Schrader
The Sources of U.S. Conduct
Stuart Schrader
imagine an empire with a massive security sector, one barely accountable
to the democratic will. This coercive system, though appearing self-per-
petuating, represents an elite echelon’s efforts to protect and consolidate
power. It employs so many people that its maintenance and funding is
necessary, not because of the dictates of national security, but simply
to keep all its workers from becoming “superfluous.” With a repressive
apparatus notorious for its abuses, this security sector fosters the very
domestic opposition it is designed to combat.
This outline, to some readers, may sound similar to the military-
industrial complex—and its cognate prison-industrial complex—in the
United States today. But this description actually comes from George
Kennan’s foundational article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which
appeared in Foreign Affairs, under the byline X, in 1947. Kennan,
perhaps more than anyone else, shaped the rhetoric of the Cold War
in a way that made it seem preordained, inevitable. He is most often
remembered for calling out the supposedly innate qualities of Russian
culture—spiritual deprivation, cynicism, and conformity—upon which