John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (/ˈdʌlɪs/ DUL-iss; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American politician, lawyer, and diplomat. A member of the Republican Party, Dulles served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 until his resignation in 1959 (due to his colon cancer diagnosis) and was briefly a Senator from New York in 1949. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, who advocated an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world.
"John Dulles" redirects here. For his grandfather, the American Presbyterian minister and author, see John Welsh Dulles. For his son, the American scholar of Brazilian history, see John W. F. Dulles.
John Foster Dulles
February 25, 1888
Washington, D.C., U.S.
May 24, 1959 (aged 71)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
John W. F. Dulles
Lillias Dulles Hinshaw
Avery Cardinal Dulles
Allen Welsh Dulles (brother)
John Welsh Dulles (grandfather)
Harriet Winslow (great-grandmother)
Miron Winslow (great-grandfather)
Dulles family
United States
1917–1919
Born in Washington, D.C., John Dulles joined the leading New York law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell after graduating from George Washington University Law School. His grandfather, John W. Foster, and his uncle, Robert Lansing, both served as United States Secretary of State, while his brother, Allen Dulles, served as the Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961. John Foster Dulles served on the War Industries Board during World War I and he was a U.S. legal counsel at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. He became a member of the League of Free Nations Association, which supported American membership in the League of Nations. Dulles also helped design the Dawes Plan, which sought to stabilize Europe by reducing German war reparations. During World War II, Dulles was deeply involved in post-war planning with the Federal Council of Churches Commission on a Just and Durable Peace.
Dulles served as the chief foreign policy adviser to Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948. He also helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter and served as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1949, Dewey appointed Dulles to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Democratic Senator Robert F. Wagner. Dulles served for four months before his defeat in a special election by Herbert H. Lehman.
Despite having supported his political opponents, Dulles became a special advisor to President Harry S. Truman, with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region. In this role from 1950 to 1952, he became the primary architect of the Treaty of San Francisco, which ended World War II in Asia, the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, which established the U.S.–Japan Alliance, and the ANZUS security treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and United States.
After Eisenhower won the 1952 presidential election, he chose Dulles as Secretary of State. Throughout his tenure, Dulles favored a strategy of massive retaliation in response to Soviet aggression and concentrated on building and strengthening Cold War alliances, most prominently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was the architect of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), an anti-communist defensive alliance between the United States and several nations in and near Southeast Asia. He also helped instigate the 1953 Iranian coup d'état and the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government. Dulles advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina but rejected the Geneva Accords between France and the communists, instead supporting South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference in 1954. Suffering from cancer, Dulles resigned from office in 1959 and died a month later.
Early life and education[edit]
Dulles was born in Washington, D.C., eldest of five children of Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife, Edith (née Foster). His paternal grandfather, John Welsh Dulles, had been a Presbyterian missionary in India. His maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, had been Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison, and doted on Dulles and his brother Allen, who would later become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The brothers grew up in Watertown, New York and spent summers with their maternal grandfather in nearby Henderson Harbor. The brothers were also homeschooled, as their parents distrusted public education.[1][2][3]
Dulles attended Princeton University and graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in 1908. At Princeton, Dulles competed on the American Whig-Cliosophic Society debate team and was a member of University Cottage Club.[4][5] He then attended the George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.
Early career[edit]
Upon passing the bar examination, Dulles joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in international law. After US entry into World War I, Dulles tried to join the Army, but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles received an army commission as major on the War Industries Board. Dulles later returned to Sullivan & Cromwell and became a partner with an international practice.[6]
In 1917, Dulles's uncle, Robert Lansing, the then-Secretary of State, recruited him to travel to Central America.[7] Dulles advised Washington to support Costa Rica's dictator, Federico Tinoco, on the grounds that he was anti-German, and also encouraged Nicaragua's dictator, Emiliano Chamorro, to issue a proclamation suspending diplomatic relations with Germany. In Panama, Dulles offered waiver of the tax imposed by the United States on the annual Canal fee, in exchange for a Panamanian declaration of war on Germany.[8]
Interwar and World War II activities[edit]
Versailles Peace Conference[edit]
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Dulles as legal counsel to the United States delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, where he served under his uncle, Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Dulles made an early impression as a junior diplomat. While some recollections indicate he clearly and forcefully argued against imposing crushing reparations on Germany, other recollections indicate he ensured Germany's reparation payments would extend for decades as perceived leverage militating against future German-born hostilities. Afterwards, he served as a member of the War Reparations Committee at Wilson's request. He was also an early member, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, of the League of Free Nations Association, founded in 1918, and after 1923 known as the Foreign Policy Association, which supported American membership in the League of Nations.[9]
Dawes Plan[edit]
As a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell, Dulles expanded upon his late grandfather Foster's expertise, specializing in international finance. He played a major role in designing the Dawes Plan, which reduced German reparations payments and temporarily resolved the reparations issue by having American firms lend money to German states and private companies. Under that compromise, the money was invested and the profits sent as reparations to Britain and France, which used the funds to repay their own war loans from the U.S. In the 1920s Dulles was involved in setting up a billion dollars' worth of these loans.[10]
Advisor to Harry Truman[edit]
Despite being a prominent Republican and having been a close advisor to Truman's opponent Dewey, Dulles became a trusted advisor of Harry Truman, especially on the issue of what to do with Japan, which was still under U.S. military occupation.[22] In his role as an external "consultant" to Truman's State Department, Dulles became the key architect of the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty which ended the U.S. occupation of Japan, as well as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which ensured that Japan would remain firmly in the U.S. camp in the Cold War and allowed the continuing maintenance of U.S. military bases on Japanese soil.[23]
In 1951, Dulles also helped initiate the ANZUS Treaty for mutual protection with Australia and New Zealand.
Possible Chief Justice nomination[edit]
Following the 1953 death of Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, President Eisenhower considered appointing Dulles in his place. In his later life Eisenhower is said to have considered only two men for the job — Dulles and eventual nominee Earl Warren.[24] The Evening Star in fact initially viewed Dulles as the third most likely candidate after Warren and Thomas E. Dewey,[25] while some Republican insiders at the time of Vinson's death actually thought Dulles was more likely to be chosen for the post than Warren.[26] Dulles was viewed by the press as too favourable to big business,[27] and in Eisenhower's own memoirs as too old to potentially wield significant influence upon the Court.[24] Besides the issue of age, Eisenhower did not want to deprive himself of Dulles’ valuable contributions in the field of foreign policy.[24]
Personal life[edit]
Family[edit]
Both his grandfather, Foster, and his uncle, Robert Lansing, the husband of Eleanor Foster, had held the position of Secretary of State. His younger brother, Allen Welsh Dulles, served as Director of Central Intelligence under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and his younger sister Eleanor Lansing Dulles was noted for her work in the successful reconstruction of the economy of post-war Europe during her twenty years with the State Department.
On June 26, 1912, Dulles married Janet Pomeroy Avery (1891–1969), granddaughter of Theodore M. Pomeroy, a former United States Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives.[46] They had two sons and a daughter. Their older son John W. F. Dulles (1913–2008) was a professor of history and specialist in Brazil at the University of Texas at Austin.[47] Their daughter Lillias Dulles Hinshaw (1914–1987) became a Presbyterian minister. Their son Avery Dulles (1918–2008) converted to Roman Catholicism, entered the Jesuit order, and became the first American theologian to be appointed a Cardinal.
Non-governmental organizations[edit]
Dulles served as the chairman and cofounder of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (later the National Council of Churches), the chairman of the board for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1935 to 1952. Dulles was also a founding member of Foreign Policy Association and Council on Foreign Relations.
Death[edit]
Dulles developed colon cancer, for which he was first operated on in November 1956 when it had caused a bowel perforation.[48] He experienced abdominal pain at the end of 1958 and was hospitalized with a diagnosis of diverticulitis. In January 1959, Dulles returned to work, but with more pain and declining health underwent abdominal surgery in February at Walter Reed Army Medical Center when the cancer's recurrence became evident. After recuperating in Florida, Dulles returned to Washington for work and radiation therapy. With further declining health and evidence of bone metastasis, he resigned from office on April 15, 1959.[48]
Dulles died at Walter Reed on May 24, 1959, at the age of 71.[49] Funeral services were held in Washington National Cathedral on May 27, 1959, and he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington County, Virginia.[50]