Dr ADAM MCCONNEL
EAN Acheson prefaced his collection of political essays, A Democrat Looks at His Party, with a quote from the esteemed US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “And it seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.”
Holmes’s quote provided an effective summary of what Acheson, writing only two years after the end of his tenure as US Secretary of State, explained in the rest of the text.
While serving as the secretary of state, Acheson carried out one of the boldest and most visionary foreign policy initiatives of an era dominated by bold and visionary foreign policy initiatives.
From the inception of NATO in 1949, and until February 1952, Acheson engaged in a long process of arguing, cajoling, and eventually convincing various European allies, as well as Congress, into accepting the Turkish Republic as
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