was a unique figure in American history. I greatly admired him but disagreed with him profoundly on many critical issues, and, in the 35 years I knew him, I often reflected on this strange paradox.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tSuit le blabla habituel, o\u00f9 Kennan est magnifique mais se goure, se goure, et o\u00f9 Holbrooke-Albright-Clinton (dans cet ordre) ont raison \u00e0 225%. Notamment sur un truc, une \u00e9pine dans le pied, un grand dessein, l’expansion vers l’Est, triomphale et strat\u00e9gique, de l’OTAN. Que l’administration Clinton ait lanc\u00e9 l’affaire pour de basses uvres (pour rameuter l’\u00e9lectorat d’origine polonaise de la r\u00e9gion de Chicago en 1993-94) n’importe pas. C’est devenu un grand dessein.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tHolbrooke nous rapporte une anecdote o\u00f9 le great old man<\/em> montre combien il \u00e9tait magnifique et combien il se gourait, et combien Holbrooke, lui, avait raison. Cela concerne l’Europe, la Russie, l’OTAN \u00e9largie et la stabilit\u00e9 strat\u00e9gique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abIn 1996 Kennan went to Columbia University to hear a speech by Pamela Harriman, Averell’s widow and, at that time, ambassador to France. A distinguished group, including Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state and one of Kennan’s greatest admirers, gathered for dinner afterward in the home of Columbia’s president. After dessert we asked Kennan to speak, giving him no advance warning. The 92-year-old legend rose slowly, and in a weak, high-pitched voice, delivered a flawlessly constructed and fairly brutal attack on one of the pillars of the Clinton administration policies Talbott and I were most closely associated with, the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbKennan’s warning that enlarging NATO would destabilize Europe an enormous and historic strategic error carried the dinner audience with its eloquence and sense of history. Events, of course, proved Bill Clinton right, and Kennan and the bulk of the liberal intellectual community wrong. But in a sense, Kennan that evening was fulfilling his true role in American foreign policy: not the brilliant architect of containment but an eloquent skeptic, forcing people in power to make sure their easy justifications stood up before his polite but ferocious criticism<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tEh bien non, Dick (NDLR: Richard Holbrooke), le vieux connard brillant avait raison, Events, of course, proved Kennan right, and Bill Clinton wrong.<\/em> Il suffit de jeter un coup d’il sur ce qui se passe en Europe depuis deux mois, gr\u00e2ce au syst\u00e8me BMD en pleine expansion dans les pays-nouveaux et orientaux de l’OTAN, ce syst\u00e8me BMD \u00e9tant un naturel compl\u00e9ment de la brillante et strat\u00e9gique id\u00e9e de Clinton d’\u00e9tendre l’OTAN vers l’Est. Ce n’est pas au poids qu’on mesure la subtilit\u00e9 (Holbrooke est un poids lourd). Il suffit de consid\u00e9rer la longue silhouette fine et \u00e9l\u00e9gante du vieux monsieur mort \u00e0 101 ans en 2005.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 14 mars 2007 \u00e0 12H48<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Kennan, l’un des architectes de la politique de containment de la Guerre froide, est mort en 2005 \u00e0 101 ans. Certes, ce n’est pas une nouvelle. Kennan, un faucon pur sucre \u00e0 ses d\u00e9buts, avait notablement \u00e9volu\u00e9 pour mettre en question, sur le tard, sa propre politique notablement hostile \u00e0 l’URSS, et la politique… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3187,5433,934,4300,4306,584],"class_list":["post-68622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-anti-missile","tag-bmd","tag-clinton","tag-holbrooke","tag-kennan","tag-otan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}