There’s No George Kennan in the Trump Administration

Every foreign policy planner secretly wants to be the next George Kennan. Kennan, of course, was the American diplomat who in 1946-47 laid down, in two famous documents, the basics of the containment strategy that ultimately defeated the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, after the Cold War ended, the debate over U.S. strategy was called “the Kennan sweepstakes.” Policy makers and academics agreed that America needed a doctrine as clear and enduring as the one he had described decades earlier.

The onset of a new great power rivalry, this time with China, has recently offered another opportunity for aspiring grand strategists. In the closing weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, the State Department has sought to answer the call by detailing a strategy meant to transcend “bureaucratic squabbles” and “short-term election cycles.” Yet its effort, set out in a very long paper, falls short, because it embodies the conflicting impulses and strategic failings that have plagued this administration since its outset.