Lincoln Gordon: Architect of Cold War Foreign Policy
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Lincoln Gordon: Architect of Cold War Foreign Policy

Lincoln Gordon: Architect of Cold War Foreign Policy

by Bruce L.R. Smith

Overview

After World War II, American statesman and scholar Lincoln Gordon emerged as one of the key players in the reconstruction of Europe. During his long career, Gordon worked as an aide to National Security Adviser Averill Harriman in President Truman's administration; for President John F. Kennedy as an author of the Alliance for Progress and as an adviser on Latin American policy; and for President Lyndon B. Johnson as assistant secretary of state. Gordon also served as the United States ambassador to Brazil under both Kennedy and Johnson. Outside the political sphere, he devoted his considerable talents to academia as a professor at Harvard University, as a scholar at the Brookings Institution, and as president at Johns Hopkins University.

In this impressive biography, Bruce L. R. Smith examines Gordon's substantial contributions to U.S. mobilization during the Second World War, Europe's postwar economic recovery, the security framework for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and U.S. policy in Latin America. He also highlights the vital efforts of the advisers who helped Gordon plan NATO's force expansion and implement America's dominant foreign policy favoring free trade, free markets, and free political institutions.

Smith, who worked with Gordon at the Brookings Institution, explores the statesman-scholar's virtues as well as his flaws, and his study is strengthened by insights drawn from his personal connection to his subject. In many ways, Gordon's life and career embodied Cold War America and the way in which the nation's institutions evolved to manage the twentieth century's vast changes. Smith adeptly shows how this "wise man" personified both America's postwar optimism and as its dawning realization of its own fallibility during the Vietnam era.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813156552
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Publication date: 05/06/2015
Series: Studies in Conflict, Diplomacy and Peace Series
Pages: 536
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Bruce L. R. Smith is a retired professor of political science at Columbia University and a Brookings Scholar. He is currently affiliated with the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is the author or editor of many books, including American Science Policy since World War II, The RAND Corporation, and The Advisers: Scientists in the Policy Process.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1

1 Dorothy and Dad 7

2 Secular Humanism at Fieldston 19

3 Harvard in Three Years 27

4 An American at Oxford 39

5 Allison 49

6 Mobilizing for War 63

7 Controlling the Atom 84

8 Birth of the Marshall Plan, 1947-1948 118

9 The Marshall Plan in Action, 1949-1950 138

10 NATO: From Treaty to Alliance 162

11 London: A Respite 188

12 Business School Professor, 1955-1960 206

13 The Alliance for Progress and JFK Advisor 218

14 Ambassador to Brazil 238

15 Assistant Secretary 274

16 Johns Hopkins President 300

17 What Now? 343

18 Elder Statesman 381

19 Going Gently 396

Epilogue 401

Acknowledgments 413

Appendixes

A Lincoln Gordon's Family Tree 419

B Exchange of Letters with President Johnson on Departure as Assistant Secretary of State 423

C Confidential Report to the President on Vietnam Policy 427

D Exchange of Letters with Eugene Rostow on Panama Canal Treaty 431

E Correspondence with Richard Bissell on ERP s Early Troubles 435

Notes 441

Selected Bibliography of Lincoln Gordon's Scholarly Writings 473

Index 477

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