Below is the review of The
Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War by
Stephen Kinzer as submitted to the editor of the Sturbridge Times Magazine. It ran in the March, 2016 issue.
The
Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War
By
Stephen Kinzer
St.
Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition, 2014
Paperback,
416 pages
Book
review by Richard Morchoe
Stephen
Kinzer begins his book, the The Brothers: John Foster Dulles,
Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, with the funeral of
John Foster Dulles. Having died in office, the author avers that “a
bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had sense the death of
Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before.”
Kinzer
was right. I was nine years old and remember it on television,
ending with the widow being presented the flag. It was the most
moving civic ceremony I had witnessed up until that time. The
funeral of President Kennedy would be more memorable, but that could
not be otherwise.
My
mother explained to me who the man was and what it was that made him
so important. He had been a great man and had well served the
nation's foreign policy. No controversy there.
As
time went on, more would be revealed to me about world politics and
our nations interactions with states that were not part of what we
called the “Free World.” Mostly we were competing with them in a
“Cold War.” We did not fight directly, but there was an ongoing
struggle.
Less
than two years after Dulles' death, our policy went a bit off the
rails. An armed group landed on Cuba with the intent of overthrowing
the regime. The little invasion was a horrible botch and the men,
who were considered “Freedom Fighters,” captured. The American
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been responsible for the
planning and execution of the debacle and its leader lost his job.
That man was the Late Secretary of State's brother, Allen Dulles.
Not
long after that, our war would be a lot less cold in Viet Nam and we
would leave with nothing to show for it.
We
were shy of major effort after South East Asia until Bush père
fought Gulf War I and the Soviet Union imploded. After that and 911,
we thought we could run the table. In this the last year of the
Obama continuation of the younger Bush's foreign policy, it's not
working.
This
is why reading a book by veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer is not a
bad idea. I became aware of the man while reading a column of his
from the December 15, 2015 Boston Globe. The article was a well
reasoned analysis of a”conservative” foreign policy that George
McGovern could have lived with. With the rise of Sanders and Trump,
a public might be open to it as well.
His
tome about the Dulles team does a wonderful job of describing their
domination of intel and foreign policy during the Eisenhower
administration.
The
brothers were descended from Scotch-Irish calvinists and that
ancestry would not be without influence in how they viewed the world.
Each would express it differently. Though not a family of
plutocrats on the level of a Morgan or Rockefeller, they were well
connected and influential people who went to the right schools and
knew and were related to the right people.
John
Foster was the older of the two and was always referred to as Foster.
He was steady and paid attention to detail. That made him an
excellent functionary and he would become the head of what was
arguably the nation's most influential law firm, Sullivan &
Cromwell.
Allen,
had more of a fun personality and probably thought himself as a bit
of a swashbuckler. He was never going to be the office drudge, but
he would make his mark as well.
Foster,
through a family connection would serve as US legal counsel at the
Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. He would also act
ably on the War Reparations Committee and as ably expanded his
contacts that would be of use when he returned to Sullivan &
Cromwell.
Allen
pursued a diplomatic career. In 1917, upon being assigned to Bern,
Switzerland at the beginning of American involvement in war, he was
called on to take charge of intelligence. It was a task he took to
with gusto.
The
brothers would continue on a trajectory of power and influence.
Allen would have essentially the same role in World War II, but on a
grander scale. Though always active, Foster was not a direct
participant in the war. He did end as a major foreign policy figure
in the Republican party.
In
the Eisenhower administration, they would rise to the top of their
respective fields. Allen would become the head of the CIA and Foster
would helm State. The 50s looked to become their decade.
They
had a couple of major successes. The CIA would remove the secular
prime minister in Iran to further national interest, or at least Big
Oil's. In Guatemala, the elected president was toppled as a
suspected communist not necessarily to the detriment of the US held
United Fruit Company.
Then
there were the non-successes, most glaringly the abovementioned Bay
of Pigs invasion that ended in complete failure for the agency and
triumph for Castro. This happened after Foster's passing, but on
Allen's watch and made his directorship untenable. The 50s were over
and so was the Dulles era.
The
legacy of the successes did not even last. That Iranian coup left a
bad taste and when the Ayatollahs arrived, we were out and so was
secularism.
Foster
and Allen were intelligent men who had studied with great minds but
at the end of the day, the record is tarnished. They were sure they
were in a death struggle with the forces of evil and that if the war
of good and evil were not won, all would be lost.
After
a short respite with the end of the Soviet Union, that low temp war
is back and threatening to warm up in Syria. Assistant Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were part of
engineering a coup to remove an elected government in Ukraine. Not
much has been learned.
A
lot of folks at Foggy Bottom need to read Mr. Kinzer's book.
