Gospels of Foreign Policy Realism
By Francis P. Sempa
March 16, 2024
As wars rage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and as tensions rise in the western Pacific, America’s leaders and policymakers should tone down their rhetoric, prioritize vital as opposed to peripheral interests, and consult with the “gospels” of U.S. foreign policy realism--George F. Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and Robert D. Kaplan.
Realism, unfortunately, is in short supply in Washington, D.C., where legislators’ comments on foreign policy appear designed to make the evening news programs or tomorrow’s headlines in Beltway media, and where the Biden national security team seems fixated on leading an ideological crusade against “autocracy.” And while Kennan and Kissinger cannot personally be consulted, their writings (and their actions while in government) can and should be studied. Robert Kaplan is their philosophical successor--he is American foreign policy realism’s most profound voice in the early 21st century. A careful reading of the gospels of Kennan, Kissinger, and Kaplan may help to ground American foreign policy in prudential geopolitics.
Let’s begin with Kennan. He served as a foreign service officer and diplomat in Eastern European nations, Russia, and Germany before, during, and after the Second World War. He authored the Long Telegram in 1946 and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1947, which explained the need for a policy of containment of Soviet Russia. He served as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in the early years of the Cold War, writing and overseeing the drafting of numerous policy papers on Europe and Asia. He briefly served as our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and later as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/03/16/gospels_of_foreign_policy_realism_1018803.html
