George Ball (diplomat)

George Wildman Ball (December 21, 1909 – May 26, 1994) was an American diplomat.

Biography

Ball was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He lived in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from Northwestern University.

During 1944 – 45 he was director of the Strategic Bombing Survey in London.^[1]

He was the Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He is well known for his opposition to escalation in the Vietnam War. After Kennedy decided to send 16,000 "trainers" to Vietnam, "Ball, the one dissenter in Kennedy’s entourage, pleaded with JFK to recall France’s devastating defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu and throughout Indochina. 'Within five years we’ll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again.'"^[2] In response to this prediction, "JFK laughed and replied, 'Well, George, you're supposed one of the smartest guys in town, but you're crazier than hell. That will never happen.'"^[3]

Ball was one of the architects of Cable 243, and a supporter of the 1963 overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Ball also served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from June 26 to September 25, 1968. In August 1968 in UN Security Council he passionately defended the right of Czechoslovakia for freedom against the Soviet invasion and the right to live without dictatorships.

During the Nixon Administration, George Ball helped draft American policy proposals in the Persian Gulf.

Ball was long a critic of Israeli policies toward its Arab neighbors. He "called for the recalibration of America’s Israel policy in a much noted Foreign Affairs essay in 1977,"^[4] and in 1992 co-authored The Passionate Attachment with his son, Douglas Ball. The book argued that American support for Israel has been morally, politically and financially costly.^[5]

He often used the aphorism (perhaps originally coined by Ian Fleming in Diamonds are Forever) "Nothing propinks like propinquity," later dubbed the Ball Rule of Power.^[6] It means that the more direct access you have to the president, the greater your power, no matter what your title actually is.

Ball was an avowed socioeconomic elitist and an advocate of free trade, multinational corporations and the latters' theoretical ability to neutralize what he considered to be "obsolete" nation states. Prior to and following his ambassadorship, Ball was employed by Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. He was a senior managing director at Lehman Brothers until his retirement in 1982.^[7] Ball was among the first North American members of the Bilderberg Group, attending every meeting except for one before his death.^[8]

Death

Ball died in New York City on May 26, 1994. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery.

In popular culture

George Ball was portrayed by John Randolph in the 1974, made for TV film, The Missiles of October, by James Karen in the 2000 movie Thirteen Days and by Bruce McGill in the 2002 TV film Path to War.

See also

• The Best and the Brightest

References

Bibliography

• The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present, with Douglas B. Ball, ISBN 0-393-02933-6.

Further reading

• Ball, George W. (1983). The Past Has Another Pattern: Memoirs. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-30142-7. 
• Ball, George W. and Douglas B. (1992). The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement With Israel, 1947 to the Present. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02933-6. 
• Dileo, David L. (1991). George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking of Containment. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4297-4. 
• Bill, James A. (1997). George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy. Yale University Press. 

External links

• George W. Ball Papers at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
• Photo: George Ball
• Cold War International History Project's Cold War Files
• Bio at Northwestern University
• Bio at Montgomery Endowment
• Profile: George Ball, The Center for Cooperative Research
• Memorandum for the President from George Ball, "A Compromise Solution in South Vietnam"
• Memo from George Ball to McNamara
• Personal papers at National Archives Records
• Personal papers at Princeton University
• George W. Ball. How to save Israel in spite of herself, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, April 1977.
• George W. Ball. The Coming Crisis in Israeli-American Relations, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, Winter 1979.
• George W. Ball. The conduct of American foreign policy, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, 1980.
• James A. Bill. George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy
• Robert Dallek. George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy, The Washington Monthly, July 1997.
• Richard Curtiss. George Ball's Middle East views were muffled by U.S. media, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1994.
• William Engdahl. George Ball's role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Payvand News, March 10, 2006.
• Book review of biography on George Ball
• New York Times obituary
• Oral History Interviews with George Ball, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• Interview with George W. Ball, 1981, on the Vietnam War. WGBH Open Vault.
• Booknotes interview with Ball on The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement in Israel, 1947 to the Present, May 23, 1993.