National Affairs: Containment in Moscow?

"The individuals who are the components of [the Soviet] machine," wrote George Kennan, "are unamenable to argument or reason . . . from outside sources . . . Thus, the foreign representative cannot hope that his words will make any impression on them . . . even those at the top are not likely to be swayed by any normal logic in the words of bourgeois representatives."

Last week the word trickled out from Washington that Career Diplomat Kennan, 47, once the State Department's leading policymaker in the fight against Soviet Communism, will probably...