re KISSINGER RE GADDIS RE KENNAN TERM SEARCH
Halfway through this tome, Gaddis', still my view, this is a mostly unhelpful, and often misleading, work, re ' real ' grand strategy, or Kennan's contributions.
Grand strategy, not something which the US has really ever been able to do, since the beginning really.
It is way too much an unvarnished glossing over of unstable and kaleidoscopic American political and policy decision making foibles;
highlights in places, but without critical comment, the overbearing role played by the press in all this, throughout the period under discussion;
and is even an attempt, oddly enough, to blame Kennan for this reality.
Re Kennan v Lippman re containment, it is positively misleading, whereas Mayers, The Dilemmas, even, is a better, clearer, account.
The "Dissenter 1948" chapter's opening pages really are a dance of the seven veils re open door. Last paragraph of the previous chapter really a travesty.
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