John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (
February 25,
1888 –
May 24,
1959) was an
American statesman who served as
Secretary of State under President
Dwight D. Eisenhower from
1953 to
1959. He was a significant figure in the early
Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against
communism around the world. He advocated support of the
French in their war against the
Viet Minh in
Indochina and famously refused to shake the hand of
Zhou Enlai at the
Geneva Conference in
1954.
Born in
Washington D.C., he was the son of a
Presbyterian minister and attended public schools in
Watertown, NY. After attending
Princeton University and
The George Washington University he joined the
New York City law firm of
Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in
international law. He tried to join the
United States Army during
World War I but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles got an Army commission as captain in the War Industries Board.
Both his grandfather
John W. Foster and his uncle
Robert Lansing served as
Secretary of State. He was also the older brother of
Allen Welsh Dulles,
Director of Central Intelligence under Eisenhower. His son
Avery Robert Dulles converted to
Catholicism and became the first American priest to be directly appointed to
Cardinal, although his advanced age prohibited him from voting in the
College of Cardinals in 2005 following the death of
Pope John Paul II.
In
1918 Woodrow Wilson appointed Dulles as legal counsel to the United States delegation to the
Versailles Peace Conference where he served under his uncle,
Robert Lansing, then Secretary of State. Dulles made an early impression as a junior diplomat by clearly and forcefully arguing against imposing crushing reparations on Germany. Afterwards he served as a member of the War Reparations Committee at the request of President Wilson. Dulles, a deeply
religious man, attended numerous international conferences of churchmen during the
1920s and
1930s. In 1924, he was the defense counsel in the church trial of Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, who had been charged with heresy by opponents in the denomination, a case settled when Fosdick, a liberal Baptist, resigned his pulpit in the Presbyterian Church, which he had never joined. Dulles also became a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell. In the 1930's, according to Stephen Kinzer's 2006 book Overthrow, Dulles was an active supporter and collaborator with the Nazis.
Dulles was a close associate of
Thomas E. Dewey who became the
presidential candidate of the
United States Republican Party in the
U.S. presidential election, 1944. During the
election Dulles served as Dewey's foreign policy adviser.
In
1945 Dulles participated in the
San Francisco Conference and worked as adviser to
Arthur H. Vandenberg and helped draft the preamble to the
United Nations Charter. He subsequently attended the
United Nations General Assembly as a United States delegate in
1946,
1947 and
1950. Dulles was appointed to the
United States Senate as a
Republican from
New York on
July 7,
1949, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of
Democrat Robert F. Wagner. Dulles served from
July 7,
1949, to
November 8,
1949, when a successor,
Herbert Lehman, was elected, having beaten Dulles in a special election to fill the senate vacancy.
In
1950, Dulles published
War or Peace, a critical analysis of the American policy of
containment, which at the time was favored by many of the foreign policy elites in Washington. Dulles criticized the foreign policy of
Harry S. Truman. He argued that containment should be replaced by a policy of "liberation". However, he still carried out Truman's policy in neutralizing the
Taiwan Strait during the
Korean War in the
Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951. When
Dwight Eisenhower became President in January, 1953, he appointed Dulles as his Secretary of State.
As Secretary of State Dulles spent considerable time building up
NATO as part of his strategy of controlling
Soviet expansion by threatening
massive retaliation in event of a
war. In 1950 he helped instigate the
ANZUS Treaty for mutual protection with
Australia and
New Zealand. One of his first major policy shifts towards a more aggressive posture against communism, Dulles directed the
CIA in March of 1953 to draft plans to overthrow the
Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in
Iran [
1]. This led directly to the
Coup d'état via
Operation Ajax which installed
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the
Shah of Iran.
Dulles was also the architect of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) that was created in
1954. The treaty, signed by representatives of the
United States,
Australia,
Britain,
France,
New Zealand,
Pakistan, the
Philippines and
Thailand, provided for collective action against aggression.
Dulles was one of the pioneers of
Mutually Assured Destruction and
brinkmanship. In an article written for
Life Magazine Dulles defined his policy of brinkmanship: "The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art." His critics blamed him for damaging relations with Communist states and contributing to the
Cold War.
Dulles upset the leaders of several non-aligned countries when on
June 9,
1955, he argued in one speech that "neutrality has increasingly become an obsolete and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception."
Dulles provided some consternation and amusement to the British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand ambassadors by his repeated attempts to tell substantially different versions of events to them. Apparently unbeknownst to Dulles the men had all in attended
Cambridge together and followed up meetings with Dulles by comparing notes and reporting the discrepancies to their home countries.
In
1956 Dulles strongly opposed the Anglo-French invasion of the
Suez Canal,
Egypt (October-November 1956). However, by 1958 he was an outspoken opponent of President
Gamal Abdel Nasser and stopped him from receiving weapons from the United States. This policy seemingly backfired, enabling the
Soviet Union to gain influence in the
Middle East.
Dulles also served as the former Chairman and Co-founder of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (succeeded by the
National Council of Churches), Chairman of the Board for the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a former Trustee of the
Rockefeller Foundation, and a founding member of the
Council of Foreign Relations.
Suffering from
cancer, Dulles was forced by his declining health to resign from office in April
1959. He died in Washington, D.C. on
May 24,
1959, at the age of 71, and is buried at
Arlington National Cemetery. He was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in
1959.
The
Washington Dulles International Airport (located in
Dulles, Virginia) and John Foster Dulles High School (
Sugar Land,
Texas) were both named in honor of Dulles.
Carol Burnett first rose to prominence in the
1950s singing a novelty song, "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles"; more recently,
Gil Scott Heron commented "John Foster Dulles ain't nothing but the name of an airport now" in the song "B-Movie".
*
Biographies*
Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles by Frederick Marks (1995) ISBN 0275952320
*
John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy by Richard H. Immerman (1998) ISBN 0842026010
*
Devil and John Foster Dulles by Hoopes Townsend (1973) ISBN 0316372358. Most famous book on Dulles.
**
The actor; the true story of John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1953-1959 by Alan Stang, Western Islands (1968)
**
The John Foster Dulles Book of Humor by Louis Jefferson (1986),
St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312443552
*
Vietnam War*
Brinkmanship*
Free ebook of John Foster Dulles at
Project Gutenberg*
John Foster Dulles page at Arlington National Cemetery.
*
John Foster Dulles' Gravesite*
Annotated bibliography for John Foster Dulles from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
