Training for Statesmanship - Essay Example

The extract from George F.Kennan’s “Training for smanship” addresses the pertinent issue of the representations of power in the post-War American environment. He asserts that the American democratic system is unique in its approach to power. Kennan claims that unlike other countries where the police represent the state’s central power that serves at many occasions as an oppressive tool, America does not concentrate all its power in the police. On the contrary, the idea itself of power is that of a diffused and invisible one that spreads across the various state institutions.

However, the base-superstructure parameter of the Marxian precept is not what exactly Kennan talks about. In his opinion, the American people are in general conscious of the need to accept a multicultural environment, without a state centre having to exert power on them to think on terms of the greater common good. This innate accommodative sense of the American public that leads to progress is the most interesting point Kennan makes in this passage. The generalization that the American sentiments regarding national progress and general peace can be related to the concept of the American Dream where all those who came to the land and considered themselves as Americans were willing to work towards the common goal of building a paradise on the face of the earth.

However, this common mission that Kennan tries to talk about had already been challenged during the World Wars and the Cold War years, due to the uncontrollable dimensions of ethnic diversity that made the America that we talk about now. Years of legal and illegal migration from many parts of the world to the American mainland has made many cultural collisions inevitable. The various ethnic and religious communities that settled in America for various reasons made it impossible to have a shared viewpoint on progress and peace.

The fact that America gained immense amount of power in the international scenario through economic development has in fact led to a situation where the opinion of Kennan would seem like a joke. America is now seen by many other nations as exerting power even outside its administrative boundaries to gain and sustain more power. Its interference in the Palestinian issue and the the antagonistic relations with Iran and other Muslim nations have in fact made America notorious for using its military force for its selfish gains.

Similarly, the American internal affairs are also much beyond the comprehensive and cooperative attitudes that Kennan talks about. The occurrence of violence and crime inside the state tops all statistics, and the police force that has to be executed inside the state far exceeds the same in other countries of the world. The ideal state of affairs that Kennan dreams of could have been achieved with what the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci labels ‘consent’. Some amount of ‘coercion’ to maintain a community that works in accordance with national interests is also necessary.

Kennan’s idealistic view of the American situation reveals an improbable dream of going beyond such necessary evils that even Marxism approves of. However, the changing world order has made it impossible for the American public to spend at least a second of their life without thinking of the worst by-product of power – terrorism.