Ball, George Wildman

Ball, George Wildman, 1909-94, American lawyer and diplomat, b. Des Moines, Iowa. Admitted to the bar in 1934, he served (1942-44) as counsel in the Lend Lease Administration and the Foreign Economic Administration. An expert on economic foreign policy, Ball became (1961) Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs and then served (1961-66) as Undersecretary of State. During that period he played a major role in formulating U.S. foreign aid and foreign trade policy and was the chief architect of the Trade Agreements Act of 1962. A persistent critic of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Ball left the State Department to become (1966-68) chairman of Lehman Brothers, a major investment banking firm. After briefly serving (1968) as U.S. representative to the United Nations, he returned to Lehman Brothers as a senior partner. Ball is the author of The Discipline of Power (1968).

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

Ball was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He lived in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from Northwestern University. 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. Ball also served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from June 26 to September 25, 1968. During the Nixon Administration, George Ball helped draft American policy proposals in the Persian Gulf. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery.

Long a critic of Israeli policies toward its Arab neighbors, Ball co-authored The Passionate Attachment with his son, Douglas Ball. The 1992 book argued that American support for Israel has been morally, politically and financially costly.

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. 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. He was also associated with the secretive Bilderberg Group. 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.

Ball was played by actor Bruce McGill in the 2002 HBO movie Path to War about the formation of Vietnam policy in the Johnson Administration.

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.

See also

• The Best and the Brightest

External links

• 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