The Far Eastern Commission

Shortly before he left the State Department in the summer of 1947, Undersecretary Dean Acheson summarized the main objectives of American foreign policy during his term in office. These, he said, had been principally two. One was to “establish the unity and mutual confidence and cooperation of the great powers.” The other, he said, was to “create international organizations necessarily based on the assumption of this unity and cooperation, in which all nations could together guarantee both freedom from aggression and the opportunity for both the devastated and undeveloped countries to gain and expand their productivity under institutions of their own free choice.''x Following out this policy, the United States has helped to create and has participated in an impressive number of international organizations. Some, like the United Nations and its affiliates, are directed mainly to the continuing task of building and maintaining a secure peacetime order among nations. Others, like the Allied control bodies in former enemy countries, have the more temporary job of filling in the gap of leadership until peace treaties have been signed.