Talk:Aftermath of World War II

Deceptively edited George Kennan quote

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. ... In the face of this situation ... we should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. ... The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. ~ George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, February 28, 1948

In 1948, George Kennan wrote a secret memo of advice concerning post-War US diplomacy, which you can read in its entirety at WikiSource. One part of the memo is his advice about Asia. Kennan strongly advised against intervening in China's civil war. Truman took Kennan's advice and in 1949 the PRC was successfully established.

From Kennan's advice related to East Asia, a carefully selected portion has been used in several articles to give a false impression. Here's that edited bit, which I just removed.

We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. ... In the face of this situation ... we should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. ... The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

Now here's that edited bit with some context restored.

We must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore,

we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population.

This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment... All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose.

In the face of this situation

we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice.

We should cease to talk about vague

— and for the Far East —

unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization.

The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.

The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

The real context shows how the little bit taken from it is misleading. Kennan was not suggesting that the US should use its wealth to oppress the rest of the world without thought for morality. He was pointing out that US wealth did not give Truman the ability or the right to try to impose US values on the peoples of East Asia. HouseOfChange (talk) 17:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)