George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis Page A

insisted, was the defense of Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists. Kennan’s first recommendation upon arriving at the State Department on the evening of June 25—it was probably the first on this subj ect from anyone in government—was to ensure “that Formosa did not fall to the communists since this, coming on top of the Korean attack, would be calamitous to our position in the Far East.” 45
    With the approval of the U.N. Security Council—the Soviet representative, protesting the organization’s failure to seat the People’s Republic of China, had not been present to cast a veto—President Truman announced on June 27 that American troops, under MacArthur’s command, would be coming to the defense of South Korea. Meanwhile, the Navy would begin patrolling the Taiwan Strait. Asked on short notice to brief the NATO ambassadors that day, Kennan acknowledged that the United States was acting not because of the strategic importance of the territory at risk but because “of the damage to world confidence and morale which would have been produced had we not so acted.” The effects could have extended throughout East Asia and even into Europe. He then added—without authority, since the issue had not yet been decided—that the war would be limited : “We had no intention to do more than to restore the status quo ante and no intention to proceed to the conquest of northern Korea.” 46
    That evening the Kennans attended a long-planned dinner party. On their way in, they met Joe Alsop. “Although he regards himself as a total contemplative,” the columnist wrote of this encounter, “I have always observed that George makes his best sense as a man of action, when there is a good, loud, cable machine at his elbow clacking out horrible problems all over the world. When George broods, he becomes a little silly.”
    On this day, the cable machine had been clacking madly, and George was dancing on air because MacArthur’s men were being mobilized for combat under the auspices of the United Nations. He was carrying his balalaika, a Russian instrument he used to play with some skill at social gatherings, and with a great, vigorous swing, he clapped me on the back with it, nearly striking me to the sidewalk.
    “Well, Joe,” he cried, “what do you think of the democracies now?”
    No matter how well intended, it is never pleasant being knocked about, and I replied quite crossly, “I think about democracy exactly what I always have, but not what you thought when you came to see me.”
    Two days later, still elated, Kennan attended a meeting of the NSC staff in the former State Department building next to the White House. Nostalgic for its cool, calm, and spacious interior, Kennan joked to his old friend “Doc” Matthews that the crisis would never have happened if they hadn’t moved to the new headquarters in Foggy Bottom. “To my surprise the colored elevator woman turned around and said with great firmness and enthusiasm: ‘That’s right, sir.’ ” 47
    A second shift in Kennan’s thinking related to NSC 68. He had not questioned its call to spend more on conventional forces—how else could reliance on nuclear weapons be reduced?—but he and Bohlen had objected to Nitze’s portrayal of a worldwide Soviet threat. Now, though, by authorizing the attack in Korea, Stalin had made Nitze look prophetic. “I stated it as my deep conviction that the U.S. had no choice but to accept this challenge,” Kennan wrote of a meeting with Acheson and his advisers on June 26. It would have to commit whatever was required for the completion of the task. The fighting in Korea was likely to spread, and it was “absolutely essential” to mobilize for that purpose. If, in World War II, “our commanders had been told [that their only task] was to cope with an army of 90,000 Koreans with 100 tanks and small air support and to occupy Korea to the 38th Parallel, they would have considered it a small operation indeed.”