John Foster Dulles
U.S. Secretary of State 1953–1959, architect of the Eisenhower-era Cold War
Also known as: Dulles, Foster Dulles, Secretary Dulles
John Foster Dulles (1888–1959), Sullivan & Cromwell international lawyer and U.S. Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower, was — with his brother Allen Dulles at the Central Intelligence Agency — the principal designer of the early-1950s American posture toward the Soviet bloc. Quigley reads him as a figure formed inside the J. P. Morgan orbit of the interwar period whose later "massive retaliation" doctrine he treats with marked critical distance.
Wall Street origins
Quigley's introductory inventory of the Morgan-allied legal establishment names "John W. Davis, John Foster Dulles, and S. Parker Gilbert" among those who, though not bearing the Morgan name, "were parts of the system of influence which centered on the J. P. Morgan office at 23 Wall Street" (T&H 68). Earlier, as a young American delegate at the Paris Peace Conference, Dulles authored the compromise that produced the "war-guilt clause" of the Treaty of Versailles: "Germany was forced to admit an unlimited theoretical obligation to pay but was actually bound to pay for only a limited list of ten categories of obligations" (T&H 295). The biographical arc from Versailles to Foggy Bottom is, for Quigley, the arc of the early-twentieth-century American foreign-policy class itself.
Massive retaliation and the State Department
As Secretary of State, Dulles "combined sanctimonious religion with 'massive retaliation wherever and whenever we judge fit'" (T&H 880), pursuing a policy that Quigley describes as one "of slogans and quite unrealistic policies which could never have been used" (T&H 891). The doctrine, in Quigley's reading, "could not actually be pursued as a policy" — and was not pursued by the Pentagon nor seriously by Dwight D. Eisenhower himself — but it did "permanent injury to our allies, the neutrals, and the personnel of American government" (T&H 895). The Dulles U.S. Department of State years anchor the The Cold War chapters of Tragedy and Hope.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 68 Quigley
Russell Leffingwell, Elihu Root, John W. Davis, John Foster Dulles, and S. Parker Gilbert… were parts of the system of influence which centered on the J. P. Morgan office at 23 Wall Street.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 295 Quigley
Instead a compromise, originally suggested by the American John Foster Dulles, was adopted. By this, Germany was forced to admit an unlimited theoretical obligation to pay but was actually bound to pay for only a limited list of ten categories of obligations.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 880 Quigley
Both noncombatants and of neutrals in the policies of John Foster Dulles, who combined sanctimonious religion with 'massive retaliation wherever and whenever we judge fit.'
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 891 Quigley
Associated with the influence of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, sought to deal with foreign crisis by the use of slogans and quite unrealistic policies which could never have been used.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 895 Quigley
It was pursued by John Foster Dulles, with permanent injury to our allies, the neutrals, and the personnel of American government.