A POLICY-MAKING SECRETARY OF STATE AN INTIMATE MESSAGE FROM WASHINGTON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100090071-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 1998
• Sequence Number: 71
• Publication Date: February 10, 1954
• Content Type: NSPR

c: uu5r~t :..yam FEB 1 o 19
Aped,Fdr Release 2000/05/24: CIA-
A Policy-Making Secretary of State
An Intimate Message From Washington
Bcgistcred in U. B. Patent omes
By Neal Stanford
WASHINGTON
There's the story that when Secretary
Dulles moved into the State Department
his first act was to call in his aides, write
out a list of 20 duties facing him as Secre-
tary, and then announce as he crossed out
the first nineteen: "I'm going to confine
myself to this last: making policy."
This story may well be apocryphal.
But time has testified to its basic truth.
The fact is the present Secretary of State
has no taste for or interest in the manage-
rial, administrative, mechanical, and per-
sonnel aspects of his job as head of a de-
partment of 11,000 persons. So he got a
"chauffeur-mechanic" undersecretary to
handle mechanical and personnel prob-
lems, and has left him strictly alone. What
he loves to do, and is undoubtedly best
at doing, is making policy. No Secretary of
State since John Quincy Adams has been
so deliberately and thoroughly trained for
just that: making foreign policy.
Secretary Dulles both advises and in-
fluences the President in the conduct of
foreign policy to a unique degree. His
recent address in New York on "The Evo-
lution of Foreign Policy" was a major
pronouncement, possibly a revolutionary
pronouncement, with its assertion that
hereafter the United States would "de-
pend primarily upon its great capacity to
retaliate, instantly, by means and at places
of our choosing."
What is of interest here is that it was
Mr. Dulles, not President Eisenhower or
Defense Secretary Wilson, who called the
turn on what is more a security or mili-
tary problem than a diplomatic decision,
Literally, in his New York speech, Secre-
tary Dulles was only "announcing policy":
But it is no secret that he played almost
as big a part in making the policy he an-
nounced as in announcing the policy he
made.
The Eisenhower-Dulles relationship is
something unique in recent American
diplomatic history. President Roosevelt's
Secretaries of State were definitely over-
shadowed by their chief. Hull was not a
maneuverer in the diplomatic field -
though very effective in the defense of
freedom. Stettinius was a very inadequate
mouthpiece. President Truman by con-
trast let his Secretaries of State make,
announce, and direct foreign policy al-
most single-handed. His trust in and ad-
miration for Secretaries Marshall and
Acheson were obvious and deeprooted.
The Eisenhower-Dulles relationship
falls somewhere between that of Presi-
dent-to-Secretary practiced by their im-
mediate predecessors. Mr. Dulles is Secre-
tary of tae in fact as well as name-
but he is not being delegated a President'
responsibility.
It was Secretary Dulles who really per-
suaded the President he had to make
fight for Charles E. Bohlen as Ambassador
to Moscow if the morale of the Foreign
Service wasn't to fall to zero. It was Mr
Dulles who gave the President the A-B-C'
on constitutional law that set him unalter
ably against the original Bricker treaty
making amendment. And it was Mr
Dulles-or better, th two Dulleses (fox
the Secretary's brit r is head of the su-
persecret Central, Intelligence Agency)
who assured Pre ident Eisenhower the
post-Stalin U.S.S.R. had too tfthy Internal
problems to make new Communist ag-
gression probable-making a "new look'
at policy possible.
There is no question but that Secretar
Dulles has been stepping up the forceful-
ness of his policy statements as he becam
accustomed to his No. 1 post in foreig
affairs. He has warned the French to ge
on with ratification of EDC or face a pos
sible American "agonizing reappraisal" o
its European defense strategy. He has tol
America's allies that they had to serious,
deserve whatever future aid was provide ,
He has put Moscow and Peking on noti
that if there's a new aggression the Unite
States will hit back where, when, and ho
it considers most appropriate.
It is certain the Secretary would not b
talking with such force-throwing warn
ings, advice, and even threats about 1
this manner if he was not persuaded th
was good strategy. Yet there is an anomal
and possibly some danger in taking sue
diplomatic stances just as America'
leadership of the free world coalition
challenged by the turn of world events an
our own policies.
The threat of Soviet aggression is Ie
and so our allies are less fearful of a
attack and consequently less pliable t
Washington's views. Washington', is als
reducing its economic, if not military, ai
abroad, and so is in not as good a positio
to get the foreign cooperation it want.
Also, the United States is no longer fight
ing the free world's battle in Korea th
automatically gave it the right to call th
tune for the coalition.
Yet Secretary Dulles is speaking wit
more, not less, force and frankness to 0
allies. If he is successful it will be one
those calculated risks he is not unwilli
to take-such as the mounting depen
ence on retaliation to keep peace, and t
growing dependence on atomic weapo
for national security.
Approved For Release 2000/05/24: CIA-RDP70-00058R000100090071-3