‘Geopolitics of Sympathy’: George F. Kennan and NATO Enlargement

ABSTRACT In the light of the dramatic escalation of the Russian war on Ukraine since February 2022, questions concerning the handling of Russia in the post-Cold War era, and the enlargement of NATO in particular, are timelier than ever. This article scrutinises the views of George F. Kennan, one of the most influential critics of the decision to expand NATO. It is widely accepted that Kennan’s opposition to NATO was grounded in realism about international affairs. A careful study of the development of his thinking, based on his private papers and archival sources from many countries, suggests that his perceptions of developments inside Russia and his imagination of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe were more important than any foreign policy doctrine. Kennan’s criticism was grounded in his ‘geopolitics of sympathy’, understood as a fusion of mental maps, sympathies and personal connections towards the region affected by NATO enlargement. However, Kennan’s geopolitics must be considered in conjunction with his ideas about international order, in particular with his defence of empire.

idealism and relied instead on realism's core insights, the present crisis would not have occurred'.He continued: 'That is why several prominent U.S. experts -including diplomat George Kennan . . .opposed enlargement from the start'.Walt mentioned two other 'experts' but, significantly, cited Kennan's name first.What is more, he did not name any neorealists, for example John Mearsheimer, who has been most vocal about the supposed what he thought were authentic expressions of climate and geography, which in his view shaped peoples' character, behaviour, and passions.For Kennan, these factors drove world history more than ideology.This perspective, influenced by his teacher at Princeton, Joseph C. Green, and his readings of Edward Gibbon's works on the Roman empire, encouraged him to discover and describe places, which he did his entire life.As a result, his travelogues are one of the most substantial and beautiful parts of his literary legacy and a treasure trove for historians.They are also a key to understanding his geopolitics of sympathy with regard to NATO enlargement.It is precisely his travelogues and other parts of his extensive diaries that are utilised in this article as the main source of data.
To go deeper into the roots of Kennan's ideas, this article develops the concept of 'geopolitics of sympathy', which joins two approaches.The first is Critical Geopolitics, a perspective that starts from the assumption that geographical knowledge is neither neutral nor objective but a 'technology of power'.The approach views all geographical claims as inevitably geopolitical and, conversely, all politics as geopolitics involving geographical assumptions about territories and borders. 14Geographic mental maps, though usually unspoken, are latent in all visions and concepts about regional order, be it in Europe or other places. 15Through a close analysis of Kennan's personal writings and reflections, this article suggests a means by which such assumptions (including those propping up different views on NATO enlargement) can be unearthed through historical research.
The second part of the concept is 'sympathy', a term capturing the personal and intimate nature of the connection of people to places, as demonstrated recently by Larry Wolff in the case of President Woodrow Wilson's relationship with Eastern Europe. 16The trouble with sympathy is that one cannot confer sympathy to rivalling social groups in the same degree.In Wolff's analysis, sympathy is the key to analysing the construction of the less than satisfactory post-World War I political settlement, as Wilson's 'mental map was becoming confused with overlapping sympathies'. 17As we will see, similar problems were apparent in Kennan's thinking about international order in the 1990s.
The concept 'geopolitics of sympathy' underlines the geographical dimension of conferring sympathy to social groups and reflects the subjective nature of geopolitical views.It is not assumed that it explains all of Kennan's ideas, but it does help unlock some of Kennan's views on the post-Cold War order, including the enlargement of NATO.The plan of the article is to look at how his perceptions of the countries affected by NATO policies influenced his thought process.The article is primarily based on Kennan's diaries and correspondence housed at Princeton University; however, it is not supposed that these will reveal the 'true Kennan'.The diary was not only a medium for expressing feelings and thoughts, but very clearly part of what Kennan imagined would be his literary legacy; nevertheless, it is probably the best source we have, especially if complemented by published writings, correspondence, as well as observations by his colleagues and friends. 18

Kennan and the problem of NATO
As a diplomat who had a distinguished career in government for almost three decades, a historian, and a prolific author who had become famous as one among the 'wise men who made the American century', 19 Kennan seemed to be an expert whose advice governments wanted to seek out.Kennan kept contact with various administrations following his retirement from the State Department in 1950/1953, but most of the time his advice was not sought after.Dean Acheson, his friend and boss at the State Department, recapped the official view of Kennan's utility at the time: he was 'not a very useful policy adviser'. 20owever, the end of the 1980s and 1990s presented Kennan with another opportunity.The collapse of the Soviet bloc seemed to vindicate his views about the fragility of Communism. 21Encouraged by the admiring public and attention from President George H.W. Bush, he gave up his historical studies and decided to dedicate his remaining years to influencing current affairs. 22oreover, the 1992 election of Bill Clinton and his team of experts sympathising with Russia presented a unique moment when his feelings towards Russia matched with those of powerful actors within the administration.In autumn 1993 he was invited by Talbott and Secretary of State Warren Christopher to give advice to Russian experts at the State Department and was assured that what was expected of him was not the 'limited professional competence' of an expert but the ability to look at the entire subject from a greater distance -this is to act as the wise man, which had been his dream all along. 23The structure of the international system in the post-Cold War era, including the future of NATO, were clearly among the questions he was expected to comment on.
When Kennan began to think about the future of NATO, he was already an old man.In April 1989, at the age of 85, he confided in his diary that he did not have the strength to be more than a 'casual observer' of international politics. 24evertheless, his commentaries were timely and sometimes even ahead of times.Already in February 1989, Kennan took for granted that the Cold War was over and in November began to discuss the future of Germany, future roles of NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and the whole 'political structure of European society'. 25He did not excel in offering solutions -he warned against hasty decisions and 'loose talk' about things like German reunification -but rather shined with his insights about the nature of the changes underway.He framed it all as a challenge of opportunities rather than danger, which presented policy-makers with the chance to remake the failed settlements of 1919 and 1945. 26n December 1989 Kennan gave a talk at the Council of Foreign Relations, where he identified the great question of the coming age: should one reintegrate formerly communist Eastern Europe into the European system 'ordered under the benevolent umbrella of the NATO alliance[?]' 27Kennan was sceptical: resulting from the region's authoritarian past, the peoples of Eastern Europe were, according to him, unable to handle day-to-day challenges of running democratic governments.Moreover, eastern Europeans, unlike the Finns, were not going to respect Soviet 'security interests' and would thereby destroy the political future of Gorbachev, all of which persuaded Kennan not to support complete sovereignty, but sovereignty limited by what he indicated were the legitimate security interests of the Soviet Union. 28ennan had been hesitant about the future of NATO in November.Now he seemed to be convinced that both NATO and the Warsaw Pact had to give way to a new all-European security structure -'a structure resembling nothing that has ever existed in the past'.In the creation of that structure, the US would have to be heavily involved.On that basis, one would be willing to agree with the conclusion of John L. Gaddis, Kennan's chosen biographer: 'Kennan wondered why the alliance should even survive the end of the Cold War, much less grow'. 29owever, the conclusion is a hasty one considering a talk Kennan had given earlier in May 1989 at a conference of the senior members of the NATO community (some 200 people), hosted at NATO headquarters in Mons. 30his was a historic moment.His diary reflects his hesitation because ever since NATO was founded, he was convinced that this was 'the center of all that was wrong in the Western-establishment thinking' and now, for the first time, he was going to speak at 'the camp of the enemy'.Kennan decided to take a benevolent stance, however.He was startled to find himself thinking that not only had NATO of the Cold-War era become obsolete but his own grievances against it had also become irrelevant. 31n his presentation on 9 May 1989, Kennan admitted that NATO would still be needed for some time to come, but only if it was transformed into an organisation that was not directed against any specific foreign power and would act as a 'general manifestation of military-political prudence on the part of the whole western European community'.He acknowledged that NATO had proven 'indispensable' as a guard against divisions on the continent and hoped that it could be reshaped for the 'key task' to assist 'the overcoming and the eventual removal' of the East -West division. 32It is quite easy to imagine George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton sitting in the audience and devising their strategies for the 1990s that saw NATO enlarged and transformed from a military to a security organisation with simultaneous efforts to engage Russia. 33et, Kennan is not known for these remarks but for his vehement opposition to enlargement and to NATO itself.Why?Is it because Kennan's presentation at NATO headquarters was confidential?Is it because Kennan's biographers have emphasised aspects of Kennan that matched their own deep conviction about the mistake of NATO enlargement? 34Another question is whether something happened after May 1989 for Kennan to change his mind.His diary offers a possible clue, as he seemed disappointed by what he thought was the traditional mentality still prevailing in NATO, hence his sense of vindication after returning from Mons that he had been right all along. 35his hardly solves the problem, as he repeated his approving views towards NATO in his personal philosophy, In the Cragged Hill, written between 1991 and 1993.In this volume, neglected by biographers, he again advanced the idea that a transformed NATO should take the lead in integrating all of Europe. 36ne can perhaps infer from this that Kennan had difficulty deciding on what would be the most practicable post-Cold War settlement.He favoured the continuation of NATO, but at the same time wanted to leave the security of Europe to Europeans. 37On another occasion, he argued that the US should not withdraw but hold on to key alliances in Europe via NATO as well as with Japan. 38In the final analysis, Kennan's hesitations and contradictions seem to be associated with his views of Russia and his struggle to balance his sympathy for Russia with his consideration for small states looking for support from the West, which we will try to unlock by looking at Kennan's mental maps of Eastern Europe.

Kennan's mental map: Russia and the Baltic states
From 1989 to 1991, Kennan witnessed the sudden collapse of the Soviet sphere of influence in CEE and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, but doubted that the problem of Russia's predominant power had been solved.Indeed, it was anyone's guess whether Russia would remain a weak power for long.Kennan, who always took a long-term view, expected the world to fall back to the state of things as had existed before 1914, or with regard to Russia before 1917, the assumption being that Russia would return to liberal, albeit imperial, traditions. 39In a letter to the Finnish diplomat Max Jakobson in 1996, Kennan warned against identifying the 'Russian regime with the Communist one that preceded it'. 40Kennan thus agreed with scholars, like Richard Pipes, who emphasised the strength of the authoritarian tradition and stressed that the Russian Sonderweg was not derailed by Communism, but disagreed about how dangerous Russian imperialism would be. 41he first instance when Kennan had to grapple directly with the problem of reconciling Russian power with the aspirations of smaller countries was in March 1990 when Lithuania declared independence and challenged Gorbachev openly. 42The ensuing Baltic -Soviet crisis caused Kennan to search for a balance between his sympathies for Gorbachev and sympathies for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.Kennan came to respect Gorbachev as a reformer but was also pleased to receive attention from the Soviet government and Gorbachev personally.He was delighted by Moscow's recognition of his Cold War-era role as an advocate of US-Soviet friendship.Gorbachev personally met Kennan on two occasions and literally embraced him.In March 1990, Kennan confided in his diary with his usual understatement that the 'generous acknowledgment from the official Soviet side' did 'mean something'. 43The new Russian government continued the courtship.In 1992, the first Russian ambassador Vladimir Lukin and his assistant and historian Vladimir Pechatnov visited him at his home in Princeton.What gave Kennan 'unusual satisfaction' was that the ambassador had not even presented his credentials at the White House before seeing him. 44id Kennan have a bias towards Russia that clouded his judgement?This was, indeed, the assessment of some of his closest colleagues and friends.Loy Henderson (1892-1986), whose career crossed Kennan's at several points, had trouble understanding Kennan's lack of compassion for the suffering of other people.Kennan's advice as Mr. X to leave Eastern Europe under Soviet control, along with the constant 'fondness for Russia and romantic feelings', rendered Kennan's advice impartial for Henderson.Elbridge Durbrow (1903-1997), who alongside Kennan had been in Bill Bullitt's team that went to Moscow in 1934 and later headed the Eastern European department and the personnel division at the State, noted in 1982 that from 'uncle George's' books, or from literature, Kennan had acquired a 'real love for the Russian people'.A love that 'pops out all the time, between the lines and directly'. 45he uncle whom Durbrow referred to was actually the cousin of Kennan's father, George Kennan (1845-1924), the famous explorer of Russia, who influenced the younger Kennan's decision to seek a career in diplomacy and to invest in studying Russia.However, the idea was not just to advance knowledge of Russia, but also to advocate certain policies, which seems to have been rooted in the way the role of experts was conceived in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century and thereafter. 46here was a difference in the way the two men looked upon Russia.The elder Kennan, through his travels in Siberia and contacts with Russian rebels, became a critic of the oppressive Tsarist regime.The younger Kennan, however, became an admirer of the country's imperial qualities and the apparent parallels to other pioneer nations, such as the United States.Moreover, he imagined that Tsarist Russia was a liberal empire, a country where a figure like Anton Chekhov, for whom Kennan had unusual affection, could flourish. 47In the 1990s, when many observers wondered if Russia belonged to the Western world at all, Kennan would comprehend the country in the context of a longue durée of Russian history, expecting that the new Russia of the 1990s would fall back to the 'real' and essentially liberal traditions of the Tsarist Empire.'Russia belongs very largely (not entirely) to the Western world', he noted. 48ennan's sympathies for Russia had been visible during his activities as a scholar for much of the Cold War era.In 1974, he founded an institute that conveniently bore the name of his ancestor and was dedicated to the study of the Soviet Union but was always supposed to influence policy.As part of Cold War area studies, but independent of any major university, the Kennan Institute, located in Washington D.C., reflected the Cold War preoccupation with the USSR.Like the rest of Soviet studies, it was fixated on Russia as the centre, neglecting the other nationalities of the USSR and even peripheral regions of Russia itself. 49his had major political implications.In 1991, Kennan defended this choice against calls to expand the field to include the cultures of other Soviet republics.Privately, he expressed disgust towards what he called the 'pseudo-intellectuals' who could not appreciate that Russian culture was 'incomparably richer and stronger than any of the others'. 50This amounted to a claim that only nations allegedly possessing a high culture were legitimate objects of scholarly effort, but also implied that non-Russian cultures were less important in the larger scheme of things and could be overlooked when political claims were raised.This in fact would be Kennan's point of view, save perhaps for the Baltic states.
Kennan was unusually well-informed about the Baltic countries, where his diplomatic career started in the 1920s.One can even say that the path towards becoming the famous Mr. X and architect of containment was through dealing with the problem of Russian power in the Baltic states.The interesting aspect of Kennan's mental map was the importance of Estonia and Latvia and the almost total absence of CEE countries, like Poland or Hungary, not to speak of the Balkans.Despite his personal involvement with Polish questions in 1944, his ambassadorship in Yugoslavia in 1961-1963, or his friendships with people like the Hungarian American scholar John Lukacs, the Baltics were central in Kennan's mental map.
Perhaps the young age at which Kennan came to the Baltic states was decisive in establishing an intimate connection.He was 24 years old when he was sent to Tallinn as part of his training as a specialist of Russia.The next year, in 1929, he was transferred to Riga, which was the main American listening post on the Soviet Union before President Roosevelt opened diplomatic relations. 51The Baltic countries left a deep impression so that even decades later a boat trip on the Baltic Sea prompted Kennan to note: 'I suddenly was absolutely filled with a sort of nostalgia/ . . ./.It meant an enormous amount to me'. 52rank Costigliola is right to criticise Gaddis for overlooking just how sensitive and emotionally involved Kennan was as a thinker.But Kennan's impressions of the Baltic landscape, written in beautiful prose and interesting in their own right, also reveal their essentially anonymous and hollow nature. 53Kennan's exclamation in a journal entry from 1929 captures his aloofness: 'Good people, . . .busy yourselves with the mechanisms of your quiet lives, but do not talk to me.We have nothing to offer one another'. 54In his memoirs he would admit: 'I never saw the inside of an Estonian home, either. . .I was, after all, not primarily interested in Estonia. ..'. 55 It was very fitting that of the two pieces of memorabilia he had preserved from his times in Estonia and Latvia, one was German china from Riga and the other a Russian landscape painted by a Russian artist in Tallinn.There was nothing genuinely Estonian or Latvian in his home. 56n the 1920s and the 1930s, Kennan's perception of the Baltic was overshadowed by his overarching interest in all things Russian.The region, especially Latvia's capital Riga, merely provided the scenery and stimulus for embracing remnants of Imperial Russian culture that for an American diplomat was inaccessible at the time.As a traveller, Kennan did not try to be an accurate observer either.He noted frankly that the period of discovery was 'nearing its close', thus there was no need to introduce 'strange places' to fellow citizens back home.In the vein of modern primitivist travelling, the purpose was primarily self-reflection. 57His impressions thus reflected his own feelings and yearnings, which were primarily associated with his imagination of Imperial Russia.For example, all the churches that he noticed in Latvia and Estonia were 'Russian [Orthodox] churches', although these were predominantly Lutheran lands. 58Seeing a Russian quarter in Teheran in 1944 gave him the occasion to remark that Teheran was very similar to Tallinn, suggesting that Tallinn was associated in his mind with Russia. 59This was all the more surprising considering that he had come to the Baltic states by way of Germany and must have known the strong German cultural influence in the former Baltic provinces of Estonia and Livonia.There is little evidence to corroborate Costigliola's claim that Kennan was influenced by his studies at the University of Berlin's Oriental Seminar and had adopted an essentially Germanic perspective on Russia. 60ennan's perception that he was trolling in Russian lands is evident in his description of a trip to Helsinki in 1929.Kennan marvelled at the modern, indeed American, face of the city that had 'no sense of age and tradition'.The train station (designed by Eliel Saarinen), in particular, would have done justice to Chicago or Detroit, but this was only a façade, as Kennan would find out, for behind the modern building there were strange box-like passenger cars of the old Russian railway, ' . . .and one realizes that Helsingfors is not Finland, that it belies its hinterland, that the modern, Twentieth-century Finns are literally all dressed up and no place to go', Kennan concluded. 61Still, Kennan was puzzled by the apparent contrast between Reval (Tallinn's Germanic name) and Helsinki, but then, sitting in the dining room of a hotel in Helsinki he realised: all the guests were speaking Swedish, so he concluded that Helsinki was not really a Finnish town at all but a city 'stormed and captured by the up-to-date Scandinavians'.Kennan was convinced that their conquest ended with the city limits (indeed, the train station), 'and for hundreds of miles beyond there stretched the bleak melancholy expanse of northern Russia . . .ageless . . .unconquerable'. 62Kennan was thus relieved to find out that Finland and the Finns were still essentially Russian and the elements of modernity had been introduced by Swedish tourists.
In Kennan's mental map, the landscapes of Estonia, Latvia, and Finland were characterised with words 'bleak', 'flat', 'dull', and 'sober', which in his mind were the essential qualities of Russia. 63He also expressed on several occasions his interest in the imperial Russian railway system, which reflected his understanding of the Russian empire as an essentially amorphous organism without clear borders, a network of connections and influence rather than a clearly bounded entity.Thus, the terms 'Russia', the 'Russian empire', or the 'traditional Russian empire', lacked precision in geographical terms -something that we can also note in Kennan's comments in the 1990s.

Accommodating Russian power: empire and world order
When the Baltic countries were occupied and annexed by the USSR in 1940, Kennan would probably have agreed with President Roosevelt that 'all those Baltic republics are as good as Russian'. 64According to Loy Henderson, Kennan 'looked with contempt on those [Baltic] people' and his attitude was: 'How can these people want to be separated from Great Russia?' 65 On the other hand, there is no direct evidence that he did not regret the annexation.In 1941, he referred to Russia's 'destruction of the Baltic states' when arguing against Roosevelt's policy of extending moral support to Stalin. 66In 1948 under Kennan's direction, the National Security Council argued that as long as the Soviet Union could crush small countries like the Baltic states, which had 'given evidence of their ability to handle their affairs', international peace and stability would continue to be under threat. 67t is possible that as a 'realist', Kennan understood the futility of complaining about Russia's sphere of influence and realised that his feelings for one or the other rivalling group in CEE did not matter anyway.This was certainly his experience in 1944-1945 when he witnessed the collapse of the effort of Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, to wrestle Poland away from Soviet control. 68His own concept of containment advocated a clear delineation of spheres of influence rather than efforts to penetrate the Soviet sphere, failing to realise that eastern Europeans, like Mikołajczyk, would probably have appreciated exactly such efforts even when prospects of success were slim. 69y the 1990s, Kennan's perception of the Baltic states as a natural part of Russia had changed.A June 1987 visit to Riga prompted him to wonder about the sources of his impressions over half a century earlier: 'To me, as bewildered, foolish, but sensitive young man, this view, this landscape, once had their own mysterious meaning . . .How much of this lay in what I was seeing and how much in myself, God alone knows . . .'. 70 Kennan probably understood that what he had 'seen' before the war was not in fact present in the landscape but rather in his own mind and that Latvia, even after fifty years of Soviet colonialism, was not Russia.Although he continued to refer to the Baltic states as part of the 'traditional Russian empire' -conveniently passing over earlier history before their conquest by Peter the Great -they began to feature in his mental map as independent entities. 71When he visited the Soviet Union in October 1990, he included in his itinerary a short stay in Estonia.In comparison, he would never visit any of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact or non-Russian republics of the former USSR.
Back in the 1920s and the 1930s, Kennan made no acquaintances among Estonians or Latvians.From a safe distance, he observed and described people who piqued his curiosity. 72In the late 1980s when his diaries were being published, he began to worry about critics noticing the absence of 'real people' -another indication that his perceptions had changed. 73he way Kennan described in his diary the visit of Lennart Meri, the President of Estonia, at his home in Princeton in June 1996 to receive Estonia's highest decoration is different, perhaps deliberately so, from his encounters with Baltic people before the war.Not only did he describe Meri's visit at length, but he was also willing to acknowledge the good manners of the Estonian President: 'He [Meri] proved to be a very dignified, highly cultured, and in all respects presentable man'.Kennan admitted that it was hard to understand why Estonia had identified him 'as the great friend of that country' (indeed, Kennan's opposition to NATO was a direct challenge to Estonia's security policies) but added, 'I am grateful for it, because I do have high respect for the Estonians -the best, from my standpoint, of the Three Baltic peoples'. 74It is curious that Kennan was willing to heap that much praise on the Estonians, as such feelings had not been apparent before.Rather than reflecting a conviction, he was probably under the spell on emotions after the visit of a 'cultured' man from the east.
By May 1990, Kennan made his choice and came out in support of Baltic independence: 'the Baltic countries will have to receive, sooner or later, their sovereign independence'.At the same time, remaining true to his view formed by 1944-1945 that the US should not actively interfere in the Soviet sphere of influence, he considered it 'very unwise' to actively support the break-up of the Soviet empire.In other words, Baltic independence depended entirely on the goodwill of Gorbachev. 75ennan was willing to support Baltic independence, but independence did not mean that the countries would be free to determine their foreign and security policies.At the time when the post-Cold War world was beginning to unfold, Kennan was struggling deeply with the prevalent idea of the sovereign equality of states and the principle, enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, that all countries were free to choose their allies.In the Cragged Hill Kennan gave vent to some of his concerns, expressing the opinion that immense differences in size and importance between nations made a mockery of the 'lofty terms' of sovereignty and equality.Moreover, independence was associated not only with freedoms, but more so with a 'grave burden of responsibility', so that 'smaller emerging nations' should be relieved of 'some burdens of total independence'.Autonomy could be an option, Kennan suggested. 76n spring 1993, around the time when the Clinton's administration began contemplating NATO enlargement, Kennan set to work on a more substantial paper on 'the structure of the international community'. 77By January 1994, he had written 18 pages of what he described as 'not-bad material', which he sent to his friend, the political scientist Richard Ullman.Kennan's point of departure was the international order that existed in the late nineteenth century.He commended this order for what he believed to be the ability of 'very few hands' -the great imperial and royal chanceries -to control the unfolding of world events.These hands, Kennan claimed, derived their steadiness from superior education, tradition, inheritance, and a sense of personal security based on affluence and class. 78Kennan regretted that this order was destroyed in two world wars and that the end of the Cold War had revealed just 'how terribly disorderly' the world had become since then.The greatest threat to stability was not the great powers but the proliferation of the smaller and weaker powers after the break-up of the 'great structure of colonialism'. 79Kennan wanted to replace the contemporary nation-state system with a more hierarchical structure reflecting the actual power disparities between the strong and the weak.Looking for clues from history, he discussed the League of Nations' mandates system but considered the earlier imperial systems even more practical, as these had allowed for a 'large spectrum of titles, designations, prerogatives and duties for the smaller and weaker entities'. 80ick Ullman's reply was courteous, praising the paper as interesting, provocative, and lucid, but took the author to task for the lack of examples about how small countries had in fact been responsible for all the troubles in international affairs.He also pointed at the danger of great powers exerting hegemony. 81llman thought the treatise was Wilsonian, Hegelian, and surprisingly 'un-Kennanesque'. 82The only point of agreement between the two men was on ethnic nationalism, which Ullman also found a pernicious force, but the danger in his view concerned the birthing process of states rather than the existence of multiple small countries per se. 83As a result of Ullman's critique, Kennan abandoned the attempt to publish the treatise, admitted inability to make progress and delegated the whole question to Ullman and latter's colleagues at the Woodrow Wilson School.The fate of the treatise is impossible to infer from the correspondence but apparently it never saw print. 84t was precisely during this exchange with Ullman that Clinton's idea of expanding NATO was brought to Kennan's attention.While most authors cite Kennan's observations in 1996-1997, he commented on the idea already in January 1994.The immediate political context was the astonishing victory in the Russian parliamentary elections of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a politician running on an openly nationalist and imperialist platform.Kennan claimed that he had always rejected the idea of enlarging NATO as a measure to guarantee 'outlying territories' against a possible Russian attack.Although not revealing his earlier favourable views towards NATO, he was strictly speaking correct, because in 1989 he had suggested enlargement not as a negative measure against the USSR but rather as a positive measure for uniting Europe.Unlike many proponents of NATO enlargement, he thought Zhirinovski's rise was not sufficient grounds to start considering Russia as a potentially aggressive, expansionist power. 85Apparently, Kennan's comment should be viewed primarily as an answer to those pundits in the United States who envisaged a stronger NATO as a reassurance against the possible rise of a revanchist Russia, and not as Kennan's definite disapproval of NATO enlargement. 86ennan pointed to another problem associated with NATO enlargement.This was what he perceived as the highly unstable situation in the internal and external politics of the CEE countries, with the possible exception of the 'historic Bohemia'. 87Clinton's visit to the region after a NATO summit and the encouragement the president gave to these '"countries" (if you may call them that)' -Kennan used quotation marks in his diary -appeared to Kennan as terribly misguided. 88It is not clear exactly which countries Kennan referred to in quotation marks.Clinton had toured the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.Perhaps he referred to all of them but more plausibly to the former non-Russian Soviet republics because he did not consider them worthy of being called a 'country'. 89The other interesting aspect was that Kennan was imprecise when he talked about the borders of the different countries -he complained about NATO expanding 'right up to the Russian borders', when in fact only Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary were included in the first round. 90It was probably intentional that he talked about the region as a shapeless geographic space.
Considering his open-minded attitude towards NATO back in 1989, it is curious how strongly cemented his opposition to NATO enlargement became.He fought against the opening of NATO publicly as well as privately when he met and corresponded with Clinton's officials.A revealing source for analysing the difference between his views and those of the administration are the letters he exchanged with Talbott, the key person responsible for devising the two-track strategy to expand NATO and engage Russia.Kennan became particularly agitated over the involvement of the US military in an exercise in the Crimea, perceiving it as an intrusion into the legitimate sphere of Russian influence. 91he disagreement seemed to boil down not as much to diverging sympathies (although these may have been also present) as to conflicting conceptions of security.While Kennan's was a traditional, state-centred perspective on security, Clinton's administration was developing a novel conception that took societal, or human, security as a point of departure. 92In Talbott's view, an exercise like the one in Crimea brought stability to the region and enhanced the security of not only Ukraine but also of Russia: 'A strong, new NATO, operating in partnership with a strong, democratic, new Russia, will give the Russian people something they have not had for over two hundred years: a genuine, sustainable peace with the nations to their west'.Talbott knew that the Russian government had difficulty accepting that true security and stability were based not on subjugation and intimidation of its neighbours but on cooperation.NATO was going to base its strategies on the hope that Russia would eventually see things that way, while in the meantime prepare for the possibility of Russia returning to a position of hostility. 93ennan remained unconvinced, probably struggling to accommodate his geopolitics of sympathy with his appreciation of the value of different national cultures and the need to ensure their co-existence. 94What caused Kennan to have second thoughts, privately, about his opposition to NATO's greater role in a new Europe was not Talbott's argumentation, but a seemingly unimportant piece of information that he received from his old friend, the German publisher Marion Dönhoff, in July 1997.Kennan talked with Dönhoff over the phone and came to an argument over whether the Poles were anti-Russian or not.Dönhoff told him that they were not anti-Russian at all.His wife Annelise also sided with Dönhoff.Kennan, who had great respect for Dönhoff, lost sleep over the issue. 95hat could be the reason for Kennan's agitation?Was it because he realised that he had been wrong about the Polish mentality?Probably, because he had opposed NATO enlargement primarily because he assumed this was directed against Russia.But this was not crucial.What probably caused him to lose his balance was his realisation of how little he actually knew about the region.Although a living legend, revered as the foremost expert on international affairs and Russia in particular, he could not persuade Dönhoff or even his own wife.At a loss to explain his point of view, Kennan was aghast: 'The entire thrust of my activity as an official and a publicist must be regarded as misguided and useless.With that recognition my entire view of myself, my work, and my life collapses'. 96hen Kennan noted this, he was 93 years old.He would live another eight years, but criticism of NATO enlargement would remain his last significant intervention in international politics.The doubts that he expressed about his own position, indeed his realisation that he knew almost nothing about the region affected by NATO enlargement and by his own opposition to it, would remain confined in his private diaries.His contradictory visions about the future of NATO remained unexplored by biographers and sympathisers alike.Kennan would become a prophet who foresaw trouble ahead.

Conclusion
In debates over NATO enlargement Kennan's name is habitually used to give an air of authority to claims that the opening of NATO to new members lies at the root of present difficulties.As recently as February 2022, Stephen M. Walt referred to Kennan first among 'prominent U.S. experts' who warned against moving NATO closer to Russian borders.Walt, just as many other commentators, treats Kennan almost as a genius of the thought and practice of realism in international affairs.Indeed, Kennan's observations have outward similarities with the views of other notable opponents of NATO enlargement, such as John Mearsheimer and Kenneth Waltz. 97owever, 'realism' is probably not the best lens for analysing Kennan's thought.The inconsistency of his ideas about the desirable role for NATO suggests that he was not following any neat theory of international relations.In fact, Kennan had very little in common with IR theorists. 98Kennan made up his mind and turned decisively against enlargement only after perceiving the step as a measure against Russia (which it was not, at least as directly as Kennan perceived).In contrast to structural realists, who supported collaboration with Russia for purely pragmatic reasons (i.e. to balance against China), Kennan was an admirer of the Russian people and Russian culture and, despite some misgivings, never gave up on his hope of Russia's eventual incorporation into the West. 99nother problem concerns Kennan's cult of empire as part of his 'realism'.In fact, the two aspects of his thought seem indistinguishable. 100Kennan never made a secret about his regret that the West had given up imperial possessions in Asia, Africa and elsewhere.In the 1990s, he tried to design new principles for accommodating self-determination of small peoples with the predominant power of great nations but ultimately fell back to the nineteenth century ideas of empire and spheres-of-influence. 101 He was also a proud cultural imperialist, arguing that Russian culture was superior to any other cultural tradition in the former Soviet space and the CEE, except for historic Bohemia, and therefore 'the legitimate national interests of the great Russian people' should be given special consideration. 102On the other hand, one must also consider that if Kennan was consistent in anything, it was in his criticism of the instances of American universalism and imperial behaviour around the globe.It begs a question why he refused to apply the same standard to Russian behaviour in Eastern Europe.Was it because of his deep orientalism towards the region? 103hen it came to choosing between competing claims in Eastern Europe, Russia on the one side and most of the other countries on the other, it came down to Kennan's geopolitics of sympathy.By the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, he had developed sympathies for the Baltic states.He understood that his perceptions back in the 1930s had been misleading and that these nations were not in fact Russian and deserved independence, but this did not mean that these, or other small countries, could choose whatever allies they wished.For Kennan, 'independence' for small nations did not mean equality with greater powers or the right to join alliances such as NATO.
This can be considered as 'realism', as realism acknowledges the power differential between nations and accepts spheres-of-influences as a fact of life.Nevertheless, Kennan's 'realism' is understandable only in conjunction with his perception of the internal developments inside Russia and of his imagination of the other players in the region.In short, Kennan's 'realism' depended on how his mental map about the geographic space in Eastern Europe and how his personal connections to places and people in the region -his geopolitics of sympathy -meshed with ideas and principles about desirable international order.He advocated for a Russian imperialist sphere of influence in CEE because in his imagination Russia was not an aggressive and expansionist power but an essentially peaceful country of Anton Chekhov, a liberal empire connected by railways and Russian high culture, a country that had no boundaries but frontiers.Russia was Kennan's obsession and remained one until the end.He could develop sympathies for one country or the other, but these sympathies were overridden by his stronger sympathy for Russia.
Although very much a nineteenth century imperialist, Kennan was nevertheless quite fond of small states as such. 104In contrast to many great thinkers of his time -liberals, socialists, and conservatives alike -he did not dislike small-state nationalism and did not despise small states simply because they were small. 105As a conservative who had an instinctive dislike for modernity and wanted to keep things natural and simple, he admitted his 'preference for the small over the great, particularly in the case of the human political community'. 106Kennan knew several small countries in Europe intimately.He spent almost all his post-war summers in Norway, but had probably the greatest respect of all for Swedes, whom he considered as culturally superior. 107He even argued that the United States should be divided into smaller sovereign and autarchic parts.Nevertheless, he could not sympathise with all small countries equally, because as a cultural imperialist his sympathy depended on the perceived level of civilisation. 108is views of Eastern Europe were affected, throughout his long career as the 'expert' of Russia, by his exclusive attention to Russia on account of the latter's ostensibly higher cultural standard.When the Soviet Union collapsed, he insisted on continuing with what was essentially a colonial perspective on the region.As to Estonia and Latvia, the CEE countries he knew best, he perceived them initially as natural parts of Russia but by the 1980s had realised that they were not Russian at all.On the occasion of President Meri's visit in Princeton in 1996 he even admitted that these countries were able to produce 'highly cultured' and 'presentable' men.
The final point one could consider when discussing Kennan is the role of experts in major political decisions.Kennan's name is invoked when the decision to expand NATO is discussed, which suggests that he has become to epitomise the 'wise men' whose advice governments should heed by default.However, the history of the rise of experts in the United States indicates the intimate connection of such experts to policy advocacy.In the Cold War years, Kennan became, among other political and social causes that he cared for, an advocate for the Soviet Union and later for Russia.It was his 'real love for the Russian people', according to Durbrow, that damaged his reputation among his former colleagues but probably did not bother the American public or the administration of President Clinton.Rather, it was his long-standing hostility towards NATO as such that gave Clinton the grounds to dismiss his advice, but his reputation in the public as the ultimate expert or even a prophet probably withstood the test of time.
The failings of Kennan's 'expertise' were striking.There was no one more aware of that than Kennan himself, who often noted that he had been an ordinary newspaper reader without access to much information for decades.As to the developments in CEE, he simply did not care.However, he could also be profoundly self-critical.It was at such a moment that he realised that he knew next to nothing about the region, which was affected by NATO enlargement and by his opposition to it.After that instant in July 1997, he never offered his advice again.