# John Foster Dulles **John Foster Dulles** (1888–1959) was U.S. Secretary of State under [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] from 1953 to 1959 and the architect of the administration's hard-line [[Cold War]] posture — "brinkmanship," "massive retaliation," and the global alliance-and-covert-action system that defined 1950s containment. Washington Dulles International Airport is named for him. ## Why he matters for the KB Dulles is the in-house counterweight to Eisenhower's own anti-militarist instincts: he was skeptical of the [[Chance for Peace Speech]] (complaining an early draft "doesn't say anything") and followed it within days with a harder-line address, helping close the post-Stalin opening the president had tried to test. The Eisenhower–Dulles split is an early template for the recurring fight between transactional-restraint and confrontation factions in Republican foreign policy. ## See Also - [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] — the president he served - [[Chance for Peace Speech]] — the peace overture he resisted