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Shadowy negotiations begin to end Berlin standoff. Acheson emissary Jessup meets Stalin emissary Malik. Molotov out, Vyshinsky in. Marshall Plan triggers spy/propaganda game. Kennan shepherds early covert stuff. In UK, James Bond receives his 00 rating. George Smiley joins MI6.
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May 12, 1949. Blockade over. Stalin fails to mess with Acheson via Jessup-Malik talks to stall the creation of the FRG. Kinda a whimper rather than a bang.
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Kennan retreats from the stage, cut out of the last act. Gloomy and moody, ultimately resisting the natural outcomes of his own doctrines. In a way both he and Stalin saw the beginning of the Cold War as a chess game and both lost. Acheson won by treating it like tic-tac-toe.
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What led to allies prevailing was simple economic success in the West. The Soviets could not bear economic cost of holding Berlin hostage. As in 2 world wars and the Civil War, what won the conflict for the US was economics. Kennan never really developed an intuition for that.
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Kennan cuts an interesting tragic figure in this telling of the story. Object lesson for all intellectual descendants of kremlinology. It’s a futile nerd pastime beyond a point. Good for setting up the chessboard, but not for winning the tic-tac-toe game that follows.
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