David Mayers

JFK's ambassadors and the cold war

The importance of sound representation abroad was plain to President J.F. Kennedy. This survey of Kennedys diplomats is selective, confined to the three most telling cases in the Cold War drama: Moscow, New Delhi, London. The countries corresponding with these capitals shaped Americas world, as chief rival, preeminent neutral and pluckiest ally. Ambassadors in distinctive posts do not constitute the whole of JFKs foreign policy, but this account do shed light on significant achievements, thereby challenging those critics who have attributed every manner of blunder to Kennedy. His diplomatic record may not have been as brilliant as court historians suggested. Yet, to JFKs credit, the practical effect of his ambassadors in three major countries was to advance US security and prestige.

Humanity in 1948: The Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

By approving prohibitions on genocide and embracing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the United Nations in 1948 sustained a theory premised on the centrality of people—both in their collective and individual capacities—that enjoyed primacy over the claims of the sovereign state. This affirmation of human rights dovetailed with the UN’s earlier endorsement of the Nuremberg principles with their emphasis on personal accountability. The melding of privileges and responsibilities gestured toward, although it did not fully encompass, that philosophical line strenuously espoused at the time by the eminent legal theorist, Hersch Lauterpacht: the state is not a sanctified end but merely the custodian of the welfare and ultimate purpose of human beings. This analysis examines the Genocide Convention and the UDHR and brings into conversation their drafting histories, politics, and diplomacy. It traces the saga of two seminal documents and their tandem fates in Cold War America. The collectivist project of the Genocide Convention and the individualistic emphasis of the UDHR are usefully placed in the same analytical frame, something seldom done in the literature that deals with human rights and norms-making of the late 1940s and their interaction with Cold War dilemmas. As peoples and governments pick their way through the hazards of the twenty-first century, it is exigent—for the sake of upright bearing—to stay mindful of the orientation prescribed in the Genocide Convention and the UDHR.

Crossing to Safety from Cold War America: The Collaboration and Friendship of John Paton Davies, Jr. and George Frost Kennan

ABSTRACT This analysis probes the interwoven careers and lives of two distinguished American diplomats, John Paton Davies, Jr. and George Frost Kennan. These Foreign Service officers, who rose to prominence in the years immediately after the Second World War, were embroiled in the formulation and implementation of controversial policy during the early Cold War. The experience of Davies and Kennan illustrates the domestic hazards that have dogged American foreign policy-making even into the present. Yet the focus here is on their friendship—a subject hitherto little examined in the scholarly literature—its connexion to the evolution of their policy recommendations, its steadying power in moments of moral and personal crisis, its tempering effect on failure. The assessment also draws on a notable work of fiction, Wallace Stegner’s 1987 Crossing to Safety, to consider the ineffable nature of friendship itself.

Destruction Repaired and Destruction Anticipated: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the Atomic Bomb, and US Policy 1944–6

ABSTRACT This analysis examines the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and the Acheson-Lilienthal project and brings into conversation their drafting histories, politics, and diplomacy. Placing them in the same analytical framework, something not hitherto done in the literature, this essay traces the saga of UNRRA and Acheson-Lilienthal and their tandem cold-war fates. As peoples and governments pick their way through the humanitarian dilemmas and atomic hazards of the twenty-first century, it is useful to reflect upon the experiences and lessons of these two long-ago initiatives.

Neither War Nor Peace: FDR's Ambassadors in Embassy Berlin and Policy Toward Germany, 1933–1941

American policy toward Germany in the years before Pearl Harbor can be approached from any number of angles. A rich literature already exists that emphasizes the geopolitical dimension of the German–U.S. relationship, as well as its economic and ideological complexities. I shall here explore an interpretative line that has been less fully developed in the historiography, namely, the viewpoint of U.S. diplomats posted in Berlin. Their experience in the 1930s throws into vivid relief the dilemmas posed by the Third Reich to FDRs America and its equivocal response.

Wars and Peace: The Future Americans Envisioned, 1861-1991

Introduction - Malice Toward None - Splendid Little War - Safe For Democracy - Freedom From Fear - Evil Empire - New World Order - Notes - Bibliography - Index

George Kennan and the Soviet Union, 1933–1938: Perceptions of a Young Diplomat

formal diplomatic relations. George Kennan, not yet thirty, was invited to join the first official delegation to represent US interests in Moscow. This tour in the Soviet Union, which coincided with the great purges and was dominated by them, was formative for Kennan and crucial to the development of his early views about the Soviet Union, the nature of Russian-US relations, and US diplomacy. When later the Cold War began to erupt, these views of Kennans found expression in his pronouncements and recommendations for US foreign policy. In fact, the underlying assumptions of Kennans formulation of containment the incompatability of Soviet and US political commitments, the divergent nature of their security interests, the importance of patience and steady purpose in dealing with the Russianscan be traced to the 1930s.