The Secretary of State Who Created the Modern World. - book reviews

James Chace's study of the political career of Dean Acheson appears at a most propitious time. It is not only an absorbing biography and a sweeping historical overview of the years following World War II, it is a document that bears directly on our present post-cold war period.

When Harry Truman assumed the presidency on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1945, neither he nor the country was prepared for the change. In the congressional elections of 1946, the Democrats, under Truman's leadership, suffered a massive defeat. When Truman stepped off the train on his return to Washington, the high government officials who usually greeted the president were nowhere to be seen. There was one lone figure, elegant in tailored topcoat and homburg, the undersecretary of state, Dean Acheson. Delighted to see him, Truman invited him back to the White House for a drink.

Chace begins with this engaging and telling incident, which foreshadowed the significant future relations between these two men. Acheson developed close ties with Truman, both political and personal, at a time when the United States was emerging as a great power on an international scene whose new contours were taking shape in ways that no political leader could have anticipated. The times called for new vision, new initiatives, new and difficult policy decisions. The forged-in-loyalty bond between Truman and Acheson "led to the creation of new institutions so powerful that they came to define - for Americans at home, for allies and adversaries, for good and all - an American international order." ("For good and all" is surely hyperbolic.) It is this bold assessment that allows Chace in his subtitle to go beyond Acheson's more modestly titled book, Present at the Creation.

Chace makes his case persuasively by reporting on and analyzing the structures that Acheson helped to build as an active participant and sometimes architect. These include, notably, the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild war-shattered Western Europe; the Bretton Woods accords, designed to stabilize an international financial and economic order through the instrumentalities of the World Bank (more formally, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), and the IMF (International Monetary Fund); NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization); and the Truman Doctrine, devised to contain Soviet advances into the Mediterranean area. He was a staunch ally of the president in making decisions about the H-bomb, the civil war in China (where he was prepared to discount Chiang Kai-shek and deal with Mao, whom he projected as the victor), in dealing with the North Korean invasion of South Korea, and with the subsequent insubordination of the redoubtable General Douglas MacArthur. While a number of political leaders capitulated to Senator Joseph McCarthy and his scattershot accusations of Communist sympathies or party membership, Truman and Acheson, who became a high-profile target, stoutly resisted and counterattacked. His friend Archibald MacLeish said that during this period Acheson's intellectual arrogance became a real strength.

To achieve many of his international goals Acheson had to persuade, cajole, and push foreign leaders with strong and varied personalities who had themselves to cope with the radically altered fortunes of their countries. Here he called upon the vast personal resources he had at his disposal: acute intelligence, a well-equipped mind, charm, wit, conceptual clarity, energy, balance, judgment - and integrity. He inspired both respect and trust even from many who differed with him on weighty policy matters.

When Truman left office in 1952, Acheson's term as secretary of state came to an end, but it was not to be the end of his life as a public servant. He was frequently called back from a private life he enjoyed, even though he missed the excitement of participating in high events, to offer advice and judgment to presidents up to and including even Richard Nixon who, years earlier, had derided what he termed Acheson's "Cowardly College of Communist Containment."

Acheson's career was not, of course, one of all hits and no errors. To gain public and congressional support for the Marshall Plan he deliberately projected a Soviet threat that exceeded his own estimate and thus helped create a political atmosphere he would later try to change. To bring about Senate ratification of NATO he responded to questions about the stationing of American troops in terms that he later described as "deplorably wrong" and "almost equally stupid." His pragmatic judgments about Asian affairs - including his lack of support for Chiang's nationals and his omission of South Korea from an explicitly defined perimeter when he described what the United States would defend militarily - can still stir a small storm. However, as Chace emphasizes, even taking into account his failures or questionable policies, his achievements remain monumental. The institutions constructed under his guidance and the resolute actions he and Truman took did much to set the course of U.S. policies during the cold war.

On what were Acheson's accomplishments based? What formed the bedrock of his character? What values infused his judgments? These questions are not easy to answer and one must tread carefully here. One begins, conventionally, with his family and early education. Like his mother, with whom he was very close, Acheson was an independent spirit, and from his minister father he learned what it means to be decent and civilized. At Groton he was labeled disagreeable and immature. However, he showed his ability to get along with people very different from himself when he joined a rough and bawdy work crew that was pushing the railroad further westward. His rebellious nature was evident in his years at Yale, as were his sharp wit and his predilection for good times over bookish studies. It was at Harvard Law School that he learned to see excellence as a goal and to graduate fifth in his class.

At different times in his career he spelled out standards that guided his actions. Along with contemporaries such as George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and Reinhold Niebuhr he was a political realist. In a 1965 article "Ethics in International Relations Today," which Chace does not mention but which can be found in Amherst Alumni News of 1965, he dismissed, quite properly, critics of U.S. policy who seemed to believe that moral "solutions" could be readily translated into political policy. But in dismissing the intellectual confusion that bedeviled then-current debates about ethical considerations in political matters he also contributed, I believe, to that confusion. Like many other realists, Acheson was intellectually not realistic enough, failing to recognize the ethical values underlying the judgments that he described as pragmatic. In that sense, he also bore testimony to the fact that it is better and more difficult to practice statecraft - the right ordering of policy - than to define it.

If Acheson could not himself always discern the moral principles on which his decisions rested, he could draw upon them. In the simplest terms he was a man of character who trusted himself and could be trusted. One incident deserves special attention in this regard and is a useful reminder of the moral complexity of the man. In January 1950, Alger Hiss was found guilty of perjury for denying that he had passed secret documents to Whittaker Chambers when the latter was an active Communist agent. Acheson knew that he would be asked for his reaction. In the event he referred to Matthew 25:34, but what was widely quoted and evoked a political storm was his simple statement: "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss." Chace terms this an act of Christian charity and says it may have marked Acheson's finest hour. I find this at least questionable.

Consider: Acheson was a close friend of Hiss's brother Donald but not of Alger, and he personally believed that Hiss's testimony "did not add up." At other times Acheson acted in political terms as a realist and, as Chace writes, was "relentlessly pragmatic." Acheson himself believed strongly that "What may be quite proper and moral for a private citizen...often, and rightly, is condemned if done when he assumes legislative or executive powers of government." Acheson's statement on Hiss was politically disastrous for the president as well as for himself and reduced his effectiveness as secretary of state. Christian charity - if, indeed, it was that - does not commend such political imprudence.

As the United States tentatively makes its way in the post-cold war world, many of the institutions for which Acheson is responsible are still in place but are no longer adequate to present needs. The Soviet empire is no more and socialism as an ideology has been discredited. Today's Russia is a threat principally to itself, China remains a tyranny but is much stronger. Asia plays a greater part in an increasingly interdependent global economy and affects our own. Civil wars in different countries demand our attention, and modern technology has magnified the threat of terrorism.

In political, economic, and military terms the United States is, in this new world, the strongest country there is. It has opportunities and obligations commensurate with its great strength. Acheson forces one to conclude that we would be fortunate indeed if, thus historically challenged, we could produce leaders with the competence and character of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson.

James Finn, formerly a Commonweal editor, is president of the Pueblo Institute.

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