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Home , Dean Acheson, Douglas Brinkley, Townsend Hoopes

DEAN ACHESON AND THE MAKING OF U.S. Also l7y : THE YEARS 1953-1971 DRIVEN PATRIOT: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES V. FORRESTAL (with ) : THE PATH TO EUROPEAN UNITY (coedited with Clifford Hackett) Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

Edited by

Douglas Brinkley Assistant Professor of History Hofstra University

palgrave macmillan ©Douglas Brinkley 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 978-0-333-56735-7 All rights reseiVed. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-22613-9 ISBN 978-1-349-22611-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22611-5

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. To Alice Acheson - a woman of uncommon courage, talent and intellect Contents

Preface IX

Introduction XXI Paul H. Nitze Notes on Contributors xxiv 1. The Rise and Fall of Economic Diplomacy: 1 Dean Acheson and the Michael J Hogan 2. Dean Acheson and the Atlantic Community 28 Lawrence S. Kaplan 3. Acheson, the Bomb, and the Cold War 55 Robert L. Messer 4. Loy Henderson, Dean Acheson and the Origins of the 73 Bruce R Kuniholm 5. 's Place in the Cold War: the Acheson Plan 109 Nancy Bemkopf Tucker 6. Dean Acheson and the Japanese Peace Treaty 133 Takeshi Igarashi 7. Frustrating the Kremlin Design: Acheson and NSC 68 159 Steven L. Rearden 8. Negotiating from Strength: Acheson, the Russians and American Power 176 Melvyn P. Leffler 9. Marshall and Acheson: the State Department Years, 1945-1949 211 Forrest C. Pogue

Vll viii Contents 10. Foreign Economic Policy in Dean Acheson's Time and Ours 233 WiUiam Diebold Dean Acheson 189~1971: A Biographical Sketch 256 Select Bibliography 258 Index 265 Preface

The essays comprising Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy grew out of a two-day conference held in April 1989 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Dean Acheson's swearing-in as Harry Truman's Secretary of State. The conference presentations were commissioned from distin• guished historians already working on some aspect of the Truman era and then revised for publication. Those laboring in the field of post World War II diplomatic history enjoy a peculiar circumstance that, say, Gibbon writing on the Roman Empire, did not: namely, important participants are still around to enrich, enliven, refine, and critique the historian's work product. Thus one purpose of this preface is to convey this environment of 'interactive history'. Also, the conference or• ganizers had concerns broader than the past and left room to follow historical threads to their contemporary tapestry. And so this preface also aims at placing the essays in the broader sweep of the conference itself. The Acheson conference was held in Washington, DC, under the auspices of the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Inter• national Studies (SAIS). The conference was clearly congruent with FPI's mission as an integral part of SAIS: to unite the worlds of scholarship and public affairs in search of realistic answers to contemporary problems facing the . Since FPI' s founding in 1980, scores of policymakers, scholars, business executives, members of Congress, diplomats, and jour• nalists have participated in FPI seminars and roundtables, policy study groups, and international conferences. In addition to books and monographs on topical issues of US foreign policy, FPI publishes The SA/S Review, a journal of international affairs; FPI Policy Consensus Reports, the recommendations of leading Americans on vital issues; FPI Case Studies of diplomatic nego• tiations; and the SAIS Energy Papers. When David C. Acheson proposed to SAIS Dean George Packard holding a conference to commemorate his father's

ix X Preface appointment as Secretary of State, Packard seized the opportu• nity. Mter all, Acheson and his friends and had been '' of SAIS during World War II. Acheson, Herter and Nitze had seen a need to create a Washington-based graduate school that sought new methods to prepare men and women to cope with the international respon• sibilities that would be thrust upon the United States in the postwar world. As Packard said at the conference opening: 'We do not require any special anniversary at SAIS to honor Dean Acheson. By that I mean his ideas and works are so embedded in our curriculum on US foreign policy in the post-World War II period that he is studied by graduate students here almost every day as a matter of basic literacy in international affairs.' Today, more than 5,000 SAIS graduates work in 120 countries. The Achesonian connection is further cemented in that SAIS's director of European Studies is the eminent Professor David Calleo, holder of the distinguished Dean Acheson chair. Once Packard and Acheson agreed on SAIS as the proper venue to evaluate Dean Acheson's foreign policymaking from both historical and contemporary vantage points, the planning commenced. Johns Hopkins University President Steven Muller captured the spirit of the event in his opening remarks: 'The purpose of this conference is ambitious, namely to remember the past in such a way as to improve our ability to understand the present and imagine the future.' The conference logistics Packard turned over to the able hands of then FPI Executive Director Simon Serfaty and his extraordinary conference coordinator Joan H. Kloepfer. Anyone involved with the conference had to be impressed with their efficient professionalism. David Acheson's first step in transforming the conference from an idea to a reality was to enlist four of his father's close friends and working associates to help in the planning and to put together a sponsoring committee. Paul H. Nitze was the obvious choice for honorary chairman. As head of the State Department's Policy Planning staff from 1950-3, Nitze worked closely with Acheson on an array of national security issues. When Acheson stepped down as Secretary of State, Nitze con• tinued to meet with his former boss once a week so he could 'tap his wisdom even when he was not in government'. Unfor• tunately, a week before the conference Nitze was thrown from Preface XI his horse while riding at his Maryland farm, breaking a hip. Hospitalized, he was unable to attend but sent an intimate letter which sketched a warm remembrance of Dean Acheson and his historic role in the postwar era: 'The happiest and most productive years of my life were those from 1947 to January 1953, when I was among those working closely with Dean and creating the modern world'. Without Nitze's active support the conference would not have been possible. When David Acheson needed a chairman to head the spon• soring committee, he turned to George C. McGhee. Known throughout Washington as an astute observer of the interna• tional scene, McGhee was Coordinator for Aid to Greece and Turkey (1947-9), Special Assistant to the Secretary of State ( 1949), Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany ( 1963- 8), and Ambassador at Large ( 1968-9). As conference chair• man he led the fundraising drive. He also generously shared his foreign policy insights during a roundtable discussion on US• Soviet relations during the Cold War. Two of Dean Acheson's most treasured friends served as conference vice-chairmen: Lucius D. Battle and J. Robert Schaetzel. Battle, as a young Special Assistant to Acheson from 1949 to 1953, formed a close personal relationship with his boss during those years. As Acheson himself wrote in Present at the Creation: 'l shall always be deeply grateful to Carl Humelsine for recommending a tall, good-looking Floridian, Lucius D. Battle, then serving on the Canadian desk, as meeting my require• ments [for a personal assistant] by being a bachelor, bright, pleasant, knowledgeable about the Department, energetic, and responsible. No better choice could have been made.' Follow• ing the Truman years Battle went on to a stellar diplomatic career of his own: Ambassador to the United Arab Republic (1964-7); Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (1967-8); first Chairman of the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute ( 1980-4); and he is at present President of the Middle East Institute. He proved to be an indispensable vice-chairman, helping to set-up the conference agenda, and participating himself on two panels. The other vice-chairman, J. Robert Schaetzel, was a key organizer of the event. Schaetzel, who was Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of International Trade Policy, De• partment of State (1945-50), Special Assistant to the Assistant xii Preface Secretary of State for Economic Affairs ( 1950-4), and Ambassa• dor to the European Community (1966-72), forged a close relationship with Dean Acheson in the 1960s. Both men pas• sionately believed that the political, military and economic ties within the Atlantic Community- the link between North America and Western Europe-were the cornerstone upon which Ameri• can foreign policy rested. Schaetzel, currently President of the Jean Monnet Council, oversaw the conference panel on Post• war Contemporary Europe and organized a session on Acheson and US Postwar Economic Policies, recruiting Charles P. Kindelberger, Jr. (Professor of Economics at Massachusetts In• stitute of Technology), I. M. Destler (Professor and Director of the Seminar on the Foreign Policy Process at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland), William Diebold (Sen• ior Fellow emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations), and Isaiah Frank (William L. Clayton Professor of International Economics at SAIS and Chairman of the State Department Advisory Committee on International Investment Technology and Development) to participate. The chairmen began putting together a sponsoring committee and organizing panels. It was decided that five ma• jor themes of Acheson's government career would be exam• ined: postwar contemporary Europe, collective security in the Western Pacific, the Cold War and US-Soviet relations, US postwar economic policies and the importance of bipartisan• ship in US foreign policy making. All agreed that the confer• ence should honor Acheson's governmental service but also allow plenty of time for discussion of contemporary events. Forrest Pogue, author of the award-winning four-volume au• thorized biography of George C. Marshall, was called in as a historical consultant. In addition to helping the organizers locate and enlist the most appropriate Truman era scholars, Pogue also agreed to give a luncheon talk on 'Acheson and Marshall'. Pogue's address, revised for publication, appears in this volume. Lord Jenkins ofHillhead (), a member of the British Parliament (Labour) from 1948 to 1977, Presi• dent of the European Commission, and co-founder and leader of the Social Democratic Party, complemented Pogue's presen• tation with a talk on 'Truman and Acheson'. Jenkins, the author of Truman (1986), pointed out that no previous Ameri• can President and Secretary of State had ever before or since Preface xiii worked so constructively together. 'Acheson', Jenkins noted, 'was essential to Truman's success', in part because Acheson 'rightly saw Truman, who may have started as a backwoods politician ... [as] a world statesman, not simply because he was president of the United States in the plenitude of American power but because he had an exceptional sense of duty and power of decision, and because he could distinguish the big issues from the little ones.' Although Jenkins praised Acheson as 'one of the most outstanding heads of the State Department in American history', he qualified his assessment by saying that Acheson 'would not have been equally so under either a less robust or a more subtle and convoluted president'. Another distinguished Briton the steering committee deemed essential to any historical retrospective of Acheson also agreed to come to Washington to offer his unique vantage point on the early Cold War years: this was Lord Franks of Headington (Sir Oliver Franks). As British Ambassador to the United States from 1949 to 1952, Franks developed a special working rela• tionship with Acheson based on candid, no-holds-barred pri• vate conversations, which Franks retailed to a large audience at a dinner at the Cosmos Club. 'I was very lucky ... to have enjoyed this enduring friendship with Dean Acheson', Franks said. 'He was the best of friends and, I suppose, for a time, the most influential maker of foreign policy in the United States, utterly loyal to his president and to his country, but for me, in style, the rarest vintage of champagne.' In addition to Franks and Lucius Battle three other speakers were enlisted to illuminate Dean Acheson at a dinner held at the Cosmos Club: Eugene V. Rostow, James Reston, and David McCullough. Rostow, on the Yale law faculty since 1938 and former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency ( 1981-3), spoke on the applicability of Acheson's foreign-policy axioms to help guide America safely through the 1990's. Sound• ing an alarm against the lethargic leadership and unfocused policymaking that he saw as all too pervasive in Washington, Rostow called for a revival of the innovative yet realistic diplo• macy of the Truman-Acheson period. Reston, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist twice over and head of the New Yom Times Washington Bureau from 1953 to 1964, came to know Acheson well. Reston spoke of Acheson's contempt for reporters: 'One of his complaints was that we could never even get names right, xiv Preface and on one very important occasion, I agreed with him', Reston acknowledged. 'It was my conviction then, and it remains even more so my conviction today, that we misnamed the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, and that these should obvi• ously be called the Acheson Doctrine and the Acheson Plan.' The closing dinner address was given by David McCullough, award-winning author and host of the public television series, Smithsonian World. McCullough was chosen to speak because he was at that time well along on an original new biography of Harry Truman. 'Whether Truman was a great man or a great president is an issue that honest people can debate for some time, but this I know for certain: Harry Truman is a great story, and part of the great story is his friendship with Dean Acheson', McCullough noted at the outset. 'It is not important just be• cause they are an odd couple; it is important because Harry Truman never had such a friend before.' He went on to tell many wonderful and revealing Truman-Acheson stories, end• ing with a heartfelt tribute to the legacy of both men:

At no point in [Truman's] life is there an event that affects him quite so [profoundly] as the advent of Dean Acheson, both professionally and personally. An entire book could be written about just that friendship; and, of course, aside from what it reveals about either man, its impact on our history, our times, our present, and undoubtedly our future is greater than any of us at this stage can even begin to imagine.

The scholarly portion of the conference opened with three papers dealing with Acheson and Europe, which all appear in this volume. Bruce Kuniholm, Director of the Institute of Policy Sciences and Public Affairs at Duke University and recipient of the Bernath Memorial Prize for The Origins ofthe Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey and Greece (1980) spoke on 'Loy Henderson, Dean Acheson and the Origins of the Truman Doctrine'. Michael J. Hogan, Professor of History at State University and author of The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe 194 7-195 2 ( 1987) presented a further distillation of his thoughts on the subject in 'The Rise and Fall of Economic Diplomacy: Dean Acheson and the Marshall Plan'. Lawrence S. Kaplan, University Professor and Director of the Lyman L. Lemnitzer Preface XV Center for NATO Studies at Kent State University, and author of many books on US diplomacy, wrote on 'Dean Acheson and the Atlantic Community'. Commentary on these papers was provided by Lord Franks of Headington, Martin J. Hillebrand (Ambassador to Hungary 1967-9, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs 1969-72, and Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany 1972-6), Rozanne Ridgway (Ambassador to Finland 1977-80, Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic 1982-5, and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada 1985-9), and Brendt von Staden (the Federal Republic of Germany's Ambassador to the United States 1973- 9, Head of the Department for Foreign Relations and Security of the Federal Chancery 1979-81, and State Secretary of the Foreign Office 1981-3). SAIS professor David P. Calleo chaired the session. The panel on Acheson and US-Soviet relations was composed of three distinguished diplomatic historians whose presenta• tions, revised for publication, appear herein. Melvyn P. Leffler, Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of Fear, Power, and Preponderance: National Security, the Truman Ad• ministration and the Cold War, 1945-1952 (1991), spoke on 'Ne• gotiating from Strength: Acheson, the Russians, and the Cold War'. Historical consultant and author of The Evolution ofAmeri• can Strategic Doctrine: Paul H. Nitze and the Soviet Challenge ( 1984), Steven L. Rearden spoke on 'Frustrating the Kremlin Design: Acheson and NSC-68'. The final talk in this session, entitled 'Acheson, the Bomb and the Cold War' was presented by Robert L. Messer, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Messer, the author of The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman and the Origins of the Cold War (1982), is completing a book on Truman's atomic policy. The session was chaired by FPI's Diplomat-in-Residence Arthur A. Hartman. As a former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (1974-7), Ambassador to France (1977-81), and Ambassador to the USSR (1981-7), Hartman was perfectly suited to run what turned out to be a very lively session. Com• mentary was provided by Raymond L. Garthoff (Senior Advisor to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 1969-73, Ambassador to Bulgaria 1977-9, and currently Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution); Richard Helms (Director of the Central Intelligence Agency 1966-73, xvi Preface Ambassador to Iran 1973-6 and currently President of the Safeer Company, Washington, DC); Helmut Sonnenfeldt (Director of the Office of Research and Analysis for the USSR and , Department of State 196~9, Senior Staff member for Europe and East-West Relations of the National Security Council1969-74 and Counsellor of the Department of State 1974-7); and well-known diplomat and conference organ• izer George C. McGhee. SAIS Dean George Packard, a Japan specialist by training, chaired the session on Acheson and Asia. Takeshi Igarashi, Professor of American History and Government at the University ofTokyo, spoke on 'The japanese Peace Treaty and the Rebuilding ofjapan'. Nancy BernkopfTucker, Professor of American Diplomatic History and American-East Asian Rela• tions at and author of Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy 1949-50 (1983), reexamined her book's controversial thesis in 'China's Place in the Cold War: The Acheson Plan'. Both papers appear in this volume. Commentary was offered by A. Doak Barnett (George and Sadie Hyman Professor of Chinese Studies at SAIS), Warren I. Cohen (Professor of History and Director of the Asian Studies Center at Michigan State University), Waldo Heinrichs (Professor of History at Temple University), and David D. Newsom (Ambassador to Libya 1965-9; Indonesia 1974-7; Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs 1978-81; and presently Associate Dean of the School of Foreign Service and Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University). The conference closed with two speeches on a topic of great concern to Dean Acheson: bipartisanship in US foreign policymaking. In the spirit of bipartisanship, two former US senators - one Democratic, the other Republican -were asked to reflect on enhancing cooperation between the legislative and executive branches of government in foreign policymaking, or as Dean Acheson himself once phrased it: 'The central question is not whether the Congress should be stronger than the presidency, or vice versa, but how the Congress and the presidency can both be strengthened to do the pressing work that falls to each to do and to do both together.' The Democrats were represented by , the former Governor of Maine 1955-9, US Senator 1959-80, Preface xvii and Secretary of State 1980-1. Recalling Acheson's successful lobbying of Republican Senators Tom Connally and Arthur H. Vandenberg on such historic events as the Marshall Plan and NATO, Muskie acknowledged that partisan considerations had not evaporated in either the Truman Administration or the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, but such impulses seemed to play a secondary role then. The important lesson of the Truman-Acheson-Vandenberg era, Muskie said, is that public officials must always be prepared to put what is best for Ameri• can over partisan concerns. Muskie went on to compare the bipartisanship of that bygone era to the recent past, with what he saw as executive branch abuses of Congress's constitutional role in international affairs.

Foreign policy in a democracy runs many risks- the risk of premature disclosure of delicate negotiations, the risk of duplicity by less scrupulous regimes. But those risks pale in significance compared to the danger that arises when democ• racy's servants have arrogated themselves to power to ignore constitutional restraints. Those restraints give life and mean• ing to the idea of self-government. One ought to remember that one of the distinguishing features of our democracy and of our free society is not the existence of an executive but the existence of a clearly independent legislature. Dean Acheson understood that . . . Those who believe that more active congressional involvement in foreign policy would only en• feeble the presidency understand the strength that can flow from adherence to the constitutional design. Shared respon• sibility between the branches should spare us some of the more foolish schemes that have slipped through the execu• tive decisionmaking province. In the area of covert opera• tions, most of the successful ones of recent years have been those which enjoyed prior congressional approval. When officials have withheld notification from Congress, as in the case of the mining of the Nicaraguan harbors or the ex• change of arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra affair, the operations have often been failures.

Charles Mathias, a member of the US House of Representa• tives from 1960-8, of the US Senate from 1969-87 and cur• rently President of the American Council on Germany, speak- xviii Preface ing of what he called the 'Vandenberg era' of bipartisan foreign policy, recalled that Vandenberg, an isolationist during the Second World War, was converted to internationalism by Acheson, Secretary of State George Marshall and Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett. Mathias reminded the audience that 'there is no believer more devout than a convert, and Vandenberg was no exception. His determination that the United States should seek world leadership and his understanding that American security began on the Elbe made him an unrelenting spokesman for bipartisanship'. Notwith• standing the Michigan senator's conversion, Mathias saw the bipartisanship of the Vandenberg era as largely a function of circumstance.

The United States was in the process of a major transforma• tion of its foreign policy from isolationism to world leader• ship, and following [Franklin] Roosevelt's death with a Republican majority installed in both Houses during the 1946 elections, the Truman Administration, without its own mandate needed support. With a new enemy, seemingly dedicated to unbridled expansion, and with new allies who needed to be bolstered, there was a sense that the govern• ment had to speak with one voice.

George Packard closed the conference with a call, directed primarily at the students in the audience, for the new genera• tion of public servants to 'glean the wisdom of the Acheson era, apply it now, and answer the question not what America is against, which was the Acheson question - How do you oppose Communism? - but what is America for and how do we put together coalitions domestically and internationally?' By focus• ing on building the future without forgetting the historical lessons of the past, the SAIS conference stayed true to the life and mission of Dean Acheson. In addition to the individuals already mentioned many others contributed to the conference's success by agreeing to be spon• sors: Philip Bonsai, William P. Bundy, Cooper, Margaret Truman Daniel, C. Douglas Dillon, George Elsey, Barbara Evans, Thomas S. Foley, Dorothy Fosdick, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., U. Alexis Johnson, George F. Kennan, W. John Kenney, Henry A. Kissinger, Carol Laise, Richard G. Lugar, Preface xix Charles Burton Marshall,JohnJ. McCloy, RobertS. McNamara, Egidio Ortona, Henry Owen, Elliot L. Richardson, Mathew B. Ridgeway, William P. Rogers, , George P. Shultz, Brendt von Staden, Robert W. Tufts, Cyrus R. Vance, Paul A. Volcker, James E. Webb and Albert Wohlstetter. SAIS acknowledges the generous financial support provided by the following individuals and organizations: David M. Abshire, George W. Ball,John N. Irwin II, Philip M. Klutznick, George C. McGhee, Paul H. Robinson, Jr., John A. Volpe, Covington and Burling, The Dillon Fund, The Mobil Founda• tion, Inc., The National Endowment for the Humanities, Procter & Gamble and the Florence and John Schumann Foundation. The conference would not have been the same without the elegant presence of Dean Acheson's wife Alice and daughter Mary. Throughout the two-day affair they graced the confer• ence with wit, intelligence and durability. Their support to the SAIS Conference was steadfast and unwavering. The conference minutes were tape-recorded and ably transcribed by Joyce McPhee of the Court Reporting Service, Annandale, Virginia. The proceedings, edited by me, were deposited in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri and the Sterling Library at as part of their permanent Dean Acheson archival collection. Scholars interested in Acheson, Truman and/ or the Cold War will find the proceedings an invaluable historical source. An index was added to facilitate research. A copy has also been deposited in the SAIS library in Washington, DC. All quotations in this preface are taken from this transcript. The publishers believed that to publish the entire proceed• ings would be too costly, too long and too diffuse and unfocused, an assessment with which I concurred. Thus, Dean Acheson and the Making of US. Foreign Policy, while not a comprehensive record of the conference, does capture its rich essence, only hinted at in this preface. It provides fresh historical insights into Dean Acheson's diplomacy based on original archival research. A brief biographical sketch and select bibliography of Acheson has been added to provide readers with a chronology and to alert them to other sources about Acheson's multifac• eted career. Dean Acheson and the Making of U.S. Foreign Policy includes the revised versions of the eight scholarly papers presented plus XX Preface Forrest Pogue's luncheon talk and William Diebold's insightful piece on Acheson's economic policy. Many are critical of Achesonian policies or decisions. Scholars were not selected by a pro- or anti-Acheson liunus test, but for their objective, thoughtful and independent minds. In these, the essays speak for themselves. I thank Simon Winder and Frances Condick of St. Martin's Press/Macmillan for assistance in preparing the book for publication. The dustjacket photograph of Acheson and Truman was selected by the staff of the Truman Library from their collection. John Gillingham, director of the Truman Era Research Project at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, found the time to read portions of the book in draft and suggested many improvements. Hofstra University's Center for American• Netherlands Studies provided me with word-processing assistance in the final stages of manuscript preparation. The Honorable Paul H. Nitze kindly agreed to write an introduction for the book. His commitment to both Dean Acheson and higher education in American are unsurpassed. David C. Acheson and J. Robert Schaetzel helped me through all stages of book production, and the realization of both the book and the conference is a tribute to their admiration of Dean Acheson. Douglas Brinkley New York City 1991 Introduction Paul H. Nitze

Without doubt, Acheson had the sharpest and wittiest mind Washington could boast of during the years when World War II was winding down and the nature of the long conflict with the Leninists in the USSR was taking its definitive shape. It was sheer joy to work with Acheson. His door was always open to his subordinates. We could walk into his office anytime, explain what we had on our mind, and he would listen intently. He would not only relay his decision but explain with care why he had arrived at it. He believed communication of ideas within an organization should be encouraged from the bottom up and reciprocated from the top down. The lucidity of his reasoning and clarity of his expression were such that we who worked immediately for him were able to grasp quickly how his mind worked on a particular issue. As a result, we could talk to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Congress, the press or representatives of other countries in full confidence that we understood his and the President's general intentions. Acheson particularly valued those on his staff who were pre• pared to stand up to him when they thought he was wrong. Barbara Evans was a tower of strength. As his personal secretary she was exposed to everything he wrote or said and was fully prepared to correct him when she thought his memory had slipped or he was simply wrong. On rare occasions, Acheson's open door closed- at those times when he was fully determined to go forward despite opposition from those of his immediate subordinates who were convinced he was making a mistake. On those occasions, he would shut the door on us because, as he said, he knew what we would say, he had considered the point, and rejected it. One such occasion occurred in 1950 when he decided to stand up for , with the phrase 'I will not tum my back upon a friend'. Luke Battle, his administrative assistant, told me he thought Acheson was about to make an improvident state• ment about Hiss but would not discuss the matter with him. He suggested that I, or Chip Bohlen, should see whether Acheson

xxi xxn Introduction would talk with one of us about it. I was fully prepared to do so for I had shared a car pool with Hiss and believed I knew him better than Dean. Although Acheson was a close friend of Hiss's brother Donald, he did not know Alger that well. Moreover, some of us thought Acheson was too important to the nation for him to jeopardize his position as Secretary of State by support• ing someone he didn't know well on an issue about which all the facts were not yet in. Acheson refused to see me nor, after I had failed, would he see Chip. Later, I asked him why he had been so determined not to talk to any of us about the decision. He said he already knew the reasons why we would oppose what he wanted to do; neverthe• less he was determined to proceed because it was right; there• fore, for him to consider backing away would have been pusil• lanimous. That decision caused him many difficulties with Re• publican senators over the next few months, the period preced• ing the surprise North Korean attack on South Korea. But Acheson felt compensated when President Truman expressed his enormous gratitude to Acheson for his skills and wisdom in handling the necessary international and domestic decisions in the days following that attack. Acheson titled his memoirs of those years Present at the Crea• tion, saying that the enormity of the tasks facing President Truman and his lieutenants (among whom he was, perhaps, the most important) only slowly revealed itself.

As it did so, it began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process. The wonder of it is how much was done.

Today, over twenty years after he wrote those words, it appears more was accomplished than Acheson had foreseen: just as Nazism and Fascism were thoroughly discredited as ideologies by the defeat of Hitler and Mussolini in World War II, so the evolution of Cold War events since the spring of 1947 have thoroughly discredited the pretensions of totalitarian Commu• nism. In spring 1947, President Truman, backed by Acheson and Marshall, decided to stand up against Stalinist aggression: Introduction xxiii first in respect to Greece and Turkey, next with the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, and finally with the support of South Korea against the surprise attack from the north on a Sunday morning. Acheson was the instrumental American states• man in all these events. Whenever the going was tough, Acheson was in his element. He had a remarkable sense of the sweep of history and the major events of his time. He acted with calmness, courage and decisiveness. With the advent of the Eisenhower administration on 20 January 1953, Acheson was succeeded by Foster Dulles as Secretary of State. Acheson and his wife Alice moved down to their farm at Sandy Springs, Maryland and for the next two months he uncharacteristically vanished from the Washington scene. Finally, in March, I called him at his farm to invite him to lunch at the Metropolitan Club, a place he always enjoyed. He told me I was the first to invite him to lunch since he had left office. At the time I was amazed that his close friends had not rallied around. But his wit could do more than charm; it could cut. Acheson had a hard time resisting the temptation to score points even on those he was fond of. I was confident that he was fond of me, but at one point, after I had decided, contrary to his advice, to devote most of my time to arms control negotia• tion, he told a number of our mutual friends that 'Paul has gone soft on communism'. Like a number of the graduates of in the days of the Reverend Endicott Peabody, he had absorbed from him a desire for, and a pride in, personal excellence combined with a breadth of concern for the interests of the common man. This volume of essays, written by an eminent group of diplo• matic historians, will help future generations remember the potent and distinguished service Dean Acheson rendered his country for nearly forty turbulent years. Notes on Contributors

Douglas Brinkley is Assistant Professor of History and Teaching Fellow at New College, Hofstra University.

William Diebold is Senior Fellow emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michael J. Hogan is Professor of History at .

Takeshi Igarashi is Professor of American History and Govern• ment at the University of Tokyo.

Lawrence S. Kaplan is University Professor of History and Di• rector of the Lyman L. Lemnitzer Center for NATO Studies at Kent State University.

Bruce L. Kuniholm is Director of the Institute of Policy Science and Public Affairs at Duke University.

Melvyn P. Leffler is Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

Robert L. Messer is Associate Professor of History at the Univer• sity of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

Paul H. Nitze is a former high-ranking Defense and State De• partment official and served as Secretary of the Navy from 1963-7.

Forrest C. Pogue is author of the award-winning four-volume authorized biography of George C. Marshall.

Steven L. Rearden is an independent consultant specializing in contemporary politico-military affairs and national security issues.

xxiv Notes on Contributors XXV Nancy Bernkopf Tucker is Associate Professor of American Diplomatic History and American-East Asian Relations at Georgetown University.