BALL, George Wildman

(b. 21 December 1909 in Des Moines, Iowa; d. 26 May 1994 in New York City), undersecretary of state for economic affairs, January–November 1961; undersecretary of state, 1961–1966; and the most prominent and consistent advocate of U.S. nonintervention in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Ball was the third and youngest son of Amos Ball, Jr., a Standard Oil of Indiana vice president, and Edna Wildman, a teacher. Educated at public schools in Evanston, Illinois, Ball obtained bachelor's and law degrees from Northwestern University in 1930 and 1933 and, after a spell in the U.S. Treasury Department, practiced law in Chicago until the early 1940s. In 1932 Ball married Ruth Sneathen Murdoch, a social worker from Pittsburgh; the couple adopted two sons, Douglas Bleakly and John Colin.

During World War II Ball held government positions with the Office of Lend-Lease Administration and the Foreign Economic Administration. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who met Ball in 1943, found him "a delight … a wonderfully spirited, resourceful, joyous, imperturbable, elegant man." After the war Ball moved to Washington, where he helped found the international law firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, and Ball. The firm represented the French government and the European Coal and Steel Community—later the European Economic Community (EEC)—and Ball became a dedicated, lifelong supporter of freer international trade, which he believed was an engine of economic growth and political progress. In the 1950s he also helped establish the Bilderberg Group, which organized annual meetings of prominent Western political and business leaders. Four mentors greatly influenced Ball: his Chicago law partner, the liberal Democrat Adlai Stevenson, who became governor of Illinois; Jean Monnet, the French architect of post-war European unity and Ball's greatest role model, whom he met during World War II; Dean Acheson, Harry Truman's assertive and Atlanticist secretary of state from 1949 to 1953; and the preeminent Washington journalist, Walter Lippmann.

Ball worked for Stevenson in both his unsuccessful 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns and initially supported his 1960 bid for the Democratic nomination. When John F. Kennedy became the nominee, Ball made speeches and wrote articles on his behalf and prepared foreign policy position papers. Kennedy was sufficiently impressed to invite Ball to become undersecretary of state for economic affairs, the third-ranking post in the Department of State. Ball quickly assembled a well-qualified staff, some experienced departmental officers, others talented outsiders, who greatly enhanced his own bureaucratic effectiveness. So did the close relationship he developed with the reserved Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. The two men often shared an evening scotch or bourbon and, despite their major policy differences over Vietnam, Ball paid warm tribute to Rusk in his memoirs. Rusk never developed similar rapport with his own deputy, Chester Bowles, an idealistic and somewhat ineffective liberal who concentrated on American relations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America, whereas throughout his career Ball believed that his country's primary international interests lay in its relationship with Europe. After ten months Ball replaced Bowles, becoming undersecretary for political affairs in the November 1961 "Thanksgiving Day massacre" reorganization of top State Department personnel. From then on Ball's responsibilities were far more extensive, and in Rusk's absence he often served as acting secretary. Immensely energetic and hardworking, Ball also became an administration troubleshooter, making numerous trips to such problem areas as Pakistan, Congo, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Cyprus, and Greece. He generally sought peaceful resolution of conflicts and disliked American endorsement of regimes not firmly based on popular political participation.

Before his promotion, Ball focused primarily on his economic responsibilities, and he did not attend top-level meetings on political and military strategy. Ball argued forcefully that a major downward revision of American tariff rates and greater presidential flexibility on economic issues were needed to resolve the persistent balance-of-payments deficit and other trade difficulties he anticipated would occur after Britain's expected entry into the European Common Market. He was heavily involved in drafting the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which slashed tariffs on many foreign goods and gave the president great discretionary authority to take retaliatory measures against foreign protectionism. Ball also successfully supported the use of United Nations and United States forces to prevent the Belgian-backed secession of the copper-rich Katanga province from the newly independent Congo.

Ball accorded high priority to furthering European economic integration through Britain's membership in the EEC. He believed that a strong and economically interdependent and prosperous Europe was crucial to U.S. alliance policies. Like Acheson, he trenchantly argued that since World War II, too often with American backing, Britain had myopically tried to maintain the illusion that it was still an independent great power rather than moving to become the leader of Europe. Ball also thought greater British influence in Europe was desirable to offset that of West Germany. In 1965 Ball termed French president Charles de Gaulle "a self-centered nationalist" for vetoing Britain's application to join the Common Market, and briefly contemplated a contingency plan for a limited confederation of the English-speaking peoples in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The plan included amalgamating those areas of the world whose currencies were linked to either the dollar or the pound sterling, a scheme he soon abandoned as impracticable.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy included Ball in the Executive Committee (ExCom) of senior officials who met regularly to discuss the U.S. response. Ball advised following the less drastic course of a naval blockade or quarantine rather than launching surprise air strikes. After the crisis Ball wrote a legal justification for the U.S. decision and made arrangements to inform American allies of it. After Kennedy's death Ball worked on White House transition arrangements for the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.

Despite his multifarious responsibilities, Ball was best known for his consistent opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Tall, burly, forceful, and well read, Ball could be a formidable opponent, but on Vietnam he failed to convince his fellow officials. In November 1961 Ball dissented when General Maxwell D. Taylor and the economist Walt W. Rostow returned from Vietnam recommending an increased commitment of U.S. aid, advisers, and, if possible, troops. Over two years the Kennedy administration gradually increased the number of American advisers in Vietnam from a few hundred to 16,000, with Ball always on the losing side. Ball was greatly influenced by his memories of France's failure to sustain a quasicolonial Vietnamese government during the 1950s but also believed that Vietnam, and indeed all of Asia, was an area of peripheral importance to the United States. In addition, Ball considered President Ngo Dinh Diem's government in South Vietnam both corrupt and incompetent, incapable of winning the war. On 24 August 1963 Ball, together with State Department officials Michael V. Forrestal and Roger Hilsman, drafted a cable instructing Henry Cabot Lodge, the American ambassador to South Vietnam, to respond favorably to enquiries by Vietnamese generals whether the United States would welcome a coup against Diem and recognize the resulting government. In November 1963 Diem was overthrown and assassinated, an event Ball always maintained made no difference to the eventual outcome of the war in Vietnam.

Ball found Johnson personally more congenial than Kennedy and later suggested that, whereas Johnson tolerated his repeated private questioning of administration policies on Vietnam, Kennedy would probably have been far less patient and would have eventually demanded his resignation. Some, however, felt that Ball was the "house dove" or "devil's advocate," his dissent acceptable because his presence in discussions on Vietnam proved that all options had been thoroughly considered. As American involvement in Vietnam escalated, with large-scale bombing raids on North Vietnam launched after the August 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident and the commitment of American ground forces in May 1965, Ball repeatedly submitted lengthy memoranda questioning almost every prevailing assumption on the conflict. He argued from European experience that the domino theory (which suggested that a single communist Asian country would "infect" its neighbors) was unfounded and contended that, rather than considering U.S. involvement in Vietnam proof of American anticommunist resolve, the West European allies would regard it as a major error that would call into question American officials' prudence and judgment. Ball also warned that war in Vietnam might easily dilute support for Johnson's Great Society domestic reform programs. Drawing on his World War II service with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and on his report that concluded that heavy bombing of German cities had failed to destroy popular morale and the will to fight, Ball contended that American bombing of North Vietnam would be no more effective in persuading Hanoi to cease its campaign against the South. He maintained these positions even when Johnson forced him to admit that American withdrawal would probably lead to the collapse of South Vietnam and to a communist takeover. Ball also recommended increased U.S. trade with and recognition of mainland China as well as its admission to the United Nations. Between October 1964 and July 1965 Ball submitted eight lengthy memoranda urging American withdrawal from Vietnam, all of which the president ignored.

Although Ball based his opposition on pragmatic considerations, on moral grounds the death and suffering caused by the war distressed him deeply. In September 1966 Ball, weary of publicly defending policies he privately deplored, and under financial pressure, resigned to become a senior partner in Lehman Brothers, a top New York investment bank. He never questioned fellow officials' good faith on Vietnam, merely their judgment, and, following the gentleman's code, he remained silent on Vietnam, later stating, "I could not share the confidence of my colleagues for a sustained period, then go out and denounce them." Only with the 1971 publication of the Pentagon Papers did his dissent become common knowledge.

Ball became one of the senior advisers, or "wise men," whom Johnson occasionally consulted on major foreign policy issues and in January 1968 chaired a committee to investigate the Pueblo Incident, when North Korea seized an American intelligence-gathering vessel. As before, he advocated that the United States cut its losses and leave Vietnam; at a November "wise men" meeting Ball bitterly assailed his colleagues for their indifference to rising American casualty figures. After the disastrous Tet offensive early in 1968, Ball's fellow advisers finally swung around to his perspective, and Johnson publicly announced that he would open negotiations and would not seek reelection. In the following months, however, Ball felt Johnson's peace policies were far too half-hearted. In spring 1968 Johnson prevailed upon a reluctant Ball to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, an assignment that bored him and one he left after three months to campaign aggressively for Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee, who might well have named him secretary of state. Ball had ably positioned himself for this office by publishing The Discipline of Power (1968), which forcefully assailed the growing isolationist trend in the United States. The victory of Republican Richard Nixon, whom Ball despised for his use of McCarthyite smear tactics in the 1950s, effectively relegated him to private life.

Ball remained with Lehman until he retired in 1982, cultivating international business contacts in Europe and the Middle East. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter asked Ball to report on the growing troubles in Iran, and he presciently but unavailingly recommended that only democratic reforms would prevent the ouster of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. From the early 1970s Ball criticized Israel's post-1967 annexation of Palestinian territory and called for reduced American support of Israel, a controversial stance that made him politically unacceptable to many Democrats. Until his death in 1994 of abdominal cancer, he spoke and wrote extensively on foreign affairs.

Elitist, ambitious, and Eurocentric, Ball nonetheless demonstrated not merely bureaucratic effectiveness but a reflective streak that distinguished him from most of his contemporaries. When convinced of a position's validity, he argued for it with stubborn conviction and tenacity regardless of its unpopularity. Unlike most of his peers, he preferred long-term analyses to short-term, ad hoc crisis management. It may be no exaggeration to term him the greatest secretary of state the United States never had.

Ball's personal papers were deposited in the Seeley G. Mudd Memorial Library of Princeton University. He donated relatively small collections of his official papers to the National Archives II, College Park, Maryland; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts; and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas. Many of his papers were published in the appropriate volumes of the series Foreign Relations of the United States. Ball wrote his own memoirs, The Past Has Another Pattern (1982), and reflected on some of the lessons of office in The Discipline of Power (1968). The fullest biography is James A. Bill, George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy (1997). Ball's position on Vietnam is fully covered in David L. DiLeo, George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment (1991). Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., wrote a revealing memorial of Ball for the Century Association Yearbook (1995). Obituaries are in the New York Times (28 May 1994); the Washington Post (29 May 1994); the Times (London) (30 May 1994); and the Daily Telegraph (31 May 1994). Ball recorded oral histories for the Kennedy and Johnson presidential libraries.

Priscilla Roberts