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The Dulles Brothers: The ones that shaped US Policy
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-outMeet 'The Brothers' Who Shaped U.S. Policy, Inside And Out
by NPR Staff
October 16, 201312:33 PM
KINZER: I think the main theme of this book that is new is that during the 1950s, which according to most histories was a period of peace in the world, actually we were involved in a continual secret war. Nobody noticed it because it was covert. I use this phrase monsters to describe the enemies that the Dulles brothers struck out against. That's a word that John Quincy Adams used in a famous speech when he said America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But the Dulles brothers did.
They saw enemies everywhere, and they waged one war after another, in a sense merging these into one single conflict. The first two monsters they struck out against were people against whom they had grudges from their days as corporate lawyers. Their job was to protect the interests of big American corporations in foreign countries, and in 1951they failed twice.
...
Then they began developing new ideas of who the real monsters in the world were. In my book I talk about their efforts to foment civil war in Indonesia; their terribly tragic decision to get involved in Vietnam, which led to the entire American war there; and their actions against Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in The Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba.
There were some others that they were interested in trying to topple, like Nassir in Egypt and Nehru in India, all of them believers in neutralism, which was a horrible concept to the Dulles brothers, but those operations didn't succeed, and we are now living with the legacies of both their failed operations and their successful ones.
GROSS: Yeah, we'll get to some of the legacies a little bit later. When you say neutralism, they saw the world as divided between communism and the free world, and if a country was neutral, why was that a bad thing?
KINZER: Actually, President Sukarno asked that question to Foster Dulles, and Dulles told him our policy is global. He even used the word immoral to describe the concept of neutralism. He believed that everything that happened in the world during the 1950s was part of the Cold War.
For example, it wasn't conceivable to him that land reform in Guatemala could be a project that Guatemalans had designed to deal with a Guatemalan situation. He just assumed that it had been ordered by the Kremlin. They had this view of the world, which I think was implanted in them from a very young age, that there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones.
GROSS: Well, you say that there was, like, a missionary background that they were from, and you think that that contributed to that view of good and evil. Can you talk about that a little bit?
KINZER: The Dulles brothers came from a long line of missionary Calvinists. They grew up in a parsonage. Their father was a clergyman. And they had missionaries for dinner very often. They had to go to services every day, three on Sundays and take notes about the services so they could discuss the sermons with their father. They sang hymns at home and spent a lot of time in prayer.
The particular religious tradition they came out of, Presbyterian Calvinism, was one that did see the world in these two ways, that there were good Christians, and then there were heathens and savages. Christians, under this doctrine, did not have the luxury of sitting at home and hoping for the triumph of good. They had to go out into the world and make sure good triumphed.
When you have that view about your religion, it's a very small step to applying the same schema to politics. You think there are good and evil leaders in the world, good and evil regimes in the world. And this is a very different concept than the concepts that many cultures and many other peoples have.
It's a widespread belief in many parts of the world that every person and every government is made up of good and evil impulses, and they come out in different proportion depending on circumstances. But the Dulles brothers didn't believe that. They had grown up in a religious tradition that saw a division between good and evil, and when they came to political power, they saw the world that way.
by NPR Staff
October 16, 201312:33 PM
KINZER: I think the main theme of this book that is new is that during the 1950s, which according to most histories was a period of peace in the world, actually we were involved in a continual secret war. Nobody noticed it because it was covert. I use this phrase monsters to describe the enemies that the Dulles brothers struck out against. That's a word that John Quincy Adams used in a famous speech when he said America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But the Dulles brothers did.
They saw enemies everywhere, and they waged one war after another, in a sense merging these into one single conflict. The first two monsters they struck out against were people against whom they had grudges from their days as corporate lawyers. Their job was to protect the interests of big American corporations in foreign countries, and in 1951they failed twice.
...
Then they began developing new ideas of who the real monsters in the world were. In my book I talk about their efforts to foment civil war in Indonesia; their terribly tragic decision to get involved in Vietnam, which led to the entire American war there; and their actions against Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in The Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba.
There were some others that they were interested in trying to topple, like Nassir in Egypt and Nehru in India, all of them believers in neutralism, which was a horrible concept to the Dulles brothers, but those operations didn't succeed, and we are now living with the legacies of both their failed operations and their successful ones.
GROSS: Yeah, we'll get to some of the legacies a little bit later. When you say neutralism, they saw the world as divided between communism and the free world, and if a country was neutral, why was that a bad thing?
KINZER: Actually, President Sukarno asked that question to Foster Dulles, and Dulles told him our policy is global. He even used the word immoral to describe the concept of neutralism. He believed that everything that happened in the world during the 1950s was part of the Cold War.
For example, it wasn't conceivable to him that land reform in Guatemala could be a project that Guatemalans had designed to deal with a Guatemalan situation. He just assumed that it had been ordered by the Kremlin. They had this view of the world, which I think was implanted in them from a very young age, that there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones.
GROSS: Well, you say that there was, like, a missionary background that they were from, and you think that that contributed to that view of good and evil. Can you talk about that a little bit?
KINZER: The Dulles brothers came from a long line of missionary Calvinists. They grew up in a parsonage. Their father was a clergyman. And they had missionaries for dinner very often. They had to go to services every day, three on Sundays and take notes about the services so they could discuss the sermons with their father. They sang hymns at home and spent a lot of time in prayer.
The particular religious tradition they came out of, Presbyterian Calvinism, was one that did see the world in these two ways, that there were good Christians, and then there were heathens and savages. Christians, under this doctrine, did not have the luxury of sitting at home and hoping for the triumph of good. They had to go out into the world and make sure good triumphed.
When you have that view about your religion, it's a very small step to applying the same schema to politics. You think there are good and evil leaders in the world, good and evil regimes in the world. And this is a very different concept than the concepts that many cultures and many other peoples have.
It's a widespread belief in many parts of the world that every person and every government is made up of good and evil impulses, and they come out in different proportion depending on circumstances. But the Dulles brothers didn't believe that. They had grown up in a religious tradition that saw a division between good and evil, and when they came to political power, they saw the world that way.
I thought this might be an interesting read.
4 replies
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