Biography
Ball was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He lived in Evanston, Illinois and graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. and a J.D..
During 1944 – 45 he was director of the Strategic Bombing Survey in London.
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.'" In response to this prediction, "JFK laughed and replied, 'Well, George, you're supposed to be one of the smartest guys in town, but you're crazier than hell. That will never happen.'"
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," 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.
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. 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 among the first North American members of the Bilderberg Group, attending every meeting except for one before his death.
Read more about this topic: George Ball (diplomat)
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