Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The REAL George F. Kennan with Frank Costigliola

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

In this episode, Anthony talks with distinguished historian and author Frank Costigliola about his new book, Kennan: A Life Between Worlds.  US diplomat George F. Kennan was one of the most influential and prominent figures of the 20th Century, whose policies, perhaps most notably - containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War, significantly altered the course of history. Frank and Anthony explores areas of Kennan’s life never previously visited – from his regrets and personal anecdotes to his extraordinary ambition and policies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is open. book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know,

I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. U.S. diplomat and prize-winning historian George Kennan is a complex, unique, but extremely influential figure, and one not everyone is familiar with. I first encountered George Kennan in an international relations course at Tufts University in 1982. Had no idea who he was, but the more I read about him, the more amazed I was at the fact that this one man created, by and large, the containment policies that were used by the United States in a bipartisan way. Since the end of the Second World War, let's call that in 1946 to 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down.

Many people don't know who he is, but I am a huge fan of Mr. Kennan, and I think he was the single intellect responsible for pushing this policy of containment, which was a very big man. obviously the most elemental theme of post-World War II and the post-World War II architecture that led to global peace and global prosperity. Yes, if you read the book that Frank Castigliola wrote, he is an extremely quirky guy, but his ideas remain powerful and relevant today. Here to tell us all about George Kennan is Frank Castigliola. Joining us now on Open Book, Frank Castigliola, Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, wrote an amazing book, by the way. I hope it becomes a bestseller, Frank. It's called Kennan, A Life Between Worlds. But by the way, when I read your book, sir, you didn't write it for it to be a bestseller, actually. You wrote it because you wanted there to be a piece, a historical and objective piece about this very brilliant, very complicated man known as George Kennan. Moreover, lots of people that are listening to this podcast who are young people. because we know that from our demographic studies,

do have no idea who George Kennan is. And so I would imagine you wrote it for that reason as well. You wanted there to be an artifact out there to explain the genius and the complexity of this person. But before we get into him, sir, I want to talk to you about you and me because your name ends an avowal. My name ends in a val. I think we're very close to our moms.

Right, right, right. Tell me a little bit about Frank before we go into George Kennet. Actually, I was going to start off, even before we talked about Kenner. I was going to start off by myself. say, you know, I have like 20-year-so podcasts that I've done or are going to do. I spoke last week at Princeton University. In December, I'm giving the keynote at a conference at the London School of Economics where you took some courses.

You know, I read your stuff. But I'd be very honest with you. I've been more excited about this interview with you, in part because I respect you and what you've done, but also especially because of your mother. I think it's really cool the way you have your mother come on at the end of every show. And I was thinking in my mind here, okay, if I could make Ken and George Kenne understandable to your mother, I would have been able to do that for my mother, who's now passed on. So I'm serious now. This is a very big honor for me.

First of all, I appreciate that. And listen, what you wrote about your mom and how you think about her. I mean, we're both very lucky, very blessed. I think you, I'm not a psychologist, sir, but I do believe you get a lot of yourself confidence and your skin comfort. You know, you're either comfortable in your own skin or you're not. And I think you get it from your parents, actually, and particularly from your mother. You know, I don't care who's richer than me or who's poorer than me or who's done. You know, I'm good with my mom.

It's good enough for me, right? Isn't that more or less the truth? That's very true. That's very true. What you said about being comfortable in your own skin, I think is important, especially for president of the United States. The United States is in a difficult situation if we have a president who's not comfortable in his own skin.

That's true. If you think about really great presidents, regardless of their politics, FDR, Reagan, these are people who are comfortable in their own skin. Truman. Truman, right? They didn't feel that they had to prove something to other people. Yeah, well, well said. And I think the American people are pretty good.

I can't, you know, we're in a little bit of a difficult spot now, but they're pretty good at picking that out. You know, in the cases of those figures, Reagan, you know, people said, all right, he had something about him. There's a very famous story about Reagan where he's running for election again. He's 69. Everyone thinks he's too old. Just imagine that now.

We have 82-year-olds running, but he's 69, and they say, well, the John Birch Society just supported you. And Reagan says, yeah, you know, I don't care, by the way. They're supporting me. I'm not supporting them. And oh, by the way, if this doesn't work out for me, I'm going to go cut brush and Santa Barbara at my ranch. And I've had a great life, and that's great. But here are my principles. This is what we're doing. If it works out great, if it doesn't, that's fine. Of course, Truman said very similar things when we were creating the post-World War II architecture, which our friend George Kennan had a lot to say about. But tell us a little bit about you, sir, if you don't mind.

You're a professor. How did you get there? What are you teaching? I grew up in a house like I mentioned, I think, in my website. Not that my parents got past the fifth grade. They had to drop out of school. Frankly, my mother had a drop out of school because there was a lot of anti-Italian prejudice in the town wishes growing up. And that's literally true. Well, we both know that. You know, the Italians

still get it, though. You know that, right? I mean, they put the sopranos on the air. Just imagine if we took other ethnics and we stereotyped them like that, how much of an uproar there would be. Actually, well, yeah, you know, usually I don't think much about that. But in preparing for this interview today, which, as I said, I really been looking forward to, I went and I googled the bit that Stephen Colbert did about you after. Right. And I frankly could not believe it. It was just nonstop, you know, Scaramucci, he's Italian, therefore he's a mobster. Right. That's incredible.

That's just, that's incredible. Well, you have no, Tony, Tony Soprano on the Potomac. Right. I was also compared to a Jersey Shore cast member. Yeah. I did go to Harvard Law School, but let's leave that out. Jim, tan, laundry, you know. And but by the way, I, you can probably see behind me, sir, there's the cartoon from

the Colbert show. Yeah. Okay. They were cartoonifying me. Yeah. I went on the show, you know, because my attitude is I'm a free speech believer. And I don't mind it. I just don't understand why we're so upset about it with other ethnic groups, but we're not upset about it at all with the Italians.

Right. But whatever. I'm a free speech person. Don't mind it. But I appreciate you bringing it up. Yeah, right. So, you know, I grew up, but my father came here in America and was 18. The next day after he got here, he went to the wholesale prodig's market, got a couple bushels of apples and potatoes, got a push cart.

And we're making some money on the streets of New York selling the priders. My mother was nine when she came here. So I grew up in a family like yours that not very much education themselves, but they appreciated the value of education. Always pushed me. But I loved reading as a kid. So my parents thought, if you're going to college, you should become a doctor or a lawyer. What else is there, right?

You know, this is serious. But they were understanding enough when I decided to go major in history, then go to graduate school. You know, they, I'll tell you, though, another story, though, Anthony. My mother fully accepted by being a professor only about 10 years ago. I've been a professor for 51 years. Only about 10 years ago after she was living in an assisted living place in Florida. And I just wrote a book of Franklin Roosevelt.

And so I went down there in the assisted living place, Abby Delray, it was called. And I gave a talk about Franklin Roosevelt. And in the audience, in the audience, was wonderful. There were these women, many women, a few men, but many women, who had voted for FDR back in 1940, 1914. before. And they were so appreciative. And then my mother, seeing this, seeing this reaction from her friends, thought, well, maybe Frankie did the right thing. I love it. See, I mean, we're going to get way off tangent, but I got to bring this up because I know you'll enjoy it. So my mother wanted me to be a judge. And I could never figure that out. You got to become a judge. And then I went to Harvard

law school. I went to Goldman. My mother told her friends, Frank, for five years that Goldman Sachs was a law firm. Okay. I was in Rosano's Italian deli, getting a hero. And, you know, Mrs. Frang comes over to me and says, oh, how's that law firm Goldman and Sacks? I said, what are you talking about, Mrs. Frant? She says, well, your mother says you're working at this very prestigious law firm, Goldman and Sacks. Because she was embarrassed for me that I didn't practice law, you know? So that's the family. But fast forward, I had the opportunity to have a lunch with Justice Scalia in June of 2014 before he passed. And we, you know, regaled each other on the Constitution. But then I said to him, sir, what is it with the Italian women and them wanting to do?

you'd be a judge. And he's, oh, Anthony, you don't get it. If you're a judge or a priest, they think you're incorruptible because those jobs are for life. If you're a mayor, I mean, maybe if you're a professor because you're tenured, but if you're a mayor, you're probably on the take. They don't want you to be the mayor. A judge or a priest means my son is a good boy. Right, right. Is that the best, Frank or why, right? I think that's it, right? That's it. Right. And Scalia was certainly, yeah, he's a piece of work, as you say. piece of work. And he was obviously very well regarded on the left and the right, even though he had an ideological point of view. He got along really well with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So, all right, so let's go to this very complex man. Let's say that I've come in from Mars. I've landed near your house. I ring your doorbell. And I say, okay, who was one of the leading thinkers in the post-World War II society that understood the threat of the Soviet Union, but also came up with constructs to help promote prospect. and democracy, and you would say who, and hopefully you'd say George Kennan, and then I'd

like you to tell me who he was and what you thought of it. Yeah, okay, I'll tell you, but the story's more complicated than that, and so that's why we have a good opportunity here. Canning lived to be 101 years old. So he's a man who kind of brought a perspective of the early 20th century into the mid and late 20th century. So in a way, he was a man, in a way, outside of his time, who could offer a perspective, you know, like they say good artists of people kind of of often alienated from the society, but there are people who have that kind of perspective from the outside who can see through the BS, see through what was working, it was not working in their own time. So Kennan was a diplomat, meaning that his life's work was getting people

to resolve differences with each other. Differences that can be very severe, particularly he wanted a, who is an expert on American relations with Russia. Kenan knew Russia intimately. He spent a lot of time in Russia. He spoke the language flawless. In fact, he spoke Russian with no accent. He spoke better Russian to Joseph Stalin, the dictator, because Stalin was came from Georgia province and still had a Russian, had a Georgian accent. Kenna did not. So, Kenan is famous because at the end of World War II, it seemed that the United States

had two difficult choices. Here is the United States 1945-46. The situation was that the Red Army, in pushing back the Germans and getting to Berlin in 1945, the Red Army ended up occupying large parts of Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and so forth. And the United States was afraid that Russians would continue moving westward, either with the force of the Red Army or because, you know, the largest political party after World War II in France was the French Communist Party. The largest political party in Italy was the Italian Communist Party because the Communists had led in the resistance against the Germans

and so forth. So Americans feared the further advance of the Russian. into Western Europe. And Americans thought they were two bad choices in dealing with that. One was to appease the Russians to accept their continued movement westward. And the second choice was to go to war with them. Two bad choices. Kennan said, no, this is 1946-47. No, those are not the only two choices. A third choice, far better choice, is containment, to contain the Russians, to stop their further expansion. And by that means, actually he said, if we contain the Russians long enough, Russian power or Soviet power, Soviet power will mellow or even collapse. And of course, that's a prediction for the end of the Soviet Union that Kennedy made in

1947 that came true in 1991. That's the part of the story that those who, I know you've taken history courses, you know, is the widely known part of the story. What's less well known, what's less well known, is that Kenan also believed that after the Russians were contained, after they pretty much staying within their borders, after Western Europe was revived through the Marshall Plan, which I know you're a big fan of. After Western Europe is revived, then Kenan believed it was time to move from containment to negotiation, to try to ease tensions and try to have compromise solutions that would lead to kind of a permanent peace in Europe and in the rest of the the world. So what I'm saying here is that he was a person who's famous for containment, but also

moving beyond containment to deal constructively to ease tensions with the Soviet Union because they thought that was necessary, especially in the nuclear age. Cold War, he feared, could always lead to a hot nuclear war. Well, let me ask you this. Did it work? Well, okay, the it is what the question is, because Canon was listened to when it came to containment, when he started advocating in 1949, 50 for negotiating with the Russians, he was not listened to, frankly. And so the Cold War continued. So it worked, and in the terms of containment did lead to the mellowing and collapse of the Soviet power, but only in 1991. That was 40 years, four decades later. Cannon felt that was too long and that we should have come to some kind of agreement with the Russians,

some kind of compromise and to the Cold War before that. And this is the important thing to get cross. There was always the danger of a nuclear war. That's something we tend to dismiss think, well, no one wants that. Well, no one wants a lot of bad things that happened. And that's something Kenney was concerned about. So, yes, containment worked, but the process took longer than he thought was necessary. Okay. So I'm a huge Kenan fan, despite his complexity, we'll go into it in a second, but about 30 years ago, I think it came out in 1994, I read one of his books around Cragget Hill. Right. He was being quite reflective at that time. He was well into his 80s. He was just turning 90. Very religious. The book starts out very religious. I don't know if you remember the book, Professor. Right, right. Call me Frank. Please call me Frank. Frank. He is big time into God. He's a big time into his Presbyterianism and his religion. And he thinks that there's some divine inspiration and some divine things that happen on Earth. Right. We're in more of a secular society now. But he's,

He certainly felt that way. And he felt that he had a role in that. And so I guess where I'm going, but he also, you know, he had a complicated personal life. Tell us why, I guess, you picked him for this major tomb, this major subject. I mean, you say as much in the book and introductions over it, but tell the listeners why. Yeah. Well, okay. You know, I've just been interested.

As you said, he's a complex character. He was ill for much of his life and lived to be 101 years old. He's famous for containment, yet he advocated. negotiation of the Soviet Union. He was a pioneering environmentalist. He somebody picked up a global warming way before most other people. He had a farm. I have a farm. He was a person who loved his family and also had numerous affairs. And he was a person who is really known among political scientists. I'm an historian, but he's known among political scientists for being a realist, for having a supremely rational approach to foreign relations. Yet he was highly

emotional. So it's a person who's a mix of many different things, as many people are, but he seemed to be very, very interesting. And the other thing about Canon is that there's so much evidence about his internal life. He wrote a diary. He started keeping a diary at the age of 11, and he kept that diary until he reached the age of 100. So there's a lot of intimate aspects of his life that are kind of revealed in the diary. He is also a person who wrote over 20 books, many of them major prizes. He spoke German as well as Russian, flawlessly. I felt that his story needed to be told. Well, I mean, it's a beautiful story. I mean, you cover everything. I want to set this scene for our listeners. He is in the embassy in Moscow. I believe at the time, he's working for Averill-Harrman.

And he now is trying to explain to people what he sees and what he knows of the Soviet Union and the Russian culture. So he telegrams back to the State Department or back to Washington. He signs it with an X. Give us the story. Right. Okay. This is the story of the long telegram. The situation is February 1946. The war ended that previous year. As I said a little earlier, people in Washington are unsure how to respond to the Soviet threat. Kenyon is also frustrated. He's frustrated with the Soviet government. He's frustrated with the American government. He's frustrated with the Russians because he's upset about their moving into Eastern Europe. He's also upset because Canada is a person who loved the Russian people, loved Russian culture. He doesn't love the Russian government, but he loved

the Russian people. He loved Russian culture. And the Soviet secret police, Stalin's secret police, had a policy preventing Soviet citizens from having any contact with foreigners. You could be arrested, you could be sent to Siberia, you could be executed, having contact, ordinary innocent contact, foreigners. And that's something that just drove Kennan up a wall. So he's upset with the Soviet government. He's also upset with the U.S. government because Kennan is a person of enormous ability. The bumper sticker story of Kenan is he's a person of enormous ability, could do all kinds of things. The only thing greater than his ability was his ambition. Okay. And he was frustrated because he had not been invited to the Yalta Conference, the Yalta Summit Conference of a year

ago, February, 1945, with Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. He'd not been invited to that. Harmon went and not him. And he has also felt that the U.S. government, this in 1946, was not listening to him in terms of the reports he was sending into Washington. So when he got a telegram from Washington saying, why are Soviets behaving so badly? Cannon said, okay, now he's going to let them have it. And also, as I said, he was sick. He's often sick. He was now sick and sick and bed with the flu. It was, and it was Washington's birthday, February 22nd, 1946. And, you know, back in the day, you and I remember this, back in the day, we didn't celebrate a generic president's day. Lincoln's birthday, February 12th, had a holiday, February 22nd. Washington's

birthday had a holiday that probably had something to do with the state of the country and what's happened. And so it was Washington's birthday. It was a Friday. And so he called his secretary, and he was in his apartment, in bed with the flu, and she was angry at being taken away from a three-day weekend, and he said, look, I'm going to dictate a telegram to you. And so lying in bed, he dictated this flawlessly worded 5,500-word telegram, the longest telegram ever sent to the Department of State, in which he laid out his analysis of Soviet behavior. You also, you have to say, that Kennan was, as I said, frustrated at being, as he saw it, ignored. And so he was, He exaggerated how dire the Soviet threat was.

He presented it as an existential threat rather than what it was, it was a challenge. And as a consequence, that Long Telegram, with its very emotional language, but highly persuasive language, which was kind of an advertisement, okay, for containment. The Long Telegram was a sensation when it hit Washington. It was picked up by not just the State Department, but it was circulated to every cabinet official in the Truman administration. And on March 5th, 1946, two weeks later, coincidentally, the same day as Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, on March 5th, 46, Kenon's Long Telegram was sent to every diplomatic post around the world, every U.S. diplomatic post around the world, because this

was now setting out what U.S. policy was going to be to contain the Soviet Union. You know, it's an amazing story, and there are other big players in the story. So I want you to regales, if you don't mind, talk a little bit about Harry Truman, talk a little bit about Dean Ackinson, George Marshall. I'm going to draw a blank on the gentleman's name, though. He was the Republican Senate Majority Leader. What was his name? Arthur Vanderberg.

So you had Republicans and Democrats post-World War II era. They fought the war together, ideologically different, but you needed Vanderberg's help on some of the policy. And so tell us a little bit about the cast. characters alongside of Kennan as the United States was thinking about the post-World War II architecture and had it put up with and contained the Soviet Union. I think, you know, these American leaders at the end of the world due to, the United States was fortunate that the United States had such talented leaders. People who were smart,

as you said, people of different political parties, but who agreed on basic issues. And they're really cast of interest, kind of a team of rivals in certain respects, to each fascinating. Harry Truman, I mean, Harry Truman, when he became president, most Americans had never experienced any other president. He became president. Franklin Roosevelt died in April 12, 1945. Truman had been vice president for just a few months.

FDR thought he would survive his entire fourth term. And so it didn't tell Truman about anything, literally anything. Truman didn't know about the atomic bomb. He didn't know about what had been decided at the Yalta conference in February, 45, two months before FDR died. And so Truman, you know, he's the guy who, the only American president in the 20th century who never went to college, okay? He was a person who was not tall. He failed at several business ventures in the 1920s and 30s. And finally he made it in politics he was successful, but still he was regarded as, as many people, little Harry Truman.

So now he's president of the United States. He said he felt as if the weight of the sun, the moon, the stories that all fallen upon him all at once. It was just a tremendous responsibility to replace anyone, let alone to replace FDR. So Truman, it took him a while to kind of find his footing, but he had some good advisors. One of them was Dean Atchison, who became a Secretary of State in 1949. Atchison was, there's a very interesting relationship. There's something people to pick up on. Atchison was a corporate lawyer, a very successful corporate lawyer, Covington and Burling, in Washington, and Atchison was tall, had been educated at Yale, had a very kind of arrogant manner. Atchison, you know, Atchison realized that in a way in negotiations, one way to kind of make

your mark in negotiations is to intimidate the other people in the room. And this is among corporate lawyers. So he was, Atchison was a piece of work. He looked like a British aristocrat. Again, he was tall, had a kind of steel-looking face, had a handlebar mustache. So he's now dealing with Truman. But it's a mark of the respect each of them had for each other and a mark for Atchison savvy that he was able to deal with Truman in a way that Truman felt that Atchison was on the side without being overbearing. You know, you have one person who's kind of insecure, Harry Truman, one person who's kind of

overbearing Atchison and the insecure person is the boss, but Atchison always. made it seem that he was respectful, and he was respectful for Truman, it was president, president of the United States. Then there was George Marshall, who was Secretary of State before Atchison. Marshall was revered, revered by, he'd been chief American army officer in World War II, the advisor to Franklin Roosevelt and all kinds of strategic matters. People talked about George Marshall as if he was the god. He was, again, kind of an austere person. When Franklin Roosevelt said, you could visit me at my country estate, Hyde Park. Marshall said, no, I just want to keep our relationship official. Franklin Roosevelt called George Marshall. George, George Marshall replied,

only Mrs. Marshall calls me George. So he's not afraid to stand up to the president. And Marshall also had good people working for him. They brought Cannon back. Cannon, as I said a little earlier, had been feeling frustrated in the Moscow embassy. He was number two there. He felt he was ignored. they brought him back to be the first head of the policy planning staff. This is a new part of the State Department that was set up with a purview of the entirety of U.S. foreign relations. And he was candidate at age 43 in charge of planning the long-range foreign policy of the United States. There's a series of other people, too.

This really was the time when the United States was fortunate to have leaders who were capable with far-reaching vision. Welcome to another round of drawing board or Miro board. Today we discussed technical diagramming with systems architect Maya. Let's go. First question. You've spent 10 hours slogging over a sequence diagram that should have taken five. Drawing board or Miro board? Drawing board.

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And she's done it. Join over 60 million people creating technical diagrams without workflow glitches. Get your first three boards for free at Miro. That's M-I-R-O.com. So I want to mention this to you get your reaction. So along comes Eisenhower. It's 1952. He runs successfully for president.

He's inaugurated in 53. Him and Truman, I think at that time, are not speaking. They've lost their personal friendship or even whatever it was, their acquaintanceship, whatever he might call it. But Eisenhower has a good nose for things related to the Cold War. Tell us a little bit about his relationship with Kenyon and the others. that built this architecture and the bipartisan nature of these two groups working together. And obviously, I want to talk a little bit about today versus then.

Well, I wish it was quite so rosy. It's not quite so rosy back then. The Republicans thought they were going to win in 1948. There's a famous photo of Harry Truman holding up a newspaper saying Dewey, his opponent, Dewey wins because people expected Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate, to win in 1948. Truman eked out a victory in 1948. So by 1952, the Republicans were just very anxious to win the presidency, very anxious to win back. Congress, they had not had a majority in Congress since 1930, okay, and this is 22 years later.

So the Republicans ran a tough campaign in 1952. Eisenhower picked as his vice president basically in a tact dog, Richard Nixon. Nixon was known as a very conservative Republican, not like today's conservative, but in the nature of 1915. He was close to Joseph Bacarthy, who was known as kind of comparable. I'd say Steve Bannon figure, I don't know if that means anything to you. Nothing. It means nothing. Completely over my head, Frank.

Right, right. By the way, one of the biggest assholes I've ever met in my life and literally one of the more malevolent characters. But if you ever get a chance to meet General Kelly, who I'm personal friends with, I didn't get fired because of my remarks related to Ben. And I got fired because Trump did not like the attention I was getting in the White House. And so, you know, the remarks about ban and notwithstanding, he was getting fired for the things that he was doing. I just happened to get fired along with it. Let me just say as a parenthesis here, I think it was a real loss.

And I'm just saying this because it's on your show. It was a real loss to the Trump administration to lose you because Trump had some good ideas. Not all good ideas, but he had some good ideas. And what he lacked was people to carry out his policies in a consistent, intelligent way. And that's, you know, somebody like you could have helped with that. I mean, I mean, that that's- I was there to help him. But you know what?

The problem is, if you really understand Trump's personality, it has to be about him 100% of the time. There was a blonde woman that worked for him on the apprentice. And she was getting some fame and know-to-right. He didn't like it. So he fired her and he put Ivanka in her place, you know? And there were two things if Trump said to you, you were dead. One was, you're getting more famous than me.

or if he called you President Pompeo or President Ben, and you were dead. You know, he just had that way about him, you know, unfortunately. That's what I mean about being comfortable in your own skin and feeling secure enough. Okay, so what? Scaramucci is getting attention. So what? I'm the president.

You know, I mean, that's the deal. Well, that's why he went through people so quickly, though, sir. You know, he didn't have that feel for me. He didn't have that comfort for themselves. Never did, you know. There was a tremendous amount of, ridiculous insecurity about him, honestly. But are you going back to these other guys?

You know, we have an image of Eisenhower as this benign grandfatherly figure, kind of a legacy of the last years of the Eisenhower administration when he'd had a stroke, he'd had a heart attack, he'd mellowed. But the way to understand Eisenhower is Eisenhower mobilized not just the U.S. armies, but also British, French, Canadian armies and the invasion of D-Day, Normandy, in 1944. So he had to be a diplomat as well as a general. He had to deal with Churchill. He had to deal with De Gaul.

He had to deal with Roosevelt. He had to deal with Marshall. So, I mean, Eisenhower was a savvy guy and could be very forceful. And Eisenhower liked to tell the story to give you a picture here of the people around him. I'd like to tell the story of when he had gone to Moscow in August 1945 and met with Zukov. who is the commander of the Red Army. And Eisenhower asked Zoukov, when you're advancing, you know, into formerly German-held territory,

how do you clear the fields of mines? How do you get rid of the mines, you know, explosive mines in the areas that you're occupying? And Zuckov says, we march through them. Okay? So as an Eisenhower, I like to say, that's where he gets Nixon around, to march through the minefields.

So Eisenhower was very good at utilizing other people, where they needed to be used so that he could be kind of above the fray and be the kind of benign but forceful presidential leader. So going back to 1952, Republicans were desperate to win. Eisenhower had Nixon as his vice president, which was to kind of quiet the McCarthy wing of the Republican Party. And he let it be known that he was going to appoint a secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, who was another corporate lawyer. That's another thing. These people in the late early post-world War II period, a lot of them were corporate lawyers. Something made me to be said for that.

I don't know. So Dulles was a corporate lawyer who had a lot of experience in foreign affairs. And Dulles thought the containment, that was the Democratic policy, the Democrats, to contain the Russians. That wasn't good enough. Instead, we wanted to roll them back. And so Dulles said, Republican policy, if we win, is to roll back the communists. And that meant rolling them back, getting them out of Poland, Hungary, and so forth. But after Eisenhower was elected in November 52 and became president in January 53,

Eisenhower held a big meeting at the White House with Dulles and Kennedy was invited and other people. And after two months of debate, it became clear that rollback would mean war. And Eisenhower didn't want that. So basically, Dulles could keep the language of rollback, but American policy remember. containment. All right. I mean, it's brilliant stuff. I mean, and your book is so easy to read, and it's got such great anecdotes in it, not only about the man, but the Cold War, the interaction that he has with so many different people. I shared with my production people the interview that Tom Friedman did with Mr. Kennan in 1998, and I'm going to read you a quote from that

interview, which I know you're familiar with. Mr. Kenan ended the interview by saying, this has been my life, and it pains me to see it so screwed up in the end. And so obviously, he's talking about the policies and the policies in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Vladimir Putin, and are, in his opinion, mis-sizing how to handle the situation. What say you about all of that? I think, frankly, I think that Kenner was right. In 1991, Soviet Union had fallen, right? Amazing. This was the end of a confrontation without a war, without devastation. One side simply gave up. Okay. So the Soviet Union was gone and Russia had a fragile democracy. This was an opportunity. This was an opportunity, for the United States to kind of reset what its relationship with Russia and to try, as many people were arguing. Cannon was arguing this, but other people as well, mainstream people are arguing. This is an opportunity for us to really integrate Russia into the West to try to. to solidify, secure its democracy, and end this East versus West confrontation. And what many people were suggesting, among them, Kennan, was to, okay, the Warsaw Pact,

which was Russia's Cold War Alliance, that was dead. What the United States should do, many people argued, including Kennan, is to say, okay, NATO served this purpose, the Cold War is over, we won the Cold War, now let's have a new military political security organization from including the United States and all of Europe, you know, as far as including Russia. So in other words, integrate Russia into the West and into Europe with this military security organization. Instead of doing that, which who knows what would have happened, but instead of doing that,

the United States steadily advanced NATO eastward taking in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and then eventually former republics of the Soviet Union. And now you've got Finland and, you know. Right. Now, you know, we can say, well, those countries want to join. And that's true. If I was in Poland, I would want to join Latvia, Lithuania. Of course, I'd want to join NATO.

The question is, and here's the key question, is it in the long run, is it in the long run realistic to expect the United States to maintain robust military forces in far off Eastern Europe on the frontier of Russia. Is that realistic? Is that the future that we want to pay for? Okay, pay for. This is a country has problems paying its bills. Is that realistic in terms of what the United States should be aiming for? Kennan said, you know, that's where diplomacy comes in, that rather than have confrontation and eventually war, what you need is diplomacy, patient negotiations to bridge differences. And Kenan said, and I think he was right about What people say, well, diplomacy won't work because they're irreconcilable, unbridgeable

differences. Kenyon said that that's what diplomacy is for. Patient negotiations. He said, initial positions is just the asking price. It's just the asking price. And the object of negotiations is to bring the two sides together. It's kind of what you might phrase the art of the deal. I think it's a brilliant exposition of everything that's going on.

I just hope we can get better leaders, perhaps leader. that are more comfortable in their skin, Frank, okay, that can relax a little bit and be less positional in their bargaining. Okay, so we're coming to our end. I have these five words I give my authors. Okay. And I need you to like give your immediate reaction to these words. Okay.

Can I just add one thing first? This is for your mother. Just in terms of my credentials here, I wanted to know that I make an excellent tomato sauce based on a recipe from my aunt Ray who lived in Valley Street. Now that's the South Shore, not the North Shore at Port Washington, but just I want it to be out there, okay?

It's good living. I'm going to make sure she knows for him. It's good living, but let me ask you this. Where are you from in Italy? Poitwoldi, from my father's family, and Puglia from my mother's family. Okay, yeah. My mother's family is from Avalino.

Yeah. It's a very small town called Volterara in the mountains of Avalino. All right, so it's roughly the same. recipes. That's why I was asking. So I'm going to be sure to tell her that. All right. So ready? Here are the five words. Let's go to Russia. Always a problem, but potentially a partner. Right. So we both believe that. Soviet Empire. Can it help bring it to an end? And thank God it did not end with a war. A bloodless falling of an empire pretty extraordinary. NATO. NATO. Now become an

organization that can be perceived, can be perceived as an aggressive alliance. It's interesting. And so I tell people, they get very upset with me. Imagine if North Carolina successfully seceded from the Union during the Civil War. And then the Russians said, hey, no problem. We're going to put troops. Right. Garrisons of troops there. I'm going to put our naval ships in that port. I don't know if the American president would be in love with that, given the history. Right. Think about if China had a military alliance with very, very. Venezuela, China. Yeah.

And then was advancing through Central America, alliances with Nicaragua and so. How would the United States react? Yeah. Amen. Okay. So, Cold War. Cold War. Thank God it ended without a war.

We don't need another one. Right. So, I mean, a successful outcome. George Kenon, his legacy, Frank. I hope that people appreciate the utility and possibilities of diplomacy. Well, this has been an absolutely derivative interview. You know, listen, I got to have lunch with you, Frank. I'm going to come to Connecticut and have a launch.

with you. I'm going to find you up there. You are terrific. You wrote a great book. It's called Kenan, A Life Between Worlds. And thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Well, I've read other biographies of George Kennan, but Frank's book really offers a new perspective. The John Gattis book is another book about Mr. Kennan that I would strongly recommend to people. In 1994, Mr. Kenan wrote around the Cragget Hill, and I read the book cover to cover twice, actually. Why did I do that? Because he was an amazing, thoughtful, an influential man. He was also deeply religious, which I do think influenced his behavior and also influenced his ideology. Kenan wanted world dialogue, and he wanted a peaceful

democracy to grow around the world. And one of the things that I love about Mr. Kenan, and sometimes you need this in a society, is the black and whiteness. He was very very, very, aggressive in calling out the darkness of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. And just to take people back to that time, we made a pact with Joseph Stalin who probably killed tens of millions of his own people, arguably as evil, if not more evil than Adolf Hitler, but we made a pact with him to defeat Adolf Hitler. But when the war was over, we wanted peace with the Russians. Some of our generals wanted to go into Russia and invade Russia.

Harry Truman said, we'll have none of that. He certainly didn't want to put our troops or American citizens through that. But George Kennan was very stern, very revelatory about what was going on in Russia and spoke directly about the evil and the hegemony of what the Soviet Union wanted, not only in Eastern Europe, but perhaps around the world. And so Mr. Kennan's strategy, which ultimately developed into the Truman doctrine, and you can trace it right from the Truman doctrine to Ronald Reagan's speech in June of. of 1987, where he said Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall, all of those themes were decade-long planning, decade-long strategy that manifested out of the mind of Mr. George Kennan. And so he's an important person even today as we think about the balance of power that we're still striving to have around the world. Hello?

Ma, you're ready to come on the podcast? Yeah, why not? You'll be a fan of my next guest. His name is Mr. Frank Castigliola. What a great Italian name, right? Okay. Oh, okay. Okay.

So he listens to the podcast, Ma, and he loves the conversation that you and I have at the end of the week. He said, of all the interviews he's done, he's most excited about this one because he knows he's going to listen to you at the end of the show, that you're the star of the show. You love that, Ma? See how flatter he gets you everywhere? Love it. Okay, tell me why you love it, Mom, because you know, you like to hear yourself speak, right? I like to hear myself speak, and when I was young, I looked like Natalie Whit, but not anymore. I don't think, but I really look like her because everyone in the world told me that.

Okay, so you like the flattery, right? Yeah, of course. So let me ask you something, Mom. We had a policy. You liked Harry Truman, right? Didn't pop my grandfather, your dad, like Harry Truman? Very much. Okay.

Why did he like Harry Truman? Ma. Remind everybody. Because I think he was for our country. I think that he was not in the typical diplomat where he had to be a showman. He did what he had to do in World War II, which my brothers were in. Right. So he didn't care about popular opinion. He just was like, okay, if this is the right thing to do for the American people, we're going to do it, right? He did it. Okay. So Frank, so Frank wrote a book, okay, about a diplomat by the name of George Kennan. But what George Kenyon was he was the father of the foreign policy to contain communist Russia. And this policy got adopted by Harry Truman. And the United States followed that policy right to the end where the

Berlin Wall came down. Do you remember when the Berlin Wall came down? My cousin's husband was a minor in that. In Italy, they didn't have jobs. And so he went to Berlin and he was part of it. Okay, and so he was working in Berlin as a time as a Mason, and he was very excited that the wall was coming down, right? Absolutely. Okay, but the policies got started by George Kennan, and the policies got started by Harry Truman. Okay, so give us some memories of what Uncle Tony would say about Harry Truman, okay, my uncle who fought at D-Day and was decorated, or my grandfather. What did they say, a Harry Truman? They said that Harry Truman was probably one of the best presidents that in the United States.

States never had. And never, never went to college. He was a great student of history. And so anyway, if he was alive today, the Russians wouldn't have the lead in the Ukraine, I don't think. Okay. You think that it would know how to stop it in a better way. Okay. So you think that it's dragging on too long and somebody like Harry Truman would have figured out a way to get this thing. Yeah, he wouldn't, he wouldn't stop the way how to get rid of it. Yeah, it's interesting because he had a hard time ending the Korean War and he was very frustrated by the Korean War. Do you remember when he fired just General McArthur, Ma? Or no? Or not really? Yeah, of course. I graduated from school in 1935, I'm maybe six, funny. He had guts. He had guts, right?

He didn't care. He wasn't a criminal kind of politician. He didn't want the limelight. He knew what was right. I think he really was one of the best presidents that we ever had. I really don't. So, Ma, this guy, Frank, that I interviewed, was a very refined Italian. Okay?

And he listens to our podcast, right? So I was telling Frank that you wanted me to be a judge and he was laughing. Okay, you remember all that whole thing? Why did you want me to be a judge so badly? What was the reason for that? Well, when I was a kid growing up, my first love's father was a judge. And my first love became a Supreme Court judge. And he seemed to have clout everywhere he walked.

And I think you deserved a lot of clout. But you did it a different way and you have clout. So you didn't have to be a judge. Okay. So I got the cloud anyways. I don't need to be a judge. But Frank loved that. But, ma, the one thing about Frank is that he's a, you know, he's a professor and he's a student of history.

Was I a good reader as a kid? You read all the time. Right. They used to call you Moses because you were as straight as a straight. And you didn't deviate in your personality. You were always very honest and very sincere. And somehow, you were always a giver. right kind of giver to your immediate family, and my mother was like that.

All right. All right. Well, anyway, Ma, I interviewed a fabulous Italian man by the name of Frank Costigliola, who wrote a great book about that era, and that was a great time in America where the parties were working together. You know, yeah, the Republicans and the Democrats were working together, not that they weren't fighting. Of course, they always fight, but they were more cooperative back then than they are today,

and we had better results. So anyway. They knew what was right. Both parties knew what was right. They weren't trying to manipulate to be a showman and say the Republicans were first or the Democrats. All right. I appreciate you joining me on Open Book, Ma. I love you.

I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at Plus 1, 917, 909-29-996. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.