Robert Dallek has a pretty entertaining piece in Foreign Policy on the three common historical myths which tend to lure American heads of state toward disaster, again and again.  What’s interesting here is his argument that the ideology on Cold War Russia was often hijacked away from the very experts who formed the original ideas, such as George F. Kennan, leading to the creation of the “containment” myth and an over-reliance on military solutions to political and diplomatic problems.

From the start, however, containment was a contested doctrine. In his famous “Long Telegram” of February 1946 and “X” article in Foreign Affairs the next year, George F. Kennan, who headed the State Department’s new policy planning staff, counseled the White House to contain Soviet Russia’s “expansionist,” “messianic” drive for world control. Kennan later regretted having stated his views in such evangelistic language; it encouraged anti-communists to take his advice as a call for military as well as political and diplomatic action.