Crossing to Safety from Cold War America: The Collaboration and Friendship of John Paton Davies, Jr. and George Frost Kennan. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mayers, David
• Is Part Of: Diplomacy and statecraft. Volume 29:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 208
• Page End: 236
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: Diplomacy -- Periodicals; World politics -- Periodicals; International relations -- Periodicals; 327
• DOI: 10.1080/09592296.2018.1452429
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0959-2296

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This analysis probes the interwoven careers and lives of two distinguished American diplomats, John Paton Davies, Jr. and George Frost Kennan. These Foreign Service officers, who rose to prominence in the years immediately after the Second World War, were embroiled in the formulation and implementation of controversial policy during the early Cold War. The experience of Davies and Kennan illustrates the domestic hazards that have dogged American foreign policy-making even into the present. Yet the focus here is on their friendship—a subject hitherto little examined in the scholarly literature—its connexion to the evolution of their policy recommendations, its steadying power in moments of moral and personal crisis, its tempering effect on failure. The assessment also draws on a notable work of fiction, Wallace Stegner's 1987 Crossing to Safety, to consider the ineffable nature of friendship itself.