The Original Cold Warrior, Democratic Party

Robert McMahon's opening volume in Potomac Books' Shapers of International History series is an interesting narrative biography of Dean Acheson. In a tightly written work, McMahon argues that Acheson was the primary architect of America's Cold War foreign policy. Acheson was able to take on that role, the book contends, due to his life experiences, his innate self-confidence, and the lessons learned from the men he considered his mentors. Thus, understanding Acheson the man is fundamental to understanding Acheson the statesman.

McMahon's first chapter covers Acheson's life from birth in 1893 to his return to the State Department in February 1941. McMahon argues that although Acheson did not come from "an archetypical Eastern Establishment, ruling elite family," his youth and schooling put him on a similar path (p. 5). The son of an Episcopalian minister who had recently emigrated from Canada, Dean Acheson grew up in a middle-class home in Connecticut before shipping off to boarding school at age nine. Acheson considered his childhood idyllic, a lost paradise that formed his foundation as a person. As McMahon describes it, Acheson's attitude toward his childhood was part of his "lifelong tendency to place himself, his experiences, and the outlook of his social class at the very epicenter of the world" (p. 7). This tendency shaped Acheson's beliefs both about his own role, as well as his conviction for the role the United States should play in the world.

Acheson was an indifferent student at Groton and Yale, concerned more about enjoying himself than about studies. Upon entering Harvard Law School in 1915, Acheson finally began to take education and life more seriously. One of the key factors in this change, according to McMahon, was the first of Acheson's mentors: Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter was a professor at Harvard Law who took Acheson under his wing and both encouraged his abilities and facilitated his career. Frankfurter's recommendation was key to Acheson's clerking with Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. While working for Brandeis, Acheson met his second mentor, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., whom Acheson later described as his personal hero. From these three men, two of whom (Frankfurter and Holmes) became personal friends, Acheson developed the self-confidence and the belief system that guided his future career. From Holmes he learned the importance of factual precision and pragmatism; from Frankfurter the importance of allowing evidence to shape conclusions. McMahon persuasively argues throughout the later chapters that these qualities shaped Acheson's actions throughout his career in Washington.

It was a career that almost died prematurely after Acheson's stint at the Treasury Department in 1933. His legal convictions led to a clash with Franklin Roosevelt over the president's gold-purchase plan, which led to Acheson's resignation after six months. But those six months in public service addicted Acheson to participation in the government. Although he would spend the next nine years as a successful lawyer, Acheson never again enjoyed the law as much as "the flypaper of government service" (p. 17). He rebuilt bridges with President Roosevelt by coauthoring, with Benjamin Cohen, a legal brief that justified Roosevelt's decision to transfer fifty destroyers to the British in return for lease rights to bases in the Western Hemisphere. By using the law to justify rather than hamper presidential action, Acheson regained Roosevelt's good graces, leading to his appointment as assistant secretary of state for economic affairs in February 1941.

Chapter two discusses Acheson's career as assistant and then undersecretary of state from 1941 to 1947. Despite serving much of this time under secretaries who were not as effective or as distinguished as Acheson would have liked (Cordell Hull, Edward Stettinius, and James Byrnes), Acheson began to play an increasingly important role in developing policy. As assistant secretary for economic affairs, he was responsible for interpreting "FDR's loosely defined oil embargo directive of July 1941...