The Dulles Brothers’ righteous war for American Business

Guatemala was a small part of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles’s lives. But the Dulles brothers were a transformative part of Guatemala’s destiny. If not for John Foster and Allen Dulles, Guatemala’s ten years of democracy would not have been cut short, and numerous people would not have lost their lives.

Who were the Dulles brothers?

John Foster Dulles was the United States Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, from 1953–1959. Born in 1888 and died in 1959, Foster (as he was known) was a Republican and advocated an aggressive stance against Communism.

Allen Dulles was the United States Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961, where he coordinated with his brother Foster through personal channels and was able to advance U.S. foreign policy goals secretly. He was born in 1893 and died in 1969.

The Dulles brothers made little distinction between Communism and Socialism, or Authoritarian Communism and Democratic Socialism, or between the Soviet Union and leftism. Their stances on U.S. foreign policy were driven by strong beliefs in the importance of spreading American business influence across the world, and in spreading Christian ideals—though, as their histories reveal, they often accomplished their goals through non-Christ-like means.

The excerpts below are from the following books, and dig into more detail on the brothers’ stances and motivations. To dig deeper, we recommend checking these books out in their entirety:

What forces shaped John Foster and Allen Dulles’s worldview?

“First was missionary Christianity… They were raised in a parsonage and taught from childhood that the world is an eternal battleground between righteousness and evil. Their father was a master of apologetics, the discipline of explaining and defending religious belief. They assimilated what the sociologist Max Weber described as two fundamental Calvinist tenets: that Christians are “weapons in the hands of God and executors of His providential will.

The second force that shaped the brothers was American history… In their belief that the United States knew what was best for the world, as in missionary Christianity, they reflected dominant strains in the society that produced them.

As adults, Foster and Allen were shaped by a third force: decades of work defending the interests of America’s biggest multinational corporations… They were among the visionaries who developed the idea of corporate globalism—what they and other founders of the Council on Foreign Relations called “liberal internationalism.” Their life’s work was turning American money and power into global money and power. They deeply believed, or made themselves believe, that what benefited them and their clients would benefit everyone.

Both brothers were moved by compulsive activism, a conviction that they were instruments of destiny, and a reflexive sense of loyalty to the business elite that had made them rich.”

–The Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer, pages 115 and 116

The Dulleses believed In A Strong Relationship Between Christianity, Capitalism, and covert operations:

“It was said by Jesus that material things will be added unto those who seek first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness… A society so founded will, when nature favors, produce wealth and luxury for many… [but] However rich we are, security cannot be bought by any price.”

–War or Peace, by John Foster Dulles, pages 255 and 256

John Foster Dulles’s 1950 book War or Peace is a treatise on how we ought to avoid war, and that the way to do so is to head it off at the pass. Teach other countries how to be like America. Get rid of communism. Get rid of leaders who don’t put God first. Have people return to spirituality. Otherwise war will come. The book comes across as something of a pitch for Foster for a future role as Secretary of State, which he became two years later when Eisenhower was elected.

Throughout War or Peace, Foster makes the case for activist capitalism, Christianity, and—though not in these words—covert action as a solution to war.

The Dulles Brothers Thought of their time as a war between Christianity and Communism:

“In the tenth century after Christ the so-called Christian world was challenged by an alien faith. The tide of Islam flowed from Arabia and swept over much of Christendom… Now another ten centuries have rolled by and the accumulated civilization of these centuries is faced with another challenge. This time the challenge is Soviet Communism.” –John Foster Dulles, in John Foster Dulles page 286

“During the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Americans projected the worst images of their World War II enemies, including the Nazi campaign of mass murder, onto Soviet Communism. Americans were told, and came to believe, that Soviet leaders were actively plotting to overrun the world… John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles personified this worldview.” –The Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer page 115

“[It] is, above all, a task for the spiritual leaders of our nation… [to] contribute decisively to the peaceful frustration of the evil methods and designs of Soviet Communism.” –War or Peace, by John Foster Dulles, page 261

How the Dulles brothers justified dictatorship and overthrow under the banner of “freedom”:

“Foster and Allen brought the United States into partnership with dictators in several parts of the world, and in some countries they intervened to replace democratic governments with tyrannies. Nonetheless they considered themselves paladins of liberty. By some standards, this leap of logic made them hypocrites. They justified it by applying a particular definitions of freedom. It had little to do with civil rights or social welfare. Their view of freedom was above all economic: a country whose leaders respected private enterprise and welcomed multinational business was a free country…

There was another component to freedom as Foster and Allen saw it: religion. Countries that encouraged religious devotion, and that were led by men on good terms with Christian clerics, were to them free countries. Using these two criteria—attitude toward business and attitude toward religion—they conjured an explanation of why they condemned some dictatorships but not others.”

–The Brothers, pages 324 and 325

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