Another lesson of Mr. Sestanovich's book is that diplomatic engagement with U.S. enemies is a fool's errand unless it's aimed at achieving a deeper strategic purpose. Take Ronald Reagan's personal diplomacy with Mikhail Gorbachev. Progressives today point to that diplomacy to defend their own concessions to U.S. adversaries. But such thinking, Mr. Sestanovich suggests, misses …
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[George] Kennan was right to think he had an artist’s temperament at war with a foreign service officer’s ambition. He was twenty-six years in the service of the United States in Riga, Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and Moscow, where he set up the first US embassy when US–Soviet diplomatic relations were established in 1933. He was in …
