Policy Planning Staff Memo No. 23, by George Kennan

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Organizing Political Warfare [The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare]
by George F. Kennan
April 30 1948

TOP SECRET

April 30, 1948

THE PROBLEM

The inauguration of organized political warfare.

ANALYSIS

1. Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives, [Deleted: to further its influence and authority and to weaken those of its adversaries.] Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as ERP), and "white" propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of "friendly" foreign elements, "black" psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

2. The creation, success, and survival of the British Empire has been due in part to the British understanding and application of the principles of political warfare. Lenin so synthesized the teachings of Marx and Clausewitz that the Kremlin's conduct of political warfare has become the most refined and effective of any in history. We have been handicapped however by a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war, by a tendency to view war as a sort of sporting contest outside of all political context, by [Deleted: [Illegible]] [handwritten: a national tendency to seek] for a political cure-all, [Deleted: such as the [illegible]], and by a reluctance to recognize the realities of international relations -- the perpetual rhythm of [PAGE CUT OFF HERE, WITH LINE(S) MISSING]

3. This Government has, of course, in part consciously and in part unconsciously, been conducting political warfare. Aggressive Soviet political warfare has driven us overtly [handwritten: first to the] [deleted: from] Truman Doctrine [handwritten: next] to ERP [handwritten: then] [deleted: and] to sponsorship of Western Union, [Heavy Blackout 2 lines]. This was all political warfare and should be recognized as such.

4. Understanding the concept of political warfare, we should also recognize that there are two major types of political warfare -- one overt and the other covert. Both, from their basic nature, [handwritten: should] [deleted: must] be directed and coordinated by the Department of State. Overt operations are, of course, the traditional policy activities of any foreign office enjoying positive leadership, whether or not they are recognized as political warfare. Covert operations are traditional in many European chancelleries but are [handwritten: relatively unfamiliar to] [deleted: not wholly accepted by] this Government.

5. Having assumed greater international responsibilities than ever before in our history and having been engaged by the full might of the Kremlin's political warfare, we cannot afford to leave unmobilized our resources for covert political warfare. We cannot afford in the future, in perhaps more serious political crises, [heavy blackout, 2 lines].

6. It was with all the foregoing in mind that the Policy Planning Staff began some three months ago a consideration of specific projects in the field of covert operations, where they should be fitted into the structure of this Government, and how the Department of State should exercise direction and coordination.

7. There are listed below projects which have been or are now being suggested by the Staff:

a. Liberation Committees

Purpose: To form centers of national hope and revive a sense of purpose among political refugees from the Soviet World; to provide an inspiration for continuing popular resistance within the countries of the Soviet World; and to provide a potential nucleus for all-out liberation movements in the event of war. [handwritten as to the entire para: ?]

Description: This is primarily an overt operation which, however, should receive covert guidance and possibly assistance from the Government. It is proposed that trusted private American citizens be encouraged to establish a public committee which would give support and guidance in U.S. interests to national freedom movements publicly led by outstanding political refugees from the Soviet World, such as Mikolajczyk and Nagy. The American Committee should be so selected and organized as to cooperate closely with this Government. The functions of the American Committee should be limited to enabling selected refugee leaders to keep alive as public figures with access to printing presses and microphones. It should not engage in underground [PAGE CUT OFF HERE, WITH LINE(S) MISSING]

What is proposed here is an operation in the traditional American form: organized public support of resistance to tyranny in foreign countries. Throughout our history, private American citizens have banded together to champion the cause of freedom for people suffering under oppression. (The Communists and Zionists have exploited this tradition to the extreme, to their own ends and to our national detriment, as witness the Abraham Lincoln brigade during the Spanish Civil War and the current illegal Zionist activities.) Our proposal is that this tradition be revived specifically to further American national interests in the present crisis.

b. Underground Activities behind the Iron Curtain

Purpose: To maintain contact with, sustain, and influence underground movements in the Soviet world resisting Kremlin domination.

Description: In contrast to CIA operations, involving the American Government directly with underground activities, [handwritten: *, for this first part of the sentence] this project would follow a principle which has been basic in British and Soviet political warfare: remote and deeply concealed official control of clandestine operations so that governmental responsibility cannot be shown. In brief, the project, as proposed by S/P, would operate as follows: general direction and financial support would come from the Government; guidance and funds would pass to a private American organization or organizations (perhaps "business" [PAGE CUT OFF HERE, WITH LINE(S) MISSING]

… approximate caliber of Allen Dulles; these organizations, through their field offices in Europe and Asia, would establish contact with the various national underground representatives in free countries and through these intermediaries pass on assistance and guidance to the resistance movements being the iron curtain.

c. Support of Indigenous Anti-Communist Elements in Threatened Countries of the Free World.

Purpose: To strengthen indigenous forces combating communism in countries where Soviet political warfare is a threat to our national security.

Description: This is a covert operation again utilizing private intermediaries. To insure cover, the private American organizations conducting the operation should be separate from the organizations mentioned in previous projects. With governmental guidance and financial support, [heavy blackout, 6-7 lines]. [Handwritten: State (Bill)]

8. It would seem that the time is now fully ripe for the creation of a covert political warfare operations directorate within the Government. If we are to engage in such operations, they must be under unified direction. One man must be boss. And he must, as those responsible [PAGE CUT OFF HERE, WITH LINE(S) MISSING]

9. While covert political warfare must be controlled by the Department, the direction should not be physically in the Department of State. This is the more true when it is realized that the considerable funds necessary for such an operation could not be concealed in the Department's budget. Therefore, this operation must find cover elsewhere.

10. The National Security Council Secretariat would seem to provide the best possible cover for such a directorate. Such cover would also permit a direct chain of command from the Secretary of State and be a natural meeting ground for close collaboration with the military establishment.

In the Spring of 1983, the network began to turn its attention toward beefing up the Administration's capacity to promote American support for the Democratic resistance in Nicaragua and the fledgling democracy in El Salvador. This effort resulted in the creation of the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Department of State (S/LPD), headed by Otto Reich.

On May 25, 1983, Secretary of State George P. Schultz, in an effort to head off the creation of S/LPD, wrote a memorandum to the President asking for the establishment of "simple and straight-forward management procedures." [Schultz testimony, Exhibit 69a supra]. The memorandum to the President followed a discussion between the President and Schultz earlier in the day. In the memo Schultz said:

"… Therefore, what we discussed was that you will look to me to carry out your policies. If those policies change, you will tell me. If I am not carrying them out effectively, you will hold me accountable. But we will set up a structure so that I can be your sole delegate with regard to carrying out your policies.

"… What this means is that there will be an Assistant Secretary acceptable to you (and you and I have agreed on Tony Motley) who will report to me and through me to you. We will use Dick Stone as our negotiator, who, in conjunction with Tony, will also report solely to me and through me to you. Similarly, there will be an inter-agency committee, but it will be a tool of management and not a decision-making body. I shall resolve any issues and report to you."

The President responded with a memorandum, which stated in part:

Success in Central America will require the cooperative effort of several Departments and agencies. No single agency can do it alone nor should it. Still, it is sensible to look to you, as I do, as the lead Cabinet officer, charged with moving aggressively to develop the options in coordination with Cap, Bill Casey and others and coming to me for decisions. I believe in Cabinet government. It works when the Cabinet officers work together. I look to you and Bill Clark to assure that that happens." [Schultz Testimony, Exhibit 69B].

Attached to the memo was a chart placing the NSC between the Secretary of State and the President for the management of Central American strategy. Schultz had not only lost the battle to prevent the establishment of the office, he also accepted the NSC-sponsored candidate to run the office, and accepted the fact that Reich would report directly to the NSC and not through the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.

-- An unpublished draft chapter of the congressional Iran-Contra investigation, that was suppressed as part of the deal to get three moderate Republican senators to sign on to the final report and give the inquiry a patina of bipartisanship.

RECOMMENDATIONS

11. There should promptly be established, under the cover of the National Security Council Secretariat, a Directorate of Political Warfare Operations [handwritten: directorate of political warfare operations [lower caps]]

12. The Director should be designated by the Secretary of State and should be responsible to him.

13. The Director should have initially a staff of 4 officers designated by the Department of State and 3 officers designated by the Secretary of National Defense.

14. The Directorate should have complete authority over covert political warfare operations conducted by this Government. It should have the authority to initiate new operations and to bring under its control or abolish existing covert political warfare activities.

15. Specifically, (a) the 3 projects mentioned in paragraph 7 above should be activated by the Directorate and (b) covert political warfare now under CIA and theater commanders abroad should be brought under the authority of the Directorate.

16. The coordination of the above covert operations with the overt conduct of foreign policy should, of course, be accomplished through the offices of the Secretary and Under Secretary of State.

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A Fateful Error
by George F. Kennan
New York Times
February 5, 1997

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PRINCETON, N.J. -- In late 1996, the impression was allowed, or caused, to become prevalent that it had been somehow and somewhere decided to expand NATO up to Russia's borders. This despite the fact that no formal decision can be made before the alliance's next summit meeting, in June.

The timing of this revelation -- coinciding with the Presidential election and the pursuant changes in responsible personalities in Washington -- did not make it easy for the outsider to know how or where to insert a modest word of comment. Nor did the assurance given to the public that the decision, however preliminary, was irrevocable encourage outside opinion.

But something of the highest importance is at stake here.

And perhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.

Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.

It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis.

And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move.

Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?

I am aware, of course, that NATO is conducting talks with the Russian authorities in hopes of making the idea of expansion tolerable and palatable to Russia. One can, in the existing circumstances, only wish these efforts success.

But anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it.

Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions. They would see their prestige (always uppermost in the Russian mind) and their security interests as adversely affected.

They would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.

It will obviously not be easy to change a decision already made or tacitly accepted by the alliance's 16 member countries.

But there are a few intervening months before the decision is to be made final; perhaps this period can be used to alter the proposed expansion in ways that would mitigate the unhappy effects it is already having on Russian opinion and policy.

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Russia's Concerns Aside, NATO Must Expand
by Kurt W. Bassuener
February 5, 1997/February 10, 1997

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To the Editor:

George F. Kennan (Op-Ed, Feb. 5) says that ''expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.''

Yet most responsible Russian politicians are well aware that the inclusion of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in NATO would in no appreciable way threaten Russia's security and will publicly state this. Save a bit of northeastern Poland that borders Russia's Kaliningrad district, which is essentially a huge military reservation, none of the proposed new members even border Russia.

Unfortunately, Russia's propaganda campaign to counter expansion has effectively sidelined three potential members that would be easily integrated -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- simply because they were under Soviet domination for half a century. The United States never officially recognized the legitimacy of this occupation and should not now allow Moscow to dictate to any extent the foreign and security policy of these nations, which have clearly and unequivocally voiced their desire to enter NATO as full members.

The clear conceit of Russia's leadership is readily apparent: we will create a groundswell of opposition to NATO expansion, even though polls illustrate that such opposition does not presently exist among Russia's electorate. Russia not only wants to be able to intimidate its neighbors in the former Soviet Union but also wants to keep its former satellites out of any binding security arrangements to guarantee their security.

Instead, it proposes to join NATO or calls for its dissolution, both of which amount to a negation of the alliance. If the matter is not resolved, it could lead to a ''Russia increasingly swayed by ultranationalists,'' according to Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, the Russian Prime Minister.

It is clear why the new democracies in Central Europe want the security that would be guaranteed by admitting them into NATO. It is also clear that NATO should welcome them, not merely in spite of, but also because of Russia's opposition and the form it has taken.

KURT W. BASSUENER

Washington, Feb. 5, 1997

The writer is a former researcher on Central European security policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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NATO Expansion Would Be an Epic 'Fateful Error': Enlargement could weaken unity within the alliance. Denials of the potential threat to Russia are delusory.
by Eugene J. Carroll, Jr.
July 7, 1997

[Eugene J. Carroll Jr., a retired Navy rear admiral, is deputy director of the Center for Defense Information, a defense watchdog group based in Washington]

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Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first NATO supreme allied commander. Shortly after assuming that post, he wrote these words in February 1951:

"If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed."

One can only wonder at his reaction today if he learned that 46 years later, the United States was the dominant force in a plan not just to continue our powerful military presence there but to enlarge NATO's responsibilities and increase U.S. costs and risks in Europe. If his granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, is any guide to his reaction, he would not be pleased. She gathered an impressive group of 49 military, political and academic leaders who joined her in signing an open letter to President Clinton on June 26 that terms the plan to expand NATO "a policy error of historic proportions."

Why have so many knowledgeable and responsible authorities, in addition to the letter's signatories, raised powerful objections to NATO expansion? Diplomat-historian George F. Kennan perhaps said it most clearly when he wrote earlier this year in a newspaper commentary: "Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the post cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected . . . to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."

Aye, there's the rub. The long-term interests of the United States in Europe can best be served by actions that promote enduring peace in Europe through security arrangements that include Russia as a cooperative participant. The expansion of NATO, however, excludes Russia at the same time it moves NATO borders 300 miles eastward -- the recent pact providing for regular NATO-Russia consultation notwithstanding.

President Clinton and his counselors deny that expansion threatens Russia. He told the graduating class at West Point in May that the objective was "to build and secure a New Europe, peaceful, democratic and undivided at last."

It is delusory, deliberately so, to argue that expanding NATO is a way to unite Europe. Certainly Henry Kissinger, a strong proponent of NATO expansion, was more candid and accurate when he wrote in The Times recently that "the new members are seeking to participate in NATO . . . not to erase dividing lines but to position themselves inside a guaranteed territory by shifting existing NATO boundaries 300 miles to the east." In stating that the real purpose of expansion is to create new dividing lines, he also provided a clear picture of Moscow's perception of a new NATO threat moved closer to its borders.

This picture also reveals that, at its heart, NATO expansion is aimed at Russia. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright confirmed this in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 23: "On the off-chance that in fact Russia doesn't work out the way that we are hoping it will . . . NATO is there."

NATO expansion is an attempt to extend Cold War divisions and strengthen the alliance against the chimera of a resurgent Russia bent upon imposing its hegemony in Eastern Europe. It may be safe to treat Russia as a prospective enemy today when it is helpless to prevent NATO expansion but there is the longer-term danger. A hard-line, anti-Western coalition will be strengthened in Moscow and give priority to anti-NATO measures in the future.

Even in the short-term there may well be nuclear dangers. The greatest U.S. security concern today is "loose nukes" in Russia. Our arbitrary and threatening actions may convince the hard-liners that nuclear weapons remain the only vestige of Russian military and political leverage. Efforts to reduce numbers, lower the alert status of long-range missiles and improve internal security for both weapons and missile material could easily be thwarted by the Russian Duma. This prospect represents a far greater threat to U.S. security than the improbable emergence of a Russian conventional threat at a distant date.

Overbearing U.S. insistence on expanding NATO strictly on our terms also could weaken unity within the alliance. Serious complaints are being leveled by some members concerning the autocratic tactics we have employed to control the expansion program. It will be ironic if our attempts to strengthen U.S. military leadership in Europe result in weakening U.S. political influence there.

Fortunately, it is not too late to halt the precipitous commitment to NATO expansion at the Madrid summit this week and consider alternatives that could produce a much more stable, peaceful Europe. Rushing into an unwise decision now to expand NATO in the face of real risks and great costs would be an action that fully merits the thoughtful warnings that it would be a "fateful error" of "historic proportions."