George Kennan 2005 Deaths

George Kennan

influential diplomat and historian who, while working at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1946, devised the U.S. policy of containment to deal with the Soviet Union during the cold war. He believed that instead of declaring all-out war against communist countries and attempting to defeat them, the U.S. should keep the countries in their current state and prevent them from growing more powerful. Kennan also presciently stated that a drastic military solution was not necessary to defeat communism and would lead to unnecessary death and destruction. He left the foreign service in 1953 to head Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.