Dean Acheson Quotes

Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.

No people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

It was in describing these early bargaining tactics by the British oil company that Dean Acheson, the U.S. secretary of state, made his famous statement: “Never had so few lost so much so stupidly in so short a time.

Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.” He later told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.

Happily for the Allies, none of those scenarios became reality. As Dean Acheson aptly put it, “At last our enemies, with unparalleled stupidity, resolved our dilemmas, clarified our doubts and uncertainties, and united our people for the long, hard course that the national interest required.

somehow Acheson had been scarred during the McCarthy era; it was not so much that he had done anything wrong as the fact that he had been forced to defend himself. By that very defense, by all the publicity, he had become controversial. He had been in print too often, it was somehow indiscreet of Dean to be attacked by McCarthy.

Any nation which claims that this [North Atlantic] treaty is directed against it should be reminded of the Biblical admonition that 'The guilty flee when no man pursueth.

Soviet Union, he had used his iconic status to join the ranks of the liberal foreign policy establishment, counting as personal friends men like Gen. George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and McGeorge Bundy. Liberals had then embraced Oppenheimer as one of their own. His humiliation thus implicated liberalism, and liberal politicians understood that the rules of the game had changed. Now, even if the issue was not espionage, even if one’s loyalty was unquestioned, challenging the wisdom of America’s reliance on a nuclear arsenal was dangerous.

as Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, merrily observed, “In the State Department we used to discuss how much time that mythical ‘average American citizen’ put in each day listening, reading, and arguing about the world outside his own country. . . . It seemed to us that ten minutes a day would be a high average.” So why bore the people? Secret “bipartisan” government is best for what, after all, is—or should be—a society of docile workers, enthusiastic consumers, obedient soldiers who will believe just about anything for at least ten minutes.

Afterwards, the President was heard to mutter, “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.” He later told Dean Acheson, “I don’t want to see that son-of-a-bitch in this office ever again.” Even in May 1946, the encounter still vivid in his mind, he wrote Acheson and described Oppenheimer as a “cry-baby scientist” who had come to “my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time wringing his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.

And far from conducting any reconsideration of nuclear strategy, in the months ahead the Eisenhower Administration would begin to cut defense spending on conventional weapons while building up its nuclear arsenal. Eisenhower called this his “New Look” defense posture. The Administration had accepted the Air Force’s strategy and would rely almost exclusively on air power for America’s defense. A policy of “massive retaliation” appeared to be a cheap and deadly fix. It was also shortsighted, genocidal and, if initiated, suicidal. Dean Acheson called it a “fraud upon the words and upon the facts.” Adlai Stevenson asked pointedly, “Are we leaving ourselves the grim choice of inaction or thermonuclear holocaust?” The “New Look” was in fact old policy, and precisely the opposite of what Oppenheimer had hoped for from the new Administration.

Retrospectively, American statesmen realized the rashness of their oil embargo. As the later secretary of state Dean Acheson put it, America’s misreading of Japanese intentions was not of “what the Japanese government proposed to do in Asia, not of the hostility our embargo would excite, but of the incredibly high risks General Tojo would assume to accomplish his ends. No one in Washington realized that he and his regime regarded the conquest of Asia not as the accomplishment of an ambition but as the survival of a regime. It was a life-and-death matter to them.”146 Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was a partial success in the short term, and Japan went on to enjoy great tactical victories against America and Britain, but the conflict eventually led to its almost total destruction by 1945. Its wars in East Asia cost tens of millions of lives.

Harry Truman was a man of the ordinary people of America; Dean Acheson was everything ordinary Americans loved to hate.

Adlai has a third rate mind that he can't make up.

Entwined with the strand of conservatism in the Democratic party is the strand of empiricism.

Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson‘s biographer writes that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Another author, John Mulhall, records Acheson‘s warning of the danger for U.S. interests: “...to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.”[190]

followed Adam Smith on economics, Edmund Burke on society, The Federalist Papers on government, and a merger of Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles on national security.

We cannot seem to understand that we are playing for keeps in a deadly serious operation in which there are no rules, no umpire, no prizes for good boys, no dunce caps for bad boys. In this game good intentions are not worth a damn; moral principles are traps; weakness and indecision are fatal. This is what Americans have been taught since they went to Christian Endeavor meetings cannot and must not happen — “the law of the jungle,” where the judgment of nature upon error is death. And so we commit every error of every sort against nature. We make ourselves unworthy of the trust of our allies, we disregard their interests, we join with their and our enemies to weaken, humiliate and destroy them and our alliance with them. We believe for some incomprehensible reason that the U.N. is some disembodied moral force apart from ourselves. We are elated when it serves as the front for the combination of Russian and American power which crushes our allies. This is principle. We turn away when American desires running counter to Russian have no more effect than a peashooter on a tank. Dean Acheson to Harry S. Truman December 4, 1956

He was succeeding admirably in communicating his own boredom to his audience.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Vietnam was worse than immoral — it was a mistake.

The really crucial decisions were made at the tail end of the Truman years, with Acheson as Secretary of State and Rusk as his principal deputy for Asia. This was the period when the United States went from a position of neutrality toward both sides in the Indochina war to a position of massive military and economic aid to the French. The real architect of the American commitment to Vietnam, of bringing containment to that area and using Western European perceptions in the underdeveloped world, was not John Foster Dulles, it was Dean Acheson.

Peacemaking, statecraft in: "[It may be necessary for a peacemaker to rely] less on the application of raw power than on a determined statecraft deriving its leverage from others, from the regional balance of power itself, and from the logic of the concepts to which [he is committed.]" — Chester A. Crocker, 1992 Peacemaking, verification, guarantees: "Warring parties are unlikely to make possibly irreversible steps toward military disengagement until they have come to grips with the basic deal. Nor are they likely to hammer out the specifics of essential trade-offs on the key issues until (a) the basic parameters of the deal are agreed, and (b) a climate of greater confidence exists and no side feels that it is negotiating at gunpoint. Efforts to negotiate ... language relating to verification or guarantees make the most sense once it is reasonably clear what is to be verifies or guaranteed. Institutionalized mechanisms for implementation and follow-up come at the end, when the sides have acquired a substantial stake in the success of their own efforts." — Chester A. Crocker, 1992 Perseverance: "The simple truth is that perseverance in good policies is the only avenue to success, and that even perseverance in poor ones often gives the appearance of being so." — Dean Acheson

Dean Acheson, a respected elder statesman and a senior adviser to the Kennedy administration, delivered a lecture to the American Society of International Law in which he stated that no “legal issue” arises if the United States responds to any challenge to its “power, position, and prestige.

Planning: "Planning is a waste of time unless it is done by the people who have got to execute it." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1970 Planning, diplomats and: "In every foreign service officer there is a foreign policy planner, struggling to be free. ... Scratch a liberal, and you'll find a socialist: scratch a diplomatist, and you'll find the frustrated artist of some grand design." — James Eayrs, 1971 Planning, futility of: "Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes, turns out to be not what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under a different name." — William Morris Planning, profitability of: "The truth is that in foreign affairs man-hours spent in thinking and planning on future action are by far the most profitable investment. The thundering present becomes so soon the unchangeable past that seizing it at any moment of its acceleration is as dangerous as mounting a train gathering speed. ... Every bird-shooter knows that you must lead your bird and swing with its flight. ... The true problem lies in determining the emerging future and the policy appropriate to it." — Dean Acheson

Morality in foreign policy: "Where an important purpose of diplomacy is to further enduring good relations between states, the methods — the modes of conduct — by which relations between states are carried on must be designed to inspire trust and confidence. To achieve this result, the conduct of diplomacy should conform to the same moral and ethical principles which inspire trust and confidence when followed by and between individuals." — Dean Acheson, 1964 Morality in foreign policy: "Moral principles have their place in the heart of the individual and in the shaping of his own conduct, whether as a citizen or as a government official. ... But when the individual's behavior passes through the machinery of political organization and merges with that of millions of other individuals to find its expression in the actions of a government, then it undergoes a general transmutation, and the same moral concepts are no longer relevant to it. A government is an agent, not a principal; and no more than any other agent may it attempt to be the conscience of its principal. In particular, it may not subject itself to those supreme laws of renunciation and self-sacrifice that represent the culmination of individual moral growth." — George F. Kennan, 1954 Morality in foreign policy: 'A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist." Attributed to Will Durant

Internal affairs, interference in: "Obviously, no diplomat can long expect to remain at his post if he gives offense to his hosts, and the surest way to do so is to interfere in their politics." — Charles Roetter, 1963 Internal affairs, intervention in: "A belief that it is possible for one country to modify the institutions of another country has some validity — at least, up to a point, and depending on the country." — Ellis Briggs, 1968 Internal affairs, right of interference in: No state or group of states has the right to intervene in the domestic affairs of another nation unless the influence of these affairs reaches abroad to menace the security and liberty of others. Internal affairs, sanctions as intervention in: "If one is going to interfere in the internal affairs of a country by economic sanctions, not only is one going to be unsuccessful, but also one is doing something basically wrong, if not indeed wicked. That is to say, one engages in an attempt to foment civil disturbance, uprisings, revolution, and violence." — Dean Acheson, 1969

Relations, close: "Unhappily, amity is not the inevitable result of close relations between either people or peoples. Marriage and war lock both into close embrace. Sometimes the parties live happily ever after; sometimes they don't. So it is with allies." — Dean Acheson, 1963 Relations, diplomatic: The exchange of envoys symbolizes and embodies a process of continuous bargaining between states. The purpose of diplomatic relations is to influence a foreign capital and its policies, not to confer a favor on it. Reliability: In foreign relations, reliability is a moral imperative. Religion: An ideology premised on the existence of supernatural or superhuman forces and characterized by a distinctive body of ritual. See Ideology. Religion, influence on diplomatic theory: See Diplomats, best and worst.

Reporting, honesty in: "Hold it as a maxim that displeasing things must be sent as well as pleasing ones, and the prince, in the end, if he is a man of wisdom and understanding, will be better satisfied with the ambassador who will not have concealed from him any item he may have learnt where he is stationed, than with the one who, to spare him annoyance, will have abstained from writing unpleasant things but which it would have been of interest for him to know in time." — Bishop Danès, 1561 cited by J. J. Jusserand Reporting, memoranda of conversation: "No one ever lost an argument in his own memorandum of conversation." — Dean Acheson Reporting, purpose of: The purpose of diplomatic reporting is not just to anticipate and analyze events. It is to point out the implications of trends for national interests and to enable governments to act to shape events to their advantage and to the disadvantage of their adversaries. Reporting, reward for honest: The rewards for diplomats who report honestly and forthrightly on foreign developments that contradict the convictions of their leaders at home have been well established by history. They will first be ignored, then charged with disloyalty, and, finally, dismissed. Diplomatic reporting is therefore always a contest between the professional integrity of those doing it abroad and the prejudices of those who read it at home. Reporting, style of: Diplomatic reports are useful only if read by those with the capacity to address the problems they identify and the solutions they propose. Reporting, style of: "The zeal and efficiency of a diplomatic representative is measured by the quality and not by the quantity of the information he supplies. He is expected to do a great deal of filtering for himself, and not simply to pour out upon us over these congested wires all the contradictory gossip which he hears." — Winston Churchill