"I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it."
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People from MilwaukeeDiplomats of the United StatesUnited States Ambassadors to Russia and the Soviet UnionUnited States Department of State Directors of Policy PlanningUnited States Ambassadors to Yugoslavia
Original Language: English
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Interview on Online NewsHour : "George Kennan" (PBS) (18 April 1996)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan
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George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan (16 February 1904 – 17 March 2005) was an American diplomat and historian, who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. He was known best as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War on which he later reversed himself. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
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