John Lukacs calls "George Kennan: A Study of Character" (Yale University Press, 224 pages, $26) a "biographical study,"

noting that a full-fledged biography has yet to be written. Mr. Lukacs ranks Kennan above Henry Adams as a historian and autobiographer and above Ernest Hemingway as a writer about Europe. Kennan emer ges, toward the end of this impassioned work, as the conscience of his country. Although Kennan (19042005) is best known as the author of the famous "X" article in Foreign Affairs that formed the basis of America's Cold War "containment" pol icy, his diaries alone (spanning more than 70 years) have no equal, Mr. Lukacs s uggests, as American writing that recaptures history in the making, especially i n Germany, where Kennan, a foreign service officer, was stationed in 1927, 192819 31, and 19391941. Profound respect for Kennan the man and the writer is writ large on every page o f this crystalline book, which is a kind of throwback to the 18th century, when the term "character" meant a good deal more than it does today. Life may be unpr edictable and ever changing, but character "changes hardly or not at all," Mr. L ukacs asserts. "And by character' I mean his conscious decisions, choices, acts a nd words, but nothing of his so-called subconscious; that is, no attribution of psychoanalytic categories, no ham-handed projections or propositions of secret o r hidden motives." Mr. Kennan's character consisted of certain lifelong principles: Liberal democra cies should be viewed with as much concern as dictatorships; the major defining event of the 20th century was World War I, not the Russian Revolution; diplomacy is nearly always a better course of action than intervening in the internal aff airs of other nations. What were the practical consequences of Mr. Kennan's principles? He objected, fo r example, to much of what passed for American anti-Communism because it was hys terical and ignorant. Stalin should be viewed as a Russian tyrant who had certai n national goals, not as an international revolutionary who wanted to take over the world. When Kennan argued that Soviet communism had to be contained, he view ed the USSR as pursuing tsarist goals: dominating Eastern and Central Europe. In the long run as Kennan predicted as early as the 1940s the Soviets would not be able to hold onto Eastern Europe, let alone the rest of the world. So much of t he American anti-communist talk was puerile, he concluded, especially when coupl ed with "national self-adulation." Kennan supported the Korean War because he felt the North Koreans had to be push ed back to the 38th parallel. But he opposed the war in Vietnam, and though Mr. Lukacs does not say much about Kennan's view of later wars, especially the curre nt one in Iraq, to divine Kennan's attitude is not difficult. He called our curr ent president "profoundly superficial," a judgment Mr. Lukacs tacitly affirms wh en he quotes John Adams: "We are friends of liberty all over the world; but we d o not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." Mr. Lukacs also admires anoth er Kennan zinger about the "curious law which so often makes Americans, invetera tely conservative at home, the partisans of radical change everywhere else." Mr. Lukacs venerates Kennan, but he also faults him, noting that Kennan was spec tacularly wrong when he argued America and Britain should not ally themselves wi th Stalin after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Similarly, Kennan's "distaste f or democracy," Mr. Lukacs points out, is a "problem that his biographers must no t dismiss or ignore." Indeed, Kennan's disdain for this country's domestic polit ics surely is one reason many of his prescient views went unheeded. Mr. Lukacs n ever makes that connection. He notes, instead, how tireless Kennan was as a writ er and public speaker and how so many of his books and articles have stood the t est of time. Why then have they not received the attention Mr. Lukacs believes they deserve?

In my view, Kennan was constitutionally unfit to submit himself to the daily gri nd of politics, where he might have been able to slowly and painfully shift the thinking of decision makers his way. How could he cajole congressmen when he had nothing but contempt for most of them? He derided Dean Acheson for overselling the Cold War, but Acheson understood that he could not hold himself above politi cs. Was Kennan's estrangement from domestic politics a failure of character? This is a question I wish Mr. Lukacs had addressed. Or is it a matter of dare I mention the vile word? psychology? Surely Kennan's biographers will need to probe preci sely that sensitive point: that node where character and personality intersect.