Kennan compares American security ideas to the Roman Empire because Americans had a sense of security and superiority that had not been seen in the world since those times. He compares American ideas and situation in 1950 versus American ideas and situation in 1900 and discusses this from a subjective and objective point of view in order to back up his opinion and present a clear case without dis

In Kennan’s, Sources of Soviet Conduct, he introduces his idea of Russian containment as a better approach to relations with Soviet Russia. “In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” He correctly indicates that waging war is not always the most effective way to achieve goals, especially political goals because war does not change the way people think, if anything, it makes them less inclined to change because war brings nothing but “destruction, brutalization and sacrifice, of separations, domestic disintegration, and the weakening of the deeper fabrics of society--is a process which of itself can achieve no positive aims.” With respect to military force, Kennan adds that “victory or defeat can signify only relative degrees of misfortune…Remembering these things, we will be less inclined to view military operations as ends in themselves, and should find it easier to conduct them in a manner harmonious with our political purposes.”

“…our national consciousness is dominated at present by a sense of insecurity greater even than that of many people of Western Europe who stand closer to, and a position far more vulnerable to, those things that are the main source of our concern. Now, much of that change may be, and doubtless is, subjective…today we exaggerate our dangers and have a tendency to rate our own abilities less than they actually are. But the fact remains that much of this change is also objectively real; in 1900 the political and military realities were truly such that we had relatively little to fear in the immediate sense, whereas today we have a situation before us which, I am frank to admit, seems to m

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