WASHINGTON, March 18: George Kennan, the key architect of the US policy of containment of the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, died on Thursday aged 101. Also a Pulitzer prize-winning author, George Kennan died in Princeton, New Jersey. “He’ll be remembered as a diplomatist and a grand strategist,” John Lewis Gaddis, a leading historian of the Cold War who is working on a biography of Mr Kennan, told The New York Times. “But he saw himself as a literary figure. He would have loved to have been a poet, a novelist.”

His mark on global affairs was immense. In 1947 he wrote a celebrated article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which formed the basis of US foreign policy for decades. “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 wrote.

At the same time, he stressed that Washington should avoid bluster and exertions of toughness. Dealing with Moscow requires that the government “should remain at all times cool and collected and that its demands on Russian policy should be put forward in such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too detrimental to Russian prestige”. —AFP