Remember Liberation?

John Robinson Beal, who has been covering the State Department for Time for seven years, is an able reporter and a clear, terse writer. In his John Foster Dulles: A Biography (Harper, $4.50) the facts in the case are set forth without embellishment to tell a connected story of a life, with special emphasis on the past five years of Eisenhower diplomacy. The only trouble with Mr. Beal’s approach to his subject is that nowhere in his book does he succeed in defining what American foreign policy actually is as the first Eisenhower term gives way to the second.

When Dulles first took office it all seemed pretty clear. The Kennan policy of “containment” was to be rejected in favor of promoting the liberation of Soviet satellites. There was to be no more of this nonsense about using the Seventh Fleet to protect the Chinese Communists along Formosa Strait while they were fighting us in North Korea. To end uncertainty about what the United States might do in case of Communist depredations in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, our armed forces would stand poised in readiness to mete out “massive retaliation” on a “selective” basis if the provocation were deemed sufficiently great.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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John Robinson Beal, who has been covering the State Department for Time for seven years, is an able reporter and a clear, terse writer. In his John Foster Dulles: A Biography (Harper, $4.50) the facts in the case are set forth without embellishment to tell a connected story of a life, with special emphasis on the past five years of Eisenhower diplomacy. The only trouble with Mr. Beal’s approach to his subject is that nowhere in his book does he succeed in defining what American foreign policy actually is as the first Eisenhower term gives way to the second.

When Dulles first took office it all seemed pretty clear. The Kennan policy of “containment” was to be rejected in favor of promoting the liberation of Soviet satellites. There was to be no more of this nonsense about using the Seventh Fleet to protect the Chinese Communists along Formosa Strait while they were fighting us in North Korea. To end uncertainty about what the United States might do in case of Communist depredations in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, our armed forces would stand poised in readiness to mete out “massive retaliation” on a “selective” basis if the provocation were deemed sufficiently great.