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:

  • 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.

  • 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 US 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 shown by the 1914 SS Ypiranga arms-shipping incident, German saboteur Lothar Witzke's base in Mexico City, the 1917 Zimmermann Telegram and German advisors present 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.

  • Intervention in Mexico

    • Although the Zimmermann Telegram affair of January 1917 did not lead to a direct U.S. intervention, it also exacerbated tensions between the US and Mexico.

  • Watergate

    • Telegrams flooded the White House, and the House of Representatives began to discuss impeachment.

  • Wilson and Latin America

    • Although the Zimmermann Telegram affair of January 1917 did not lead to a direct U.S. intervention, it also exacerbated tensions between the US and Mexico.

  • Conclusion: Reasons for Union Victory

    • Historians have long debated whether or not there was ever a chance of Confederate victory in the American Civil War.
    • Northern public opinion would not have supported a long or costly war, so it follows that if the Confederate army had managed to outlast their opponents in defensive battles rather than invade Union territory, they might have had a chance at overall victory.
    • Lincoln’s eloquence went a long way towards securing these political victories.
    • Lincoln also utilized his war powers appropriately in releasing the Emancipation Proclamation at a time when it would have the most long-lasting effects against Confederate while also being received favorably within the Union and around the world.
    • The reality of the Union’s many long-term military advantages was also significant in creating a Union victory.