Dean Acheson and the Obligations of Power

Diplomatic histories are an acquired taste, but this admirable addition to the American Foreign Policy Series from Hopkins (The Cold War), senior lecturer in American foreign policy at the University of Liverpool, maintains the series’ high standard of scholarship while eschewing the traditional turgid academic prose. This is not a biography, so Hopkins dispenses with Acheson’s early years in a few pages. Appointed U.S. Assistant Secretary of State in 1941, Acheson (1893–1971) exuded energy, showed a sophisticated grasp of international affairs and economics, and possessed a gift for getting along with most of his fellow bureaucrats and members of Congress. Acheson resigned in 1945 but was persuaded to return as Undersecretary and then Secretary of State from 1948–1953, when he oversaw the rebuilding of Europe and Japan as well as America’s rise to superpower status. Despite persistent abuse by Joe McCarthy and the China Lobby for what they saw as insufficient opposition to communism, Acheson managed America’s aggressive containment policy, which persisted until the U.S.S.R.’s collapse. During a long retirement, Acheson advised and worked for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and his speeches and writing place him with Henry Kissinger among America’s leading 20th-century diplomats. The book is not a page-turner but it is gratifyingly well-written and provides a definitive account of mid-20th-century U.S. foreign policy. (Apr.)