Dulles, John Foster (1888–1959)

As U.S. Secretary of State (1953–1959) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles promoted hard-line policies in the Cold War. Grandson of one secretary of state and nephew of another, Dulles attended Princeton University, George Washington University, and the Sorbonne before joining the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell in 1911. He played a role in founding the League of Nations and the United Nations. As secretary of state, he was driven by a powerful hatred of Communism to view diverse issues through the lens of superpower conflict. He promised to meet any Soviet aggression in Europe with "massive retaliation" (nuclear attack), and favored a confrontational approach to diplomacy, comparing both Joseph Stalin and the Egyptian nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser to Adolf Hitler. In Latin America, Dulles supported dictators such as Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venezuela, who allegedly brought stability, whereas he portrayed the democratically elected government of Jácobo Árbenz Guzmán of Guatemala as a pawn of the Soviets. At a summit meeting in Caracas in March 1954, Dulles sought hemispheric backing for his opposition to Árbenz, but Latin American delegates insisted on reaffirming the principle of nonintervention. The Central Intelligence Agency nonetheless proceeded with a coup that overthrew Árbenz and brought widespread condemnation.

See alsoArbenz Guzmán, Jacobo; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Dulles, Allen; Pan-American Conferences: Caracas Conference (1954).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hoopes, Townsend. The Devil and John Foster Dulles. New York: Little, Brown, 1973.

Immerman, Richard H. John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy. Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1998.

Rabe, Stephen G. Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

                                  Max Paul Friedman