The following year, for example, George Kennan, author of the “containment” doctrine, a protégé of Forrestal, and the single most influential strategic foreign policy thinker of the moment, offered a strikingly candid version of the task at hand, in a classified memo that consciously punctured the universalist ambit of the Truman Doctrine:

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. (emphasis added)