Power and Diplomacy

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958. Presumed First Edition/First Printing. Hardcover. good/fair. 22 cm, 137 pages. Name in ink on flyleaf. Signed by the author. Fascinating read and insight into the times. This was the "new world order" before the one predicated by the collapse of the USSR. Acheson's goal is to persuade his readers to take the Soviet threat seriously, to concentrate power in American hands (given the limits, for example, of the UN), to maintain and strengthen alliances with free states, and to limit one's efforts to what is possible, rather than desirable. Dean Gooderham Acheson (April 11, 1893 - October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Acheson's most famous decision was convincing President Truman to intervene in the Korean War in June 1950. He also persuaded Truman to dispatch aid and advisors to French forces in Indochina, though in 1968 he finally counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into the executive committee ExComm), a strategic advisory group. In the late 1940s Acheson came under heavy attack over Truman's policy toward China, and for Acheson's defense of State Department employees (such as Alger Hiss) accused during the anti-gay Lavender and anti-Communist Red Scare investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others.