[PEN-L:1593] Dean Acheson

[Henry C.K. Liu]

Acheson, Dean Gooderham, born 1893 in Middletown, Conn., graduate of
Yale
(1915) and Harvard Law School (1918), private secretary to Associate
Justice
Louis Brandeis (1919-21) of "Brandeis brief" fame (using sociological
economic
and physiological considerations as legal arguments, a forerunner of
Critical
Legal Studies, as in Muller v.Oregon, in which the Supreme Court ruled
as
constitutional minimum hours legislation for women), Undersecretary of
Treasury
(1933) until disagreement with FDR's New Deal fiscal policies caused his
resignation, Assist. Secretary of State (1941-45 under Cordell Hull),
Under
Secretary of State (1945-47 under George Marshall) and Secretary
(1949-52 under
Truman), was the architect of the policy of 'containment" of communist
expansion via economic and military aid to members of collective
security
alliances such as NATO and security pacts in Asia with Australia and New
Zealand.

The Chinese revolution in 1949 started a witch hunt in domestic America
politics.
In anticipation of Republican attack, Acheson commissioned the China
White
Paper (August, 1949) by the State Department, a 1,500-page apologia on
"who
lost China" with a 8,000-word letter of transmittal written personally
by
Acheson to President Truman, which was immediately attacked by Mao
Zedong in no
less than 3 separate essays:
"Why is it necessary to Discuss The White Paper" (August 28, 1949),
"Friendship or Aggression?" (August 30, 1949) and
The Bankruptcy of  the Idealist Conception of History" ( September 16,
1949).

Acheson's early friendship with Alger Hiss, born 1904, of similar
background,
Harvard Law School (1929), secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1930-33), State Department (1936), exposed Acheson to much personal
attack.

The outbreak of the Korean War brought a depressed and disillusioned
Acheson a
final opportunity to vindicate himself in history, that his
"containment"
policy was on point and the military aid to alliances of collective
security
was not a waste. That could explain why Acheson called the beginning of
the Korean war the most glorious two weeks in history.
By 1952, Stevenson was defeated by Einsenhower whose promise to end the
by-then
disastrous Korea War played a major part in his successful campaign.

It has been understood for a long time that the line that
separates American "doves" from their counterpart "hawks" has more to do
with
the willingness to deploy nuclear weapons.  The terms have very little
meaning
when it comes to conventional wars.

Henry C.K. Liu

Brad De Long wrote:


> >And why did Acheson call the beginning of the Korean war
> >the most glorious two weeks in history?
> >
> >Doug
>
> Because they demonstrated that the U.S. could stand up to totalitarianism,
> and that Americans would put their lives on the line to keep more people
> from becoming subjects of the Great Leader?
>
> Because the military buildup projected in NSC-68--the build-up that Acheson
> thought was very necessary--had not a snowball's chance in hell of getting
> through the Congress before Kim Il Sung's tanks rolled south?
>
> Because Harry Truman repeatedly and publicly told Acheson that he did good
> in the crisis at the start of the Korean War?
>
> My assessment is that these three reasons weighed about equally in
> Acheson's mind in impelling him toward the judgment that those two weeks
> were "glorious." But I could be wrong: Acheson's mind is hard to read--I
> still don't know what he intended in the summer of 1941 in closing off
> exports of oil to Japan...
>
> Brad DeLong