And if it is possible to learn from the mistakes of the past, we could do worse than reflecting on the observations and lessons of such a period from the perspective of an expert practitioner. For example, it looks critically at the history of American foreign policy from 1900 through 1950, a period of profound change in the international system in general and the United States in particular.
We can read this landmark work for any number of reasons. Here we have a work that has remained required reading in the circles of diplomacy and international relations for over sixty years as of this writing, a status achieved by few works. These three elements, comprise the current edition of American Diplomacy. Then, in 1984, Kennan gave two further lectures reflecting on his original work and drawing new lessons from the history of the Cold War to that point. Together with “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” and a 1951 Foreign Affairs article titled “America and the Russian Future,” these would become the first edition of American Diplomacy, a seminal text on the subject and on political realism more generally. These six lectures covered the history of American diplomatic efforts from the Spanish-American War through the Open Door Policy with China and relations with the Orient more generally, the First and Second World Wars, and into the modern world (of 1951). It was during the early period of his self-imposed exile-though calling his sojourn with the Institute for Advanced Study an exile may be a bit extreme-that Kennan was invited to give a series of lectures at the University of Chicago.
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