Table Of ContentDEAN ACHESON AND THE MAKING
OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Also l7y Douglas Brinkley
DEAN ACHESON: THE COLD WAR YEARS 1953-1971
DRIVEN PATRIOT: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JAMES V.
FORRESTAL (with Townsend Hoopes)
JEAN MONNET: 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
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First published 1993 by
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and London
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ISBN 978-1-349-22613-9 ISBN 978-1-349-22611-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22611-5
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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 Marshall Plan
J
Michael 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 Truman Doctrine 73
Bruce R Kuniholm
5. China'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 United States.
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
Preface
X
appointment as Secretary of State, Packard seized the opportu
nity. Mter all, Acheson and his friends Paul Nitze and Christian
Herter had been 'present at the creation' 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
