Page 1 of 1

Jody Williams

From: Jody Williams
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 9:26 PM
To: 'Ed Epstein'
Subject: e-mail from Dr. Kissinger

Dear Ed,

Many thanks for your kind comments on my review of Robert Beisner's Acheson biography. It was nice to hear from you.

Nancy and I missed you at our screening of "Goya's Ghost" on November 1st but understand that you were going to its Madrid premiere on the 7th. It's a powerful film, certainly one of Milos's best.

With all good wishes from Nancy and hoping to see you soon,

Mr. Edward Epstein
New York
Via e-mail: eje@nyc.rr.com

11/9/2006

The New York Times

October 15, 2006 $1.50

Book Review

Copyright © 2006 The New York Times

Cold
Warrior

By Henry A. Kissinger

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state in modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years — 1949-53

DEAN ACHESON

A Life in the Cold War.
By Robert L. Beisner.
Illustrated. 800 pp.
Oxford University
Press. $35.

— that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on

the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which

garb of
age 10

Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Louis XIV's bed • Marie Antoinette's bed

26TH FLR
NEW YORK NY 10022-6045

Cold Warrior

*Continued from Page 1*

Corbis

Dean Acheson with President Nixon, December 1970; he confessed that he was not immune to Nixon's switch from "abusive hostility to respect." On the cover: arriving at the White House to meet with President Truman, April 1951.

The position of secretary of state is potentially the most fulfilling in the government short of the presidency.

The debonair conduct, the bristling mus-
tache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting
wit, the extraordinary analytical skill coupled
with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek
bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic
over the conventional. Acheson was a man of
high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr., an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin
shaped by the 19th century, and whose best
friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son
of Jewish immigrants.

Though Acheson served during the transi-
tion when America emerged as a world power
and enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of
government was as yet relatively small, and
Washington was still a comparatively provin-
cial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped
by public relations advisers or tested on focus
groups; hence they were somewhat personal.
That senior officials must remain blandly
obliging while their veracity or honor is be-
ing systematically challenged was never part
of the Acheson code. This explains the scene,
unimaginable today, when Acheson, in the
author's words, at a hearing before the Sen-

Henry A. Kissinger served as secretary of
state from Sept. 22, 1973, to Jan. 20, 1977. He is
chairman of Kissinger Associates, an interna-
tional consulting firm.

ate Appropriations Committee, admonished
Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska not to
shake his dirty finger in his face. When Wherry
persisted, Acheson rose and launched a round-
house swing at the senatorial gaddfly, which was
stopped at the last moment because Adrian
Fisher, the legal adviser of the State Depart-
ment, wrapped his arms around Acheson and
pulled him down into his seat.

When Acheson became secretary of state,
America had only just started its journey to-
ward global involvement. Africa was still colo-
nial; Britain was predominant in much of the
Middle East; Indian democracy was only two
years old; Germany and Japan were still occu-
pied countries. The debate was not over aspi-
rations to hegemony but over whether the na-
tion should engage itself internationally at all,
never mind permanently. It was appropriate
that Acheson entitled his memoirs "Present at
the Creation."

The position of secretary of state is poten-
tially the most fulfilling in the government short
of the presidency. Its scope is global; ultimate-
ly it rests on almost philosophical assumptions
as to the nature of world order and the relation-
ship of order to progress and national interest.
Lacking such a conceptual framework, inco-
herence looms in the face of the daily task of
redefining America's relationship to the world

via the thousands of messages from nearly 200
diplomatic posts and the constant flow of com-
munication from the Executive Department
— all this against the backdrop of Congressio-
nal liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as under secretary of state
and then as secretary during the period when
a people that had known no direct continuing
threat to its security since the early days of
the Republic had to be brought to recognize
that its permanent participation in the world
was indispensable for peace and security. In-
evitably this realization was painful and slow
in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved
to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed
from both political sides, by those insisting on
an end to involvement through total victory
over the threat and, on the other side, by those
who thought there was no threat to begin with,
or at least none that required Acheson's mili-
tant response.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the
five principal tasks of any secretary of state:
the identification of the challenge; the develop-
ment of a strategy to deal with it; organizing
and motivating the bureaucracy in the State
Department and in other agencies; persuading
the American public; and conducting Ameri-
can diplomacy toward other countries. These
tasks require the closest collaboration between
the president and the secretary of state; secre-
taries of state who seek to base their influence
on the prerogatives of the office invariably
become marginalized. Presidents cannot be
constrained by administrative flowcharts; for
a secretary of state to be effective, he or she
has to get into the president's head, so to speak.
This is why Acheson made it a point to see Tru-
man almost every day they were in town to-
gether and why their friendship was so crucial
to the achievements of the Truman years.

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with
equal skill — though Acheson came closer than
any other of the modern period. His overriding
challenge was to define a conceptual frame-
work on which to base America's involvement
in global affairs. Beisner, a former president
of the Society for Historians of American For-
eign Relations, describes this process in de-
tail and with special emphasis on Acheson's
growing debate with George Kennan. Acheson
turned Kennan's seminal article, "The Sources
of Soviet Conduct," into the operating principle
of American foreign policy. He interpreted it
to mean that the task of foreign policy was to
create situations of strength around the Soviet
periphery to deter any temptation for aggres-
sion. Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to
be deferred until these situations of strength
had come into being; any attempt to begin di-
ploancy prematurely would undermine the
primary task.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years
immediately following World War II, was to re-
store Western Europe and create an Atlantic
community to resist what then appeared as the
Soviet colossus. He built the structure that sus-
tained democracy during the cold war, with the
Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and the
return of Germany and Japan to the commu-
nity of nations. But Acheson was less precise
about the role of diplomacy in this process once
the architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of
American thinking. He rejected what he con-

Sunday, October 15, 2006

LcI

# Roots

*Colin Tudge has written a tribute to the world's trees.*

## THE TREE

*A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter.*

By Colin Tudge.

Illustrated. 459 pp. Crown Publishers. $27.95.

By ELIZABETH ROYTE

sidered the militarization of his own views, inaugurating a debate that has not ended to this day. Acheson implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-enforcing, and he played down the importance of diplomatic engagement with the adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to gain Soviet acquiescence in the process and urged negotiation, even while the ultimate structure was being built. Acheson treated diplomacy as the more or less automatic consequence of a strategic deployment; Kennan saw it as an autonomous enterprise depending largely on diplomatic skill. The danger of the Acheson approach has been stagnation and gradual public disenchantment with stalemate. The danger of the Kennan approach has been that diplomacy might become a technical exercise in splitting differences and thus shade into appeasement. How to merge the two strands so that military force and diplomacy are mutually supportive and so that national strategy becomes a seamless web is the essence of a continuing national controversy.

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with respect to the Korean War was the cause of the single greatest error of Acheson's tenure: initially, the placing of Korea publicly outside the American defense perimeter (though this was conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the inability, after the United States crossed the 38th parallel, to correlate military operations with some achievable diplomatic objectives.

For someone like myself, who knew Acheson, Beisner's portrait does not always capture the vivacity of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered that relationship an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for vice president. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike some other outside advisers, without offering advice that had not been solicited.

Acheson emerges from the Beisner book as the greatest secretary of state of the postwar period in the sweep of his design, his ability to implement it, the extraordinary associates with whom he surrounded himself and the nobility of his personal conduct. He was impatient with relativists who sought surcease from the complexity of decisions by postulating the moral equivalence of the United States and the Soviet Union. His values were absolute, but he knew also that statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates, and this requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages, each of which is probably imperfect by absolute standards.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but 'countless problems stretching into the future.' ... Americans must reconcile themselves to 'limited objectives' and work in congress with others, for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to evoke support from others — an ability quite as important as the capacity to compel.'"

The importance of that perception has not changed with the passage of time. ☐

In the early 1900's, fruit and walnut growers ripened their harvest in sheds warmed with kerosene stoves. Eventually, forward-looking orchardists switched to electricity, which was cleaner and more reliable. But electric heating had an insurmountable drawback. It turns out it wasn't warmth that had been doing the ripening, but the ethylene leaking from the smelly old heaters. Scientists now know that ethylene, a derivative of petroleum and natural gas, is also emitted — as a hormone — by plants. Ethylene causes fruit to ripen, and leaves and fruit to drop. Commercial growers use it to thin crops of plums and peaches (so the remaining fruits grow bigger) and to loosen berries in preparation for mechanical harvesting.

"So it is that plants control their form," Colin Tudge writes in "The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter." The subtitle is as straightforward as can be, but the book is oddly more — a descriptive catalog of all the trees in the world in which Tudge expounds on how many there are in each family, where they grow, their physical characteristics, why they are ecologically or economically important and the tasty details of their sex lives.

But this book isn't useful as a guide: its illustrations are few, and there are no keys. It is written as a tribute to the world's 60,000 species, but it's hard to say for whom it's intended. Maybe someone like me, who has a thing for trees, forgets her botany, marvels at what basic science has revealed and turns a sympathetic ear toward humanistic prescriptions for saving the earth.

Like most biographies of objects, this one presents its subjects as essential players on the global stage. Without trees, Tudge says, we wouldn't be here. They helped form our atmosphere (without photosynthesis there would be no oxygen), they may have helped shape us (we may partly owe our big brain and dexterous hands to millions of years in the trees), they feed and shelter us, and they provide invaluable ecosystem services, like flood control. But Tudge sees grandeur in how trees exist in the world — "The themes of literature are indeed the themes of nature" — and demonstrates it with fascinating stories about trees' mating and death, their acts of war and peace, their parent-offspring rivalry, their sibling rivalry and the tension between females and males.

Most people appreciate trees for their beauty and awesome utility, but Tudge wants us to know there's more to it, that it's hard out there on a pine. Trees must compete every second for "water, nutrients, light and space; and to fend off cold, heat, drought, flood, toxicity and the host of parasites and predators of all conceivable kinds," he writes. In perpetual dialog with all that surrounds them, trees "gauge what's going on as much as they need to, and

Elizabeth Royte, whose most recent book, "Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash," has just been published in paperback, is a frequent contributor to the Book Review. ☐

Dawn Burford/From "The Tree"

The dragon tree is a relative of asparagus.

they conduct their affairs as adroitly as any military strategist." How? By growing toward light; concocting chemical deterrents to pests from raw materials they take from the air, water and soil; thickening their trunks in response to stress; and attracting their animal collaborators when it's time to reproduce.

Tudge, the author of "Global Ecology" and other books, writes simply and with unapologetic enthusiasm. He also has a sense of humor. Pandas were once carnivorous, he says, but they now limit themselves to bamboo. "Though if you want to catch a panda, lure it into a (bamboo) cage with roast pork. It's the same with all vegetarians."

There are dozens of "wow" and "who knew?" moments throughout, until the book in its final section takes a sudden and uncompromising political turn. Thanks to all of us, the earth's climate is rapidly warming, and trees can't evolve fast enough to cope with the changes. What to do? Turn away from current development models, which focus on industrialization and will continue to pump out carbon dioxide, Tudge says, and support grass-roots arbo-centric economies.

Tudge calls for a new type of governance, one that takes account of the "realities of soil, water and climate" and the needs of humanity at large. If this sounds unrealistic (because it's anti-business) try redefining the word. "Realistic," he argues, should apply to people's lives — "whether they have enough to eat, and water and shelter; whether they have control over their own lives, and worthwhile jobs and can live in dignity." Despite sometimes slipping into vagueness, Tudge is courageous to take this stand and risk alienating readers who've stuck with him throughout solely for the love of trees and his enchanting way of writing about them. ☐

Tudge offers stories about trees' mating and death, their acts of war and peace, their parent-offspring rivalry.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 11

The national bestseller, now in paperback

"Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing journey through the Amazon rain forest has never before been told with such intimate depth and nail-biting urgency."*

ONE OF THE
BEST BOOKS
OF 2005

The New York Times
Book Review

The Washington Post
Book World

San Francisco
Chronicle

USA Today

"An eye-popping mix of presidential history, whitewater epic, and jungle-wild thriller." —Men's Journal

"Excellent... Candice Millard writes with precision and perfect pacing." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Vibrant...Exhilarating...Millard combines high adventure with dazzling passages of nature writing." —The New York Times Book Review

"The River of Doubt reminds one of the man himself —thorough, robust, extremely knowledgeable, and triumphant." —The Washington Post Book World

"A bully good adventure tale about a great man."
—DEIRDRE DONAHUE, USA Today

*The Kansas City Star

BROADWAY BOOKS
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF BRIGHT LIGHTS AND BOLD STYLE

Available wherever books are sold

Also available on CD from Random House Audio • www.broadwaybooks.com

## Up Front

HENRY ALFRED KISSINGER left his position as secretary of state in 1977, but he has remained in the public eye through his writing, particularly his three volumes of memoirs, and his place on the Defense Policy Board and a number of other government advisory panels. And, as Bob Woodward writes in his latest book, Kissinger has been "a powerful, largely invisible influence on the foreign policy of the Bush administration," meeting privately with the president every few months. Kissinger's admiration for another former secretary of state who was brought to the White House long after he left office — in his case to provide advice to Kissinger's boss, Richard Nixon — is clear in his front-page review of Robert L. Beisner's "Dean Acheson." And in an e-mail message to us, he said that "Acheson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions were so different." But, he added, "leadership is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's society from where it is to where it has never been; and character to withstand the assaults with which the familiar defends itself. Acheson met these criteria to a special degree and did so with zest."

The Editors

Matthew Bandsuch

## On the Web

**First Chapters:** Excerpts from "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid," by Bill Bryson; "The Light of Evening," by Edna O'Brien; and other books.

**Forums:** Respond to a review, discuss literary topics or join a monthly Reading Group.

**Books Update E-Mail:** Receive a selective overview of new book reviews and features every Sunday.

**Podcast:** Subscribe to an audio program featuring the editors of the Book Review discussing the week's issue.

www.nytimes.com/books

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War - By Robert L. Beisner - Books - Review - New York Ti...

Page 1 of 4

The New York Times

nytimes.com

PRINTERS-FRIENDLY FORMAT
SPONSORED BY

THE L
OF ST
NOW

October 15, 2006

Cold Warrior

By HENRY A. KISSINGER

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state in modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years — 1949-53 — that Acheson served as secretary of state,

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; *Condoleezza Rice* is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace.

The debonair conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. Acheson was a man of high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin shaped by the 19th century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants.

Though Acheson served during the transition when America emerged as a world power and enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of government was as yet relatively small, and Washington was still a comparatively provincial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped by public relations advisers or tested on focus groups; hence they were somewhat personal. That senior officials must remain blandly obliging while their veracity or honor is being systematically challenged was never part of the Acheson code. This explains the scene, unimaginable today, when Acheson, in the author's words, at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, admonished Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska not to shake his dirty finger in his face. When Wherry persisted, Acheson rose and launched a roundhouse swing at the senatorial gadfly, which was stopped at the last moment because Adrian Fisher, the legal adviser of the State Department, wrapped his arms around Acheson and pulled him down into his

DEAN ACHESON

A Life in the Cold War.

By Robert L. Beisner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/books/review/Kissinger.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=boo... 10/17/2006

Page 2 of 4

When Acheson became secretary of state, America had only just started its journey toward global involvement. Africa was still colonial; Britain was predominant in much of the Middle East; Indian democracy was only two years old; Germany and Japan were still occupied countries. The debate was not over aspirations to hegemony but over whether the nation should engage itself internationally at all, never mind permanently. It was appropriate that Acheson entitled his memoirs "Present at the Creation."

The position of secretary of state is potentially the most fulfilling in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global; ultimately it rests on almost philosophical assumptions as to the nature of world order and the relationship of order to progress and national interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in the face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of communication from the Executive Department — all this against the backdrop of Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as under secretary of state and then as secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct continuing threat to its security since the early days of the Republic had to be brought to recognize that its permanent participation in the world was indispensable for peace and security. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five principal tasks of any secretary of state: the identification of the challenge; the development of a strategy to deal with it; organizing and motivating the bureaucracy in the State Department and in other agencies; persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy toward other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration between the president and the secretary of state; secretaries of state who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by administrative flowcharts; for a secretary of state to be effective, he or she has to get into the president's head, so to speak. This is why Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the achievements of the Truman years.

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill — though Acheson came closer than any other of the modern period. His overriding challenge was to define a conceptual framework on which to base America's involvement in global affairs. Beisner, a former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, describes this process in detail and with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's seminal article, "The Sources of

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/books/review/Kissinger.t.html?_r=1&ref=slogin&ref=boo...

10/17/2006

Soviet Conduct,” into the operating principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression. Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to begin diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years immediately following World War II, was to restore Western Europe and create an Atlantic community to resist what then appeared as the Soviet colossus. He built the structure that sustained democracy during the cold war, with the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and the return of Germany and Japan to the community of nations. But Acheson was less precise about the role of diplomacy in this process once the architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of American thinking. He rejected what he considered the militarization of his own views, inaugurating a debate that has not ended to this day. Acheson implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-enforcing, and he played down the importance of diplomatic engagement with the adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to gain Soviet acquiescence in the process and urged negotiation, even while the ultimate structure was being built. Acheson treated diplomacy as the more or less automatic consequence of a strategic deployment; Kennan saw it as an autonomous enterprise depending largely on diplomatic skill. The danger of the Acheson approach has been stagnation and gradual public disenchantment with stalemate. The danger of the Kennan approach has been that diplomacy might become a technical exercise in splitting differences and thus shade into appeasement. How to merge the two strands so that military force and diplomacy are mutually supportive and so that national strategy becomes a seamless web is the essence of a continuing national controversy.

For someone like myself, who knew Acheson, Beisner's portrait does not always capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered that relationship an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for vice president. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike some other outside advisers,

Page 4 of 4

Henry A. Kissinger served as secretary of state from Sept. 22, 1973, to Jan. 20, 1977. He is chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

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INTERNATIONAL
Herald Tribune

Review: Dean Acheson

Reviewed by Henry A. Kissinger *The New York Times*

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2006

Dean Acheson. *A Life in the Cold War*.

By Robert L. Beisner. 800 pages. $35. Oxford University Press.

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state in modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years - 1949-53 - that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace.

seat.

When Acheson became secretary of state, America had only just started its journey toward global involvement. Africa was still colonial; Britain was predominant in much of the Middle East; Indian democracy was only two years old; Germany and Japan were still occupied countries. The debate was not over aspirations to hegemony but over whether the nation should engage itself internationally at all, never mind permanently.

Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in the face of the daily
task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of
messages from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of
communication from the Executive Department - all this against the backdrop of
Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill - though Acheson came
closer than any other of the modern period. His overriding challenge was to

define a conceptual framework on which to base America's involvement in global affairs. Beisner, a former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, describes this process in detail and with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's seminal article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," into the operating principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression. Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to begin diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task.

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with respect to the Korean War was the cause of the single greatest error of Acheson's tenure: initially, the placing of Korea publicly outside the American defense perimeter (though this was conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the inability, after the United States crossed the 38th parallel, to correlate military operations with some achievable diplomatic objectives. For someone like myself, who knew Acheson, Beisner's portrait does not always capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered

A cheson emerges from the Beisner book as the greatest secretary of state of the postwar period in the sweep of his design, his ability to implement it, the extraordinary associates with whom he surrounded himself and the nobility of his personal conduct. He was impatient with relativists who sought surcease from the complexity of decisions by postulating the moral equivalence of the United States and the Soviet Union. His values were absolute, but he knew also that statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates, and this requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages, each of which is probably imperfect by absolute standards.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but 'countless problems stretching into the future.' ? Americans must reconcile themselves to 'limited objectives' and work in congress with others, for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to evoke support from others - an ability quite as important as the capacity to compel.'" The importance of that perception has not changed with the passage of time.

Sep 08 06 02:15p

p.1

9/8/06

TO: Dr. Kissinger
FROM: Theresa
RE: Acheson review

I spoke with Barry Gewen of the NYT regarding publication of your review. "First of all," he said, "everyone is absolutely delighted with the piece. It's excellent, and we think it's going to attract a lot of attention."

The piece is currently scheduled to run in the October 8 issue. They plan to have an edited version to you for your approval on Thursday, Sept. 18 (at which time you are scheduled to be in London and then that evening to Berlin). Gewen, who has been our contact, will be out next week but provided a contact number if you have any questions while he is gone.

Dean Acheson - By Robert L. Beisner - Book - Review - New York Times

The New York Times

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October 4, 2006

BOOKS OF THE TIMES

# Facing a Global Threat With Nonpartisan Clarity

By WALTER ISAACSON

In 1946, just after fascism had been defeated, America's leaders found themselves confronted by a whole new global threat, the spread of Soviet-backed Communism. They reacted creatively and boldly by devising an imaginative array of institutions, like NATO and the Marshall Plan, and by formulating a clear and nonpartisan sense of mission, expressed in the Truman Doctrine and the strategies of containment.

DEAN ACHESON

A Life in the Cold War

By Robert L. Beisner

Illustrated. 800 pages. Oxford University Press. $35.

Today America is once again confronted by a new global threat, that of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. But so far no new NATO or Marshall Plan has been birthed, and the Bush Doctrine is not yet as clear nor as nonpartisan as some might hope. That is one reason that it is worth welcoming another biography of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who was more responsible for the Marshall Plan than Gen. George Marshall and as responsible for the Truman Doctrine as President Harry S. Truman.

Acheson has been blessed with good and generally sympathetic biographers: Gaddis Smith, David McLellan, James Chace and, for his later years, Douglas Brinkley. The man himself conveyed his own flair in what may be the most luminous memoir by any American statesman, "Present at the Creation," published in 1969, as polished and elegant as its author.

Robert L. Beisner, a diplomatic historian whose previous works have focused on the 19th century, has now produced a welcome addition to this shelf, a solidly researched and balanced tome that focuses mainly on Acheson's years as the undersecretary and then secretary of state. It serves as the perfect companion to "Present at the Creation." It is not as rollicking and witty, but Mr. Beisner's prodigious mining of archives and oral histories makes it actually far more reliable and accurate than Acheson's martini-lubricated memories.

Mr. Beisner meticulously traces the evolution of Acheson's attitude toward the Soviet Union in 1946. Acheson began the year pushing a plan to bring Moscow into an international system for controlling atomic weapons. But by September, in what Mr. Beisner calls a "sharp and decisive turn," he joined the growing bipartisan consensus that Stalin had to be resisted rather than accommodated. He concluded, as he later wrote, that the Soviet threat was "singularly like that which Islam had posed centuries before, with its combination of

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/books/04isaa.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

10/5/2006

Dean Acheson - By Robert L. Beisner - Book - Review - New York Times
ideological zeal and fighting power."

Page 2 of 3

With Marshall as secretary and Acheson as undersecretary, the State Department embarked on meeting this challenge. Their first step was laying a solid, carefully conceived and clearly articulated foundation, which became known as the Truman Doctrine.

The process began in early 1947 when the British informed Washington that they could no longer keep their commitment to support the Greek government in its struggle against Communist forces. Acheson realized that the United States must step into the breach, and that this presaged a whole new international role. He worked throughout the weekend with his advisers to produce an official request for aid to Greece and Turkey, and then "drank a martini or two toward the confusion of our enemies."

Recognizing the need for bipartisanship in embarking on a mission that might take decades, Acheson consulted Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At a meeting with Truman and Vandenberg in the White House, Acheson put the aid request in the context of the larger struggle by using a metaphor about how one or two rotten apples could spoil a barrel.

Acheson oversaw the process of writing the presidential speech to define the new doctrine. The challenge was cast in sweeping terms of a world split between freedom and repression. But the commitment at the core of the doctrine was carefully calibrated to be pragmatic, definable and doable. The United States would, Truman proclaimed, "support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Acheson realized that it was important for the new doctrine to set limits as well as visions. The United States could not help every free nation, and it would be guided by its own security interests in deciding how to react to each case. He eventually got into trouble by seeming to exclude Korea from America's security perimeter, which some thought contributed to Stalin's calculations in encouraging the North Korean invasion in 1950.

Mr. Beisner is defensive on Acheson's behalf, explaining the Korea comment as a minor "afterthought in a busy month" that did not truly alter United States policy. But the incident was significant because it showed that there were risks as well as benefits in making sure that doctrines were clearly articulated and circumscribed. On balance, Acheson felt, the benefits were greater.

When Truman later loosely declared that "whenever and wherever we are challenged by the Communists we must meet the challenge," Acheson privately wrote him: "You cannot mean this," adding that confronting Moscow required "lots of sense and coolness in making decisions of where and how."

After becoming secretary of state in 1949, Acheson helped shape the NATO military alliance with Western Europe and was generally able to preserve the bipartisan consensus behind the cold war strategy. But he was not able to inoculate himself personally from the anti-Communist fervor that arose in the early 1950's. With an intellectual brilliance only partly leavened by wit, and a veneer of aristocratic arrogance polished by mustache wax, Acheson became a natural target, especially after he defended the honor of his employee and acquaintance Alger Hiss from allegations that he was a Russian spy.

10/5/2006

American foreign policy has historically fluctuated between idealism and realism. Acheson's career showed that it is best when these strands are woven together, as they were in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. As his current heirs at the State Department seek to temper the democracy-crusade idealism at the heart of the Bush Doctrine with a dose of practicality, pragmatism and realism, Mr. Beisner's book can offer some lessons about balancing commitments and resources, interests and ideals.

Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, is co-author of "The Wise Men" and author of biographies of Henry A.Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin.

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10/5/2006

Inbox: Dr. Kissinger's review

Web Hosting Web Mail

From: Theresa Cimino <tcimino@kmaglobal.com>
To: <gewen@nytimes.com>
Subject: Dr. Kissinger's review
Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:37:33 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Mr. Gewen:

Dr. Kissinger has one additional change that he would like made to the review. He would like the very last sentence of the piece to read: "The **importance** [changed from 'relevance'] of that perception has not changed with the passage of time."

Also, attached are two files. The first is a page with the identification line you asked for (to run with the review) and answers to the questions you posed to Dr. Kissinger last week (for your "Upfront" feature). The second is the current resume you requested.

I am working from home today, reachable at 201/689-1622 if you have any questions.

Thank you,
Theresa

<<Acheson review questions-FINAL.doc (application/msword)>>

<<Bio-Kissinger.doc (application/msword)>>

https://register.bcentralhost.com/home/mail/new/mbox_message.cgi?pFolder=Inbox&pLas... 10/2/2006

For New York Times Sunday Review of Books

10/2/06

Responses to Questions for
<u>Dr. Kissinger's review of Robert L. Beisner's Dean Acheson</u>

**Brief identification line:**

Dr. Kissinger served as Secretary of State from September 22,
1973 to January 20, 1977. He is chairman of Kissinger
Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.

Responses to questions for "Upfront" feature:

Was Acheson a model for you, and if so, in what ways?

Acheson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions
were so different. I did attempt to emulate, within the limits of the possible,
the quality of his staff, which contained the extraordinary and unique team of
George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Charles Bohlen and Foy Kohler.

What do you think of "Present at the Creation" and of Acheson as a
writer?

Present at the Creation is a splendid example of the memoir genre that seeks to capture a series of decisive high points and to explain how they were mastered, through vivid portraits of the personalities involved. It is written with passion and elegance.

Has the role of Secretary of State changed from Acheson's time to
your own time in the office to the present?

The bureaucratic aspect of policymaking has been transformed. Acheson had to compete for dominance in foreign policymaking with a few individuals. The contemporary Secretary of State has to master a process. The importance of close ties with the President has remained the key to effectiveness.

Are there any additional comments that you would like to make
about Acheson that you weren't able to fit into the review?

Leadership is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's society from where it is to where it has never been; and character to withstand the assaults with which the familiar defends itself. Acheson met these criteria to a special degree and did so with zest.

these criteria to a special degree and did so with great
willingness the absence with which the familiar defend itself. Adeson met
society from where it is to where it has never been, and character to
leadership is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's
about Adeson that you weren't able to fit into this review?

Are there any additional comments that you would like to make
about Adeson that you weren't able to fit into this review?

The democratic aspect of policymaking has been transformed. Adeson has
compete for command in foreign policymaking with a few individuals.
about Adeson that you weren't able to fit into this review?

Your own time in the office to write the present? has the role of Secretary of State changed from Adeson's time to

with passion and elegance.
Present at the Creation is a splendid example of the memoir genre that seeks
to capture a series of decisive high points and to explain how they were
present at the Creation is a splendid example of the memoir genre that seeks

What do you think of "Present at the Creation" and of Adeson as a
writer?

George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Charles Bogen and Roy Kietlet.
Was Adeson a model for you, and it so, in what way?
Adeson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions

Reasons to questions for "Upfront" feature:

Associated Press, Inc., an international consulting firm.

1973 to January 20, 1977. He is chairman of Klausing.

Dr. Klausing served as Secretary of State from September 25,

Brief identification line:

Dr. Klausing's review of Robert T. Belanger's Dean Adeson
Reasons to Questions for

10/2/76

June 2006

HENRY A. KISSINGER

Henry Alfred Kissinger was sworn in on September 22, 1973, as the 56th Secretary of State, a position he held until January 20, 1977. He also served as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs from January 20, 1969, until November 3, 1975. In July 1983 he was appointed by President Reagan to chair the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America until it ceased operation in January 1985, and from 1984-1990 he served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. From 1986-1988 he was a member of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy of the National Security Council and Defense Department. He is currently a member of the Defense Policy Board.

At present, Dr. Kissinger is Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. He is also a member of the International Council of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; Chairman of the International Advisory Board of American International Group, Inc.; a Counselor to and Trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies; an Honorary Governor of the Foreign Policy Association; and an Honor Member of the International Olympic Committee. Among his other activities, Dr. Kissinger is a member of the Board of Directors of ContiGroup Companies, Inc. and a Public Sector member of the United States Olympic Committee. He is also an Advisor to the Board of Directors of American Express Company; a member of the Advisory Board of Forstmann Little and Co.; a Trustee Emeritus of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a Director Emeritus of Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc.; and a Director of the International Rescue Committee.

Among the awards Dr. Kissinger has received have been the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973; the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the nation's highest civilian award) in 1977; and the Medal of Liberty (given one time to ten foreign-born American leaders) in 1986.

Dr. Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany, came to the United States in 1938 and was naturalized a United States citizen in 1943. He served in the Army from 1943 to 1946. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1950 and received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University in 1952 and 1954.

From 1954 until 1969 he was a member of the faculty of Harvard University, in both the Department of Government and the Center for International Affairs. He was Director of the Harvard International Seminar from 1952 to 1969.

Dr. Kissinger is the author of:

*A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace, 1812-1822 (1957);*

*Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957);*

*The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (1961);*

*The Troubled Partnership: A Reappraisal of the Atlantic Alliance (1965);*

*Problems of National Strategy: A Book of Readings (ed.) (1965);*

*American Foreign Policy, Three Essays (1969);*

*White House Years (1979);*

*For the Record: Selected Statements, 1977-1980 (1981);*

*Years of Upheaval (1982);*

*Observations: Selected Speeches and Essays, 1982-1984 (1985);*

*Diplomacy (1994);*

*Years of Renewal (1999);*

*Does America Need a Foreign Policy?: Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century (2001);*

*Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (2003); and*

*Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises (2003).*

He has also published numerous articles on United States foreign policy, international affairs and diplomatic history. His column, syndicated by Tribune Media Services International, appears in leading U.S. newspapers and in over 40 foreign countries.

Dr. Kissinger is married to the former Nancy Maginnes and is the father of two children by a previous marriage.

10/1/06-#2

Responses to Questions from
NYT Sunday Review of Books

Brief identification line:

"Dr. Kissinger served as Secretary of State from September 22, 1973 to January 20, 1977. He is chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm."

1) Was Acheson a model for you, and if so, in what ways?

were so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of his staff, which

contained the extraordinary and unique team of [George] Kennan, [Paul]

Nitze, [Charles] Bohlen and [Foy] Kohler.

2) What do you think of "Present at the Creation" and of Acheson as a writer?

*Present at the Creation* is a splendid example of [the memoir genre] that seeks to capture a series of decisive high points and to explain how they

seeks to capture a series of discursive high points and to explain how they

Present at the Creation is a splendid example of [the memoir genre] that
is a writer.

3) What do you think of Present at the Creation, and of Adreagon

Mike [Charles] Bonnen and [Roy] Kohler.

concerned the extraordinary and unique team of [George] Kennan, [Paul]
where so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of the staff which
Adreagon was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions

1) Was Adreagon a model for you, and it so, in what ways?

Reasons to questions for "Outside" features:

1913 to January 30, 1933. He is chairman of Kleisinger.

"Dr. Kleisinger served as Secretary of State from September 55.

Brief identification line:

WNY Bungy Review of Books
Reasons to Questions from

10/100-#5

[Note: did. will be emended as it stands, as you indicated.]

withstand the assault with which the commissar defend itself. Adrean met

accusation from where it is to which it has never been; and character to

Testimony is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's

about Adrean that you weren't able to fit into the review?

(4) Are there any additional comments that you would like to make

errichterzeichen?

to compete for dominance in foreign policy making with a few individuals.

The business aspect of policy making has been transformed. Adrean had

(3) Has the role of Secretary of State changed from Adrean's time

were matched through vivid portraits of the personalities involved. It is

10/1/06-#2

**Responses to questions for "Upfront" feature:**

Acheson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions
were so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of his staff, which
contained the extraordinary and unique team of [George] Kennan, [Paul]
Nitze, [Charles] Bohlen and [Foy] Kohler.

seeks to capture a series of delicate high points and to explain how they

Present at the Creation is a splendid example of [the memoir genre] that

5) What do you think of "Present at the Creation", and of Acherson as a writer?

6) What do you think of "Present at the Creation", and of Acherson as a writer?

Nitsche, Charles Golden and [Ray] Kooler.

Chapman was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions
were so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of his staff, which
Acherson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions
were so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of his staff, which
Chapman was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions
were so different. I did attempt to emulate the quality of his staff, which
Acherson was more an inspiration to me than a model because conditions

7) Was Acherson a model for you, and was I in what ways?

Responses to questions for "Upgrade" feature:

1973 to January 30, 1977. He is chairman of Kleasigden.

Dr. Kleasigden served as Secretary or State from September 22.

Brief identification line:

WRT Sunday Review of Books
Responses to Questions from

10/1/00-#5

2

3) Has the role of Secretary of State changed from Acheson's time to your own time in the office to the present?

4) Are there any additional comments that you would like to make about Acheson that you weren't able to fit into the review?

Leadership is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's society from where it is to where it has never been; and character to withstand the assaults with which the familiar defends itself. Acheson met these criteria to a special degree.

[Note: Bio. will be emailed as it stands, as you indicated.]

Oct 01 06 04:21p

p. 1

10/1/06

Brief identification line:

Acheson was more an inspiration to me than a model. If anything, I

attempted to surround myself with outstanding exports as Acheson did when...

he had the extraordinary team of [George] Kennan, [Paul] Nitze, [Charles]

Bohlen and [Foy] Kohler, in his entourage.

Present at the Creation is a splendid example of [the memoir genre] that seeks to capture a series of decisive high points and to explain how they

10

09:90 09 10 200

10/1/06

Brief identification line:

Acheson was more an inspiration to me than a model. If anything, I attempted to surround myself with outstanding experts as Acheson did when he had the extraordinary team of [George] Kennan, [Paul] Nitze, [Charles] Bohlen and [Foy] Kohler in his entourage.

2

The bureaucratic aspect of policymaking has been transformed with so many
new agencies clamoring for attention. Acheson had to compete for
dominance in foreign policymaking with a few individuals. The contemporary
Secretary of State has to master a process. The importance of close ties
with the President has remained the key to effectiveness.

Leadership is a composite of courage and character: courage to take one's
society from where it is to where it has never been; and character to
withstand the assaults with which the familiar defends itself. [DID YOU
WANT TO TIE THIS BACK TO ACHESON SOMEHOW?]

[Note: 610 will be amended as it stands, so you indicate it.]

WANT TO THE THIS BACK TO ACHERON SOMEHOW?

With the audience in mind, which the Hamilton defends itself. [DID YOU society from where it is to where it has never been; and character to Leadership is a composite of courage and character; courage to take one's about Acheson that you weren't able to fit into the review?

4. Are there any additional comments that you would like to make about Acheson that you weren't able to fit into the review?

With the President has remained the key to effectiveness.

Secretary of State has to master a process. The importance of close ties of foreign policy making with a few individuals. The contemporary new agencies clamoring for attention. Acheson had to compete for the bureaucratic aspect of policy making has been transformed with so many to your own time in the office to the present.

3. Has the role of Secretary of State changed from Acheson's time

were measured, through vivid portraits of the personalities involved, it is

Oct 01 06 09:14p

10/1/06-#2

Brief identification line:

Oct 01 06 09:14p

p.2

Oct 01 06 09:15p

10/1/06-#2

Brief identification line:

Oct 01 06 09:15p

p. 4

Oct 01 06 04:19p

10/1/06

Brief identification line:

Oct 01 06 04:20p

Re: Changes to Acheson review

Theresa Cimino

From: Barry Gewen [gewen@nytimes.com]
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 2:51 PM
To: Theresa Cimino
Subject: Re: Changes to Acheson review

thank you. i'm returning this to you with dr. kissinger's two changes, just so you have it. barry

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state of modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years - 1949-53 - that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what). History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace.

Though Acheson served during the transition when America emerged as a world power and enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of government was as yet relatively small, and Washington was still a comparatively provincial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped by public relations advisers or tested on focus groups; hence they were somewhat personal. That senior officials must remain blandly obliging while their veracity or honor is being systematically challenged was never part of the Acheson code. This explains the scene, unimaginable today, when Acheson, in the author's words, at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, admonished Sen. Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska not to shake his dirty finger in his face. When Wherry persisted, Acheson rose and launched a roundhouse swing at the senatorial gadfly, which was stopped at the last moment because Adrian Fisher, the legal adviser of the State Department, wrapped his arms around Acheson and pulled him down into his seat.

The position of secretary of state is potentially the most fulfilling in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global; ultimately it rests on almost philosophical assumptions as to the nature of world order and the relationship of order to progress and national interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of communication from the Executive Department - all this against the backdrop of Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as undersecretary of state and then as secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct continuing threat to its security since the early days of the Republic had to be brought to recognize that its permanent participation in the world was indispensable for peace and security. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

9/29/2006

Re: Changes to Acheson review

Page 2 of 2

For someone like myself, who knew Acheson, Beisner's portrait does not always capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered that relationship an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for vice president. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike some other outside advisers, without offering advice that had not been solicited.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but 'countless problems stretching into the future.' Americans must reconcile themselves to 'limited objectives' and work in congress with others, for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to evoke support from others - an ability quite as important as the capacity to compel.'"

The relevance of that perception has not changed with the passage of time.

9/29/2006

Message

Theresa Cimino

**From:** Theresa Cimino [tcimino@kmaglobal.com]
**Sent:** Friday, September 29, 2006 1:41 PM
**To:** 'Barry Gewen'
**Subject:** Changes to Acheson review

Dear Mr. Gewen:

As discussed, following are Dr. Kissinger's slight changes to your edited version of his review (in bold, caps and larger font in order to facilitate spotting them in the text).

Thank you,
Theresa

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state of modern American history.

Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," [WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IN THE REVIEW] his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years - 1949-53 - that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

9/29/2006

Message

Page 2 of 9

Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace. [DELETE: , if not the banal.]

9/29/2006

Message

9/29/2006

Message

Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence
looms in face of the daily task of redefining
America's relationship to the world via the
thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic
posts and the constant flow of communication from
the Executive Department - all this against the
backdrop of Congressional [DELETE HYPHEN]
liaison and press inquiry.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five
principal tasks of any secretary of state: the
identification of the challenge; the development

9/29/2006

Message

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with
equal skill - though Acheson came closer than any
other of the modern period. His overriding
challenge was to define a conceptual framework on
which to base America's involvement in global
affairs. Beisner, a former president of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations[WE ALSO MUST IDENTIFY THE AUTHOR IN
SOME WAY], describes this process in detail and
with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate

9/29/2006

Message

9/29/2006

Message

Page 7 of 9

initially, the placing of Korea [ADD: publicly] outside the
American defense perimeter (though this was
conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the
inability, after the United States crossed the
38th parallel, to correlate military operations

9/29/2006

Message

[PLEASE NOTE: YOU ORIGINALLY HAD "HIS
1952 CAMPAIGN FOR SENATE." NIXON RAN FOR SENATE
IN 1950 AND FOR VICE PRESIDENT IN 1952, AND WE
WEREN'T SURE WHICH RACE YOU MEANT, BUT THE FAMOUS
COMMENT ABOUT ACHESON'S "COWARDLY COLLEGE OF
COMMUNIST CONTAINMENT" WAS FROM 1952, SO WE
DECIDED YOU MEANT THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL RACE.]

9/29/2006

Message

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but 'countless problems stretching into the future.' Š Americans must reconcile themselves to 'limited objectives' and work in congress with others, for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to evoke support from others - an ability quite as important as the capacity to compel.'"

9/29/2006

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

P. 1

Page 1 of 6

With HAK changes

Web Hosting Web Mail

From: Barry Gewen <gewen@nytimes.com>

To: <tcimino@kmaglobal.com>

Subject: acheson review

Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:16:18 -0400

Dr. Kissinger--

Your review will be running as the cover review of the Oct. 15 Book Review. We are delighted with it and expect it will generate wide discussion. Here is the edited version for you to look over. You should know that we close the issue next Wednesday, so Tuesday is the latest I can hear from you, though Monday would be preferable. I've included a few comments about some of the editing in CAPS in the body of the review. We also need a brief i.d. from you to run with the review.

But here is something else for you to attend to. In every issue of the Book Review we run a small, 200-300 word introductory section called "Upfront," highlighting some aspect of the week's issue. For Oct. 15 we would like to write the Upfront on you. For this we will need a current resume. It would also help us out if you could provide brief, one- or two-sentence answers to some or all of the following questions--but whereas we can take your response to the editing on Tuesday, we will need your answers to these questions by Monday. ←*

* Was Acheson a model for you, and if so, in what ways?

* What do you think of "Present at the Creation" and of Acheson as a writer?

* Has the role of Secretary of State changed from Acheson's time to your own time in the office to the present?

* Are there any additional comments that you would like to make about Acheson that you weren't able to fit into the review?

Many thanks for your cooperation on all this.

Here is the edited version of your review:

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state of modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," [WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IN THE REVIEW] his sweeping and

CAPS = editor's notes

[] = added by
NYT

Deletions indicated in margin

https://register.bcentralhost.com/home/mail/new/mbox_message.cgi?pFolder=Inbox&pLas... 9/28/2006

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years (1949-53) that Acheson served as secretary of state, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace, if not the mandatory.

The debonaire conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. Acheson was a man of high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.), an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin shaped by the 19th century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants.

Though Acheson served during the transition when America emerged as a world power and enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of government was as yet relatively small, and Washington was still a comparatively provincial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped by public relations advisers or tested on focus groups; hence they were somewhat personal. That senior officials must remain blandly obliging while their veracity or honor is being systematically challenged was never part of the Acheson code. This explains the scene, unimaginable today, when Acheson, in the author's words, at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, admonished Sen. Kenneth Wherry (of Nebraska) not to shake his dirty finger in his face. When Wherry persisted, Acheson rose and launched a roundhouse swing at the senatorial gadfly, which was stopped at the last moment because Adrian Fisher, the legal adviser of the State Department, wrapped his arms around Acheson and pulled him down into his seat.

sep 28 ub u3:cop

Inbox: acheson review

p. 3

Page 3 of 6

p. 3

Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of *messages* from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of communication from the Executive Department (all this) against the backdrop of Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as undersecretary of state and then as secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct (continuing) threat to its security since the early days of the Republic had to be brought to recognize that its (permanent) participation (in the world) was indispensable for peace and security. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five principal tasks of any secretary of state: the identification of the challenge; the development of a strategy to deal with it; organizing and motivating the bureaucracy in the State Department and in other agencies; persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy toward other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration between the president and the secretary of state; secretaries of state who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by administrative flowcharts; for a secretary of state to be effective, he or she has to get into the president's head, so to speak. This is why Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the

Deletions:

a/

[will point out hyphen should be deleted here]

permanent/

and that it would have to do so on a permanent basis!

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

p. 4

Page 4 of 6

Deletions:

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with
equal skill - though Acheson came closer than any
other of the modern period. His overriding
challenge was to define a conceptual framework on
which to base America's involvement in global
affairs. Beisner, a former president of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations (WE ALSO MUST IDENTIFY THE AUTHOR IN
SOME WAY], describes this process in detail and
with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate
with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's
seminal article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,"
into the operating principle of American foreign
policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task
of foreign policy was to create situations of
strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any
temptation for aggression. Negotiation with the
Soviet Union was to be deferred until these
situations of strength had come into being; any
attempt to (begin) diplomacy prematurely would
undermine the primary task.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years
immediately following World War II, was to
restore Western Europe and create an Atlantic
community to resist what then appeared as the
Soviet colossus. He built the structure that
sustained democracy during the cold war, (with) the
Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO (and) the
return of Germany and Japan to the community of
nations. But Acheson was less precise about the
role of diplomacy in this process once the
architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of American
thinking. He rejected what he considered the
militarization of his own views, inaugurating a
debate (that) has not ended to this day. Acheson
implicitly believed that situations of strength
would be self-enforcing, and he (played down) the
importance of diplomatic engagement with the
adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to
gain Soviet acquiescence in the process and urged
negotiation, even while the ultimate structure
was being built. Acheson treated diplomacy as the
more or less automatic consequence of a strategic
deployment; Kennan saw it as an autonomous
enterprise depending largely on diplomatic skill.
The danger of the Acheson approach has been
stagnation and gradual public disenchantment with
stalemate. The danger of the Kennan approach has
been that diplomacy might become a technical
exercise in splitting differences and thus shade
into appeasement. How to merge the two strands so
that military force and diplomacy are mutually
supportive and so that national strategy becomes

The author/

on/

American/

launch/

and ultimately prevailed in/

which/

downplayed/

Sep 28 06 05:26p

Inbox: acheson review

p.5

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with
respect to the Korean War was the cause of the
single greatest error of Acheson's tenure:
initially, the placing of Korea outside the
American defense perimeter (though this was
conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the
inability, after the United States crossed the
38th parallel, to correlate military operations
with some achievable diplomatic objectives.

For someone (like myself) who knew Acheson,
Beisner's portrait does not always capture the
vividness of his personality, which emerges too
much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's
relationship with the Nixon White House, and to
President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly
dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's
vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I
considered that relationship an example of
Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made
essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson
during his 1952 campaign for (vice
president).

Acheson emerges from the Beisner book as the
greatest Secretary of State of the postwar period
in the sweep of his design, his ability to
implement it, the extraordinary associates with
whom he surrounded himself and the nobility of
his personal conduct. He was impatient with
relativists who sought surcease from the
complexity of decisions by postulating the moral
equivalence of the United States and the Soviet
Union.

Deletions:

initially/publicly! < Resture ✓

sing/ of/

the/ fully/

it/

Senate/

Q/!

adversaries/

that/

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

P. 1

Page 1 of 6

With HAK changes

Web Hosting Web Mail

To: <tcimino@kmaglobal.com>

Subject: acheson review

Dr. Kissinger--

Robert L. Beisner, in ("Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," [WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IN THE REVIEW] his sweeping and

CAPS = editor's notes

( ) = added by NYT

Deletions indicated in margin

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

P.2

The debonair conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. Acheson was a man of high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.), an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin shaped by the 19th century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants.

Deletions:

Acheson's
a/

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

P.3

Page 3 of 6

P.3

Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of communication from the Executive Department (all this) against the backdrop of Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as undersecretary of state and then as secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct continuing threat to its security since the early days of the Republic had to be brought to recognize that its (permanent) participation in the world was indispensable for peace and security. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

Deletions:

a/

[will point out hyphen should be destred here]

permanent/

Sep 28 06 05:25p

Inbox: acheson review

P. 4

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with
equal skill - though Acheson came closer than any
other of the modern period. His overriding
challenge was to define a conceptual framework on
which to base America's involvement in global
affairs. Beisner, a former president of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations (WE ALSO MUST IDENTIFY THE AUTHOR IN
SOME WAY), describes this process in detail and
with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate
with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's
seminal article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,"
into the operating principle of American foreign
policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task
of foreign policy was to create situations of
strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any
temptation for aggression. Negotiation with the
Soviet Union was to be deferred until these
situations of strength had come into being; any
attempt to (begin) diplomacy prematurely would
undermine the primary task.

Deletions:

The author/

on/

American/

launch/

and ultimately prevailed in/

which/

downplayed/

Sep 28 06 05:26p

Inbox: acheson review

p.5

For someone (like myself) who knew Acheson,
Beisner's portrait does not always capture the
vividness of his personality, which emerges too
much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's
relationship with the Nixon White House, and to
President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly
dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's
vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I
considered that relationship an example of
Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made
essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson
during his 1952 campaign for vice

president. [PLEASE NOTE: YOU ORIGINALLY HAD "HIS
1952 CAMPAIGN FOR SENATE." NIXON RAN FOR SENATE
IN 1950 AND FOR VICE PRESIDENT IN 1952, AND WE
WEREN'T SURE WHICH RACE YOU MEANT, BUT THE FAMOUS
COMMENT ABOUT ACHESON'S "COWARDLY COLLEGE OF
COMMUNIST CONTAINMENT" WAS FROM 1952, SO WE
DECIDED YOU MEANT THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL RACE.]

Acheson emerges from the Beisner book as the
greatest Secretary of State during the postwar period
in the sweep of his design, his ability to
implement it, the extraordinary associates with
whom he surrounded himself and the nobility of
his personal conduct. He was impatient with
relativists who sought surcease from the
complexity of decisions by postulating the moral
equivalence of the United States and the Soviet

Deletions:

initially, publicly! ← Resture ✓

sing./ of/

the/ fully/

it/

Senate/

q/

adversaries/

that/

Maggie Halley

From: Theresa Cimino [tcimino@kmaglobal.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 5:17 PM
To: mhalley@kmaglobal.com
Subject: Fwd: acheson review

From: Barry Gewen <gewen@nytimes.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:16:18 -0400
To: tcimino@kmaglobal.com
Subject: acheson review

Dr. Kissinger--

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state of modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," [WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IN THE REVIEW] his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years - 1949-53 - that

Secretaries of state appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty-five years after his death, Acheson has achieved iconic status. This is all the more remarkable in view of his out-of-scale personality, so at odds with the present period, in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace, if not the banal.

2

No secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill - though Acheson came closer than any other of the modern period. His overriding challenge was to define a conceptual framework on which to base America's involvement in global affairs. Beisner, a former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations [WE ALSO MUST IDENTIFY THE AUTHOR IN SOME WAY], describes this process in detail and with special emphasis on Acheson's growing debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's seminal article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," into the operating principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression. Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to begin diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task.

3

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with respect to the Korean War was the cause of the single greatest error of Acheson's tenure: initially, the placing of Korea outside the American defense perimeter (though this was conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the inability, after the United States crossed the 38th parallel, to correlate military operations with some achievable diplomatic objectives. For someone like myself, who knew Acheson, Beisner's portrait does not always capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Acheson's relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered that relationship an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for vice president.

4

Inbox: acheson review

Page 1 of 6

Web Hosting Web Mail

To: <tcimino@kmaglobal.com>

Subject: acheson review

CAPS = editor's notes

Dr. Kissinger--

DEAN ACHESON was perhaps the most vilified secretary of state of modern American history. Robert L. Beisner, in ("Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," [WE HAVE TO INCLUDE THE TITLE OF THE BOOK IN THE REVIEW]) his sweeping and

Inbox: acheson review

Page 2 of 6

[4]

p.2

Deletions:

Acheson's
a/

Inbox: acheson review

Page 3 of 6

p. 3

[4]

The position of secretary of state is potentially the most fulfilling in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global; ultimately it rests on almost philosophical assumptions as to the nature of world order and the relationship of order to progress and national interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and the constant flow of communication from the Executive Department (all this) against the backdrop of Congressional liaison and press inquiry.

Acheson served as undersecretary of state and then as secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct continuing threat to its security since the early days of the Republic had to be brought to recognize that its (permanent) participation (in the world) was indispensable for peace and security. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

Deletions:

a/

permanent/

and that it would have to do so on a permanent basis/

Inbox: acheson review

Page 4 of 6

[y]

Deletions:

The author/

on/

American/

launch/

and ultimately prevailed in/

which/

downplayed/

Inbox: acheson review

Page 5 of 6

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with
respect to the Korean War was the cause of the
single greatest error of Acheson's tenure:
initially the placing of Korea outside the
American defense perimeter (though this was
conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the
inability, after the United States crossed the
38th parallel, to correlate military operations
with some achievable diplomatic objectives.

Acheson emerges from the Beisner book as the
greatest Secretary of State during the postwar period
in the sweep of his design, his ability to
implement it, the extraordinary associates with
whom he surrounded himself and the nobility of
his personal conduct. He was impatient with
relativists who sought surcease from the
complexity of decisions by postulating the moral
equivalence of the United States and the Soviet
Union. His values were absolute, but he knew also

Deletions:

initially / publicly /

sing / of /

the / fully /

it /

Senate /

q /

adversaries /

that /

Inbox: acheson review

Page 6 of 6

[4]

Deletions:

p. 6

War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one
more river to cross' but ①countless problems
stretching into the future.①Americans must
reconcile themselves to ②limited objectives③ and
work in congress with others, for an essential
part of American power was the 'ability to evoke
support from others - an ability quite as
important as the capacity to compel.'"

9/8/06

The piece is currently scheduled to run in the October 8 issue. They plan to have an edited version to you for your approval on Thursday, Sept. 21 (at which time you are scheduled to be in London and then that evening to Berlin). Gewen, who has been our contact, will be out next week but provided a contact number if you have any questions while he is gone. Nancy Martinez 212/556-1466

✓ HAK said okay

REVISED FINAL

8/24/06

Review of Robert L. Beisner's
**Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War**
for **The New York Times Sunday Book Review**

By Henry A. Kissinger

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of State appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model; Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty years after his death, Acheson has achieved icon status.

This is all the more remarkable in view of Acheson's out of scale personality, so at odds with a period in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace, if not the banal. The debonair conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. Acheson was a man of high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Homes, an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin shaped by the nineteenth century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants. Though Acheson served during the transition when America emerged as a world power and enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of government was as yet relatively small, and Washington was still a comparatively provincial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped by public relations advisors or tested on focus groups; hence they were somewhat personal. That senior officials must remain blandly obliging while their veracity or honor is being systematically challenged was never part of the Acheson code. This explains the scene, unimaginable today, when Acheson, in the author's words, at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, admonished Senator Kenneth Wherry not to shake his dirty finger in his face. When Wherry

persisted, Acheson rose and launched a roundhouse swing at the
senatorial gadfly, which was stopped at the last moment because
Adrian Fisher, the Legal Advisor of the State Department, wrapped his
arms around Acheson and pulled him down into his seat.

When Acheson became Secretary of State, America had only just
started its journey towards global involvement. Africa was still
colonial; Britain was predominant in much of the Middle East; Indian
democracy was only two years old; Germany and Japan were still
occupied countries. The debate was not over aspirations to hegemony
but over whether the nation should engage itself internationally at all,
never mind permanently. It was appropriate that Acheson entitled his
memoirs, *Present at the Creation*.

The position of Secretary of State is potentially the most fulfilling
in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global;
ultimately it rests on almost philosophical assumptions as to the
nature of world order and the relationship of order to progress and
national interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence
looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to
the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic
posts and a constant flow of communication from the Executive
Department, against the backdrop of congressional liaison and press
inquiry.

Acheson served as Undersecretary of State and then as
Secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct
permanent threat to its security since the early days of the republic
had to be brought to recognize that its participation was indispensable
for peace and security and that it would have to do so on a permanent
basis. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if
indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was
assailed from both political sides, by those insisting on an end to
involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other
side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at
least none that required Acheson's militant response.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five principal tasks of
any Secretary of State: the identification of the challenge; the
development of a strategy to deal with it; organizing and motivating
the bureaucracy in the State Department and in other agencies;
persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy
towards other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration
between the President and the Secretary of State; Secretaries of State

3

[4]

who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office
invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by
administrative flowcharts; for a Secretary of State to be effective, he
or she has to get into the President's head, so to speak. This is why
Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in
town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the
achievements of the Truman years.

No Secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill – though
Acheson came closer than any other of the modern period. His
overriding challenge was to define a conceptual framework on which to
base America's involvement in global affairs. The author describes this
process in detail and with special emphasis on Acheson's growing
debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned Kennan's seminal article
on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" into the operating principle of
American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of
American foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the
Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression. Negotiation
with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of
strength had come into being; any attempt to launch diplomacy
prematurely would undermine the primary task.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years immediately following
World War II, was to restore Western Europe and create an Atlantic
community to resist what then appeared as the Soviet colossus.
Acheson built the structure that sustained democracy during the Cold
War and ultimately prevailed in the Marshall Plan, the creation of
NATO, the return of Germany and Japan to the community of nations.
But Acheson was less precise about the role of diplomacy in this
process once the architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of American thinking. He
rejected what he considered the militarization of his own views,
inaugurating a debate, which has not ended to this day. Acheson
implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-enforcing,
and he downplayed the importance of diplomatic engagement with the
adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to gain Soviet
acquiescence in the process and urged negotiation, even while the
ultimate structure was being built. Acheson treated diplomacy as the
more or less automatic consequence of a strategic deployment;
Kennan saw it as an autonomous enterprise depending largely on
diplomatic skill. The danger of the Acheson approach has been
stagnation and gradual public disenchantment with stalemate. The
danger of the Kennan approach was that diplomacy might become a

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with respect to the Korean war was the cause of the single greatest error of Acheson's tenure: the initial placing of Korea publicly outside the American defense perimeter (though this was conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the inability, after the crossing of the 38th parallel, to correlate military operations with some achievable diplomatic objectives.

For someone who knew Acheson, the portrait does not always fully capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. His relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, I considered it an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for Senate. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike some other outside advisors, without offering advice that had not been solicited.

Acheson emerges from the Beisner book as the greatest Secretary of State of the postwar period in the sweep of his design, his ability to implement it, the extraordinary associates with whom he surrounded himself, and the nobility of his personal conduct.

Acheson was impatient with relativists who sought surcease from the complexity of decisions by postulating the moral equivalence of adversaries. His values were absolute, but he knew also that statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates, and that requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages, each of which is probably imperfect by absolute standards.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but countless problems stretching into the future: Americans must reconcile themselves to limited objectives and work in congress with others for

8/24/06

Review of Robert L. Beisner's
<u>Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War</u>
for <u>The New York Times Sunday Book Review</u>
By Henry A. Kissinger

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, has unearthed a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements about him on the Senate floor and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

Acheson served as Undersecretary of State and then as
Secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct
permanent threat to its security since the early days of the republic
had to be brought to recognize that its participation was indispensable
for peace and security and that it would have to do so on a permanent
basis. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if
indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was
assailed from both political sides, by those longing for an end to
involvement through total victory over the threat and, on the other
side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at
least none that required Acheson's militant response.

3

[x]

4

CT

8/24/06

[4]

3

4

1,608 WORDS

8/23/06-FINAL

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, has unearthed a scholar who, with meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements on the Senate floor about him and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Secretaries of State appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model;

2

Condoleezza Rice is the most recent example. Thirty years after his death, Acheson has achieved icon status.

This is all the more remarkable in view of Acheson's out of scale personality, so at odds with a period in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace, if not the banal. The debonair conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill, coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. Acheson was a man of high principle, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Homes, an iconoclastic Boston Brahmin shaped by the nineteenth century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants.

3

4

The position of Secretary of State is potentially the most fulfilling
in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global;
ultimately it rests on almost philosophical assumptions as to the
nature of world order and the relationship of order to progress and
national interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence
looms in face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to
the world via the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic
posts and a constant flow of communication from the Executive
Department against the backdrop of congressional liaison and press
inquiry.

In this maelstrom, Acheson dealt with the five principal tasks of any Secretary of State: the identification of the challenge; the development of a strategy to deal with it; organizing and motivating the bureaucracy in the State Department and in other agencies;

6

persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy
towards other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration
between the President and the Secretary of State; Secretaries of State
who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office
invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by
administrative flow charts; for a Secretary of State to be effective, he
or she has to get into the President's head, so to speak. This is why
Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in
town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the
achievements of the Truman years.

7

debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned George Kennan's seminal article on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" into the operating principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of American foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression.

Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to launch diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task.

8

10

and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result
of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings,
I considered it an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had
made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952
campaign for Senate. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was
received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a
form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put
before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in
pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike some other
outside advisors, without offering advice that had not been solicited.

11

Acheson was impatient with relativists who sought surcease from the complexity of decisions by postulating the moral equivalence of adversaries. His values were absolute, but he knew also that statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates and that requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages, each of which is probably imperfect by absolute standards.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech at the War College in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but countless problems stretching into the future: Americans must reconcile themselves to limited objectives and work in congress with others for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to evoke support from others — an ability quite as important as the capacity to compel.'"

Aug 23 06 03:36p

1,654 WORDS

8/23/06-#4

Review of Robert L. Beisner's
*Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War*
*for The New York Times Sunday Book Review*

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, has unearthed a scholar who, ~~with~~ in an application of meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements on the Senate floor about him and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

Aug 23 06 03:36p

This is all the more remarkable in view of Acheson's out of scale personality, so at odds with a period in which eminence seems to be tolerable only in the garb of the commonplace, if not the banal. The debonair conduct, the bristling mustache, the Bond Street tailoring, the biting wit, the extraordinary analytical skill, coupled with a defiant refusal to turn the other cheek bespoke an affirmation of the idiosyncratic over the conventional. He was a man of high principle and sense of honor, whose hero was Oliver Wendell Homes, a Boston Brahmin shaped by the nineteenth century, and whose best friend was Felix Frankfurter, the brilliant son of Jewish immigrants. Though Acheson served during the transition when America emerged as a world power and still enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, the scale of government was as yet relatively small, and Washington was still a

iconoclastic
an iconoclastic
Boston
Brahmin
Felix Frankfurter
Acheson
Washington

Aug 23 06 03:37p

The position of Secretary of State is potentially the most fulfilling
in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global;
ultimately it rests on an almost philosophical inquiry into the nature of
world order and the relationship of order to progress and national
interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in
face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world
via
[vie-à-vie] the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic
posts and a constant flow of communication from the Executive
Department against the backdrop of congressional liaison and press.

Aug 23 06 03:37p

P. 5

Acheson served as Undersecretary of State and then as Secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct permanent threat to its security since the early days of the republic had to be brought to recognize that its participation was indispensable for peace and security and that it would have to do so on a permanent basis. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those longing for an end to involvement as soon as an immediate threat had been overcome and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

Aug 23 06 03:37p

the bureaucracy, both in the State Department and in other agencies; persuading the American public; and conducting American diplomacy towards other countries. These tasks require the closest collaboration between the President and the Secretary of State; Secretaries of State who seek to base their influence on the prerogatives of the office invariably become marginalized. Presidents cannot be constrained by administrative flow charts; for a Secretary of State to be effective, he or she has to get into the President's head, so to speak. This is why Acheson made it a point to see Truman almost every day they were in town together and why their friendship was so crucial to the achievements of the Truman years.

No Secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill - though Acheson came closer than any other of the modern period. He was the first to see the need to define a conceptual framework on which to base America's involvement in global affairs. The author describes this

Aug 23 06 03:37p

process in detail and with special emphasis on Acheson's growing
debate with George Kennan. Acheson turned George Kennan's
seminal article on "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" into an operating
principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the
task of American foreign policy was to create situations of strength
around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for aggression.
Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these
situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to launch
diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years immediately following
World War II, was to restore Western Europe and create a European
political community to resist what then appeared as the Soviet
colossus. Acheson built the structure that sustained democracy during
the Cold War and ultimately prevailed in the Marshall Plan, the
creation of NATO, the return of Germany and Japan to the community

Aug 23 06 03:37p

of nations, even granting that Acheson sought not so much the
collapse of the Soviet Union as its ultimate transformation into a
normal state. But Acheson was less precise about the role of
diplomacy in this process once the architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of American thinking. He rejected what he considered the militarization of his own views, inaugurating a debate, which has not ended to this day. Acheson implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-enforcing, and he downplayed the importance of diplomatic engagement with the adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to gain Soviet acquiescence in the process and urged a negotiation, even while the ultimate structure was being built. (The danger of the Acheson approach has been stagnation or conflict through miscalculation. The well-known danger of the Kennan approach was that diplomacy might become a technical exercise in splitting differences and thus shade into

Aug 23 06 03:38p

appeasement. The tension between the two schools of thought — the

one that treats diplomacy as the more or less automatic consequence
of a strategic deployment, and the other that sees it as an autonomous
enterprise depending largely on diplomatic skill and political will.

**resolution** - How to merge the two strands so that military force and diplomacy are mutually supportive and so that national strategy becomes a seamless web is the essence of a continuing national controversy.

Aug 23 06 03:38p

For someone who knew Acheson, the portrait does not always
fully capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much
as a list of eccentricities. His relationship with the Nixon White House,
and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result
of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings,
I considered it an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had
made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952
campaign for Senate. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was
received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a
form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put
before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in
pursuit of his conception of national service and, unlike other outside
advisors, without offering advice that had not been asked for.

Aug 23 06 03:38p

Aug 23 06 11:16a

P.C.

ability to implement it, the extraordinary associates with whom he
surrounded himself, and the nobility of his personal conduct.

He was not a conventional relationist, seeking surcease from the
certainty of decisions by postulating the moral equations of
adversaries. His values were absolute, but he knew also that

that requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages, each of
which is probably respectful by absolute standards.

1,654 WORDS

8/23/06-#4

Review of Robert L. Beisner's
**Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War**
for The New York Times Sunday Book Review

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, has unearthed a scholar who, in an application of meticulous pedantry, discovered that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements on the Senate floor about him and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

2

3

comparatively provincial city. Its political conflicts were not shaped by
public relations advisors or tested on focus groups; hence they were
somewhat personal. That senior officials must remain blandly obliging
while their veracity is being systematically challenged on talk shows
and at congressional hearings was never part of the Acheson code.
This explains the scene, unimaginable today, described by Mr. Beisner
when Acheson admonished Senator Kenneth Wherry at a hearing
before the Senate Appropriations Committee not to shake "your dirty
finger in my face." When Wherry persisted, Acheson rose and
launched a roundhouse swing at his senatorial gadfly, which was
stopped at the last moment because Adrian Fisher, the Legal Advisor
of the State Department, wrapped his arms around Acheson and pulled
him down into his seat.

The position of Secretary of State is potentially the most fulfilling
in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global;
ultimately it rests on an almost philosophical inquiry into the nature of
world order and the relationship of order to progress and national
interest. Lacking such a conceptual framework, incoherence looms in
face of the daily task of redefining America's relationship to the world
[vis-à-vis] the thousands of messages from nearly 200 diplomatic
posts and a constant flow of communication from the Executive
Department against the backdrop of congressional liaison and press.

5

Acheson served as Undersecretary of State and then as Secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct permanent threat to its security since the early days of the republic and had to be brought to recognize that its participation was indispensable for peace and security and that it would have to do so on a permanent basis. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why Acheson was assailed from both political sides, by those longing for an end to involvement as soon as an immediate threat had been overcome and, on the other side, by those who thought there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required Acheson's militant response.

No Secretary can fulfill all these tasks with equal skill - though
Acheson came closer than any other of the modern period. He was
the first to face the need to define a conceptual framework on which to
base America's involvement in global affairs. The author describes this

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years immediately following
World War II, was to restore Western Europe and create a European
political community to resist what then appeared as the Soviet
colossus. Acheson built the structure that sustained democracy during
the Cold War and ultimately prevailed via the Marshall Plan, the
creation of NATO, the return of Germany and Japan to the community

8

of nations - even granting that Acheson sought not so much the
collapse of the Soviet Union as its ultimate transformation into a
normal state. But Acheson was less precise about the role of
diplomacy in this process once the architectural phase was completed.

Kennan represented the other strand of American thinking. He
rejected what he considered the militarization of his own views,
inaugurating a debate, which has not ended to this day. Acheson
implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-enforcing,
and he downplayed the importance of diplomatic engagement with the
adversary. Kennan raised the question of how to gain Soviet
acquiescence in the process and urged a negotiation, even while the
ultimate structure was being built. The danger of the Acheson
approach has been stagnation or conflict through miscalculation. The
danger of the Kennan approach was that diplomacy might become a
technical exercise in splitting differences and thus shade into

9

appeasement. The tension between the two schools of thought – the one that treats diplomacy as the more or less automatic consequence of a strategic deployment and the other that sees it as an autonomous enterprise depending largely on diplomatic skill – has yet to be resolved. How to merge the two strands so that military force and diplomacy are mutually supportive and so that national strategy becomes a seamless web is the essence of a continuing national controversy.

Beisner shows how the failure to do so with respect to the Korean war was the cause of the single greatest error of Acheson's tenure: the initial placing [of] Korea publicly outside the American defense perimeter (though this was conventional wisdom at the time) and, later, the inability, after the crossing of the 38th parallel, to correlate military operations with some achievable diplomatic objectives.

10

He was not a conventional relativist, seeking surcease from the
complexity of decisions by postulating the moral equations of
adversaries. His values were absolute, but he knew also that
statesmen are judged by history beyond contemporary debates and
that requires a willingness to achieve great goals in stages.

This was the theme of an Acheson speech [at] the War College
in August 1951: "There was not 'one more river to cross' but
countless problems stretching into the future: Americans must
reconcile themselves to limited objectives and work in congress with
others for an essential part of American power was the 'ability to
evoke support from others — an ability quite as important as the
capacity to compel.'"

Aug 23 06 08:41a

p. 1

1,576 WORDS

#3 - 8/22/06

Review of Robert L. Beisner's
**Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War**
**for The New York Times Sunday Book Review**

Dean Acheson was perhaps the most vilified Secretary of State of modern American history. Robert Beisner, in his sweeping and thoughtful account of Acheson's tenure, cites a scholar who discovered, in an [application] [discovered] of meticulous pedantry, that during the four years that Acheson served as Secretary of State, Republicans made 1,268 antagonistic statements on the Senate floor about him and only seven favorable ones (one wonders for what).

History has treated Acheson more kindly. Accolades for him have become bipartisan. Even Secretaries of State appointed by the party of his erstwhile tormentors have described him as a role model.

Aug 23 06 08:46a

AUG-22-2006 13:11

KAI

212 759 0042

P.14

p.1

M

3

provincial city. Its political conflicts were therefore highly personal and

[not shaped] by public relations focus groups. That senior officials

must be bland and turn the other cheek while their veracity is being

systematically challenged was not part of the Acheson code. This

"you before the Senate Appropriations Committee not to shake his dirty

finger in his face." When Wherry persisted, Acheson rose and launched

last moment because the legal advisor of the State Department

All this was possible because America had only just started its

journey towards global involvement. The debate was not over

aspirations to hegemony but over whether America should engage

itself at all, never mind permanently. The impetus behind foreign

internationally

it was appropriate

began to

Foreign policy was concerned with all issues, not just the totally global
but for America could not get the totally global
Africa was still vital. Britain was
preliminary in mind if the Viscountess East, then
democracy was only two years old. Germany
and Japan were still compactly united.

Aug 23 06 08:46a

AUG-22-2006 13:11

KAI

212 759 0042

P.15

policy was to defend [America's] values. Crusading on their behalf in
'Present at the Creation.'
every corner of the globe was as yet unimaginable.

The position of Secretary of State is potentially the most fulfilling
in the government short of the presidency. Its scope is global; it
addresses an ultimate philosophical inquiry into the nature of world
order and the relationship of order to progress and national interest.

Lacking such a conceptual framework, the daily task of dealing with
the thousands of e-mails from nearly 200 diplomatic posts and a
constant flow of communication from the Executive Department
compiled with the need for congressional liaison that daily demand
attention by which America's relationship to the world is constantly
redefined, runs the risk of turning inconsistent.

Acheson served as Undersecretary of State and then as
Secretary during the period when a people that had known no direct
permanent threat to [its] security since the early days of the republic

Aug 23 06 08:47a

AUG-22-2006 13:11

KAI

212 759 0042

P.10

and that had grown up with the conviction that such challenges as
at once could be overcome rapidly by the mobilization of America's
strength, had to be brought to recognize that its participation was
indispensable for peace and security and that [it] would have to do so
on a permanent basis. Inevitably this realization was painful and slow
in coming, if indeed it has been fully achieved to this day. This is why
Acheson was assailed from both political wings, by those convinced by
a delusion for an end to involvement as soon as an immediate threat had
been overcome, [from those who sought a final victory over the threat
followed by withdrawal] and, on the other wing, by those who thought
there was no threat to begin with, or at least none that required
Acheson's militant response.

Aug 23 06 08:47a

AUG-22-2006 13:12

KAI

212 759 0042 P.18

7

operating principle of American foreign policy. He interpreted it to mean that the task of American foreign policy was to create situations of strength around the Soviet periphery to deter any temptation for Soviet aggression. Negotiation with the Soviet Union was to be deferred until these situations of strength had come into being; any attempt to launch diplomacy prematurely would undermine the primary task. Kennedy was later to reject this approach, which he considered the militarization of his policy, launching a debate that has not ended to this day.

Acheson's overriding priority, in the years immediately following World War II, was to restore Western Europe and create a political community to resist what then appeared as the Soviet colossus.

In the words of Acheson created the structure that sustained the free countries during the Cold War via the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, the return of Germany and Japan to the community of nations, without it, the

Aug 23 06 08:49a

AUG-22-2006 13:12

KAI

212 759 0042

p. 1
R.19

8

ultimate outcome of the Cold War would never have been reached

acid from the fact that Acheson forces not so much the collapse of
the Soviet Union as its ultimate transformation into a normal state.

But Acheson was less clear about the diplomacy needed to follow the
culmination of his architectural phase was uncompleted

Acheson implicitly believed that situations of strength would be self-
enforcing, thus reinforcing the importance of diplomatic engagement

negotiation based on it would involve. The danger of the Acheson

approach has been conflict through miscalculation. The danger of the

Kennan approach was that diplomacy might shade into appeasement.

Aug 23 06 08:50a

AUG-22-2006 13:12

KAI

10

212 759 0042 P.21

For someone who knew Acheson, the portrait does not always fully capture the vividness of his personality, which emerges too much as a list of eccentricities. Especially his relationship with the Nixon White House, and to President Nixon himself, is too cavalierly dismissed as the result of ego and an old man's vanity. As a participant in all these meetings, [I considered it] an example of Acheson's generosity of spirit. Nixon had made essentially unforgivable attacks on Acheson during his 1952 campaign for Senate. But when he reached out to Acheson, it was received with the consideration Acheson felt he owed to the office, as a form of duty to the country. Acheson dealt with the issues Nixon put before him thoughtfully, precisely, without any attempt at flattery, in pursuit of his conception of national service, although I think not his. He was not a flatter, although I think he was a very able and intelligent man.

The basic theme of the book is contained in a speech by Acheson. This was the theme of his first campaign for Senate in 1952, quoted as follows: "There was not

He was not a flatter, although I think he was a very able and intelligent man. He knew also that just as men are judged by their present actions, so are judged by their past actions. His values were absolute, not relative. Any debate and argument should be based on reason, not emotion. He was not a emotionalist, but a rationalist. He sought to reason from the facts, not to believe what he wants to believe. He wanted to show that there is no such thing as good or bad. His values were absolute, not relative. Any debate and argument should be based on reason, not emotion. He was not a emotionalist, not a rationalist, but a rationalist.

Aug 23 06 09:07a

AUG-22-2006 13:12

KAI

11

The relevance of that lesson has not changed with the passage
of time.

TOTAL P. 22