Long Telegram

(noun)

G. F. Kennan had been stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as minister-counselor since 1944. Although highly critical of the Soviet system, the mood within the U.S. State Department was friendship towards the Soviets, since they were an important ally in the war against Nazi Germany. In February 1946, the United States Treasury asked the U.S. Embassy in Moscow why the Soviets were not supporting the newly created World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In reply, Kennan wrote the Long Telegram outlining his opinions and views of the Soviets; it arrived in Washington on February 22, 1946. Among its most-remembered parts was that while Soviet power was impervious to the logic of reason, it was highly sensitive to the logic of force.

Related Terms

Examples of Long Telegram in the following topics:

  • The Long Telegram

    • Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow helped to articulate the US government's increasingly hard line against the Soviets, and became the basis for the US "containment" strategy toward the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War.
    • An important moment in the development of America's initial Cold War strategy was the delivery of the "Long Telegram" sent from Moscow by American diplomat George Kennan in 1946.
    • Kennan's "Long Telegram" and the subsequent 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" argued that the Soviet regime was inherently expansionist and that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States.
    • According to Kennan, the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for long-term peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world.
    • the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies ...

  • Containment in Foreign Policy

    • He responded with a wide-ranging analysis of Russian policy now called the "Long Telegram" .
    • Clark Clifford and George Elsey produced a report elaborating on the Long Telegram and proposing concrete policy recommendations based on its analysis.

  • Origins of the Cold War

    • Kennan delivered a memo from his post in Moscow which came to be known as the Long Telegram.
    • The Long Telegram sought to explain recent Soviet behavior to Kennan's superiors in Washington, and further advised a hard line against the Soviets.
    • That September, the Soviets produced the Novikov Telegram.
    • This telegram, sent by the Soviet ambassador to the US, portrayed the US as being in the grip of monopolistic capitalists bent on building up military capability "to prepare the conditions for winning world supremacy in a new war."

  • Containment

    • Kennan known as the "Long Telegram."
    • According to Kennan, the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for long-term peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world.

  • The Truman Doctrine

    • In February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat in Moscow, sent his famed "Long Telegram," which predicted the Soviets would only respond to force and that the best way to handle them would be through a long-term strategy of containment, that is, by stopping their geographical expansion.
    • Aid would be given to both Greece and Turkey, to help cool the long-standing rivalry between them.
    • American policy makers recognized the instability of the region, fearing that if Greece was lost to communism, Turkey would not last long.

  • Delivering Bad News

    • Waffling can be cruel and dangerous in the long run: cruel to the person you waffle towards, and dangerous for you.
    • Western Union delivered its last telegram in January 2006 after 145 years in the business.
    • Western Union delivery man (knocking on someone's door): I have a telegram for John Smith.
    • I've never had a telegram before.
    • What if you make it a singing telegram?

  • America's Entry into the War

    • By 1917, events such as unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany and the Zimmermann Telegram led the U.S. to enter the war.
    • The German Foreign minister, in the Zimmermann Telegram, told Mexico that U.S. entry was likely once unrestricted submarine warfare began, and invited Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the United States .
    • British intelligence intercepted the telegram and passed the information on to Washington.
    • A photo of the Zimmermann Telegram.
    • This telegram was important in pushing the US away from neutrality and towards entry in World War I.

  • The Banana Wars

    • The treaty allowed for the construction of a canal and U.S. sovereignty over a strip of land 10-miles wide and 50-miles long on either side of the Panama Canal Zone.
    • The Germans were actively arming and advising the Mexicans, as demonstrated by the 1914 SS Ypiranga arms-shipping incident, the establishment of German saboteur Lothar Witzke's base in Mexico City, the 1917 Zimmermann Telegram, and the presence of German advisors during the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales.

  • Last Efforts for Peace

    • Wilson, less fearful of the Navy than other branches of the service, embraced a long-term building program designed to make the U.S. battleship fleet the equal of the Royal Navy by the mid-1920s.
    • This long-term plan would double the army and increase the National Guard.
    • After the so-called Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted and decoded by British cryptographers, outraged American public opinion now overwhelmingly supported Wilson when he asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917.

  • Conceptual Art

    • In 1961, Robert Rauschenberg sent a telegram to the Galerie Iris Clert which said: 'This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.' as his contribution to an exhibition of portraits.