Norman A. Graebner (1915–2010)

Moving back in time with an article written by Hans J. Morganthau at the end of the Eisenhower presidency, a critical contemporary perspective emerges on the administration. He presents the view that John Foster Dulles controlled American foreign policy. This is the Ike as lazy golfer orthodoxy which Robert Divine and other "Eisenhower revisionists" have challenged in the last two decades.

Morganthau adds another dimension to his analysis of the administration's foreign policy by demonstrating the way in which the Republican right wing ruined Dulles' effectiveness as secretary of state. Wary of the fate of Dean Acheson, who had been tarred and feathered by the Republican right as an "appeaser," Dulles abdicated control of the everyday operation of the department to those elements and allowed them to indulge in an orgy of security reviews in their search for closet "Commies. " Furthermore he placated the Republican right by indulging in flights of virulent anti-communist rhetoric as a cover for pursuing the same policies as Acheson. Because of these two abdications, Dulles was forced into assuming greater personal contact with representatives of foreign governments and to appear before them as extremely hypocritical. (Ambassadors had to face the security review gauntlet of the department, as well as the Senate confirmation process, and were presumably less likely to follow in Dulles' duplicitous scheme.)

As a political scientist, Morganthau is interested in a prescription for future action. Arguing that the prestige of Eisenhower could have insulated Dulles against this right wing contagion, Morganthau is encouraging future secretaries of state to invoke the prestige of the executive against quasi-popular dementias. As a "Realist," he is arguing for policy formulation by an elite, presumably free from such disorders.… (mehr)