Provocation or Deterrence?

"Yet, as Thompson emphasizes, acceptance of containment also brought Kennan disappointments that haunted him until his death in 2005. Kennan believed that the Soviet Union, however repugnant, posed little military threat to the West and urged that the United States rely mostly on economic and political means to resist Communist expansion. Other officials, above all Nitze, who succeeded Kennan as chief of policy planning, saw things differently, especially after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Kennan watched with regret as the United States subsequently poured enormous resources into weaponry and military bases."

Mark Atwood Lawrence in The New York Times reviews Nicholas Thompson's The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War.