The Long Telegram

It was on this date seventy-one years ago, February 22, 1946, that one of the longest and most influential telegrams in history was sent. Milwaukee, WI born George Keenan was the Charge d’ Affaires in Moscow in 1946 and was asked on February 3, 1946 to provide his opinion on strategy to utilize in adopting a policy of  how to deal with the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.  It only made sense that they turned to Keenan, who was in Mosocow at the time for advice. Telegrams were usually short and to the point, at least for private individuals, but this was/is the federal government where expensive hammers, bolts, and toilet seats not to mention long regulations are the rule.  Keenan’s 8,000 word document would set forth a new policy, although one he later felt was improperly implemented. While today we view the Soviet Union as being on the historical ash heap, the United States and Russia  still continue to have a difficult relationship. This historically long and complicated relationship is perhaps best suited to an excessively long telegram. One commentator has noted that most telegrams of that era involving the State Department never really made it to the necessary levels, and were dismissed; in that way it is like our emails of today. So many emails are received, there is so much data, that no one can really recall what was said when.  Just ask Hillary, or John Podesta.

George Keenan
Wikipedia

In the fall of 1945 the Soviet Union began further tactics to further imperial expansion and territorial domination. It was looking to claim territory it saw as belonging to its own version of manifest destiny, and so would begin to put in place the pieces of what would be dominance of smaller territories, and defacto domination of Eastern Europe.  However, as I have written in the past about WWII, the Soviets had territorial ambitions masked at the Yalta Conference, and the United States, with a then dying president failed in intelligence to really fathom what the Soviets were doing. As noted, it only was a matter of weeks before the Soviets broke the Yalta agreement.  They US was warned, but failed to heed the warning of another allied head of state regarding Soviet ambitions. The fall 1945 Soviet expansions began in the Balkans, which would presage Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. The United States during the last year of the war and just after had been duped by the dictator.  So it is interesting that US State Department officials were surprised when Stalin in a February 9, 1946 speech proclaimed the end of the WWII alliance, and promoted the development of five year successive plans to build up Soviet armaments and military.  The US WWII era lend-lease act had already given the Soviets a heads-up on equipment.  The US failed to recognize the Soviets taking of German scientists, and scientific equipment, and scientific papers as Berlin fell.

First page of 19 pages of the Long Telegram
Truman Library, U of Missouri

Keenan’s opinion would be put to rest the Pollyanna views of the State Department, albeit too late for many (think of Eastern Europe). The US, he proclaimed should set a policy to contain rather than appease or roll back to the Soviet Union was noticed by those in the Truman administration. Keenan would, a year later, publish a shorter work based on his long telegram in the highly regarded "Journal of Foreign Affairs," although he did so under the name Mr. X.  He used a pseudonym as he still worked for the State Department at the time. In the article, he reiterated the need to be firm and contain Soviet expansion. It was in 1948 when the US began employing what is known as the Truman Doctrine, to assist countries, particularly Greece and Turkey, vulnerable to Soviet takeover. Hence, one reason why Turkey is in NATO. This would also see the beginning of the Marshall Plan, where the US would provide over $12 billion in aid to Western Europe, Greece and Turkey. The US knew it had to give these democracies a leg up after all of the destruction from WWII.  In particular, a food shortage in the winter of 1945 to 1946 posed a threat to public order.  A threat to public order was a threat to democracy.  Today, the Marshall Plan would be valued at $120 billion. 1948 also saw the Berlin airlift, which began after the Soviets blocked all roads and railroads to and from Berlin for the three western powers in control of parts of Germany (France, US and Great Britain).  You should recall from history that Berlin was totally in the Soviet sector, although as the capital city, it too was split between the powers.  During the course of WWII Henry Morganthau, FDR's Secretary of the Treasury, was promoting Germany to be a pastoral state and that the Allied powers should take away the manufacturing capabilities of that nation. Former President Hoover, had visited post-war Germany and noted that the pastoral economy would not work even with a population decimated by war.   Hence, another reason for the Marshall plan.

Stalin

Truman's and subsequent administrations would enact Keenan’s policies, but by sometime in 1950 Keenan believed that the Truman Administration had provided  too harsh and too overly militaristic of a response to his suggestions. He would leave the state department to work at a think tank where he would spend his long life critiquing US foreign policy. In his long telegram, Keenan would make six predictions on Soviet policies, all of which, according to some historians, came to pass. In his work Keenan wrote: “Success of the Soviet system, as an internal power, is not yet finally proven. It has yet to be demonstrated that it can survive…internal soundness and permanence of movement need not yet be regarded as assured.” It would take near fifty years from the end of WWII for the Soviet Union to fall (1991), but it fell due in part to its own weight and a promotion of prestige, privilege and patrimony;  ideas counter to the principles for the "worker paradise".   This prestige and privilege led to graft and corruption. There is no system of checks and balances in a dictatorship.

Marshall Plan map and value received
Wikipedia

Today, Russia is again in the news, with a leader perhaps eyeing addiitonal territory, and desirous of world influence.  It did not take long for Putin to fill the void left by activity in Syria and in particular the slow response of Western powers.  The Obama foreign policy of a pivot to Asia never took off, for it met the intractability of Russia and the Levant.  In his waning weeks as President, Barack Obama ordered additional US Troops to Poland to bolster NATO defenses in view of perceived Russian threats. The British geographer and explorer of the early twentieth century, Halford Mackinder, in a 1904 speech to the Royal Geographical Society identified much of  Russia as within an area he referred to as the Geographical Pivot of History. It is an area that spans central Eurasia, and south to capture parts of the Middle East.  I see the western border of Mackinder's area as a location of chronic tensions, for it staddles Western and Eastern cultures with their varied and different values.  

Mackinder Pivot of History Map
Wikipedia

Given events occurring in the world in current time--think of the strife in the Middle East, Russia's dominance of Crimea, and its continued meddling in Ukraine, Geo-politically, it still appears that what happens in the pivot will have consequences for the rest of the world.  Mackinder's general thesis may well still be relevant today.  Although if Keenan was around today in writing his monograph,  it would probably have been sent by email.  But, given the chances of being hacked by Russian operatives, perhaps it best be sent by diplomatic pouch,