George Kennan sent a lengthy telegram, better known as “The Long Telegram”, to Washington in early 1946, outlining his own views on the Soviet Union and how they should be dealt with in the postwar era. Kennan believed that the Soviet Union was not to be trusted and they were extremely difficult to be reasoned with. He firmly believed that the Soviet’s should be treated with contention and force. Kennan’s telegram had a large impact on how the U.S foreign policy was formed. The Long Telegram also had significant impacts worldwide. The telegram would later be recognised as a factor that sparked the tensions between the US and the USSR, thus contributing to the causes of the Cold War.
The thesis of this document states that the Soviet Union’s mindset, ideologies and circumstances of power all play a role in that of Soviet conduct. Kennan argues that the US must attempt to understand the conduct of the USSR if they wish to ever have security and strength as a nation. He argues that while “it would be an exaggeration to say that American behaviour unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia”, it is possible for the US…show more content… He believed that a Marxist ideology combined with a very unified and seasoned group in charge of the USSR, made it very evident that they were the stronger nation and thus a threat to the US. Kennan brings light to the fact that the USSR was very much against the ways of the US and the ideologies of capitalism. He makes note of the fact that the Soviet Union constructed its foreign policy with the idea in mind that “capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction”. He made it clear that the USSR saw all other powers as enemies and they believed that eventually all other nations would fall under the weight of their own faulty systems and have to resort to