The Policy Planning Staff (sometimes referred to as the Policy Planning Council, the Office of Policy Planning or by its in-house acronym S/P [1] ) is the principal strategic arm of the United States Department of State. [2] It was created in 1947 by Foreign Service Officer George F. Kennan at the request of Secretary of State George Marshall to serve "as a source of independent policy analysis and advice for the secretary of state." Its first assignment was to design the Marshall Plan.
Early directors include George F. Kennan and Paul Nitze. More recently came Anne-Marie Slaughter, Jake Sullivan, Dennis Ross, Gregory B. Craig, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Haass. Past members include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sandy Berger, Kori Schake, Michael Armacost, and Peter Berkowitz. At least fourteen past members of the Policy Planning Staff have served as ambassadors. [3]
The Staff is headed by the director of policy planning. As of June 2023, its director is Salman Ahmed.
The United States secretary of defense (SecDef) is the head of the United States Department of Defense, the executive department of the U.S. Armed Forces, and is a high-ranking member of the federal cabinet. The secretary of defense's position of command and authority over the military is second only to that of the president of the United States, who is the commander-in-chief. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a defense minister in many other countries. The secretary of defense is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and is by custom a member of the Cabinet and by law a member of the National Security Council.
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American politician and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman's main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947 during early years of the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was in private law practice from July 1947 to December 1948. After 1949 Acheson came under political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman's policy toward the People's Republic of China.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. CFR is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. Its membership has included senior politicians, secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, corporate directors, CEOs, and prominent media figures.
George Frost Kennan was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".
The White House Fellows program is a non-partisan fellowship established via executive order by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October 1964. The fellowship is one of USA's most prestigious programs for leadership and public service, offering exceptional US Citizens first-hand experience working at the highest levels of the federal government. The fellowship was founded based upon a suggestion from John W. Gardner, then the president of Carnegie Corporation and later the sixth secretary of health, education, and welfare.
Containment was a geopolitical strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States during the Cold War to prevent the spread of communism after the end of World War II. The name was loosely related to the term cordon sanitaire, which was containment of the Soviet Union in the interwar period.
The "X Article" is an article, formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", written by George F. Kennan and published under the pseudonym "X" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. It introduced the term "containment" to widespread use and advocated the strategic use of that concept against the Soviet Union. It expanded on ideas expressed by Kennan in a confidential February 1946 telegram, formally identified by Kennan's State Department number, "511", but informally dubbed the "long telegram" for its size.
Robert Abercrombie Lovett was an American politician who served as the fourth United States Secretary of Defense, having been promoted to this position from Deputy Secretary of Defense. He served in the cabinet of President Harry S. Truman from 1951 to 1953 and in this capacity, directed the Korean War. As Under Secretary of State, he handled most of the tasks of the State Department while George C. Marshall was secretary.
Paul Henry Nitze was an American businessman and government official who served as United States Deputy Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is best known for being the principal author of NSC 68 and the co-founder of Team B. He helped shape U.S. Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations.
William Harding Jackson was a U.S. civilian administrator, New York lawyer, and investment banker who served as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Jackson also served briefly under President Dwight D. Eisenhower as Acting United States National Security Advisor from 1956 to 1957.
Charles "Chip" Eustis Bohlen was an American diplomat, ambassador, and expert on the Soviet Union. He helped shape United States foreign policy during World War II and the Cold War and helped develop the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was the covert operation wing of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Created as a department of the CIA in 1948, it actually operated independently until October 1950. OPC existed until 1 August 1952, when it was merged with the Office of Special Operations (OSO) to form the Directorate of Plans (DDP).
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a non-partisan American public policy think tank that seeks to promote cooperation and understanding between North America and the European Union.
William Joseph Burns is an American diplomat and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Biden administration since March 19, 2021. He previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of state from 2011 to 2014; in 2009 he served as acting secretary of state for a day, prior to the confirmation of Hillary Clinton. Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 32-year career. From 2014 to 2021, he served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made is a non-fiction book authored by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas. Published by Simon & Schuster in 1986, it describes the actions of a group of U.S. federal government officials and members of the East Coast foreign policy establishment. Starting in the immediate post-World War II period, the group developed the containment policy of dealing with the Communist bloc during the Cold War. They also helped to craft institutions and initiatives such as NATO, the World Bank, and the Marshall Plan. An updated edition of the book was released in 2012.
Executive oversight of United States covert operations has been carried out by a series of sub-committees of the National Security Council (NSC).
Brian H. Hook is an American diplomat, lawyer and government official. In 2021, he joined Cerberus Capital Management as vice chairman for global investments. He is an adjunct professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
David F. Gordon is Head of Research at Eurasia Group, the political risk consultancy. He was previously the U.S. State Department's Director of Policy Planning, where he held a rank equivalent to a United States Assistant Secretary of State.
The Foreign Affairs Policy Board is an advisory board that provides independent advice and opinion to the Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of State, and the Director of Policy Planning on matters concerning U.S. foreign policy. The Board reviews and assesses global threats and opportunities, trends that implicate core national security interests, tools and capacities of the civilian foreign affairs agencies, and priorities and strategic frameworks for U.S. foreign policy. The Board meets in a plenary session several times a year at the U.S. Department of State in the Harry S. Truman Building.
The Cold War from 1947 to 1948 is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the incapacitation of the Allied Control Council in 1948. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–1991. It took place worldwide, but it had a partially different timing outside Europe. Some conflicts between the West and the USSR appeared earlier. In 1945–1946 the US and UK strongly protested Soviet political takeover efforts in Eastern Europe and Iran, while the hunt for Soviet spies made the tensions more visible. However, historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–1948 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the breakdown of cooperation in governing occupied Germany by the Allied Control Council. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term "Cold War" to describe the increasingly chilly relations between three World War II Allies: the United States and British Empire together with the Soviet Union.