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forbids him to be neutral.
170 The predicament of the historian is a reflexion of the nature of man. Man, except perhaps in earliest
infancy and in extreme old age, is not totally involved in his environment and unconditionally subject to it.
On the other hand, he is never totally independent of it and its unconditional master. The relation of man to
175 his environment is the relation of the historian to his theme. The historian is neither the humble slave nor
the tyrannical master of his facts. The relation between the historian and his facts is one of equality, of
give-and-take. As any working historian knows, if he stops to reflect what he is doing as he thinks and
180 writes, the historian is engaged in a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his
interpretation to his facts. It is impossible to assign primacy to one over the other.
The historian starts with a provisional selection of facts, and a provisional interpretation in the light of
185 which that selection has been made — by others as well as by himself. As he works, both the interpretation
and the selection and ordering of facts undergo subtle and perhaps partly unconscious changes, through the
reciprocal action of one or the other. And this reciprocal action also involves reciprocity between present
190 and past, since the historian is part of the present and the facts belong to the past. The historian and the
facts of history are necessary to one another. The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts
195 without their historian are dead and meaningless. My first answer therefore to the question «What is
history?» is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending
dialogue between the present and the past.
From: E.H. Cart, What Is History? (1964).
MORALITY AND FOREIGN POLICY
by George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
1 In a small volume of lectures published nearly thirty-five years ago, I had the temerity to suggest that
the American statesmen of the turn of the twentieth century were unduly legalistic and moralistic in their
5 judgment of the actions of other governments. This seemed to be an approach that carried them away from
the sterner requirements of political realism and caused their statements and actions, however impressive to
the domestic political audience, to lose effectiveness in the international arena.
9
2 These observations were doubtless brought forward too cryptically and thus invited a wide variety of
interpretations, not excluding the thesis that I had advocated an amoral, or even immoral foreign policy for
15
this country. There have since been demands, particularly from the younger generation, that I should make
clearer my views on the relationship of moral considerations to American foreign policy. The challenge is a
fair one and deserves a response.
II
3 Certain distinctions should be made before one wanders farther into this thicket of problems. First of
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all, the conduct of diplomacy is the responsibility of governments. For purely practical reasons, this is
unavoidable and unalterable. This responsibility is not diminished by the fact that government, in
formulating foreign policy, may choose to be influenced by private opinion. What we are talking about,
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therefore, when we attempt to relate moral considerations to foreign policy, is the behavior of
governments, not of individuals or entire peoples. Second, let us recognize that the functions, commitments
and moral obligations of governments are not the same as those of the individual. Government is an agent,
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not a principal. Its primary obligation is to the interests of the national society it represents, not to the moral
impulses that individual elements of that society may experience. No more than the attorney vis-a-vis the
client, nor the doctor vis-a-vis the patient, can government attempt to insert itself into the consciences of
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those whose interests it represents.
4 Let me explain. The interests of the national society for which government has to concern itself are
basically those of its military security, the integrity of its political life and the well-being of its people.
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These needs have no moral quality. They arise from the very existence of the national state in question and
from the status of national sovereignty it enjoys. They are the unavoidable necessities of a national
existence and therefore not subject to classification as either «good» or «bad». They may be questioned
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from a detached philosophic point of view. But the government of the sovereign state can not make such