Dean Acheson

Dean Gooderham Acheson (April 11, 1893 - October 12, 1971) was U.S. Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953 under President Harry Truman, and one of the principal architects of American Cold War foreign policy. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine, NATO, and the Marshall Plan, and was responsible for approving NSC-68 - the 1950 policy document that militarized the "containment" strategy George Kennan had formulated, over Kennan's explicit objections. Acheson's memoir, Present at the Creation (Norton, 1969), took its title from his self-assessment of having helped build the postwar international order.¹

Early Career

Acheson graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. He practiced law at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. and served briefly as Under Secretary of the Treasury in 1933 before resigning over disagreements with Roosevelt's monetary policies.

He returned to government as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs in 1941 and rose to Under Secretary of State under Secretary James Byrnes from 1945 to 1947. In this role he was central to the early articulation of postwar American foreign policy, including drafting the speech for which the Truman Doctrine was named when Britain informed the United States it could no longer sustain aid to Greece and Turkey against communist insurgencies.¹

Address to Italian-Americans, 1942

On June 3, 1942, while Assistant Secretary of State, Acheson released an address to Americans of Italian descent. The Mazzini Society and the Italian-American Labor Council had invited him to speak at a gathering held on the day dedicated to the memory of Giuseppe Garibaldi.² The address stated that "The President of the United States has made it clear that the liberation of the Italian and other peoples from the military cliques which hold them in their clutches is one of the war aims of the United Nations."²

Secretary of State

Acheson was appointed Secretary of State in January 1949 and served through the end of the Truman administration in January 1953. His tenure covered the most consequential early Cold War events: the Soviet atomic bomb test in August 1949, the Chinese communist victory and proclamation of the People's Republic in October 1949, the Korean War beginning in June 1950, and the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Acheson's central policy disagreement with George Kennan, whom he effectively marginalized and replaced as Policy Planning director with Paul Nitze in 1950, concerned whether containment was primarily a political-economic strategy or required massive military buildup. Acheson backed Nitze's NSC-68 analysis that the Soviet military threat required U.S. defense spending to roughly quadruple. Kennan viewed this as a militarization that misread Soviet intentions and would produce unnecessary confrontation.¹

On March 1, 1950 Truman sent Acheson a note on the Sarnoff proposal for a committee to improve the Voice of America, and wrote: "I wish you would consider that, and we will discuss it when you come over tomorrow."³ Acheson discussed the proposal with Truman on March 6, 1950, and told him that Assistant Secretary Barrett was preparing a plan for an advisory committee along the lines Sarnoff had suggested.³ In 1951 the Project Troy report reached Acheson's office; it was dated February 1, 1951, and Acheson received it on February 15.⁴

NATO and German Rearmament

Acheson was a primary architect of NATO's founding in 1949 and subsequently pushed for West German rearmament as a NATO partner - a deeply controversial position given the recency of World War II and European fears of German military power. His success in achieving West German rearmament within a NATO framework was one of his most significant diplomatic accomplishments, helping integrate West Germany into the Western alliance structure that would persist for the remainder of the Cold War.

Korean War

The Korean War that began June 1950 dominated the second half of Acheson's tenure. His January 1950 speech defining the American "defense perimeter" in Asia - which appeared to exclude South Korea - was later cited as a possible signal to North Korea that the United States would not defend the South, though Acheson disputed this reading.

The war eventually led to Truman's firing of General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951 after MacArthur publicly challenged Truman's authority over war strategy - a civil-military confrontation that Acheson supported Truman in resolving in favor of civilian control.⁵

Legacy

Acheson was a target of Senator Joseph McCarthy's attacks, primarily over the "loss" of China to communism - which McCarthy attributed to State Department subversion - and over Acheson's refusal to condemn former State Department official Alger Hiss following Hiss's conviction for perjury in connection with Soviet espionage. McCarthy called Acheson's State Department a "Dean Acheson College of Cowardly Communist Containment."

After leaving government, Acheson returned to law practice and remained influential in Democratic foreign policy circles, advising subsequent administrations informally. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1970 for Present at the Creation. He died at Sandy Spring, Maryland, on October 12, 1971.