George Kenan's Research On Political Realism

George Frost Kennan(February 16,1904-March 17,2005)is not only a famous diplomat and Soviet expert,but a foreign policy critic and historian of American.His life has been closely linked with the design,implementation,criticism and research of American foreign policy,and he has a great influence on American foreign policy after the Second World War.Since 1945 Walter Lippmann criticized Kenan's containment strategy as a "strategic monstrosity",Kennan became a public figure,and he was commented by a large number of critics(including liberals and conservatives),diplomats,journalists and academics.Kenan's containment thought,his participation process of American foreign policy,and his critical analysis of American foreign policy,all of which have become the research samples of the later study of Kennan's political realism thoughts.At present a large number of research results mainly from the following aspects.Firstly,the historical perspective,this research focuses on Kennan's participation in American foreign policy from 1947 to 1952;secondly,the point of view of diplomacy,which focuses on the analysis of American foreign policy and Comments;thirdly,the perspective of biography,its writing focus is Kenan's life,occupation and academic point of view.As a realist political thinker,what is the basic view of Kennan's political realism thought? In this paper,some related literatures are reviewed.Most of those literatures focus on Kennan's theory of containment and its analysis of American foreign policy,but few have devoted to the basic viewpoints of his political realism thought.Based on the research achievements of previous scholars,this article takes Kenan's writings as a sample,and interprets the basic views of Kennan's international political thoughts from those images of political philosophy point of view,international political view and foreign policy view.The interpretation of this paper includes Kennan's hypothesis of human nature and its consequent reflections on power,morality,nation-state,international society and balance of powers among nations.These constitute the basic viewpoints of Kennan's international political thought.The article tries to find the coherence mechanism from Kennan's political philosophy point of view,international political view and foreign policy view.