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The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War Paperback – October 7, 2014
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A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world
During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.
John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?
The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies-many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world.
Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.
The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
- Print length432 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Publication dateOctober 7, 2014
- Dimensions5.45 x 1.4 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-101250053129
- ISBN-13978-1250053121
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“[A] fluently written, ingeniously researched, thrillerish work of popular history… Mr. Kinzer has brightened his dark tale with an abundance of racy stories. Gossip nips at the heels of history on nearly every page.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book... A riveting chronicle.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“[The Brothers] is a bracing, disturbing and serious study of the exercise of American global power… Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, displays a commanding grasp of the vast documentary record, taking the reader deep inside the first decades of the Cold War. He brings a veteran journalist's sense of character, moment and detail. And he writes with a cool and frequently elegant style.” ―The Washington Post
“[A] fast-paced and often gripping dual biography.” ―The Boston Globe
“Stephen Kinzer's sparkling new biography...suggests that the story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America.” ―Washington Monthly
“Two exceptionally important stories take up the bulk of Kinzer's book, and both are told with considerable insight and disciplined prose.” ―Bookforum
“The errors of the Dulles brothers are vividly described in this highly entertaining book…A thoroughly informative book.” ―Revista: The Harvard Review of Latin America
“A historical critique sure to spark debate.” ―Booklist
“The culmination of an oeuvre (All the Shah's Men, Overthrow and others) featuring the Dulles brothers in supporting roles, The Brothers draws them from the shadows, provoking a reevaluation of their influence and its effects.” ―Kirkus.com
“A secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.” ―John le Carré
“Kinzer tells the fascinating story of the Dulles brothers, central figures in U.S. foreign policy and intelligence activities for over four decades. He describes U.S. efforts to change governments during this period in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cuba, and other countries in exciting detail.” ―John Deutch, former director, Central Intelligence Agency
“As someone who reported from the Communist prison yard of Eastern Europe, I knew that the Cold War really was a struggle between Good and Evil. But Stephen Kinzer, in this compressed, richly-detailed polemic, demonstrates how at least in the 1950s it might have been waged with more subtlety than it was.” ―Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography
“A disturbing, provocative, important book. Stephen Kinzer vividly brings the Dulles brothers, once paragons of American Cold War supremacy, to life and makes a strong case against the dangers of American exceptionalism.” ―Evan Thomas, author of Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World
“The Dulles brothers, one a self-righteous prude, the other a charming libertine, shared a common vision: a world run from Washington by people like themselves. With ruthless determination, they pursued, acquired, and wielded power, heedless of the consequences for others. They left behind a legacy of mischief. Theirs is a whale of a story and Stephen Kinzer tells it with verve, insight, and just the right amount of indignation.” ―Andrew J. Bacevich, author of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Brothers
By Stephen KinzerSt. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2014 Stephen KinzerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-05312-1
Contents
.............................................................Introduction 1...............................................PART I: TWO BROTHERS.........................................1. Unmentionable Happenings 7................................2. The Taint of My Environment 37............................3. Dull, Duller, Dulles 63...................................4. That Fella from Wall Street 86............................PART II: SIX MONSTERS........................................5. A Whirling Dervish with a College Education 119...........6. The Most Forthright Pro-Communist 147.....................7. A Matchless Interplay of Ruthlessness and Guile 175.......8. The Self-Intoxicated President 216........................9. The Tall, Goateed Radical 247.............................10. The Bearded Strongman 284PART III: ONE CENTURY...........11. A Face of God 311Notes 329...............................Bibliography 368.............................................Acknowledgments 383..........................................Index 385....................................................INTRODUCTION
When John Foster Dulles died on May 24, 1959, a bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had since the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before. Thousands lined up outside the National Cathedral in Washington to pass by his bier. Dignitaries from around the world, led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany and President Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan, came to the funeral. It was broadcast live on the ABC and CBS television networks. Many who watched agreed that the world had lost, as President Eisenhower said in his eulogy, “one of the truly great men of our time.”
Two months later, Eisenhower signed an executive order decreeing that in tribute to this towering figure, the new super-airport being built at Chantilly, Virginia, would be named Dulles International.
Enthusiasm for this idea waned after Eisenhower left the White House in 1961. The new president, John F. Kennedy, did not want to name an ultra-modern piece of America’s future after a crusty Cold War militant. As the airport neared completion, the chairman of the Federal Aviation Authority announced that it would be named Chantilly International. He left open the possibility that a terminal might be named for Dulles.
That sent partisans into action. One of them was Dulles’s brother, Allen, who had run the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly a decade. Pressure on Kennedy grew, and he finally relented. On November 17, 1962, with both Eisenhower and Allen Dulles watching, he presided over the official opening of Dulles International Airport.
“How appropriate it is that this should be named after Secretary Dulles,” Kennedy said in his speech. “He was a member of an extraordinary family: his brother, Allen Dulles, who served in a great many administrations, stretching back, I believe, to President Hoover, all the way to this one; John Foster Dulles, who at the age of 19 was, rather strangely, the secretary to the Chinese delegation to The Hague, and who served nearly every Presidential administration from that time forward to his death in 1959; their uncle, who was secretary of state, Mr. Lansing; their grandfather, who was secretary of state, Mr. Foster. I know of few families and certainly few contemporaries who rendered more distinguished and dedicated service to their country.”
Then, in what became a newsreel clip seen around the world, Kennedy pulled back a curtain and unveiled the airport’s symbolic centerpiece: a larger-than-life bust of John Foster Dulles. It was on a pedestal overlooking an evocative reflecting pool at the center of the airport that the architect, Eero Saarinen, hoped would calm travelers’ turbulent spirits.
Half a century after Dulles’s death stunned Americans, few remember him. Many associate his name with an airport and nothing more. Even his bust has disappeared.
During renovations in the 1990s, the reflecting pool at Dulles International Airport was filled. The bust was removed. When the renovation was complete, it did not reappear. No one seemed to notice.
After several fruitless inquiries, I finally tracked down the bust. A woman who works for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority arranged for me to view it. It stands in a private conference room opposite Baggage Claim Carousel #3. Beside it are plaques thanking the Airports Authority for sponsoring local golf tournaments. Dulles looks big-eyed and oddly diffident, anything but heroic.
Dedicated by the president of the United States while the world watched, now shunted into a little-used room opposite baggage claim, this bust reflects what history has done to the Dulles brothers.
A biography published three years after John Foster Dulles died asserted that “he provoked an extraordinary mixture of veneration and hatred during his lifetime, and since his death, in spite of a surge of emotion in his favor towards the end, his memory has remained contentious and intriguing.” That memory faded quickly. In 1971 a journalist wrote that although the Dulles name had not been completely forgotten, “certainly most of the éclat had gone out of it.”
John Foster Dulles was, as one biographer wrote, “a secretary of state so powerful and implacable that no government in what was then fervently referred to as the Free World would have dared to make a decision of international importance without first getting his nod of approval.” Another biographer called his brother, Allen, “the greatest intelligence officer who ever lived.”
“Do you realize my responsibilities?” Allen asked his sister when he was at the peak of his power. “I have to send people out to get killed. Who else in this country in peacetime has the right to do that?”
These uniquely powerful brothers set in motion many of the processes that shape today’s world. Understanding who they were, and what they did, is a key to uncovering the obscured roots of upheaval in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
A book tracing these roots could not have been written in an earlier era. Only long after the Dulles brothers died did the full consequences of their actions become clear. They may have believed that the countries in which they intervened would quickly become stable, prosperous, and free. More often, the opposite happened. Some of the countries they targeted have never recovered. Nor has the world.
This story is rich with lessons for the modern era. It is about exceptionalism, the view that the United States is inherently more moral and farther-seeing than other countries and therefore may behave in ways that others should not. It also addresses the belief that because of its immense power, the United States can not only topple governments but guide the course of history.
To these widely held convictions, the Dulles brothers added two others, both bred into them over many years. One was missionary Christianity, which tells believers that they understand eternal truths and have an obligation to convert the unenlightened. Alongside it was the presumption that protecting the right of large American corporations to operate freely in the world is good for everyone.
The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.
Copyright © 2013 by Stephen Kinzer
(Continues...)Excerpted from The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer. Copyright © 2014 Stephen Kinzer. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (October 7, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250053129
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250053121
- Item Weight : 13.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.45 x 1.4 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #51,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #84 in Political Intelligence
- #129 in History & Theory of Politics
- #256 in Political Leader Biographies
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About the authors
Stephen Kinzer was Istanbul bureau chief for The New York Times and is now that paper's national cultural correspondent. He is the author of Blood of Brothers and co-author of Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. He lives in Chicago.
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”
Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.
Today Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. He writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.
Kinzer’s new book, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain and the Birth of American Empire, builds on his career watching the effects of American interventions around the world.
From 1983 to 1989, Kinzer was the Times bureau chief in Nicaragua. In that post he covered war and upheaval in Central America. He also wrote two books about the region. One of them, co-authored with Stephen Schlesinger, is Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.” The other one, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, is a social and political portrait that The New Yorker called “impressive for the refinement of its writing and also the breadth of its subject matter.” In 1988 Columbia University awarded Kinzer its Maria Moors Cabot prize for outstanding coverage of Latin America.
From 1990 to 1996 Kinzer was posted in Germany. From his post as chief of the New York Times bureau in Berlin, he covered the emergence of post-Communist Europe, including wars in the former Yugoslavia.
In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.
He has also worked in Africa, and written A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”
Kinzer’s last book was The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War. The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.”
Kinzer’s previous book was Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” the Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”
In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953.
In 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate. The citation said that “those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again.”
The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”
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A reporter asked Allen Dulles what the CIA was. "A State Department for unfriendly countries" he replied. - Allen Welsh Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence
John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles were brothers born in the gilded age to a rarified clan of politicians and businessmen. The grandfather had been Secretary of State under Harrison and a broker for international trade deals. He was the first secretary to overthrow a foreign government, in Hawaii. The father was a fervent Presbyterian reverend who believed it was America's duty to enlighten heathen masses. Together with 'American Exceptionalism' their creed was to spread trade, democracy and Christ. Their uncle would become Secretary of State under Wilson during WWI. Growing up in their grandfather's Washington DC home, they dined with Carnegie, Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.
John graduated from Princeton and strings were pulled. He was hired by the law firm that created General Electric and US Steel, with robber barons JP Morgan and EH Harriman as clients. The firm backed a revolution that separated Panama from Columbia to build the canal. Passenger liner Lusitania was sunk by a German u-boat in 1915 and turned US opinion to enter the war. Their uncle was among few who knew it secretly carried ammunition to Britain; he had established a prototype intelligence agency. John rose quickly through the law firm, promoting business in Brazil, Peru and Cuba while exploiting his connections in politics and global business. When uprisings threatened clients the US Navy was sent in.
Allen went to India after Princeton in 1914. En route he read Kipling's Kim, enthralled by the international spy. He joined the State Dept. for ten years until 1926. During WWI he was an intelligence agent in Switzerland and then a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, as was John. They were both enamoured with Wilson's ideals which included US business, liberty and democracy. Those principles weren't extended to colonies who promptly rose in revolt. Allen was director of the Near East Division for five years. Posted in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean he met with Kings Abdullah and Faisal, Kemal Ataturk and TE Lawrence. He simultaneously represented both Rockefeller's Standard Oil and the US.
John supported the Nazis rise to power in 1933, an outcome of work done by the brothers on boundaries and reparations in Paris. Allen was the first foreign emissary to meet Hitler. While Allen had an uneasy feeling John saw the Nazis as a bulwark against Bolshevism and his clients lent billions to Germany. The loans helped develop industries like Farben and Krupp, makers of arms and poison gas. As war spread in Europe John reluctantly conceded to his partners business was no longer feasible. It was a rare falling out with Allen. John argued for internationalism and against isolationism, guided by his religion. FDR wasn't interested in Christian imperatives, nor the British foreign office busy with war.
Allen had earned a law degree in 1926 and joined the law firm where his brother was director, quickly rising to a partner. They became even more wealthy and well connected than before but Allen was less happy in the corporate world. As America entered WWII in 1941 he was asked to set up a new US intelligence agency which became the OSS. After recruiting hundreds of agents he left for Switzerland where he gathered information and aided resistance in Germany, Italy and France. The war over, Truman ended the OSS and entered the UN, sending John as the Republican delegate. With publisher Time-Life he promoted US business, world leadership, and cast the USSR as the world's greatest threat.
John popularized the cold war theory that held nationalist movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America were directed from Moscow. He compared communism to the Islamic conquests, an existential threat to Christianity. Supported by the Truman Doctrine of 1947 the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were created. Allen was passed over for director by a Democrat. Truman had little patience for covert action. When he was re-elected John's hopes to become Secretary were delayed. He was made US senator in 1949 when a NY Republican became ill, but his term lasted only four months. With Truman's term nearly over John bided his time until the tides of politics turned.
Allen was appointed as CIA Director and John Secretary of State when Eisenhower came to power in 1953, and interest increased for covert operations. With the brothers in charge there was no need to consult anyone but Ike. Ike imagined waging war without loss of US lives. It would not be fought with the great communist powers but against third world anti-colonialists, presumed stooges of the Kremlin. When Iran nationalized British oil and blocked Allen's clients a communist plot was claimed and prime minister Mossadegh replaced by US flunky Shah Pahlavi. As Guatemala's Arbenz threatened John's client United Fruit Company the elected government was overthrown by a CIA sponsored dictator.
John believed the front line against communism was now in east Asia. Ho Chi Minh had appealed to Wilson in Paris for Vietnamese independence. Denied, he joined the Comintern. The US funded most of France's colonial war which ended in defeat. John pushed for US troops but Ike demurred. Instead puppet PM Diem was installed in 1954, setting the stage for future war. Indonesia's President Sukarno was invited to the White House in 1956. He was neutral to the great powers and visited China and Russia, infuriating his former hosts. Afraid he leaned left the CIA armed and trained an insurgent army to overthrow him but failed. In 1965 a US backed purge of communists by military dictator Suharto left a million dead.
Allen made plans to depose Egypt's Gamal Nasser in 1956 but was thwarted by the botched British invasion of Suez. Nasser had shaken off UK puppet King Farouk in 1952 and accepted Soviet aid. In turn the brothers backed Saudi Arabia and Israel, plotting against Nasser in Syria and Lebanon. In 1960 the CIA schemed to poison Congo PM Lumumba who had declared independence from Belgium and wasn't pro-western business. The plan failed, but he was executed by future dictator Mobutu and Belgians. From poisoned cigars to dipilatory boots wild ways to kill Castro were conceived. John died from cancer in 1959. After the Cuban invasion of 1961 JFK pinned a medal on Allen's chest and called it quits.
This book explains how US foreign policy was shaped in the 20th century by two wealthy WASPs. Their legacy has lived on. After the Soviet Union fell a new enemy was needed and presented itself in Islamic extremism. Cold war veterans Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld disrupted the middle east and created more terrorism than Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined. The military industry marched on but as wars ended economies suffered recessions and financial crises. Stephen Kinzer gives an interesting account of how things got done in the highest government offices and agencies. The relationship between privilege and power is nothing new. It is in fact as familiar as politics itself.
Kinzer does a commendable job as he draws sources from across the globe to create a portrait of the Brothers at work. The two brothers were raised within the Presbyterian manse. The father was a pastor, who would later become a professor at Auburn Theological Seminary. On their mother’s side of the family, they were descended from two former Secretaries of State. Ironically, their beloved “Grandfather Foster” had been the American Secretary of State who helped overthrow another government, the Hawaiian monarchy. This allowed the American annexation of the islands. Of the two brothers, Foster settled down quickly (marrying a woman his younger brother had rejected). He lived his life devoted to her. Allen, on the other hand, was always having affairs (his wife even became friends with two of his mistresses) and his many liaisons probably included the Queen of Greece.
Both brothers began their international interest in the aftermath of the Great War (World War I). In the 1930s, Foster was supportive of Germany (Sullivan and Cromwell had many German clients as well as representing American business with German interests). This led to the one time the two brothers had an open disagreement with Allen asking Foster how he could consider himself a Christian and support what the Germans were doing to the Jews. But soon, this became a moot issue as America was drawn into the war. During the war, Allen, who was always interested in covert work, headed the American spy network in Switzerland. After the war, when the OSS was disbanded, Allen was without a job. In less than a year later, the CIA was organized and he was brought on as second in charge. In the early 50s, he became its director. At the same time, his brother served as the Secretary of State.
The idea of two brothers in such key roles, not to mention their legal ties to many leading international businesses, is easily seen today as clearly a conflict of interest. However, such a breach of protocol wasn’t much of an issue in the 1950s when the country felt it was in a battle between good and evil. Whatever it took to win was seen as necessary. While the Soviet Union certainly presented challenges to the Western World, new research indicates the challenge wasn’t nearly as great as it was thought to have been. Kinzer points out the blunders of both sides in Africa, where neither side understood the continent. The Soviets even sent snowplows to a country that had never experienced snow and wheat to the Congo, a country without a flour mill. Kinzer’s view is that the Brothers (and in some way, all of America) were so colored by the Cold War that they were unable to see beyond their own assumptions and thereby missed opportunities to build a more peaceful world.
As divided as the Brother’s saw the world, Kinzer points out how they clearly avoided direct conflict within the Soviet and Chinese spheres. When the Romanians revolted in 1956, they watched as Soviet tanks moved in to crush the rebellion. While there was espionage behind the “Iron Curtain,” such as U-2 flights over Russia, the real battle was waged in smaller counties, many of whom attempted to remain neutral during the Cold War. The Brothers didn’t believe neutrality was possible.
The strength of Kinzer’s thesis is in his research and in his accessible writing style. However, there are weaknesses within his logic and the application of his research. Several times he refers to Foster and Allen’s “missionary Calvinistic background.” Granted, Kinzer isn’t a theologian (he even confuses Princeton Seminary with Princeton University). But a bigger problem is his use of “missionary Calvinism” in a negative (almost ad hominem) manner. First of all, I am not sure what he means by this description (nor am I sure what that he knows what he means). While many Calvinists have been missionaries, some would point out that Calvinism hasn’t displayed the missionary zeal of other theologies. But more importantly, Calvinism, with its view of human depravity, may be more applicable to the situation with the Dulles brothers. The emphasis on depravity is a belief there is a stain on the soul, in the heart of all people, that’s so deep that only God can remove. Such a doctrine stands in opposition to the dual world view of good and evil. Calvinists understand that we (the human race) have fallen. There are not those who are good and those who are bad. The only one good is Jesus, the rest of us are only righteous by his actions. Because of this strong view of how we, as people, seek out own on interest instead of what God desires, Calvinists encouraged from the beginning a system of checks and balances to keep individuals from claiming too much power. Certainly, the Dulles brothers lacked a desire to have such constraints of their power. If anything, it wasn’t Calvinism that cause their blinders that kept them from seeing a more nuanced world. It was either their ignorance of Calvinistic theology or their ignoring of the teachings of their church. The complexity of the human spirit and its complicity in sin can be seen clearly in Allen. He could be noble as in challenging his brother’s support of Germany in the late 1930s while practicing serial adultery and later, approving of covert campaigns in countries striving to be neutral during the Cold War.
The author also places Reinhold Niebuhr, one of America’s leading theologian during the 50s, in conflict with the Brothers. In his concluding chapter, he quotes Reinhold Niebuhr’s critique of the Brothers’ “self-righteousness” and lack of nuance in understanding right and wrong. However, I am not sure the conflict was as divided as Kinzer makes it out to be. Niebuhr is a complex man who wrote prolifically. While Niebuhr understood sin and the dangers of pride, from my understanding, he also supported America in opposition to the Soviet Union throughout the 50s. So while Niebuhr critiqued their self-assured swagger and unchecked power, he may have been supportive of their long-term goals.
Despite the author’s lack of understanding theological nuances, I still recommend this book. It shows the impact American business had on foreign policy. Was the overthrow of the Guatemalan government necessary in the fight of communism or was it convenient ploy that allowed the brothers to help a former client, United Fruit? The danger of ignoring such obvious conflicts of interest is revealed throughout this book. The book demonstrates just how powerful these two men, who are mostly forgotten today, were in the 1950s. They were even able to “force” Hollywood to change movies (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American). In both movies, the script departed from the book in a manner that made the story fit the Cold War mentality of the 1950s. Both authors were incensed at Hollywood’s interpretation of their books.
This book provides a portrait of the man for whom Washington’s International Airport is named. Having read this, I would like to read more about Foster’s children. His son, Avery, converted to the Catholic Church and became a Jesuit priest. He would go on to become an American Cardinal. His sister, Lillias, attended seminary and was one of the first women to be ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1957. He had one other son who was a mining engineer. The family dynamics must have been fascinating. .
This book speaks to our current age and our tendency to demonize our opponents. There are always dangers of seeing the world clearly divided into good and evil, especially when we see ourselves on the side of good and our enemies as always evil. While the Christian faith teaches of a cosmic battle between good and evil (God and Satan), that battle is also taking place within each of our souls, which blurs the battle lines. Furthermore, the victory within the cosmic struggle has already been won at the cross. We pervert Jesus’ teachings when we see ourselves as only good and others as only evil. The human race is much more complicated that this simplistic understanding that leads to a division between “us” and “them.” When we quickly demonize others, we risk denying the image of God instilled in us all.