W. Averell Harriman - Cold War Diplomacy

Cold War Diplomacy

See also: 1963 South Vietnamese coup, Arrest and assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, Reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup, Cable 243, Buddhist crisis, Krulak Mendenhall mission, and McNamara Taylor mission

Harriman served as ambassador to the Soviet Union until January 1946. When he returned to the United States, he worked hard to get George Kennan's Long Telegram into wide distribution. Kennan's analysis, which generally lined up with Harriman's, became the cornerstone of Truman's Cold War strategy of containment.

Later in 1946, he became ambassador to Britain, but he was soon appointed to become United States Secretary of Commerce under President Harry S. Truman to replace Henry A. Wallace, a critic of Truman's foreign policies. Harriman served between 1946 and 1948. He was then in Paris, where he was put in charge of the Marshall Plan, and had friendly relations with Irving Brown, a CIA agent charged of the international relations of the AFL-CIO. Harriman was then sent to Teheran in July 1951 to mediate between Iran and Britain in the wake of the Iranian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

In the 1954 race to succeed Republican Thomas E. Dewey as Governor of New York, Harriman defeated Dewey's protege, U.S. Senator Irving M. Ives, by a tiny margin. He served as governor for one term until Republican Nelson Rockefeller unseated him in 1958. As governor, he increased personal taxes by 11% but his tenure was dominated by his presidential ambitions. Harriman was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 1952, and again in 1956 when he was endorsed by Truman but lost (both times) to Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. Harriman was generally considered to be on the left or liberal wing of the Democratic party, hence his losing out to the more moderate Stevenson.

His presidential ambitions defeated, Harriman became a widely-respected elder statesman of the party. In January 1961, he was appointed Ambassador at Large in the Kennedy administration, a position he held until November, when he became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. In December 1961, Anatoliy Golitsyn defected from the Soviet Union and accused Harriman of being a Soviet spy, but his claims were dismissed by the CIA and Harriman remained in his position until April 1963, when he became Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He retained that position through the transition to the Lyndon Johnson administration until March 1965 when he again became Ambassador at Large. He held that position for the remainder of Johnson's presidency. Harriman was the chief US negotiator at the Paris peace talks on Vietnam.

Harriman is noted for supporting, on behalf of the State department, the coup against Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. Johnson's confession in the assassination of Diem could indicate some complicity on Harriman's part.

Harriman received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 and West Point's Sylvanus Thayer Award in 1975.

In 1973 he was interviewed in the now famous TV documentary series The World at War where he gives a recollection of his experiences as Roosevelt's Personal Representative in Britain along with his views on Cold war politics; in particular Poland and the Warsaw Pact; along with the exchanges he witnessed between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin.