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The Nuclear Delusion
Reviews the complex issues that must be addressed if the United States is to make rational, prudent decisions about future nuclear weapons systems
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
264 pages, Paperback
First published August 12, 1982
About the author
George F. Kennan
118 books121 followersFrom Wikipedia:
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
In the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet Union policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan.
Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch. By mid-1948, he was convinced that the situation in Western Europe had improved to the point where negotiations could be initiated with Moscow. The suggestion did not resonate within the Truman administration, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized—particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. As U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more aggressive and militaristic tone, Kennan bemoaned what he called a misinterpretation of his thinking.
In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State, except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia, and became a leading realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005.
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War. He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers.
In the late 1940s, his writings inspired the Truman Doctrine and the U.S. foreign policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, thrusting him into a lifelong role as a leading authority on the Cold War. His "Long Telegram" from Moscow in 1946, and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. These texts quickly emerged as foundational texts of the Cold War, expressing the Truman administration's new anti-Soviet Union policy. Kennan also played a leading role in the development of definitive Cold War programs and institutions, most notably the Marshall Plan.
Shortly after the diploma had been enshrined as official U.S. policy, Kennan began to criticize the policies that he had seemingly helped launch. By mid-1948, he was convinced that the situation in Western Europe had improved to the point where negotiations could be initiated with Moscow. The suggestion did not resonate within the Truman administration, and Kennan's influence was increasingly marginalized—particularly after Dean Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in 1949. As U.S. Cold War strategy assumed a more aggressive and militaristic tone, Kennan bemoaned what he called a misinterpretation of his thinking.
In 1950, Kennan left the Department of State, except for two brief ambassadorial stints in Moscow and Yugoslavia, and became a leading realist critic of U.S. foreign policy. He continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs as a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1956 until his death at age 101 in March 2005.
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September 16, 2026
This is a collection of Kennan's essays and speeches from 1950 to 1982. Kennan is famous for being the first to articulate the fact a long-term commitment to containment of the Soviet Union would be necessary, and for thereafter adopting nuclear disarmament as his primary cause. He was a diplomat for a long time, then mostly an historian at Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies for another long time. The book is an interesting peek into the thought of a respected scholar during the Cold War, if you get over his prim certainty that only he and a few peers understand the Russian mind. Alas, he is a dull writer.
He claims that nuclear weapons have no practical utility. This is nonsense. If country A has a bomb and country B does not, then A can blackmail B into just about anything. So B will want to get two bombs, because A might be able to destroy the first with its bomb. Then A will want to have three bombs, and on and on. There's a perverse positive feedback loop going on here, but it's based on the high utility of nuclear bombs. Of course it ends up with A and B both having such huge inventories that using any significant fraction of them will cause planetary catastrophe, leaving both A and B (and everyone else) much worse off. But lower-yield nuclear weapons will still have great practical military utility, used at sea and in the air and sparingly on land--as long as they don't set off a major nuclear exchange. And how could we ever be sure they wouldn't?
Kennen is clear-eyed about the difficulty of dealing with the Soviets. They readily employ internal oppression. They fear liberalizing ideas spreading from Central Europe. They suffer from fanciful fears of foreign attacks. They worry about all the restive non-Russian peoples that are part of their country. They have inherited the Marxist doctrine of implacable hostility toward capitalist powers. The legitimacy of their government depends on their leadership of revolutionary world communism. They have a passion for secrecy, a sclerotic bureaucracy, and a lingering fear of German power. They like to maintain a far larger military than necessary. They don't at all want a nuclear war, Kennan says, and there's no chance that they'd use their huge military to gobble up an unprotected Western Europe. They have too many internal problems to worry about. (Kennan does not address the possibility they would try to handle internal disaffection by turning it against an external enemy.) Their support of the worldwide anticolonial movement is unlikely to produce any real benefit. To counter the Soviets, Kennan counsels patience, waiting, understanding, and inaction in response to the invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of Solidarity. Looking back from 2026, maybe Kennan was right that the USSR had graver problems than we really understood. But he did not at all foresee the complete collapse of the Soviet Union that was less than ten years in the future. To be fair, neither did anyone else.
Kennan wants nuclear disarmament that is "unilateral but reciprocal," whatever that means. He proposes this plan: Both powers immediately institute a 50% across-the-board reduction is all types of nuclear weapons. Then as soon as possible afterwards, they cut two-thirds of the remainder. (He does not discuss how these cuts would be verified.) Then a new international commission would decide how to peacefully and safely use the fissile materials. Also, Central and Northern Europe should be denuclearized, and a total test ban implemented. In any case, the US should pledge no first use of nukes. He does acknowledge that nuclear disarmament would require larger conventional forces.
Kennan does not acknowledge that the formation of NATO was due to the Soviet Union's ominous failure to demobilize after WWII. He thinks that developing the H-bomb and letting Germany into NATO were mistakes. He thinks other problems are far more dangerous than the supposed Soviet desire to expand militarily: population growth, resource exhaustion, pollution, starvation, pornography, decadence, and all the other looming threats to civilization that we saw in the 1970s.
He claims that nuclear weapons have no practical utility. This is nonsense. If country A has a bomb and country B does not, then A can blackmail B into just about anything. So B will want to get two bombs, because A might be able to destroy the first with its bomb. Then A will want to have three bombs, and on and on. There's a perverse positive feedback loop going on here, but it's based on the high utility of nuclear bombs. Of course it ends up with A and B both having such huge inventories that using any significant fraction of them will cause planetary catastrophe, leaving both A and B (and everyone else) much worse off. But lower-yield nuclear weapons will still have great practical military utility, used at sea and in the air and sparingly on land--as long as they don't set off a major nuclear exchange. And how could we ever be sure they wouldn't?
Kennen is clear-eyed about the difficulty of dealing with the Soviets. They readily employ internal oppression. They fear liberalizing ideas spreading from Central Europe. They suffer from fanciful fears of foreign attacks. They worry about all the restive non-Russian peoples that are part of their country. They have inherited the Marxist doctrine of implacable hostility toward capitalist powers. The legitimacy of their government depends on their leadership of revolutionary world communism. They have a passion for secrecy, a sclerotic bureaucracy, and a lingering fear of German power. They like to maintain a far larger military than necessary. They don't at all want a nuclear war, Kennan says, and there's no chance that they'd use their huge military to gobble up an unprotected Western Europe. They have too many internal problems to worry about. (Kennan does not address the possibility they would try to handle internal disaffection by turning it against an external enemy.) Their support of the worldwide anticolonial movement is unlikely to produce any real benefit. To counter the Soviets, Kennan counsels patience, waiting, understanding, and inaction in response to the invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of Solidarity. Looking back from 2026, maybe Kennan was right that the USSR had graver problems than we really understood. But he did not at all foresee the complete collapse of the Soviet Union that was less than ten years in the future. To be fair, neither did anyone else.
Kennan wants nuclear disarmament that is "unilateral but reciprocal," whatever that means. He proposes this plan: Both powers immediately institute a 50% across-the-board reduction is all types of nuclear weapons. Then as soon as possible afterwards, they cut two-thirds of the remainder. (He does not discuss how these cuts would be verified.) Then a new international commission would decide how to peacefully and safely use the fissile materials. Also, Central and Northern Europe should be denuclearized, and a total test ban implemented. In any case, the US should pledge no first use of nukes. He does acknowledge that nuclear disarmament would require larger conventional forces.
Kennan does not acknowledge that the formation of NATO was due to the Soviet Union's ominous failure to demobilize after WWII. He thinks that developing the H-bomb and letting Germany into NATO were mistakes. He thinks other problems are far more dangerous than the supposed Soviet desire to expand militarily: population growth, resource exhaustion, pollution, starvation, pornography, decadence, and all the other looming threats to civilization that we saw in the 1970s.
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