George Kennan, Document PPS23, 24th February 1948

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Document PPS23, 24th February 1948
Written by George Kennan
Former Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff

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.  Our real
    task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships
    which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
    without positive detriment to our national security.  To do so, we
    will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming;
    and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our
    immediate national objectives.  We need not deceive ourselves that
    we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

    For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude
    toward the Far Eastern areas.  The peoples of Asia and of the
    Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the
    development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships
    in their own way.  This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful
    one.  The greatest of the Asiatic peoples--the Chinese and the
    Indians--have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the
    basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between
    their food supply and their birth rate.  Until they find some
    solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence
    are inevitable.  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 then hampered
    by idealistic slogans, the better.

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