The article was widely circulated among the foreign policy bureaucracy, and won Kennan a position as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to 1950 as well as the reputation of the father of containment. In the 'X' article, Kennan amplified his call for a strategy of 'patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies' through the 'adroit application of counterforce at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points.'
ambassadors in Moscow, sent the State Department an 8,000 word report in February 1946 known as the 'long telegram,' urging the United States to view the Soviet leadership as an implacable, expansionist foe. X.' Kennan, an experienced diplomat and senior advisor to U.S.
This influential essay in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, 'The Sources of Soviet Conduct,' was written by State Department official George F.
