George F. Kennan was one of the most influential and important American diplomats of the 20th century. His 1946 Long Telegram and 1947 Mr. X article in Foreign Affairs initiated America’s containment policy against the Soviet Union during the entirety of the Cold War. Frank Costigliola, author of the new biography on Kennan and a foreign policy expert, joins the show to discuss Kennan’s influence, the containment doctrine, and the current military crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
Costigliola is a board of trustees distinguished professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He is the former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, and NATO. His books include “The Kennan Diaries”; “Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances”; “Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933”; “France and the United States: The Cold Alliance since World War II”; and his latest, “Kennan: A Life between Worlds.”…