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

Author:John Lewis Gaddis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, 20th Century, Modern, General, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, History
ISBN: 9781594203121
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-11-10T08:00:00+00:00

On the official level I have been asked to give advice only on the particular problem of Soviet reaction to various possible approaches.

But there is one thing I should like to say in continuation of our discussion of yesterday evening.

In international, as in private, life, what counts most is not really what happens to some one but how he bears what happens to him. For this reason almost everything depends from here on out on the manner in which we Americans bear what is unquestionably a major failure and disaster to our national fortunes. If we accept it with candor, with dignity, with a resolve to absorb its lessons and to make it good by re-doubled and determined effort—starting all over again, if necessary, along the pattern of Pearl Harbor—we need lose neither our self-confidence nor our allies nor our power for bargaining, eventually, with the Russians. But if we try to conceal from our own people or from our allies the full measure of our misfortune, or permit ourselves to seek relief in any reactions of bluster or petulance or hysteria, we can easily find this crisis resolving itself into an irreparable deterioration of our world position—and of our confidence in ourselves.

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