Dean Acheson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dean Gooderham Acheson (April 11, 1893 – October 12, 1971) was a prominent lawyer whose career included many stints in United States government service, culminating as United States Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman. In these various capacities he played a central role in the creation of many important institutions including Lend Lease, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, together with the early organizations that later became the European Union and the World Trade Organization. He presided over United States diplomacy during several important crises of the early Cold War, including the Korean War.

Acheson was a prominent defender of State Department employees accused during Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist investigations, incurring the wrath of McCarthy himself. Acheson was instrumental in the prehistory of the Vietnam War, persuading Truman to dispatch aid and advisors to French forces in Indochina, though he would later counsel President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into Kennedy's executive committee (ExComm).

1 Early life and career
2 Economic diplomacy
3 Cold War diplomacy
4 "The Attack of the Primitives"
5 Return to private life
6 References
7 Books by Acheson
8 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Dean Acheson was born in Middletown, Connecticut. His father, Edward Campion Acheson, was an English-born Church of England priest who, after several years in Canada, moved to the US to become Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut. His mother, Eleanor Gertrude Gooderham, was a granddaughter of prominent Canadian distiller William Gooderham (1790–1881), founder of the Gooderham and Worts Distillery.

Acheson attended Groton School and Yale College (1912–15), where he joined the prestigious secret society, Scroll and Key. At Harvard Law School from 1915 to 1918 he became a protégé of professor Felix Frankfurter. At that time, a new tradition of bright law students clerking for the U.S. Supreme Court had been begun by Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis for whom Acheson clerked for two terms from 1919 to 1921. Frankfurter and Brandeis were close associates, and future Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter suggested that Brandeis take on Acheson.

[edit] Economic diplomacy

A lifelong Democrat, Acheson worked at a law firm in Washington D.C., Covington & Burling, often dealing with international legal issues before Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Undersecretary of the United States Treasury in 1933. Acheson resigned over Roosevelt's plan to change the price of gold.

In 1940 Roosevelt brought Acheson into the State Department, where he developed much of the economic warfare waged by the United States against the Axis Powers prior to its formal entry into World War II, including the American/British/Dutch oil embargo that cut off 95% of Japanese oil supplies and contributed to the crisis with Japan in 1941. In 1944, Acheson attended the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire as the head delegate from the State Department. At this conference the post-war international economic structure was designed. This conference was the birthplace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the last of which would evolve into the World Trade Organization.

[edit] Cold War diplomacy

Later, in 1945, Harry S. Truman selected Acheson as his Undersecretary of United States Department of State; he retained this position working under Secretaries of State Stettinius, Byrnes, and Marshall. During the post-war period, the Secretary was often overseas, and Acheson attended Cabinet meetings as acting Secretary. During this period, Acheson cemented a very close relationship with President Truman. Over the next two years, Acheson played an important role in devising both the Truman Doctrine and the European Recovery Program. Acheson believed the best way to contain communism and prevent future European conflict was to build and maintain a functioning economic system in Western Europe, in which the states were themselves interdependent both economically and militarily.

In 1949, Acheson was appointed Secretary of State. In this position he built a working framework for containment, first formulated by George Kennan, who served as the head of Acheson's Policy Planning Staff. Acheson played an instrumental part in the formation of NATO, signing the pact for the United States. The formation of NATO was a great departure from established U.S. foreign policy, in which the United States would refrain from 'entangling alliances.'

[edit] "The Attack of the Primitives"

The failure of the United States to prevent the communist takeover of mainland China in 1949 precipitated several years of organized opposition to Acheson's tenure, a period to which Acheson refers in his outspoken memoirs as "The Attack of the Primitives." Although he maintained his role as a firm anti-communist, he was attacked by various anti-communists for not taking a more active role in attacking communism abroad and domestically, rather than a mere containment of communist governments. Both he and Secretary of Defense George Marshall came under attack from men such as Joseph McCarthy; Acheson became a byword to some Americans, who tried to equate containment with appeasement. Richard Nixon, who later as President would call on Acheson for advice, would complain of "Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment." This criticism grew very loud after Acheson refused to 'turn his back on Alger Hiss' when the latter was accused of being a Communist Spy, which was later proved by the Venona Project.

On December 15, 1950, the Republicans in the House of Representatives resolved unanimously that he be removed from office, to no avail. Furthermore, Acheson also upset the right wing when he took the side of Harry S. Truman in his dispute with General Douglas MacArthur over the Korean War. Acheson and Truman wanted to limit the war to Korea, whereas MacArthur called for the extension of the war to China.

[edit] Return to private life

After the 1952 presidential campaign, Acheson returned to his private law practice. Although his official governmental career was over, his influence was not. Acheson headed up Democratic Policy Groups during the Eisenhower years. Much of President Kennedy's flexible response policies came from the position papers drawn up by this group.

Acheson's law offices were strategically located a few blocks from the White House and he accomplished much out of office. He became an unofficial advisor to the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, he was dispatched by Kennedy to France to brief de Gaulle and gain his support for the United States blockade. In 1964, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1970, he won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his memoirs of his tenure in the State Department, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department.

In 1971, Dean Acheson died of a massive stroke at his desk on his farm in Sandy Spring, Maryland at the age of 78. He was survived by a son, David C. Acheson and a daughter, Mrs. William P. Bundy.

[edit] References

Robert L. Beisner. Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. (2006), 800 pp
Chace, James. Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World. (1998). 512 pp.
Harper, John Lamberton. American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson. Cambridge U. Press, 1994. 378 pp.
John T. McNay. Acheson and Empire: The British Accent in American Foreign Policy (2001)

[edit] Books by Acheson

Power and Diplomacy (1958)
Morning and Noon (1965),
Acheson, Dean (1969). Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (in English). New York: Norton, 798 pp.. ASIN B0006D5KRE.
The Korean War (1971).