Last year in 2016 in the same journal. Both of these penetrating articles [ laughter ] sorry, deal with george kennen, soviet russia and the cold war. Now we all know that kennens longtelegraphed, which was sent in february 1946 from moscow to washington and his socalled e articex article embodied the very core of u. S. Containment policy to the cold war. These are the documents that frank focuses on and extrapolates from. But his articles are important, both substantively and method logically. First of all, he reexamines kennens motives and thinking. And in so doing he makes a major methodological contribution. He injects emotion as a major factor to think about when we imagine the formation of policy in the early cold war. Rather than the rational realist, frank portrays kennen in all of his humanity, rational . Yes. But also insecure. Anxious, frustrated. Fearful and fearful of seeming fearful. He urges us, frank urges us to ponder the interception of emotion and reason, the intersection of sensibility and rationality. Now to discuss these matters, we have three major scholars who have been deeply influenced by franks writings. The first commentator will be andy rotter, and hes written on relations with asia, southeast asia, hes published a very interesting book on hiroshima, the worlds bomb, which was published by objectionfoxford p 2008. And for the last decade, andy has been writing a major book dealing with two empires as he says and five senses. The u. S. Empire in the philippines and the british experience in india. The second speaker will be patrick getty, an associate professor at Temple University and a director of the center of humanities at temple. Shes written extensively about john de gender, culture and i known for work on g. I. S and germans. She wrote an interesting book on human rights and the cold war, and shes now finishing a very major volume, dealing with discourses of peace during the cold war. Our third speaker will be barbara keys. Often known as ara. Shes from the university of melbourne in australia. She has written two major books, one by harvard press, globalizing sport. In the 1930s, the second one, reclaiming american virtue. A very important book on human rights in the 1970s. She is working on a book on henry kissinger, a book strongly influenced by franks work. Our last speaker will be frank astigliola. Hes the board of trustees distinguished professor at university of connecticut. He has won many of the many prestigious accomplishments. Frank is one of the most important historians working on the history of American Foreign policy. And i just want to take a few minutes to summarize franks scholarly trajectory. Few historians have made the type of journey that frank has made. Franks first book, called awkward opinion, was published by in 1984. This was a book that helped to revamp thinking about American Foreign policy in the 1920s. The book was extremely, deeply researched in economic and financial papers, and frank show in this volume the immense involvement of the United States in European Affairs in what previously had been thought of as an isolationist era. Now, as part of this book and what has been regarded as his most empressiinteresting part, illuminated americas cultural experience in europe in the 1920s, a subject that had been rarely explored until that time. This began franks engagement with the cultural turn in historical writing during the 1980s and 1990s. Franks deep knowledge of the theoretical literature on culture, gender, language and rhetoric shaped many of the most meaningful insights in a book that he published in 1992 dealing with u. S. french relations in the aftermath of world war ii. Few historians have achieved the depth of understanding of the theoretical literature as has frank. He after finishing this book on franco American Relations in the cold war era, frank then spent close to 15 years writing articles and essays and working on what became an awardwinning book called roosevelts lost alliances, which he published three or four years ago. This volume, as many of you here now, reassessed American Relations with soviet russia during world war ii and during the first months after world war ii, employing truly pain staking research and using new insights from political psychology and cognitive theory. Frank forced many of us to rethink some of the most fundamental beliefs, some of our most fundamental ideas about allied diplomacy during and immediately after world war ii. Since writing that awardwinning book, frank has edited the kennan diaries. This volume was published in 2015 and, of course, that volume won yet additional awards. Editing those diaries provided frank with the unique opportunity to rethink and to expand upon his views that he had first presented in his very controversial 1997 article in the journal of American History. That article, of course, called unceasing pressure for penetration, gender pathology and emotion in George Kennans formation of the cold war. Now, in todays session were going to discuss both franks 1997 article and his 2016 reassessment of kennan. In so doing we hope to address both substantive and methodological regarding kennan, the cold war and emotions and reasons, senses and rationality in the making of Foreign Policy. To do this, our first speaker will be andy rotter. Andy. [ applause ] thank you, mel. Thanks to everyone here, everyone here on the panel. This is in part an origin story. I was a bit player in the very beginning of franks 1997 article. On july 3rd, 1995 i received from the journal of American History, from the editor of the journal a request to read and evaluate a submission that was entitled with reality in additional quotation marks in George Kennans cold war. I found the article irresistible and agreed to the review. I remember the excitement i felt as i read the piece. It is one of those moments where im sure youve all had them, where you feel like parts of your brain that you didnt know existed suddenly are coming online. There were all of these things that i had vaguely imagined in the world of u. S. Foreign relations but had never really been able to articulate for myself, and there they were in this piece. I didnt know who had written the essay. It was, of course, submitted to me at least anonymously, but i knew that i wanted to know the person who had written it. So at the end of my report i told the editor that i would be delighted to have my identity disclosed to the author. That was an option, it remains an option. I dont know how many people use it, but i wanted to start a conversation with whoever the author was and i hoped if i identified myself he or she would then get in touch with me. The essay made the case, first of all, for the importance of language in understanding diplomacy, and it used, as mel said, for its example kennans famous long telegram of february of 1946. Wellknown as the long telegram was, the author argued, neither it nor kennans other writing had been properly analyzed to that point. Now, this was a startling claim in 1995. John lewis gaddiss strategy of containment had been published 13 years before and had populated syllabuses throughout academia. A lot of people thought they knew a good deal about kennan from gaddiss treatment of him. Biographies had been published in 1989. David mayers biography of kennan was published in 1990, yet the authors kennan, the author of the submissions kennan was in good part unrecognizable, for here was an emotional George Kennan, a man who for all of his supposed realism clearly felt a great deal. He loved the russian people, he located the soviet government. His writing reflected his frustration at being denied access to ordinary russians whose spirit he celebrated. Kennans language was emotional and gendered. He constructs what the author called a polarity or a binary between the United States and the soviet union. The soviet union, he implied, was monstrously masculine. How else to read kennans policy as unceasing impression for command. It represented as reasonable a world view that was, in fact, like its author, deeply anxious and emotionally fraught. On that basis it appealed to policy makers in washington who wished for clarity in their understanding of soviet behavior. In my report i praised the piece. I called it fascinating, provocative and an effective counterweight to gaddiss interpretation of kennan in its analysis of the tone of the long telegram. I found a discussion of the novel called telegram, a tour de force, and i liked his despair over the alleged selfishness and softness of the American People which he contrasted with russian toughness and feared would mean a weak response to the soviet challenge. Here was an insight that emphasized the way in which our contemplation of the self inevitably leads to our constitution of the other. The piece elaborated beautifully on the work of Emily Rosenberg especially, and this appeal to me as a fellow admirer of rosenbergs work. I expressed hope in the end that the article would be published. I did have some suggestions as frank will remember. There seemed to me a lot of throat clearing in the essay. While it was necessary to introduce readers to new ways of thinking about iconic characters and text, there was too much of this. After the first paragraph it took the author 20 pages to get back to the long telegram. Some of what the author claimed was gender did not seem like gender to me, and i felt that some of the applications of the gender concept, which a number of us were still in the process of trying on in the mid 1990s, were never the less imprecise. The degree of intentionality in kennans use of language, what the author called several times his rhetorical strategy seemed to me vague. Was kennan i asked perhaps subconsciously immured in the assumptions about gender and pathology just like his audience and a later generation of scholars . Quoting myself. The authors attempt to weigh the differences between conjecture and reality i thought not especially compelling. The discussion of kennans racialized views of the soviet was underdeveloped, and a few sentences about the walnut trees on kennans pennsylvania farm left me amused. None of this reduced my admiration of the boldest ambition and sheer intellectual candle power of the essay. Unceasing pressure was published in the journal in march of 1997. It was considerably revised. The words monstrosity and reality have been replaced by pathology and emotion in the title. The article was notably more con siels th si concise than the original submission, it was leaner and less throat clearing and wandering about. Kennans walnut trees had vanished. The piece stuck to gender and emotion and pretty much let race and conjecture versus reality go. On the other hand, the author now identified of course as Frank Costigliola provided more in the way of background on kennans identification with the russian people. He explored kennans first tour at the American Embassy in moscow, describing in delightly salacious detail the homosocial and heteroof h of fill owe dipl. This anticipated franks account of world war ii in chapter 2, the chapters titled guns and kisses in the kremlin. It also recounted kennans break down a year after his arrival in moscow and noted his increasing in 1946. The article was more resolutely chronological than the draft which made it easier to read and absorb. Yet with all of its improvements i found after reading it that i missed in some ways the relative shagginess of the original submission, the greater speculation and the boldness of its forays into emotion. I hope he will publish that submission as a directors cut volume to show how his thinking evolved. For years i taught the essay. Its legacy seemed to be multiple, and we will hear from the other commentators about them. I want to highlight a couple of things. First, along with Emily Rosenberg, frank took seriously critical theory and to some extent the less than emily boroughed insights from cultural studies. This required familiarity with another and very different body of literature, and no little selective reading as anyone who has tried it will know, but frank never abandoned deep and wide archival research. It was evident in unceasing pressure, but it was more fully on display in the lost alliances book and franks more recent work on kennan. Whatever direction the field takes, i hope, i trust we will not lose the dedication to primary source evidence that franks writing shows. Second, frank taught us the importance of language, of reading for meaning as he title it his essay in the second edition of explaining the history of American Foreign relations. In unceasing pressure, frank noted the long telegram with over 5,500 words contained mention of only two names. Lenin once in passing and stalin, who was quoted once and mentioned twice. The threat the United States faced was not human but a machine or a force. Kennan used the subjunctive and passive voice, thereby concealing agency and magnifying the imagined threat. His language was gendered. Language, of course, triggers emotion. Franks contribution to the third edition of explaining is called reading for emotion, but it is language that gets us to emotion, allows us to uncover it, and without getting into the deep weeds with the other french theorists, frank has made us notice that. Finally, like all of the best history, unceasing pressure along with franks more sophisticated recent work leaves us with questions to ponder. I have often asked him to be more forthcoming about kennans freudianism. Frank takes note of it in the article. Frank has said that kennan urged gaddis, his official biographer, to use freudian theory when writing about him. Gaddis dlienld. What happens if others take up that . A man who seems to have analyzed himself in freudian terms, even while they reject as most psychologists now do, the key principles of freudianism. As for emotions, how elusive they are. The words with which they are expressed can reveal much about the emotions of the person who wrote or spoke them, but surely they can trick us, too, fooling us into mistaking, say, a momentary outburst of anger for animosity that is longheld and deeply felt. What can and should be said about the emotional climate into which a document like the long telegram arrived . Frank considered this issue more fully in his submission, writing there at length about Navy Secretary james forstalls reception of the long telegram, but most of that is gone in the article. Finally, are there times when emotion matters less than it does when analyzing George Kennan . Commentators have pointed, for instance, george w. Bush reportedly saying of Saddam Hussein that, tried to kill my comment, a comment that presupposes anger and vengeance as motives for invasion of iraq in 2003. But bush was followed by the familiar usually no drama obama who seemed to go to some lengths to avoid emotional decisionmaking. Over the years as my own interests have shifted in my interpretation of Foreign Relations history, i have asked myself when culture matters less than Something Else or when perhaps it doesnt matter at all. I wonder if were ready to ask the same of emotions in the study of history. [ applause ] it is a great pleasure to and a great honor to be part of this panel of this roundtable because franks work, frankly, has meant a lot to me over the years. I do not exactly recall when i first read franks article. It might have been when it first came out, but more likely it was not, when i think back what i was doing in the spring of 1997, i think it was a little later. I do recall, however, the excitement upon reading it because it both validated what i had been trying to do in my own dissertation and pushed my thinking in new directions. I was at the time in the middle of revising my dissertation for publication, and i was struggling to make my own argument about the importance of gender relations relevant to the larger field of diplomatic history, and here was this Senior Historian who wrote about one of the key figures in the history of the cold war and one of the key texts in Foreign Relations history in a dramatically new way. He did so by using cultural and gender analysis. Only much later did i realize, in fact on rereading it very recently, that he also engaged with the history of emotions. At the time really nobody knew about this, but ara will talk more about this later in her presentation. Frank was part of a growing cohort of scholars who engaged seriously with the cultural turn, and more specifically added gender to their research agenda. He was not the first to do so. Akira aria had written about culture and power in International History since the 1970s, but he did not include gender in his approach. As mentioned by andy, had published in various journals and anthologies, most significantly in diplomatic history in 1994. Her article was part of a forum on culture, gender and Foreign Relations, and it drew both praise as well as criticism. Criticism, particularly from bruce kuklake, who and i quote him here partially, confessed in his commentary to being a intransigent revisionist. His argument was the following, and im simplifying here, hopefully not dispointing him. Emily rosenberg and lauren mckenny, who wrote the other two articles, and i quote him again, they had nice things to say about how gender played out in the domestic reception of American Foreign policy, but they failed to convince hem all of this actually mattered for the conduct of Foreign Policy. So while coklakes criticism stung and was a bit more political that it needed to be, he laid out an important challenge forres of us who work in the field of international Foreign Relations. Let me quote him at some length because i think it has direct relevance for franks article. I quote, cultural study needs to do Serious Research to be more than a trick. Could not the emphasis on male responsibility be enriched if we could show the peculiar sort of male responsibility that ee venniates in the Business Values of American Civilization . Why not try a process with graphical study that would examine the domestic life of, say, dean etchison, w. F. Perriman and andrew wiseman, showing how their lives might be related to diplomacy. Could we not investigation the internationalism of franklin and Evelyn Roosevelt and link it to their troubled marriage. George f. Kennan displayed a brooding personal life. Were these characteristics related to his diplomacy . His challenge pointed to an important disconnect that at the time still existed between the political and cultural sub field in diplomatic history, namely that those of us who seriously immersed themselves in the cultural approach were often content with examining the discourse that showed how International Relations was embedded in notions of gender and cultural difference. What kukluck demanded was they produce concrete evidence that this discourse mattered for the nor mags of Foreign Policy. In short, soft rhetoric of cultural gender needed to enter into some kind of causal relationship with power politics. I never asked frank whether his article was actually a direct response to kuclick. It seems like all of his work later, both on kennan and then roosevelt and now back to kennan seems to be a direct response to this, because he addressed the criticism by showing how kennans personal life, his emotional attachment to the russian people, his experience at the American Embassy in moscow between 1934 and 1937 colored his thinking about diplomacy and influenced his formulation of the long telegram, which in turn gave rise to the single most important cold war doctrine, namely containment. So while rosenberg, mcinenny and others and i include myself in this, went outside the standard trophy of diplomatic archives, researching newspaper, literature, we included film, frank went straight to the heart of the political archive and showed us how to approach a classic text with the new tools of cultural and gender analysis, how to read it against the grain and how to emerge with a fresh, radically new interpretation. Let me go into what was new about franks approach. The essay showed not only is the personal political, which lots of gender historians were writing about, but the political is personal. Frank provided the missing link that forced Foreign Policy historians to take culture and gender seriously. It provided culture with a causal connection, and i am putting a little mental asterisk on causal because i explain later what this means in the cultural context, because he did so without over stepping the causal heft of cultural analysis. I want to start with a thesis and map out how the essay proves that thesis. So frank argues that, im quoting here, kennans language, particularly his trophy of gender an pathology, created an emotionalized context in which his exaggerated depictions of the soviet threat appeared rationale and credible, and furthermore, another quote, the ee motive force of this document helped delegitimize what kennan called intimate collaboration with moscow, making containment a policy that already had strong support in the true man administration, seem the only realistic and healthy and manly alternative. What is important about the two variations of the main thesis is how carefully they are formulated. I want to draw your attention to the phrase emotionalized context. Frank is not arguing that culture caused kennan to develop this particular assessment of the russians. Rather, he is interested in the context in which the assessment unfolded. That is what cultural history does and that is why political historians have had so much trouble with it. They would like to document a clear single cause and effect kind of history, but history does not unfold along these straight and neat trajectories. It is much messier, and a single explanation for a policy development is rarely ever efficient. Thus, frank also carefully inserted the term helped in the second quote. So where does frank locate the evidence in support of this . What makes him move beyond it being a trick . He locates the evidence in two places. The first is hidden in plain sight. Just by analyzing more closely kennans language, his choice of words, his metaphors, frank is able to identify a pattern of gender. Why did earlier historians miss it . Some, because they themselves were steamed in that kind of language and thought nothing of it. Some because they noticed it but at tributed to kennans peculiar style of writing and of no further significance. Still others, because they noticed it, thought it significant but lacked the tools to analyze it. Frank was the first to put all of these pieces together. He drew on theories of cultural an throw poll gist, literal theorist, to draw broader conclusions about kennans view of the russians. The other piece of evidence consists of what kuclake has called evidence, kennans personal papers, his personal relationship, his diaries and the cultural and social environment which shaped his world view. These sources help establish the emotional context in which kennan develop his political views. Frank paved the way for others to reexamine some of the standard diplomatic sources and combine them with new evidence from outside those archives. Beginning in the late 1990s, a whole cohort of books appeared which connected gender analysis with Foreign Policy. Chris tin hoganson, fighting for american manhood, robert deans book imperial brotherhood. My own book gis and germans. And more recently, heather stirs book, beyond combat, women and gender in the vietnam war. And judy woos book. These studies explore more than the gendered representation of Foreign Policy. They show how in the words of robert dean Foreign Policy is cultural constructed and reproduced. That brings me to the significance of franks argument, namely that much of what historians for a long time have identified as realist policy making is, in fact, bit on an emotional foundation. Put differently, kennans emotional assessment of the russian psyche delivered what we still commonly identify as a realist policy. Frank himself articulated it best in his article, and i quote him here because there is no better way for me to put it, although grounded in rationale expertise, kennans ideas were shaped by emotions. His centralized attachment to the russian people, his an tip agenty to the soviet government and his alienation from american society. He concludes with an observation that really has broad applicability where scholarship in u. S. Foreign relations is today, and im quoting him again because theres no better way to conclude my talk than with your words, frank. Sorry for boroughirowing them. My approach begins with the observation that causes of historical event and situations such as the cold war tend to be complex and diffuse, but not all aspects of such cauauses are attributable to single agents or conscious intention, and that the connotations of figurative language have real, although never absolute causal effect. Theres a lot of causation here, and i think thats sort of the key that he turns emotional context, cultural context into a cause. Theres no better way to put this, and i will end right here. Thank you. [ applause ] i would like to begin by echoing what mel said about franks career. I think that frank has been consistently one of the most innovative and original thinkers in our field. One measure of that is how much the intensity of the reaction that his work has provoked among us. Frank reminded me yesterday of a thread on h. Diplo in 1997 that was a response both to the journal of American History article and a diplomatic history article on the Nuclear Family that also came out in 1997. This was a huge threat. Those that were around in the 90s remember that r. Diplo was a Discussion Forum for vigorous discussion in if 1990s, and it is worth pointing out that although all of our panelists were excited and energized and intrigued and motivated by the 1997 article, there were also many people, perhaps even more people who were outraged, annoyed, frustrated, troubled by franks argument. So we titled the panel unceasing pressure in honor of the 1997 article, alluding to the pressure frank has put on us to think more deeply about what we do as historians of Foreign Relations, but we could also have titled the panel with relation to the second journal of American History article, the more recent one from 2016. It is called, i react intensely to everything, which is a quote from kennan. We could have called this panel, historians react intensely to everything Frank Costigliola writes. I would like to do two things with my very short time here. One is to talk about this second article and to look at the trajectory. The second article covers a lot of the same terrain as the first article, so i want to compare the 1997 with 2016 and look at what has changed. And then i want to talk a little bit about the intensity of the reactions that frank has provoked across his career, and especially always he has ventured into this territory of gender and emotion. So the 1997 article, it is worth remembering, was written without access to more than a tiny part of kennans papers, which were fully open to the public as opposed to just john gaddis, only in 2009. So it is worth pointing out that frank was able to reconstruct so much of kennans thinking and emotions just on the basis of other sources, not dieriearies, letters, but on the basis of other sources. Of course, the second article now does have full access to kennans papers. This one is called i react intensely to everything, russia and the frustrated emotions of george f. Kennan, 1933 to 1958, also in the journal of American History. This one covers, like the first one, territory that is really unfamiliar to historians of American Foreign relations. So frank in the second article writes of pain, fury, fantasy, passion, heartbreak, guilt, eroticism and trauma. Word and concept we dont associate with what we like to think of as the dry world of diplomacy. In the second article i dont think that frank has fundamentally revised his thesis from first article. The long telegram is still here in the second article as a product as much of reaction to the facts on the ground, namely soviet expansionism, as to what frank calls longrunning impulses like franks desire for connection with the russian people. What has changed is that frank is able to deepen his analysis and really to construct an entire theory about the way kennan perceived and made sense of the world. This is partly because frank has been immersed in kennans papers for years now, but also partly because frank has also immersed himself in the explosion of literature in psychology and other fields on emotions. In the new article frank pos i thinks th thinks posits that kennan had modes of cognition. These were analysis, sensory, engagement and intuition and i indication. Kennan worked best, made the best sense of the world when he could use all of these. When parts of them were cut off, when he was cut off from the contact with the russian people and russian culture that he so long for, he became frustrated, and in the end the story of the long telegram as frank tells it is that kennan was, in effect, kind of heart broken at his rejection, his being cut off from russian people and russian culture, and his resentments and frustrations pushed him over the long term toward hard long policies embodied in the long telegram which were the only way he could see to find a possible way to reconnect in the future with russia. So, in essence, frank is pos positing in the second article than the first article the personal motivation behind kennans policy recommendations. I think the first article had two arguments really. One is that kennan infused the long telegram with strategies that were emotional in order to persuade people, or at least that he had infused the long telegram with emotional rhetorical strategies, whatever his intent was. But also that first article had a second argument that was less emphasized but perhaps even more radical, which is that kennans lived experience had shaped the way that he wrote that long telegram. In the second article, the more recent article, frank makes the stakes very clear, that what he is positing is a radically new account of the origins and development of the cold war that makes personal hurt as powerfully explanatory as political calculation. It is also an article, second article, that is i think perhaps and i would like to know what frank would say about this very specific to kennan. So it has a theory about the way kennan made sense of the world that would not be applicable to policymakers in general. Now, the general claim is that emotions and lived experience matter to the way policymakers make policy. Frank has developed with this immersion in kennans papers, has been able to develop a very deep sense of kennan as an individual and how as an individual his particular brain worked. I want to turn now to why i cant cover all of the reasons why, but some of the reasons why franks approach, this idea that emotions matter in International Relations, why this has provoked such resistance among some quarters. Im reminded of vincent bugliosis analysis of the kennedy assassination. So bugliosi to my mind makes a compelling case that the conspiracy theories are wrong, but that they fester because of the disparity between the smallness of the truth, which is that some loser individual shot kennedy, and the consequences, the greatness of the act, that a beloved president was killed. So psychologically we crave an explanation that is as grand and grandiose as the end result, and we could certainly Say Something like that with the cold war. The cold war was tremendously consequential, so we want tremendously consequential reasons for it. We want good reasons for it. We prefer to posit grand causes for grand events. But in franks two seminal articles and many others and in the book that mel referenced, roosevelts lost alliances, how personal politics helped start the cold war, frank is offering a very uncomfortable explanation of the origins of the cold war. It is not that policymakers simply and solely observed events and realities thoughtfully, calmly weighed them, took courses of action best suited to advance the national interests. Maybe sometimes mistakenly based on misperceptions, but always in good faith. In franks telling instead choices were made for reasons that appear petty, demeaning. It is a discomfiting inversion in which the low, the personal petty, the insignificant on a grand scale have come up to influence strategy, policy, world events. To put it crudely, franks kennan seems uncomfortably like trump. Now, in fact, all policymakers are like kennan, like franks kennan. They have emotions. Even no drama obama had emotions, he just didnt express them in the same way. We cant ignore the fact that trump has emotions and is influenced by emotions because theyre so vividly on display. But, in fact, if we dig deeply we would find this to be true of all policymakers, even the rationalists like kennan. [ applause ] okay. Break is over. Thank you, first of all, for the patience of the people in this room, but also thanks to people for coming this morning. You know, to be honest, it seems like were talking about someone elses article here and someone else as an historian. I am deeply im humbled and deeply appreciative of the comments. First of all, i have a few short remarks to make. First i want to thank the people on this panel for organizing it. I also really need to thank andy rotter who contributed a lot. It wasnt a small amount. He was not only present at the creation of this article, he was did a lot to form it. The inclusion of pathology, the category of analysis and the sharpening of the discussion of emotion and gender, a lot of that had to do with andy rotter. I remember receiving, actually receiving his comments that the journal of American History sent. I remember stopping in the middle and reading it because i was so taken by the helpfulness and the supportiveness of the comments. I also want to thank mel leffler, who wasnt one of the commentators for the journal, but mel sat me in his in his lefflerian diligence a fourpage letter critiquing the essay with a lot of very, very useful suggestions, particularly in terms of connecting it, kennan more to the policy of the truman administration. How did the long telegram really fit into the trajectory of American Foreign policy. Petras work has been an inspiration for me since the publication of that article. So really i want to thank all of the people on the panel. I also want to thank Lloyd Gardner, who is sitting here, because it was Lloyd Gardner who in his essay in architects of illusion i think was the first person to really challenge kennans view of himself as this the all rationale, all objective interpreter of American Foreign policy. Lloyd guardardner point you had kennans ambition, and thats a word we need to stress with regard to kennan, kennans ambition is influential. It is in the origins of the long telegram and throughout his career. After being, as my wife knows too well, immersed in the papers and thoughts of George Kennan over the last decade or so, you know, what afroism is, kennan was a person of actually enormous talent. It seemed greater than his talent was his ambition. Thats the first point of thanks. Second i want to underscore something ara said, beneath the history of this essay we have to it was written in 1994 and 95, revised in 96, and it was in the midst of the culture wars. This was a time when humanities departments, english in particular but also humanities departments around the country, many were torn. You know, culture versus politics, men versus women, part was gendered, new people versus older people. Our own field was kind of torn. It was culture versus politics. One of the things i tried to do in this essay and that things that people on the panel and a lot of you in the room have done is to show that politics and culture is sbientwined and all involve emotion. Petra mentioned the bruce kuclick article, but you didnt mention the most quoteable phrase from that article where he called Emily Rosenberg he described Emily Rosenbergs work as the intellectual equivalent of junk food. The intellectual equivalent of junk food. That shows you the extent of emotion that was involved in the discussions here over historiography. The third point i want to make is and andy mentioned this and ara and petra mentioned this, but i think it is in a way kind of a disappointment to me, is that, you know, people have picked up on im not the first to discuss gender, people have picked up on that. You know, thats a staple of our analysis now, and culture is obviously very, very important. But what people have not really picked up in emotion, but people have not really picked up on in terms of, i think, implementing in their own work is the close reading of kind of the you know, kind of rhetorical analysis, literary criticism. That article is kind of an example of literary critical analysis of the long telegram. People talk about the importance of language, but people have not people meaning historians have not used it very much in their work. I think one reason for that is, first of all, it is difficult. It is difficult to do. It is also difficult to okay. As mel mention, and mel put it nicely, you know mel mention, you know, the article was published in 1997. My next book was published in 2012. That was like a 15year period. It was actually a 20year period between the france book and the lost alliances. It was a lot iteration, 20 years. 20 years between books. One reason for that is that i found and this is key i found that writing the 1997 article incredibly utility of close reading in terms of unpacking language, and looking at just the wealth, the wealth of evidence, the wealth of information, historical evidence in the phraseology, particularly of George Kennan but many other people, too. This is an incredibly methodology. But the problem is, and that was my problem that it took me so long to do that roosevelt book. The problem is you have kind of a huge if you unpack all of the meanings, it is like in a in a sentence, a phrase, a paragraph, then you have kind of a mass you have a mass of data, but how do you fit that kind of lump of analysis into narrative . Okay. What we do as historians is we tell stories. Narrative is key. If you have a huge lump of analysis, it is like, you know, is it going to move forward the course of the narrative. What i finally did in the roosevelt book is to say, okay, to hitch some of that analysis, kind of pare down, to hitch that anal sills to the metanarrative world of diplomacy, frankly, roosevelt, stalin, churchill. That story has been told so many times, i told it that way using analysis. The point is you need both. I cant stress too much, you know, looking at a particularly you know, some examples of evidence of more pregnant with meaning than other, but looking at looking at particularly interesting paragraph, you look at the various pri various prisms of, you know, a diamond. You are examining it from every perspective and you see the different parts of it connect and you look at it from different perspectives, ask different questions, look at how the metaphors are construct, look at the various words that are selected with whatever degree of intentionality, and you come up with really not definitive evidence but good indication of what is going on in the writers mind. Thats valuable information. So pitch for that. I discuss my view. I had to do that in, as andy said, in the second edition of explaining American History of Foreign Relations the essay for meaning. The fourth comment i will make is that it is striking to me, maybe it is my limitations, im not sure, but it is striking to me how little my basic ideas about kennan have changed over the years. As ara pointed out, when i wrote that 1997 article, i had access to maybe 10 of kennans papers that were available to ordinary historians, not just myself. Now i have looked at lots, lots more. It went from 30 boxes being open at the library in princeton to 330 boxes of material. I have looked at most of it now i think. My ideas have not changed very much, and i think one reason for that is that theres a lot of consistency. Theres a great deal of consistency, more consistency i think than historians have recognized, more consistency in kennanes ades over the course of his long 101 year long. Even the contradictions in kennan, and there are contradictions, they have a consistency or many of the contradictions resolve themselves when you look at when you look at when you analyze them over a period of time. Okay. So now in terms of the comments of people have made. Andy always asks the tough questions. Kennan and freudianism, well, you know, thats how kennan understood himself. He believed in freudian categories of the lasting influence of infantile sexuality. There was a struggle, inherent struggle between eros and civilization, that individual humans as well as society had to wrestle with. Thats how he understood himself. In my sense, freudian terms and methodology and notions are useful to understanding how kennan understood himself. I wouldnt venture to use those terms in my anal sills of kennan. Emotions, as andy said, are elusive. I think one of the ways theyre elusive and this is kind of a dilemma and a conundrum, is that, you know and i talked with ara about this a lot. Emotions, it is an artificial construct. Our brains are dealing with processing, theres both emotional and rationale, and other things that processing in the brain is incredibly complex, and dividing thinking into emotional reasoning and rationale reasoning is an artificial construct. It is a useful construct if up to recently most historians regarded, especially Foreign Policymakers, as always rationale. It is important to look at the emotional components of their thought. That distinction between emotion and reason is something, you know, that weve had in western civilization for the last 2,000 years and it is hard for us to think otherwise, but other cultures dont separate out, many other cultures dont separate out what we call emotion and reason. They think more holistically, and thats how it really occurs. Theres a dilemma in discussing whether we can have analysis without emotion. It is a dilemma because emotions are integral to thought, and it is a dilemma also because what i just said is incorrect. Emotions are integral to thought, but it is separating them out to integrate them. They are really integrated from the beginning. Okay. Im not sure if thats helpful, but i think thats how i understand it. No drama obama. I mean i think you have to think that certainly this was obamas a person who thought about the consequences of appearing the emotional consequences for his life as well as his career of appearing as an angry black man. Thats extremely dangerous. American history will show thats dangerous to be, and i think, you know, thats reflective of his defensive strategy, the way hes become so successful in the world. But certainly there are emotional impulses there which he chooses to express or not express at various times. Petra talked about the context of the 1990s. I think thats important. I also think maybe i will be on the record as stating bruce is kind of a curmudgeon in the sense he was one of the early revisionists of the early 70s, and these young whipper snappers were not being serious with their analysis. I think he vastly underestimated the intellectual integrity of the people he was criticizing. Ara asked a very important question, how applicable is this methodology to analyzing other people. I think it is applicable. I think other people, doing an emotional analysis of john dull less w dulles as an austere individual. What about other americans involved with russians . I think theres a way not allamericans are involved with russia, but Many Americans involved in russia had a romance with russia. It is not just kennan. I think i see in the audience here, his work shows it is a theme, americans involved with russia. Look at somebody like avr avril harriman. He went to russia as an ambassador in 1943, and he had installed in his plane a special compartment, one for him it was two compartments, one for him and one for molatov. When he arrived in moscow in november of 1943 he said, look, we should take trips together. We should take trips together to visit, you know, various parts of russia, the freed areas after the germans had been kicked out of where they were, and we can go in my plane. Theres a bunk here for you and a bunk for me. This idea that there was going to be this special kind of relationship. Harriman also had a special kind of relationship with stalin. He would be the gobetween. When bullet went there in 1933, theres a discussion in a 1937 article about the kiss between he and stalin. He thought he was going to be the key gobetween between stalin and roosevelt. Mcfallon, obamas ambassador to russia, thought he would have a special relationship with russia. It is one of the countries that appears to americans as a front tear, as a place where americans can interact with the leaders and the people and a place that is like america in some respects, being conduct nenttine and there can be a special relationship. Thats a complex reaction from the russians and often lots of lots of disappointment. So i daresay i think we should have some kind of like, you know, an emotion off or something, where we have a group of historians presented with kind of evidence of reflecting the background and so forth and the writing of any number of historical figures, people involved in American Foreign policy as well as other fields, and lets see if we can analyze the emotional components of this. I think we can. I think theres an awful lot there because policymakers as andy rotter said many years ago are human beings. Not only do they need bathroom breaks at times, but they also you know what im saying but the policymakers are people. They bring into their business their dreams, their aspirations, their frustrations, their backgrounds. As i have gotten more and more involved in george f. Kennan, it is clear to me more than ever how important his early life and his emotional life and his aspirations and frustrations were important in his policy. It doesnt mean they determine the policy, but it influenced how he how his approach to the policy. Thank you. [ applause ] i think that was a terrific introduction to what i hope will be an even more provocative discussion. I think we have microphones to pass around here, because this is being presented on cspan. So when you raise your hand and want to contribute, there will be a microphone. Please speak into the microphone. Maybe ill sort of help to frame some of this discussion, especially for a larger audience because there are millions out there that are going to be engaged with thinking about Frank Costigliolas two journal of American History articles. So, you know, why is this focus on kennan so important . I mean we need to in part frame this by not only was George Kennan the influential diplomat and the father, socalled, of the containment policy, but George Kennan wrote arguably the most influential book ever written about American Foreign policy. It is the book that so many people read in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s, and that we still often assign, this little book of lectures he gave at the university of chicago that was framed as american diplomacy. What is the key theme of that book . The key theme of that book is, in fact, that american diplomacy has been emotional, and that what he is trying to do in that book is saying we need to stop letting our emotions and our domestic politics shape policy, and we need to have a very rational approach to policy. Of course, the irony is that this person who was championing a very rational approach to policy was, as frank describes him, often influenced by his own emotion emotional predilections. So kennan himself probably created this amazing binary between emotion and reason. I am the most reasonable person you can think of. The American People should follow what i have to say because i am basing my policy prescriptions on the basis of rational assessments of issues. But i think theres another important thing to think about when we actually deal with this alleged binary between realism and nonrealism in the making of Foreign Policy. We usually think there is this binary, but i would like to throw out the following suggestion, that at the very heart of realist theory, at the very heart of realist theory is the role of emotion. Because what is the basic axiom of realist thinking . The basic axiom is that nations exist in a world of anarchy, and anarchy produces fear, and policymakers have to deal with the fear that they experience about their own nations survival. How they then make policy in response to their perception of threat is really probably a mixture of both emotion and reason. And in his very sophisticated presentation of this, this is the major point that i think frank is urging us to grapple with, and that is the adjudicati juxtaposition of emotion and realism, the fact these two elements are always at work in the way we think about things and the way we handle issues. So with that effort to put it in some type of framework to some of the larger discussion here, i invite questions to any of the panelists, to frank in particular, whose work has shaped so much of what we think about American Foreign policy. Please, walk to the microphone, introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and address your question or make your comment. Somebody has to make a comment or a question. Come on. One thing please introduce yourself. My name is michael donahue, im an associate professor of history at marquette university. Full disclosure, i was franks student. But one thing that i found that really reinforces more and more of what frank was talking about, about kennan, is by looking at what i guess you would term antisoviet novelists, people like alexander soltzen and other writers, it is kind of the theme of how the soviet system alienated large number also of their own citizens from element also of russian culture, russian traditions and history, because everything that happened before 1917 was considered treasonous or sub versive or whatever. It seems what kennan is going through, it seems lots of soviet citizens are going through a similar kind of alienation. That comes through in a lot of the criticism of the soviet system written by novelists and people even since the fall of the soviet union. I was wondering if frank could comment on that . Well, thats a very good observation, michael, yes. Of course, one of the aspects of kennans love of almost all things russian, not just the russian language and russian history, but was russian literature. He read widely, widely russian literature, pre1917 as well as post1917. He read almost every major russian author in the original russian. It was just necessary. Not only he read the russian, he read the german literature in the original german, French Literature in the original french, norwegian literature in the original norwegian. He was a gifted linguist. He taught himself as an adult. It was not as if he grew up speaking russian or german. Yes, he certainly empathized with the feelings of the russian people, and regarded himself as kind of this tragic triangle of the russian people, whom he often kind of portrayed as this beautiful lady, as he put it, the russian people, the cruel gentleman in the kremlin who controlled this beautiful lady, and he as the real suitor, the real partner of the russian people. Andrew johnson. Carlton university in ottawa. I just have i guess two or three quick questions, which i will reveal as questions rather than statements. In the literature on emotion, im curious as to those who are reading it, why you choose emotion rather than affect. And if you make a distinction between the two methods or approaches to dealing with that. Second, materialist historians like kuklake or bosenko when criticizing the cultural turn focus on the ways in which emotion decoupled deep Political Economic structures of, say, class and relations production from human activity and from Foreign Policy. Im wondering how your concept of emotion engages with those deep structures, looking at the vast forces of the 20th 19th and 20th sent remembecentury, t Industrial Revolution and its consequences on the Global Economy . Third, i am wondering if you, anyone perhaps could comment on, or if you want to comment on the left theyre talking about, the binary between rationalist, realism and emotional, as to whether in the Anglo American tradition of both International Relation theory and the practice of diplomacy there was a divide going back to the expert era of expert knowledge as opposed to the emotions politics, that there was an attempt in the progressive era across the atlantic to try to harness politics which is seen as emotional to social science knowledge, and that social sciences would divest politics and diplomacy of emotion and bring rationality to it, and whether it is one of the things that fed into the intellectual trajectories of realism . You handle that. Thank you. Okay. First of all, okay, affect and emotion. You know, journal emotion review polled a group of psychologists and philosophers who study emotions, and asked them to try to arrive each of those groups to arrive at a definition of emotion. They couldnt. We all know, oh, yeah, thats emotion. Here is the thing. There are various you could talk about emotion, you can talk about affect. Some writers talk about affect as being affect being kind of a basic feeling and then emotions are culturally informed expressions of affect