John foster dulles brother

Influence on American Diplomacy

President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Dulles as his Secretary of State on January 21, 1953. During the 1950s, Dulles and Eisenhower forged a strong friendship that granted the Secretary of State direct and unprecedented access to the President. Furthermore, Dulles’s time as Secretary was marked by a general consensus in U.S. policy that peace could be maintained through the containment of communism. This consensus allowed Dulles and Eisenhower to secure international mutual security agreements while at the same time reducing the number of troops in the U.S. military and the production of conventional weapons. Dulles also enjoyed the close cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency, which was run by his brother, Allen Dulles.

Dulles confronted many foreign policy challenges during his tenure including the integration of Europe, escalation of the crisis in Indochina, U.S. response to the Hungarian Revolution, and the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. Despite being diagnosed with advanced stage cancer in the immediate aftermath of the Suez Crisis, Dulles returned to work in Foggy Bottom. One of his last directives was the formulation of the Eisenhower Doctrine in response to the Suez Crisis. (The Eisenhower Doctrine was an expression of the key tenets of Dulles’s foreign policy views: containment and international mutual security agreements reinforced by economic aid.)

Dulles was also the first Secretary of State to be directly accessible to the media and to hold the first Department press conferences.

Poor health forced Dulles to resign his position at the Department of State in April of 1959, only weeks before his death on May 24, 1959.