Citizens and statesmen Book

An odd book in that Kennan made the US successful in the cold war with his policy of containment, and yet when we are at peak security and prosperity after the collapse of the USSR, in 1993, he thinks the US is in dire straits and so proposes a council of experts to rescue us. This is because he believes also that senior USG officials (and business execs) should not really be executives but thinkers and deciders.

I give it 3 stars for the elegance of the prose and for several compelling ideas. Yet this is a book by an old man (late 80s) apparently out of touch with contemporary politics and society. E.g., he asks why there is no policy of evaluating the results of government programs at the time of the Government Programs and Results Act GPRA), which did just that.