Impulsive Foreign Policy

The Dulles brothers believed so strongly in the communist threat that they rejected traditional benevolent pro-democracy action in favor of strategically inappropriate and immoral anti-communist foreign policy.

Pro-Democracy

In general, American foreign policy prior to the Cold War and the Dulles brothers' rise to power was focused on promoting democracy.
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Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States [Wikipedia u/Avala]
"The world must be made safe for democracy." 
-Woodrow Wilson



"We must be the great arsenal of democracy." 
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States [Wikipedia u/Tktru]
"the aim of our foreign policy is to create and maintain external conditions congenial to our way of life and values" 
- Robert R. Bowie, on the United States
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"The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian."
                                                          -George F. Kennan, architect of Containment

Anti-Communism

The Dulles brothers shifted the zeitgeist of American policy, reorienting it toward a belligerent anti-communist approach that often quietly contradicted American values.


"A purely defensive policy never wins against an aggressive policy. If our only policy is to stay where we are, we will be driven back." 
                                  - John Foster Dulles



"[Allen Dulles is] not in favor of the policy of containment." 

- "Chairman Hull," Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
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John Foster giving a briefing on the Middle East, June 1953 [Bhavanajagat]
"American cold war policies led to serious trouble precisely when decisionmakers forgot that their objective was to contain the expansion of soviet state power and instead made global anti-communism their goal" 
- Terry Deibel, National War College
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Pro-Shah riot in Tehran, August 1953 [Wikipedia u/Wvk]
"fighting overseas in the name of democracy, peace, and an end to human suffering would be dangerous and counterproductive" 
- Eugene Gholz, Daryl Press, and Harvey Sapolsky, in Foreign Affairs
"NATO, the H-bomb decision, and military build up... were decisions made by others in the name of containment. Kennan became a great critic of American foreign policy"
                          -John Gaddis, Yale University
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American troops in Korea, April 1951 [Chicago.CBS]