The Cold War: The Long Dispatch

Historians consider 1947 a watershed year in the history of American foreign policy. Going back to independence in 1776, the United States has long had a disposition away from ‘entangling alliances’ and towards isolationist-centred foreign policy. George Washington was unequivocal in his farewell address to the nation when he warned against these alliances, and over time, this became almost gospel to American policy makers. Of course, the United States participated in international affairs - the Barbary Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the Great War, and the Second World War saw all America as an active force in pushing its interests abroad. But these was often because self-interest required it or because it was directly provoked. However in 1947 - two years after Hiroshima this changed.

By the end of the Second World War, it was apparent to the world that America now stood alone as the only remaining free-market and democratic superpower. It was also now clear that the once powerful ally of both the U.S. and its allies, the Soviet Union, was now an opponent. This was articulated by a foreign service officer and long-time expert on the Soviet Union, Mr. George Keenan when he wrote a now famous dispatch from his post in Moscow. Keenan’s words would make him a overnight sensation in the American capital and make it very clear as to what motivated the Soviets:

Soviet leaders are driven by necessities of their own past and present position to put forward a dogma which regards the outside world as evil, hostile and menacing. Basically this is only the steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries old movement in which conceptions of offence and defence are inextricably confused.

Territorial gains were simply a means to relieve the long standing sense of insecurity and fear the Soviet, and before them, the Tsarists, were long susceptible to. Indeed, it was in this fertile soil that Marxism flourished because of its very vehement and uncompromising view of ideological and economic conflict. Subsequently named the ‘Long Dispatch’ this memorandum was a contemporary Rosetta Stone for the the new Soviet opponent and became a key platform for future American foreign policy. This policy would subsequently be labeled ‘containment’ and give Democratic president Harry Truman his own foreign policy doctrine.


Next up: The Cold War: Enter the National Security Council