DIPLOMAT IN A HURRY
Shannon, William V.
John Foster Dulles: Diplomat in a Hurry By William V. Shannon JOHN FOSTER DULLES is a man in a race with history. When President Eisenhower appointed him to the high office of Secretary of State,...
...Whatever became of the April 1 deadline for action on the European army...
...Styles Bridges' administrative assistant and is on good terms with McCarthy and Sen...
...He was determined to avoid repeating what he considered a serious mistake...
...McLeod was Sen...
...Racing against him are many rival, hostile, competing forces...
...He confided to intimates before he took office that his great ambition was to complete the work he began with the Japanese Peace Treaty by negotiating a Far Eastern political settlement...
...Dulles exhibited everywhere patience, good humor, and a willingness to listen...
...The loss of Kennan, in many ways the epitome of the thoughtful, scholarly diplomat to a generation of younger career men, was a serious blow to department morale...
...They are not fighters...
...He negotiated the Japanese Peace Treaty in 1951...
...He is too preoccupied with the hard realities of the present to believe very deeply that the UN will ever transform the world...
...One of Dulles' preconceptions upon taking office was that Acheson had been inflexible and had not gone far enough in cooperating with Congress...
...To save his job, he stayed unavailable until the Senate had voted...
...Military force and the claims of realpolitik loom much larger in his mind than do the goals of social idealism...
...This fact, for fact it seems to be, has had a crippling effect on morale in the State Department...
...Dulles and the State Department at close range in his capacity as Washington correspondent oi the New York Post...
...Those who know him best, however, are unanimous in observing that whatever religious instincts he has are kept in some separate chamber of his mind...
...The much lower defense program settled on by Dulles at this spring's NATO meeting in Paris is a more realistic statement of the facts, but psychologically its effect has been to dampen further the already sodden European spirit...
...These are failures not of the mind but of the spirit...
...If it can also be made an effective instrument of collective security as in Korea, so much the better...
...He had to go...
...Dulles has a sharp mind, but he has his eye on the clock...
...As he indicated in his book, War or Peace, he looks forward to the eventual diplomatic recognition of Communist China and its admission into the UN...
...In 1952, he was more cautious but scarcely less eager...
...It could be done, but these two gentlemen give no indication of being capable of doing it...
...Will he make that rendezvous...
...Dulles feels no compunction, no moral onus, because he believes he is bidding for survival until the tide of foreign events and his own efforts bring him to the great achievement that will justify everything else...
...In 1952 he received the Page One Award oi the New York Newspaper Guild for his series of articles on Sen...
...He had been the Republican representative to the State Department in most of its bipartisan dealings since the war...
...He served in the Senate in 1949...
...Dulles is the grandson and nephew of Secretaries of State...
...He began actively aspiring to his present office in 1939 when he backed the first Dewey Presidential boom...
...It must be remembered that liberation was hatched during the political year, 1952, when Dulles was not otherwise employed...
...It is not enough to say that he has spent a good deal of time traveling and has not had a chance to get acquainted...
...Dulles is, as of now, by no means certain of attaining his dearly desired niche in history...
...Why, they ask, devote twenty years learning the business of diplomacy only to be exiled to private life at the peak of usefulness...
...Through Vice-President Nixon, Dulles arranged the appointment of ex-FBI man Scott McLeod as departmental security officer...
...As long as McLeod is in the Department, Dulles knows nothing in the files will be safe from Senatorial inquisitors...
...Formosa's independence would be protected, but he would disavow the political ambitions of the Chiang regime...
...Pat McCarran...
...McLeod hid out when McCarthy's committee tried to examine him...
...Like Acheson, he believes military strength is indispensable to any possible settlement with the Russians...
...There is, of course, the obdurate totalitarians themselves...
...He strongly desires that they be taken out of State and put in an independent agency...
...Unfortunately his trip, though it may have lit up some corners of his mind, did not seem to stir his heart...
...Dulles' trip to the Near East and India was, unexpectedly enough, a rather considerable success...
...McLeod is a direct pipeline to the McCarthy faction...
...In this connection, some may recall that Dulles in private life was a prominent Episcopal layman and much given during the last war to analyzing international problems in the light of moral principles...
...President Eisenhower intensified this anxiety by his own fixation about "getting along with Congress...
...Joseph McCarthy...
...Dulles' central ambition is to go down in the pages of history as one of the great secretaries of state ranking with John Quincy Adams and John Hay, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes...
...During the fight over the confirmation of Charles Bohlen as Ambassador to Russia, McLeod claimed to Bridges that there was damaging information in Bohlen's security file which Dulles was suppressing...
...Dulles' ambitions also drive him to think up new phraseology, such as substituting "liberation" for "containment...
...This sometimes leads him to ludicrous extremes —like when, before the newspaper editors convention in April, he attributed the effects of Stalin's death to President Eisenhower's policy...
...He favors the continued rearming of Europe and the inclusion of Germany in a European army...
...He was well acquainted before Jan...
...Indeed, it is doubtful how much he ever believed in it...
...Dulles knew all this and that is why he appointed McLeod...
...The tide of fear and uneasiness flows strong in Foggy Bottom, as the Department's neighborhood is locally known...
...Yet Dulles is more remote and alienated from his upper and middle-level subordinates than almost any secretary in this century...
...He hopes to achieve this goal by bringing off some kind of settlement with the Communist powers, particularly in Asia, that will gain time for the West and establish him as a great WILLIAM V. SHANNON has watched Mr...
...Both were suspect to the likes of McLeod because of former association with organizations which subsequently came under the displeasure of the McCarthy-McCarran-Jenner crowd in Congress...
...If India's middle-way of economic planning and personal freedom fails, then the iron totalitarianism of which the new China is the spokesman will sweep the field...
...After telling how important India was, he concluded that she was so important we ought to give her aid in "moderate" amounts...
...Dulles' private study is cluttered with the mementos of the past diplomatic achievements of his family...
...He wanted to have some political services to point back to...
...One was with former Ambassador George Kennan...
...Robert A. Taft and John Sparkman being deputized by the Senate to examine the raw file personally...
...A portrait of his grandfather, John Foster, who was Secretary of State in 1892-93, has long hung in his office...
...prides himself on being a realist...
...It is the pattern of action of a man who is buying time...
...Dulles no more injects moral precepts into his diplomacy today than he formerly did into his activities as one of the biggest and most ruthless legal operators on Wall Street...
...India is engaged against China in a struggle of extraordinary importance for the mind and loyalties of all the peoples of Asia...
...Like Acheson, moreover, Dulles has a limited faith in the UN...
...Singing a psalm of faint praise, he went his way, un-chastened, unchanged, and uninspired...
...Knowland immediately bustled down to the White House and Mr...
...Dulles does not regard the Voice and the related information programs as properly part of his Department...
...Even if the Red Chinese are amenable to a settlement, which they show no sure signs of, it would take considerable political courage and finesse at home for the President and Dulles to sell this program to the country...
...When President Eisenhower appointed him to the high office of Secretary of State, it was the consummation of the cherished dream of a lifetime...
...His reputation which preceded him was so black that perhaps the mere fact he did not show up with horns and a tail had a calming effect on Asian observers...
...Kennan had too often and too cogently punctured the Dulles balloon of "liberation" to make him a comfortable collaborator...
...Nor is it likely that Dulles' tactic of bullying our Allies and setting arbitrary ultimatums will have good results...
...This is particularly so when at home he fails to fight for either reciprocal trade or foreign aid...
...Dulles' different political context also obscures his similarity to his predecessor...
...He knew all the top people in the Department and was widely acquainted with leaders abroad...
...He wrote a book analyzing current foreign policy...
...How did it happen that he cannot find in his august office the glory that was his ancestors...
...McLeod is out to make a record, which, in his case, means firing a large number of persons as security risks...
...In 1950 he collaborated with Robert S. Allen in writing "The Truman Merry - Go-Round...
...What Dulles did not know and failed to foresee was that McLeod would continue to give his first loyalty to his patrons in the Senate...
...His speeches on this topic, like his services in drafting the-all-things-to-all-men foreign policy plank in the Republican platform, were his way of working for his present job...
...For this reason, he was content to appease Senate economizers last month by throwing Point Four out the window as something that should be left to private capital...
...This was at the not-for-attribution press conference in April...
...Closer to home there is a none too bold President, the depths of whose mind Dulles has not fathomed and with whom he does not enjoy a secure relationship...
...Acheson believed in exhortation and tried to rally the Europeans to great efforts by setting the sights high...
...An observer might inquire further and ask: why has Dulles' dream faded so fast...
...Dulles is not likely to reach historical greatness by this specious gambit...
...There is Congress, honeycombed with men who would wreck any foreign policy by their hatred of Europe, lust for economy, and assorted prejudices...
...peacemaker—even if it be only peace in our time...
...Dulles hasn't shown he's at all unhappy about what we're doing...
...Our Allies may now achieve less than they are capable of rather than striving to do more...
...Joseph McCarthy seeking his own ends at any cost...
...On his return, Dulles noted the facts of India's role in the vanguard of social revolution in Asia and in the struggle against Communist imperialism, but he noted them dryly, much as he might have jotted down a train schedule or the cost of a haircut in Bombay...
...Time is running out, and he must keep a rendezvous with history, with greatness...
...A graduate of Clark University, he took his master's degree in history at Harvard...
...The latest embarrassment was the long stalling and eventual abandonment of two appointments to UNESCO—former Wellesly College president, Mildred McAfee Horton, wartime commander of the Waves, and David Lee Shillinglaw, a wealthy Chicago Republican banker, who had served as commander of the American Legion in Illinois...
...There is his party, long out of power and eager for quick successes...
...He had some grudges to pay off...
...under Dulles, he has demoralized it...
...He has little interest in Point Four, the covenant on the rights of women, the work of UNESCO, or the claims of the colonial peoples...
...This fueled the flames and resulted in the melancholy spectacle of Sen...
...In everything he does he exhibits his impatience...
...He remains on the premises, however, to haunt and embarrass his chief...
...He wants to unify Europe politically and economically...
...Dulles, anxious to placate the reactionaries in his party, disavows liberal and internationalist sentiments more vigorously than he might otherwise...
...Acheson's role as a member of a professedly liberal Administration caused him to speak more warmly of such projects as Point Four than he really felt...
...Now, some six months later, his only question can be: what price glory...
...Indeed, he may be remembered simply as the only weathervane ever to wear a Homburg...
...He believes it is a useful forum and meeting place...
...No deviations in outlook between India and the West, no petty disagreements over diplomatic tactics can obscure that fact...
...The paradox was that a man so experienced entered upon the secretaryship with so many fixed preconceptions—in policy, in personnel, in relations with Congress, in speaking to the American people about foreign policy...
...A secretary who envisages an old school department along pre-1914 lines would presumably seek to become the leader and spokesman of his corps of trained, professional diplomats...
...Under Dean Acheson, McCarthy immobilized the State Department...
...Experience had seemingly narrowed rather than broadened his outlook, made him cocksure rather than humble, clever but not wise...
...In any event, these agencies are still part of the Department and as such their employees and their programs remain his responsibility...
...His views and outlook do not differ in any important respect from those of his Democratic predecessor...
...The Lisbon program outlined for NATO by Acheson was perhaps too sanguine but it was at least a goal to work toward...
...I've never heard a man claim so much credit for a busted blood vessel," one listener commented...
...Long before Election Day in 1948, he was, as the prospective Secretary of State in the new Dewey regime, giving interviews on the world's problems to foreign and domestic newsmen...
...II The chapter concerning his relations with McCarthy is perhaps the most damaging in the Dulles story...
...Dulles' desire is to relieve the State Department of all operating agencies such as the Voice and Technical Cooperation Administration which runs Point Four, and make the department once again a foreign office on the European model, exclusively preoccupied with normal diplomacy...
...What began as a backstairs deal has become a front parlor nightmare...
...Last November, at the age of 69, he at last entered into his reward...
...There is Sen...
...Dulles shies clear of fighting back against the McCarthy assault on his Department, so much so that McCarthy was able to tell an interviewer: "Mr...
...Yet, having passed up the opportunity to dismiss him for insubordination during the Bohlen episode, Dulles is stuck with him...
...Dulles, the conservative free enterpriser and champion of individualism, might have been expected to perceive this issue...
...Dulles has abandoned the Voice of America to McCarthy's mercies, but this in no way troubles him...
...Dulles has some sensible foreign policy ideas which he is afraid to whisper for fear Taft may overhear him...
...He opposes total war with Red China...
...In return for peace in Korea and Indo-China, the Chinese Communists would receive recognition, admission to the UN, and opportunities of greater trade with Japan and the West...
...Ill One may disagree with as much or as little of this assortment of principles, prejudices, and aspirations as one likes—the fact remains that they guide our Secretary of State as they have guided his immediate predecessors...
...Dulles strives mightily to conceal the basic similarity between his policies and Acheson's...
...Eisenhower issued a categorical disavowal of Dulles' trial balloon...
...It is safe to say that the whole liberation issue will be completely forgotten in another six months...
...Dulles entered office with a wealth of experience...
...There are many who criticize this Dulles theory of the Department and question whether an effective diplomacy can be carried on when it is divorced from economic and propaganda policymaking...
...Recklessness, forced withdrawals, suave boastfulness, and short-term compromises have marked Dulles' irregular course since he took office...
...Dulles is not likely to be successful in reaching Acheson's objectives in either Europe or Asia...
...After, as before, he sounded like a man who did not care...
...The entire question is an empty adventure in political dema-goguery and controlled semantics...
...IV Only once has Dulles broached even tentatively his plans for a general political settlement for Asia...
Vol. 17 • August 1953 • No. 8
