansionist tendencies
• The analysis that Soviet foreign policy was aggressive and ideologically driven, reasoned with HT’s growing certainty that the Soviet Union was not only an enemy of Western democratic values but also a threat to USA’s security 
• Sept 1946 – Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Nikolai Novikov, concluded that US FP was based on economic imperialism 
• The aim of the USA was to use its economic power to make states dependent upon it in order to establish its own global supremacy
• Early 1946 – the USA’s security had become as powerful a force in the emerging post-war international relations as that of the Soviet Union 
• Isolationism was not the way to protect the USA’s vital national interests
• The impact of the ‘Long Telegram’ was to feed the seeds of change, but the change would come a year later