Dean Acheson Quotes
They are two different countries.
Dean Acheson, 1893-1971, U.S. Secretary of State (Democrat), Response to a Journalist asking him to explain the inconsistency between our fighting communism in Greece but not in China, Quoted on CNN Fareed Zakeria, Global Public Square, July 10, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This statement became known as "The Truman Doctrine." Truman asked for $400 million to help Greece and Turkey fight stave off armed Communist minorities destabilizing their governments.
This principle of support of Administration foreign policy (even if opposed) when abroad had an enormous influence on both political parties behavior for almost half a century. It began to fall apart with the hyperpartisanship that the Republican’s deep enmity to Democratic President Bill Clinton, and this was retaliated against be some Democrats during the George W. Bush Presidency. It completely disintegrated with the antipathy many very conservative Republicans had against President Barack Obama in the early 21st century. See {633113} for the Senator’s elaboration on the meaning of the policy.
He was very sensitive to the criticism of China’s human rights record. The Chinese leadership was very proud to their accomplishments of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and eliminating hunger and starvation, and many foreigners from developed nations were seemingly inattentive to the remarkable economic success in their focus on human rights shortcomings.
This is a statement that was meant as a criticism but would be interpreted by many Americans as just a straight forward description. Many believe that is the way it should be.
This was much less a treaty of how the two nations would interact with each other, than a joint statement to the world of opposition to any nation interfering with the internal affairs of another country.
When Nixon and Kissinger went to China in the midst of the cold war, there are many American right-wingers who objected and thought that it was a betrayal of America’s fundamental principles At the same time, the extreme left wing, hard line Communists objected for the exact same reasons to China allowing the visit. This quotation is an excellent example of the latter.
England in this quotation claims the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation if there is mismanagement or crises AND her national interests are affected.
See {640831} for more on this subject.
The things that makes this quotation historically important is how fast Cixi was adopting modern technology as a tool to manage the government and how she was managing day to day the significant international negotiations taking place on the other side of the earth. While in most areas Chinese bureaucracy was notorious for obstructionism and delay, Cixi maintained direct and almost real time control of the parts of the government that she felt most important. She resembled Abraham Lincoln in the sense that they both found innovative ways to use new technology to enable them to better and more directly manage and control the government.
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
