The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy by Strobe Talbott 2003 。 OBLOMOV (《奧勃洛莫夫》1859) by Ivan Goncharov
我依索引，找出有興趣處讀，意趣橫生，(2輯照片的文字說明和編排，很有意思)，收益多，譬如說，俄國外交先知、大老 George Kennan 的三類索引；China 中的"Belgrade embassy bombing and" 等。
Owen Hsieh......被譽為外交上最後一位智者（ The last wiseman ）的肯楠，是職業外交官，曾任美國國務院政策規劃局局長、美國駐蘇聯大使、駐南斯拉夫大使。肯楠文采斐然，辯才無礙，一生寫了14本書，除了兩部回憶錄外，包括外交史、外交政策及美蘇關係等，曾獲普立茲獎及美國國家圖書獎。
肯楠1993年出版了 “ 在崎嶇的山脊 （ Around the Cragged Hill ）”, 是個人的政治哲學思想著作，語出 17世紀英國詹姆士一世時期的玄學派詩人 John Donne, " 在崎嶇、尖峭聳冉的大山上，真理巍然而立，但你必須前去，設法親近……。”
肯楠在這本壓卷之作，暢論人性、政府、國家、意識型態、外交政策（軍事對抗與非軍事的）的本質。與其他著作最大的不同是完全拋開歷史、外交案例，以抽象的哲學概念，對事物作更廣泛面向、更高層次的思考，希望所分析的問題本質，在未來數十年，仍有意義。
在中國強推 “ 港版國安法 ” 踐踏香港自治，美國川普總統宣布5大報復措施之際，肯楠書中的卓見震聾發聵，躍然紙上：
“ 個人對權力的追求如何將政府轉變為野心、對抗和懷疑的混合體；"
" 一個國家的規模如何在統治者和被統治者之間樹立障礙？"
“ 為何美國必須先整理自己的房子，才能成為別人的燈塔？"
紐約時報有書評
But Professor Kennan, who has been associated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 1953, said in a telephone interview from his office that he is looking forward to the arrival of a new generation in Washington. "I have been heartened by what I have seen and heard said by Mr. Clinton, his actions and statements during the interregnum," he continued. "This is not in the way of comparison: in foreign affairs there were several things that I admired about the Bush Administration." But he is glad to see "younger people coming in, who listen to others."---此篇書評
So Unreconciled to So Much
By 發表於1993年元月3日，Clint0n總統就任之前，所以肯楠可以就他在11月當選之後的約2個月的待任期間的言行，發表看法。
The author of 18 books on American and European diplomatic history, Soviet affairs and nuclear weapons is at work now on a companion to his two-volume analysis of the French-Russian alliance at the end of the 19th century. But, he worries some more, "it is hard to write books at this age in life." His own health is good ("I've been lucky"), but "many of the people who could support me have gone." -- BARTH HEALEY
A PERSON'S political philosophy is apt to be an effect as well as a shaper of that person's temperament and sensibility. As "Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy" makes clear, George F. Kennan's conservatism is a product of his almost visceral recoil from many aspects of modern American life.
This book is, Mr. Kennan acknowledges, not systematic philosophy but "essentially a collection of critical observations." However, from their pattern flows something recognizable as conservatism. To call Mr. Kennan's conservatism anachronistic is not to disparage it: there is something bracing about a man so unreconciled to so much. And to note that his thinking is, strictly speaking, un-American is not to question his attachment to his country, which attachment he movingly affirms.
His conservatism is a curious and not quite coherent blend of two traditions long since relegated to the losing side of American history. One is the anti-Federalist suspicion of great size in a polity, and fear of the concentration of political power in the central government. The other tradition is a high Federalist, even Tory, belief that the central government should be staffed by a disinterested elite and must be strong enough to supervise the base habits of the turbulent masses.
The "cragged hill" of Mr. Kennan's title is from Donne: "On a huge hill, / Cragged, and steep, Truth stands." The truth, as Mr. Kennan apprehends it, is that man is a "cracked vessel" whose distresses can be palliated only slightly by government, which "is simply not the channel through which men's noblest impulses are to be realized." He believes the American portion of mankind is especially flawed and rapidly becoming more so.
For 27 years Mr. Kennan was an intellectual engaged in diplomacy. For four subsequent decades, mostly at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., he has written distinguished books on history and diplomacy. But in "Around the Cragged Hill" the two chapters on foreign policy reflect primarily his preoccupation with what he considers America's domestic sickness. He pleads for a "self-effacing" stance toward the world, not just because the world is largely beyond our comprehension (never mind our control), but also because all of the country's energies are required at home if regeneration is to be even remotely possible.
The United States, he says, is in "critical shape" because Americans have become "a people of bad social habits." Furthermore, the government's incompetence is such that "one has no choice but to question the adequacy of Western democracy itself" for responding to today's challenges.
Mr. Kennan grounds his thinking in an unblinking acknowledgment of humanity's "animalistic" dimension. His assessment of sexuality is particularly chilly. Given the fissure between man's physical and spiritual natures, "he staggers through life as best he can," bedeviled by an insoluble conflict between what he is and what the interests of civilization require him to be. Mr. Kennan affirms, with characteristic tentativeness, a tepid religious faith in a Spirit, though one acquitted of any responsibility for the mess mankind is in.
Mr. Kennan believes that large nations -- he calls them "monster countries" (the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, India and Brazil) -- are "problems to themselves." To achieve a greater "intimacy" in civil life, he advocates, with a sort of earnest whimsy, a radical devolution of the Federal Government's authority to 12 constituent republics, to be organized on regional lines. He does not explain why the 50 states are not suitable receptacles for authority shed by Washington.
His other proposal is notably unpersuasive: a nine-member "Council of State" to be chosen by the President to render advice on "long-term questions of public policy" -- but not about "matters of current contention." This notion is offered perfunctorily, as though as a mere reflex by a man of government who really knows the foolishness of suggesting institutional tinkering as a solution to problems of the nation's soul.
The columnist Joseph Alsop called Mr. Kennan "an almost too-sensitive man." Certainly contemporary America lacerates his sensibilities. He deplores, among many other things, "plebiscitary tendencies" in governance, forced desegregation ("people should be allowed to do what comes naturally," and policies should be "responsive to local feelings, local customs and local needs") and egalitarianism generally (because "every attempt at social leveling ends with leveling to the bottom, never to the top"). It is nowadays rare, and for that reason rather entertaining, to read something like Mr. Kennan's lament about the servant shortage:
"A society wholly devoid of the very institution of domestic service is surely in some ways a deprived society, if only because this situation represents a very poor division of labor. There are people for whom service in or around the home pretty well exhausts their capabilities for contributing to the successful functioning of a society. There are others who have different and rarer capabilities; and it is simply not a rational use of their abilities that they should spend an inordinate amount of time and energy doing things that certain others could no doubt do better, and particularly where these are just about the only things the latter are capable of doing. . . . I find it hard to picture a great deal of Western culture without the institutions of domestic service that supported it. . . . I cannot, somehow, picture Tocqueville combining his serene meditations with the washing of the pots and pans and the removal of trash from the kitchen premises."
Neither can one so picture Mr. Kennan.
Well stricken in years and well seasoned by life, the 88-year-old Mr. Kennan has standing to complain, and he gives good value as a curmudgeon. There is an echo of the 1920's in his condemnation of "great monopolies," and there is the flavor of the 1940's in his worries about "automation." He considers the computer useful primarily "to speed the manifold processes of a life that is plainly already proceeding at a pace far too great for the health and comfort of those that live it." And his loathing for the automobile is almost majestic. The automobile is a "mass addiction" that he associates with myriad evils, from the increase of crime to the decline of cities and spread of loneliness. He contrasts automobile travel "with the color and sociability of the English highway of Chaucer's time, as reflected in 'The Canterbury Tales,' or with the congenial atmosphere of the railway compartment of the Victorian novel."
Mr. Kennan is apprehensive but firm in wanting the Federal Government to reform the citizenry's offensive "habits of daily life," including the uses made of automobiles and television. But what, then, of his dour disbelief in government as an instrument of noble impulses?
This is a book to be enjoyed not for its analytic rigor but for the sparks struck from a strong personality. Mr. Kennan quotes, not disapprovingly, his first ambassadorial chief, William Bullitt, saying that mankind is "a skin disease of the earth." But, paradoxically, a species that can speak so harshly of itself is not so bad. Similarly, as long as the United States produces critics as astringent yet affectionate as George F. Kennan, it will not be so fallen as Mr. Kennan thinks it is. 'WE HAVE GOTTEN FAR OFF THE TRACK'
George F. Kennan's voice is strong, belying his 88 years, and deliberate, especially as he requests assurance that when he is quoted, "my sentences have beginnings and endings." Indeed, in explaining the genesis of his personal catechism, "Around the Cragged Hill," he speaks in well-formed paragraphs wrought by six decades in diplomacy and academia.
"I have the feeling that we have gotten far off the track because of the deficiencies of the political system," said Professor Kennan. (Though he retired from the classroom 18 years ago, none of his colleagues seem to find "Mr." sufficiently stately.) He is especially concerned that the constant need for politicians to get re-elected too often strips these public servants of the nobility with which they should serve.
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