(b. Washington, DC, 25 Feb. 1888; d. 24 May 1959) US; Secretary of State 1952 – 9 The son of a Presbyterian minister, Dulles graduated BA from Princeton in 1908, attended the Sorbonne (Paris) for a year, and then graduated LLB from George Washington University in 1911. That same year he began practising law in New York. He served as a captain, and then major, in the US army during the early years of the First World War, and as a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, 1918 – 19. He briefly experienced political office when, in 1949, he was appointed to complete the term of the late Senator Wagner of New York. His bid for re-election was unsuccessful.

Dulles is best known for his six years' service as Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration. Few secretaries can claim to have had a more thorough preparation for office. Foreign policy was in his blood. One grandfather had been Secretary of State under Harrison, and an uncle had served in the same post under Wilson. Dulles himself had gained early experience in foreign affairs as a member of the American delegation at Versailles in 1918, as a consultant to the US delegation to the San Francisco Conference, 1945, which set up the United Nations, and as acting chairman of the US delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. He had also served as an adviser to the Secretary of State on various foreign visits, 1947 – 50 and, in 1950, had been appointed by Truman to negotiate peace with Japan. Eisenhower described him as the greatest Secretary of State he had ever known and reputedly considered creating a new post — First Secretary to the Government — for Dulles, a post which he already occupied in fact if not in name.

Dulles was a staunch anti-Communist. He believed that freedom would eventually triumph within the Communist empire if the West stood firm. He did not favour intervention for liberation but did favour a policy of deterrence through the threat of mass retaliation. Dulles was known for his reluctance to delegate and this was sometimes a source of misunderstandings arising from poor communications. This is offered by some as an explanation for the rift in Anglo-American relations during the Suez crisis in 1956.

Dulles left office on health grounds two months before his death. He is the author of two books: War, Peace and Change (1939); War or Peace (1950).

(1888–1959), lawyer, senator, diplomat, and secretary of state

Deeply influenced by his grandfather and uncle, secretaries of state under Benjamin Harrison and Woodrow Wilson, Dulles devoted his life to foreign affairs. As a young lawyer, he was counsel to the Reparations Commission that helped draft the Treaty of Versailles (1919). As chairman of the Federal Council of Churches' Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, he presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt a blueprint for the postwar order.

An internationalist, the Republican Dulles frequently served in a bipartisan capacity. From the 1945 United Nations conference, he represented Democratic President Harry S. Truman at virtually every major international meeting. Dulles was foreign policy adviser to Republican nominee Thomas Dewey (1948), but after a brief Senate stint, he negotiated for Truman the Japan Peace Treaty (1951) that ended the occupation while retaining U.S. military bases there.

In the 1952 U.S. election campaign, Dulles attacked the Truman administration for failing to exploit U.S. atomic supremacy in the Cold War, insisting that liberation should replace “containment” as America's strategy toward the Soviet bloc. In 1953, he became President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state.

Dulles did not dominate Eisenhower on foreign policy, as the conventional wisdom once held. The two were agreed on collective security and the need to build strength and cohesion among non‐Communist nations. Nor was Dulles a reckless saber‐rattler. He did strongly believe in what came to be called the “New Look”: the threat of U.S. “massive retaliation” as the most effective means to deter Soviet expansion and aggression. Yet he understood that the threat of nuclear weapons was not always an appropriate response, and that overseas deployment of U.S. conventional forces was both militarily and politically necessary. Indeed, by the late 1950s he was anticipating the “flexible response” strategy associated with John F. Kennedy's presidency. Moreover, although Dulles was a covert operations enthusiast like his brother, Allen Welsh Dulles, the CIA director, he opposed direct U.S. military intervention, notably during the 1954 Indochina crisis, but he supported South Vietnam and refused to sign the Geneva Agreement on Indochina (1954).

Dulles was largely responsible for negotiating U.S. security pacts with Middle Eastern countries and Southeast Asia. But he was usually reluctant to negotiate with the Soviets, and he thrived on crises—the last over Berlin in 1958–59 even as he battled with cancer. He died in May 1959.

[See also Berlin Crises.]

Bibliography

• Ronald W. Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power, 1982.
• Richard H. Immerman, ed., John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, 1990.
• Richard H. Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1998

Dulles, John Foster (1888-1959) secretary of state (1953-59), born in Washington, D.C. Dulles advocated the threat of nuclear retaliation as the chief deterrent to Soviet aggression during the Cold War. He served on the War Trade Board during World War I and acted as delegate to the Paris Peace Conference (1919), where he sought to limit German reparations. Between the wars he actively advocated Wilsonian principles. Postwar planning became his primary interest once war again seemed inevitable. He chaired the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace (1941) and personally presented its plan to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1943). He represented President Harry S. Truman at most major international meetings (1945) and negotiated the treaty ending the occupation of Japan (1951).

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), American diplomat, was secretary of state under Eisenhower. He strove to create a United States policy of "containing" communism.

John Foster Dulles was born in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25, 1888. His grandfather, John W. Foster, had been secretary of state under Benjamin Harrison, and his uncle, Robert Lansing, had been secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson. Educated at Princeton and the law school of George Washington University, Dulles joined the international law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell in 1911, became a partner in 1920, and was head of the firm in 1927. He was eminent in his field.

Dulles's interest in foreign affairs was of long standing; at the age of 31, he had attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as legal counsel to the American delegation. In 1945 he was appointed legal adviser to the United States delegation at the San Francisco conference which drew up the Charter of the United Nations.

A Republican, Dulles served in the U.S. Senate in 1949-1950. In 1951, as ambassador-at-large, he negotiated a peace treaty with Japan acquitting himself brilliantly in overcoming Soviet opposition and other difficulties.

In 1952 Dulles was an ardent partisan of Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and was rewarded the next year with the office of secretary of state, which he held until his death. In his first months in office Dulles brought about an armistice in the Korean War, probably by the threat of the resumption of the war if the negotiations did not succeed. Less successful was his effort to roll back the Iron Curtain: in the East German revolt of 1953 and the Hungarian revolt of 1956 the United States was unable to offer any support to the rebels.

Dulles was a firm supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and supported the proposal for an international defense force in Europe. This project failed, however, and it was Anthony Eden, rather than Dulles, who played the leading role in forging a new treaty that invigorated the European alliance and admitted Germany to full membership.

In 1955 came the Big Four Conference at Geneva, attended by the four heads of government - Eden of England, Edgar Faure of France, N. A. Bulganin of the U.S.S.R., and Eisenhower of the United States - with a view to bettering understanding with the Soviet Union. Dulles had a part in the proceedings, but little was accomplished. As a matter of fact, from the outset the secretary of state had regarded the project with pessimism.

In 1956 came one of the most serious crises of Dulles's career. In the summer of that year Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator, seized and nationalized the Suez Canal, creating great resentment in France and Britain. Dulles labored manfully to find a peaceful solution of the problem, but in December the British and the French, using an Israeli attack on Egypt as a pretext, landed forces in the canal zone. With great courage Dulles protested this violation of the peace and brought the situation before the United Nations. As a result, the invaders were compelled to withdraw.

Dulles's activities were by no means confined to Europe. The United States played a part in the overthrow of a Communist regime in Guatemala. In the Far East, Dulles played a leading role in the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, an alliance of the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan. This alliance did not explicitly call for armed action, but it bound the signatories to consult whenever the integrity of any country in Southeast Asia was menaced. Importantly, it marked the extension of United States commitments in this area. Dulles also signed a defense treaty with the Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan (Formosa) and twice thwarted hostile attacks by the (Communist) Chinese People's Republic on the Nationalists' island of Quemoy. Dulles's attempt to bring together some of the countries of the Middle East in opposition to communism resulted in an alliance that soon disintegrated.

A believer in keeping firm opposition to the Communist menace, Dulles based his diplomacy on strong ideology. He was ready to use force or the threat of force (as in the Formosa Strait) when he believed that such action would balk aggression. His diplomacy was highly personal. He was not a great administrator, but he was a dedicated public servant. In the last year of his life he suffered from cancer, which he bore with real heroism. He died on May 24, 1959.

Further Reading

Louis L. Gerson, John Foster Dulles, vol. 17 in Samuel F. Bemis and Robert H. Ferrell, eds., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy (1967), is recommended. See also John Robinson Beal, John Foster Dulles (1957); Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, Duel at the Brink: John Foster Dulles Command of American Power (1960); and Richard Goold-Adams, John Foster Dulles: A Reappraisal (1962).

For more information on John Foster Dulles, visit Britannica.com.

(1888-1959), Wall Street lawyer and secretary of state. Dulles, grandson of one secretary of state (John Foster) and nephew of another (Robert Lansing), served Dwight D. Eisenhower in that capacity from January 1953 until his death, from cancer, in 1959. An international lawyer and senior partner in the prestigious Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, he built a modest reputation in the twenties as an authority on the tangled issue of Allied war debts and German reparations. Long an unreconstructed Wilsonian, Dulles opposed American involvement in Europe in the thirties on the grounds that the victors of 1919 had ignored Woodrow Wilson's call for "peaceful change" and sought only to preserve the harsh features of the Versailles settlement.

Dulles emerged during World War II as the principal lay spokesman for the Federal Council of Churches in its effort to promote the proposed United Nations. But at the same time, as a protégé of New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, he was also emerging as a leading proponent of the foreign policy views of the eastern wing of the Republican party. Senator Arthur Vandenberg and he were the architects of postwar bipartisan foreign policy. By the late forties he was a Republican adviser, and later consultant, to the Truman administration and in that capacity negotiated the Japanese peace treaty in 1950-1951.

But by 1952 partisanship and policy differences led him to become one of Harry S. Truman's and Dean Acheson's most acerbic critics, especially on Far Eastern policy. His well-publicized article in Life magazine condemned the containment policy of the Truman administration as merely a negative attempt to restrain Soviet expansionism and demanded a new policy of boldness that would restore the initiative to the United States. During the 1952 campaign he called stridently not only for the "rollback" of Soviet gains in Eastern Europe but also for the "unleashing" of Chiang Kai-shek.

As secretary of state Dulles was often portrayed as the stern Presbyterian moralist who made speeches condemning atheistic communism and threatening massive retaliation. For many historians he was the very model of the "cold warrior," a reductionist whose rhetoric intensified the ideological gulf between East and West. Moreover, since Eisenhower was perceived as a chief executive who reigned but did not govern, Dulles was regarded as the architect of American foreign policy.

Later it became evident that Eisenhower was an activist and that his foreign policy was a joint creation, not simply the work of his secretary of state. Declassified documents, moreover, indicated that Dulles was far more complex and flexible than previously thought. He considered the possibility of genuine negotiations with the Soviets, recognized the process of change in post-Stalinist Russia, did not always regard neutrality as immoral, and, above all, was prudent and cautious on atomic issues. Despite the campaign rhetoric of 1952, he, in effect, accepted the underlying postulates of containment, and his stewardship of American foreign policy deserves to be remembered more for what it preserved from the Truman-Acheson heritage than for its innovations. And despite the furor over massive retaliation and the crises over Suez, Dien Bien Phu, and Lebanon, Dulles was adept at crisis management and presided over a six-year period during which the United States was, at least technically, at peace.

Bibliography:

Richard D. Challener, "John Foster Dulles: Theorist/Practitioner," in L. Carl Brown, ed., Centerstage: American Diplomacy since World War II (1990); John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987).

Author:

Richard D. Challener

See also Cold War; Eisenhower, Dwight D.; Elections: 1952.

1888–1959, U.S. Secretary of State (1953–59), b. Washington, D.C.; grandson of John Watson Foster, Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison, and nephew of Robert Lansing, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. A graduate (1908) of Princeton, he was admitted (1911) to the bar and was counsel to the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference (1919). He soon achieved prominence as an international lawyer and attended various international conferences in the interwar years. He was appointed (1945) adviser to the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco Conference (1945), and served (1945–49) as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. He was appointed (1949) to finish the unexpired term of Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, but was defeated (1950) in a general election for the seat. In 1951, as ambassador at large, Dulles negotiated the peace treaty with Japan. Appointed (1953) Secretary of State by Dwight D. Eisenhower, he emphasized the collective security of the United States and its allies and the development of nuclear weapons for “massive retaliation” in case of attack. Regarding Communism as a moral evil to be resisted at any cost, he firmly upheld the Chinese Nationalist defense of Matsu and Quemoy off the coast of Communist China and initiated the policy of strong U.S. backing for the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. Dulles helped develop the Eisenhower doctrine of economic and military aid to maintain the independence of Middle Eastern countries; under its terms U.S. forces were sent to Lebanon in 1958. Dulles resigned from office a month before his death. He wrote War, Peace, and Change (1939) and War or Peace (1950).

Bibliography

See biographies by M. A. Guhin (1972) and T. Hoopes (1973); studies by R. Goold-Adams (1962) and L. L. Gerson (1967); R. Drummond and G. Coblentz, Duel at the Brink (1960).

1888 - 1959

U.S. secretary of state, 1953 - 1959.

John Foster Dulles came to public service after a long and successful legal career that afforded him valuable experience in international affairs. He was a senior adviser to the U.S. delegation to the 1945 founding conference of the United Nations Organization in San Francisco, and a member of the U.S. delegation to the first UN General Assembly in 1948. In 1950 and 1951 he earned the praises of U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson for negotiating a "peace of reconciliation" with Japan.

As President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state from 1953 to 1959, Dulles directed U.S. foreign policy in tandem with the president. The USSR was their focus because communism was considered an immoral and dangerous system. Concerned with the strategic northern tier of Middle Eastern countries bordering on the USSR, Dulles supported conservative pro-American rulers such as Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran, the Hashimites and Nuri al-Saʿid in Iraq, and Adnan Menderes in Turkey. Although he supported the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact of 1955, Dulles held back from fully committing the United States to membership in the alliance. When Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh threatened to supplant the shah in 1953, Dulles advocated the removal of the prime minister. Together with his brother, CIA director Allen W. Dulles, he organized Operation AJAX, which contributed significantly to Mossadegh's fall in August 1953. In August 1955, in accordance with a secret Anglo-American plot to encourage Israeli-Egyptian talks (Operation ALPHA), Dulles proposed a solution to the Arab - Israel conflict based on resettlement of the Palestinian refugees, treaties to establish permanent frontiers, and guarantees of security for both sides.

Dulles distrusted the attempts of various Middle Eastern states, particularly Egypt, to remain neutral in the Cold War between the superpowers. In 1955 he responded favorably to Egypt's request for funding of the Aswan High Dam, but was disconcerted when Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser made an arms deal with the USSR, via its client Czechoslovakia, in September 1955. Nasser's aspirations to lead the bloc of nonaligned nations, his failure to respond positively to Operation ALPHA, and his recognition of Communist China in May 1956 further alienated Dulles's sympathies.

In July 1956 Dulles decided, with Eisenhower's approval, to revoke the funding offer for the dam project. The withdrawal of funds led to Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, which in turn precipitated an international crisis that culminated in the Arab - Israel War of October 1956. Dulles refused to support the actions of Israel, France, and Great Britain in their joint attack on Egypt aimed at seizing the canal and toppling Nasser. In early 1957 Dulles participated in the formulation of the Eisenhower Doctrine, which offered U.S. military aid to any Middle East state threatened by the USSR. Invoking the doctrine, Dulles and Eisenhower sent U.S. troops into Lebanon in July 1958 in the wake of the revolution in Iraq.

Struggling against the onset of cancer, Dulles resigned his government position in April 1959 and died in May.

Bibliography

Finer, Herman. Dulles over Suez: The Theory and Practice of his Diplomacy. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964.

Hoopes, Townshend. The Devil and John Foster Dulles. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

Immerman, Richard H., ed. John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Immerman, Richard H., ed. John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1999.

Marks, Frederick W. III. Power and Peace: The Diplomacy ofJohn Foster Dulles. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.

Spiegel, Steven. The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America'sMiddle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

— ZACHARY KARABELL
UPDATED BY NEIL CAPLAN

(dul-uhs)

Secretary of state under President Eisenhower, he was known for his moralism and militant anti-communism.

John Foster Dulles served as U.S. secretary of state from 1953 to 1959. A prominent New York City attorney, Dulles participated in international affairs for much of his legal career. His term as secretary of state occurred during the height of the cold war and was marked by his strong anti-Communist policies and rhetoric.

Dulles was born in Washington, D.C., on February 25, 1888, at the home of his maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison. Dulles was raised in Watertown, New York, where his father, the Reverend Allen M. Dulles, served as a Presbyterian minister. Known as Foster, the young Dulles was a precocious student, graduating from high school at age fifteen and attending Princeton University at age sixteen. He graduated in 1908 and then entered George Washington University Law School. Again, he worked quickly, and graduated in two years.

Through the efforts of his well-connected grandfather, Dulles joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which has been called the greatest corporate law firm of the early twentieth century. In 1919 family friend and international financier Bernard M. Baruch invited Dulles to be his aide at the Paris Peace Conference. This conference, which was convened to negotiate the terms of peace to end World War I, stimulated Dulles's interest in international politics and diplomacy.

In the 1920s Dulles quickly moved ahead at Sullivan and Cromwell. In 1926, at the age of only thirty-eight, Dulles was made head of the firm. Representing many of the largest U.S. corporations, Dulles became a very wealthy man. As his stature rose, he became a prominent figure in the Republican party. A confidant of New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, Dulles was promised the position of secretary of state if Dewey was elected president in 1948, but Dewey was unsuccessful and Dulles lost that opportunity.

Dulles was an active participant in the effort to reshape foreign relations after World War II. He helped form the United Nations and was a U.S. member to the General Assembly from 1945 to 1949. He performed the duties of U.S. ambassador-at-large and was the chief author of the 1951 Japanese peace treaty. He also negotiated the Australian, New Zealand, Philippine, and Japanese security treaties in 1950 and 1951.

In 1949 he filled a vacancy in the Senate created by the death of Senator Robert Wagner, of New York, but was unsuccessful in his attempt the same year to win election to a six-year term. Dulles's political fortunes im proved when he aligned himself with the 1952 presidential candidacy of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He helped Eisenhower defeat conservative senator Robert Taft, of Ohio, at the nominating convention and was rewarded with his long-desired appointment as head of the State Department.

As secretary of state, Dulles exhibited a rigid opposition to Communism. He advocated going to the brink of war to achieve results—a position that led to the coinage of the term brinkmanship to describe his foreign policy.

Dulles is also remembered for his doctrine of "massive retaliation," which warned the Soviet Union that the United States would react instantaneously with nuclear weapons to even the smallest provocation. Dulles believed that such a policy would discourage aggressive acts, though many allies were concerned that it would turn small wars into much larger and much more destructive ones.

Dulles died May 24, 1959, in Washington, D.C.

Quotes:

"Once -- many, many years ago -- I thought I made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong."

"Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression."

"Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence."

"The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost."

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year."

"The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good."

See more famous quotes by John Foster Dulles