<P> Answer to Dept's 284, Feb. 3, 13 involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be a dangerous degree of oversimplification . I hope, therefore, Dept will bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts...I apologize in advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once . </P> <P> Kennan described dealing with Soviet Communism as "undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face". In the first two sections, he posited concepts that became the foundation of American Cold War policy: </P> <Ul> <Li> The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism; </Li> <Li> The USSR viewed left - wing, but non-communist, groups in other countries as an even worse enemy of itself than the capitalist ones; </Li> <Li> The USSR would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies; </Li> <Li> Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with economic reality, but rooted in historic Russian nationalism and neurosis; </Li> <Li> The Soviet government's structure inhibited objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality . </Li> </Ul> <Li> The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism; </Li>

The sources of soviet conduct foreign affairs july 1947