FOREIGN RELATIONS: Broad-Picture Man

(See Cover)

During a high-level diplomatic conference in Paris last February, two U.S. State Department officials found it necessary to consult their boss after the close of the business day. When they knocked on the door of his temporary quarters in the U.S. Embassy residence, a muffled voice directed them to come in. The bedroom they entered was empty, but the voice, which seemed to be coming from the bathroom, gave them further directions: “In here.” Proceeding solemnly into the bathroom, the two diplomats found Secretary of State John Foster Dulles stretched out full-length in a warm tub, his arms folded upon his chest in an attitude suggestive of the funeral effigy of Henry III in Westminster Abbey. Brushing aside his subordinates’ apologies, Dulles dealt with their problem in matter-of-fact fashion, then relapsed into his yogi-like trance for a few minutes’ more rest before getting out to dress for an official dinner.

The rise of the U.S. to world leadership since 1941 has made the Secretary of State a focus for the hopes, fears and frustrations of hundreds of millions of people. No man could be more relaxed and at home in this awesome job than John Foster Dulles. He spent his youth under the shadow of grandfather John Foster, a Secretary of State to Benjamin Harrison, and uncle Robert Lansing, Secretary of State to Woodrow Wilson. It is quite possible that John Foster Dulles is the only American who, since boyhood, has dreamed of becoming U.S. Secretary of State.

In the pursuit of this goal, Dulles displayed the single-mindedness of a track star training for the Olympics. Dashing family hopes that he would follow his father into the Presbyterian ministry, he built himself a dual career as one of the nation’s highest-priced international lawyers and outstanding nonprofessional diplomats. As senior partner of the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, he worked into a practice that included half the governments of Europe. His part-time public service, which got under way at Versailles when he acted as a counsel to the World War I U.S. Peace Commission, reached its peak when he pushed through the World War II Japanese Peace Treaty almost singlehanded.

“A Change in Heart.” Last January, a month before his 65th birthday, Dulles finally achieved his long-sought goal. When he came up before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for confirmation as Secretary of State, Wisconsin’s Senator Alexander Wiley asked him if he had in mind any specific changes in U.S. foreign policy. Dulles squinted at the ceiling, then said: “Well, I think the change that is most needed is a change in heart.” By last week John Foster Dulles’ accomplishments in office left little doubt that U.S. foreign policy had undergone such a change—and that it was a matter of head as well as heart.

In Asia, where ultimate Communist triumph once seemed assured by progressive default of the West, Dulles had created new opportunities for the U.S. Items:

Formosa. President Eisenhower, with Dulles’ approval, canceled the Truman order that obliged the U.S. Seventh Fleet to protect the Communist mainland from Chiang Kai-shek’s troops. This change created a threat, made it more hazardous for Mao to mass strength on the Korean, and Indo-Chinese borders.

Korea. Last May, through an artfully casual conversation with India’s Nehru, Dulles warned the Chinese Communists that if the Korean truce talks broke down once again the U.S. would have to enlarge the war. Two months later the Communists signed the armistice. The terms left many Americans unhappy, but no one disputed the proposition that a diplomatic stalemate was preferable to a military stalemate. Dulles has been careful to keep up his relations with Korea’s stubborn Syngman Rhee in the face of bitter anti-Rhee sentiment among U.S. allies. Aware that the armistice terms do not allow for a resumption of hostilities if the political conference is not held, Dulles expected the Reds to stall (as they have) on preparations for this meeting. The Communists know that they can scarcely improve on their present position at a political conference. Rhee represents the only solid pressure that can be exerted on the Chinese Reds in Korea. By visiting Rhee, by refusing to join the attack on him, Dulles has aligned himself with an Asian leader whose courage and obstinacy have won increasing respect in other Asian countries. Anti-Communism is growing in Asia, and Rhee, not Nehru, is its symbol.

Indo-China. In a series of carefully mortised negotiations from Saigon to Washington to Paris, Dulles persuaded the French government to promise General Henri Navarre enough troops to carry out “the Navarre Plan” for defeating the Communist-led Viet Minh rebels. The U.S.’s quid for France’s quo: a promise of $385 million in aid over the next year for the war in Indo-China. Under Dulles’ pressure France also gave assurances of independence to the native states of Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam. This meant that Indo-Chinese nationalists were no longer faced with a choice between Communism and colonialism. Result: new hope for winning the seven-year-old Indo-China war and stopping the Communist advance into Southeast Asia.

Japan. Dulles’ insistent public demands for Japanese rearmament were received with ill grace by Prime Minister Yoshida, because of the political explosiveness of the issue. Last week, however, Japan’s two largest political parties announced their joint support of a rearmament program that will reduce the power vacuum in northeast Asia.

In the Middle East, Dulles warded off impending disaster. Items:

Iran. Dulles and U.S. Ambassador Loy Henderson refused to pay blackmail to shifty, dictatorial Premier Mohammed Mossadegh. In so doing they were running a risk that Mossadegh would retaliate by turning oil-rich Iran over to the Communists. The gamble paid off when the Iranian people rose to support the Shah, overthrew Mossadegh and gave the U.S. another chance in Iran.

Egypt. Last May, Egypt’s General Mohammed Naguib and his military junta were threatening war unless Britain ended her occupation of the Suez Canal zone. In three days in Egypt, Dulles impressed on Naguib the importance the U.S. attached to Britain’s Suez base, the biggest military installation in the Middle East. Since Dulles’ visit, Britain and Egypt have made progress toward an agreement which will give Egypt control of the Canal Zone but allow British military technicians to operate the base until Egyptians are taught to do so.

In Europe the Communists had been thrown onto the defensive. Items:

East Germany. The U.S. reacted to last June’s Berlin riots by arranging the distribution of U.S. food parcels to the hungry East Germans. This helped to keep alive East German resistance to Soviet rule and illustrated Dulles’ claim that the U.S. can pursue an effective “liberation policy” without violence.

European Defense Community. Long after most European statesmen had written off the EDC plan for an international European army, Dulles continued to plug for it. His stubbornness began to bear fruit last month when West Germany showed its growing strength and political stability by re-electing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a strong EDC partisan. France, which had blocked EDC, suddenly reawakened to the danger that the U.S. might insist on independent German rearmament if EDC did not materialize. Result: the French government seemed to be moving toward acceptance of EDC, and prospects for a West German contribution to the defense of Europe looked better than they had in two years.

Spain. Three years ago, U.S. military men led by the late Admiral Forrest Sherman convinced the Truman Administration that the U.S. must have air and naval bases in Spain in order to defend Europe. But in the ensuing horse-trading, the State Department failed to put enough pressure on Franco. Last January, under new management, the State Department began to move briskly. Last week the U.S. finally got its Spanish bases.

Desire & Accomplishment. Necessarily, many of John Foster Dulles’ achievements start from plans, decisions and achievements of the Truman Administration. Had there been no Berlin airlift, the U.S. would not now be in a position to capitalize upon East German unrest. Had there been no Marshall Plan, EDC would not even be a dream. But Dulles has not merely kept U.S. power in position to contain the enemy. Unlike Dean Acheson, he has also sought every opportunity to use that power actively against the Communists. Even in matters where Dulles and Acheson were in total agreement as to objectives, there was a difference between the two: Acheson acquired a brilliant grasp of the details involved; Dulles got things done.

Dulles’ record of accomplishment was not a result of skill as a diplomatic negotiator. As the unsurpassed technician of the conference table, Acheson’s performance was far smoother, and Dulles gave his predecessor full marks for good intention and did not claim that his own desire for such laudable goals as peace was any greater than Acheson’s. But there is more to getting a peace than wanting it, more to working toward decisions than suavity and adroitness at the conference table. A statesman who wants peace has to find specific policies which will lead his adversary to make—and keep—agreements. Not until effective policies have been established can negotiating skill show any results. It is at the all-important level-where principle is translated into policy that Dulles has had more success than Acheson.

Empires & Operators. By the folklore of Washington, the man who manages the operational functions of an organization will mold its policy in the long run. This has come to be an accepted law of administrative life, as solid as Newton’s laws of motion. Consequently, career State Department officials respected Dean Acheson’s concern with operational details. They could not at first understand John Foster Dulles, the broad-picture man, who believed that the State Department had been distracted from its policymaking job by its preoccupation with miscellaneous operating functions—foreign aid, technical aid, propaganda, etc. When Dulles, soon after he took office, divested State of as many operating functions as possible, the bureaucrats were convinced that he had surrendered much of his control over U.S. policy.

To their intense surprise, it turned out that Dulles had done nothing of the sort. Harold Stassen, whose Foreign Operations Administration took over the aid programs formerly under the State Department, set himself to carry out Policymaker Dulles’ plans, responded promptly when State asked for $45 million for Iran and $385 million for the Indo-China war.

State Department men found that they could give foreign-aid administrators policy guidance on a long-term basis; they would check a few months later and find their guidance still controlling Stassen’s operation. This is one of the most amazing, and perhaps the most important, facts of Eisenhower’s Washington. Operations are necessarily conducted by specialists after the work has been broken into parts. Policy made at the operational level is apt to be fragmentary, uncoordinated, contradictory. Between them, Dulles and Stassen are demonstrating that what Washington for 20 years thought was a law of administrative life was really a symptom of administrative illness.

Breakfast & the Payoff. Dulles also followed the broad-picture approach in his campaign to restore confidence in the State Department. Foreign policy, he argued, must not only be concrete enough to work, it must also be coherent enough for the people to understand. In his congressional relations, he was careful to avoid Acheson’s chief personality defect-—contempt for the ignorant. During his first seven months in office Dulles gut in 32 appearances before congressional committees, held 58 unofficial meetings with congressional groups.

Predictably, the Dulles approach to Congressional relations frequently paid off. Assistant Secretary of State Thruston Morton still recalls with admiration a breakfast at which Dulles briefed freshmen Congressmen and Senators shortly before the MSA appropriation was to be voted on last May. “That group for the most part stood like rocks when the vote came up in the House,” says Morton. “They told me afterwards, many of them, that they had no intention of supporting the Administration’s foreign-aid program until they heard Dulles explain it.”

“The Amateur.” Not all of Dulles’ explanations had such happy consequences. In his overwhelming desire to get his policies understood he occasionally forgot that some things not only go without saying, but are better left unsaid. At a press conference (TIME, Sept. 14), he said that it would be a disaster if Konrad Adenauer did not win the West German elections. This statement came too late to affect the elections either way, but it was a bobble none the less. At the same time, Dulles strongly intimated that he did not feel bound to hold to the pro-Italian Trieste policy which the U.S. had adopted over five years ago when Yugoslavia was still a Soviet satellite. By publicly plugging Adenauer, Dulles laid himself wide open to the charge of meddling in West German affairs, a charge which might easily have created enough German resentment to cost Adenauer the election. The statement on Trieste caused universal outrage in Italy without making any visible improvement in U.S. relations with Yugoslavia.

Sincerity & Suspicion. Another criticism of Dulles is that his “intransigent” attitude toward the Soviet Union increases the danger of superbomb war. British Socialists and their new spiritual leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, wring their hands whenever Dulles makes a statement defining the struggle with Communism in moral and religious terms.

On this point, Dulles could not retreat, even if he wanted to. As a whole, the U.S. people make their basic political judgments on moral grounds. All U.S. leaders recognize this fact and describe the struggle with Communism in moral terms. There are two ways in which Dulles, on this point, differs from Truman and Acheson: 1) he is clearer about it, and 2) his practical policies reflect the greater clarity.

Dulles says: “Soviet Communism starts with an atheistic, Godless premise. Everything else flows from that.” Communism explicitly denies an objective moral law as that is understood in the Jewish, Christian and Moslem religions. Dulles is convinced that the evil of Communism flows from this denial, and that the struggle against Communism will be lost if it is considered merely a contest between rival power blocs.

On the other hand, Dulles is humble enough to recognize, as he told the U.N. last month, that the U.S. has “no monopoly of wisdom or virtue.” He is against starting a “holy war” to extirpate Communism. And he is fully aware that sound morals do not necessarily lead to wise policies. But he believes that where a nation holds a trusteeship against an organized, clearly recognizable evil, as the U.S. does, successful, realistic policy takes on a positive moral value.

This belief is exemplified by Dulles’ action at the three levels of politics—morals, policy, operations. To the first, Dulles has contributed more clarity and force but has not essentially altered the U.S. line. His great contribution is at the middle level of specific policies. These are moral in the sense that they have a good end, not pursued by evil means. But such policies as Dulles pursued in Indo-China and Germany are not derived directly from moral principles but from facts of political reality in the world that exists.

At the third level, day-te-day operations, Dulles, so far, is less successful. The time lag is probably inevitable. He has to establish and strengthen policy before he can get a grip on operations. In the process, some disruption and demoralization at the operating level of the State Department was bound to occur. The experts in details find that their judgments are modified by Dulles’ view of the broad picture. Some of them resent it. Acheson had far better morale among his operators —but the U.S. paid the price in a less coherent and less successful policy.

This inevitable conflict has been unnecessarily aggravated by other factors. Some Foreign Service officers charge that Dulles did not trust them and would not raise a hand to protect them against low blows from Joe McCarthy (although Dulles did fight manfully and successfully for Ambassador to Russia Charles Bohlen). In West Germany, High Commissioner James Bryant Conant’s staff only recently began to recover from the fears born last May when Conant’s able Propaganda Boss Theodore Kaghan was summarily fired after Cohn & Schine. McCarthy’s junketeering gumshoes, sicked their boss onto him.

Heavily contributing to low morale in the Foreign Service, and elsewhere in the State Department, is the fact that Dulles’ departmental security officer. Scott McLeod, seems little more than Joe McCarthy’s Charlie McCarthy.

In addition, the Eisenhower economy program has hit the State Department hard. Waves of bumping and riffing (see INTERNATIONAL) run through the embassies, demoralizing staffs with job insecurity. Dulles plans no further wholesale shifts and cuts. The Department and the Foreign Service may soon settle down and adjust to new, firmer policy control.

The Simulated Stamp. In his search for successful policy, John Foster Dulles puts in a 6½-day week. (Sunday mornings are reserved for attendance at Washington’s National Presbyterian Church.) He avoids the big staff meetings and long, detailed briefing sessions of the Acheson era, letting his Under Secretary. Walter Bedell Smith, run the Department’s housekeeping—which Smith does with one of the clearest heads in Washington.

Much of what “free time” Dulles has is devoted to official dinners, but he always arranges his schedule so that he can get home beforehand for a bourbon-on-the-rocks and a chat with his retiring, charming wife. Periodically, he renews his energies by a brief stay with Mrs. Dulles at his isolated summer home on Duck Island in Lake Ontario. There he gets in some fishing, sailing and birdwatching, happily washes the dishes and polishes copper pots for Mrs. Dulles. In Washington he shakes off the day’s cares with a warm bath and a half-hour’s reading (detective novels or the Bible) before he drops off to sleep.

Despite his harried existence and critical howls that he is hurtling the world toward disaster, Dulles remains buoyant and quietly confident about the future. “You can’t do these things overnight,” he points out. “But I believe that the power of America is still a potentially great force in the world if you can only get it working the right way, and I think we’re beginning to get it to work.”