Acheson, Dean

Acheson, Dean (1893–1971), statesman.Born to a privileged background, Acheson attended Groton, Yale, and Harvard Law School. After a clerkship with Justice Louis Brandeis, he joined the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling in 1921.

A conservative Democrat, Acheson joined Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration in 1933 as undersecretary of the treasury but resigned quietly that same year in disagreement over monetary policy. With the onset of war in Europe he became a fervent interventionist and pushed for measures supporting Great Britain. Named assistant secretary of state for economic affairs in 1941, he played an important role at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), which established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Promoted to undersecretary of state in 1945, Acheson served until 1947, helping to shape U.S. policies in the early Cold War, including the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Appointed secretary of state in 1949 by President Harry S. Truman, Acheson proved the key builder of political, economic, and military structures to contain the Soviet Union—a Cold War strategy codified in National Security Council Document 68 in 1950. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the decision to build the hydrogen bomb, the American military response to North Korean aggression, the substantial defense build‐up, and the incorporation of West Germany and Japan into the western alliance all bear his strong imprint. Despite his anticommunist policies and convictions, Acheson was mercilessly criticized by the right wing of the Republican party, especially Senator Joseph McCarthy. A man of great self‐assurance and caustic wit, he dismissed such assailants as “primitives.”

Acheson returned to his law practice in 1953 but remained involved in foreign policy issues and vigorously defended the containment strategy and policies he had helped to fashion. When Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson sought his advice, he consistently counseled a tough line until 1968, when he abruptly urged U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War. His aptly titled memoir Present at the Creation won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.
See also Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of State; Korean War; New Deal Era, The; World War II.

Bibliography

Douglas Brinkley , Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–1971, 1992.
James Chace , Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, 1998.

Wilson D. Miscamble