Word: pearsons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...negotiated-and guided through the General Assembly-the plan that established the State of Israel (thereby earning Israel's Medallion of Valor). By now, Pearson had won such fame as a civil servant that the courtly St. Laurent, succeeding aging Mackenzie King as Prime Minister in 1948, brought him into his Cabinet as External Affairs Secretary-and into Parliament as a reluctant politician. Asked on the day he joined the Cabinet when he had become a Liberal, Pear son grinned: "Today...
Vodka & Mr. Dulles. It used to be said that when New Delhi wanted to talk to Washington, the call went first to Ottawa. As an interlocutor, Pearson attained a rare influence for Canada; Senator John F. Kennedy wrote that the Canadian Foreign Service for its size was "probably unequaled by any other nation." A colleague describes Pearson's talents as a negotiator: "He sits down with a person from another country without ingrained hostility or prejudice or superiority. He has a sense of humor that helps...
...Pearson ably demonstrated the technique of the international honest broker, though his interventions sometimes got him labeled as a neutralist in the U.S. When Red Chinese armies marched into Korea, and the U.S. proposed a hard U.N. resolution that Britain feared would extend the war, Pearson frankly told the U.S. that its policy was about "to go off the rails." Then he nudged Commonwealth Prime Ministers, meeting in London, closer to the U.S. position, and a compromise resolution was passed. Conceded a U.S. diplomat: "We would never have taken so much arm-twisting from anyone but Mike...
...Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, Pearson made a prescient speech that was all but ignored: "The days of relatively easy and automatic political relations with our neighbor are, I think, over." He was talking as much to Canadians as Americans, and urging a mutual realization that with a next-door view, Canada could speak up to-and for-U.S. leadership more usefully if its voice was more than merely an echo...
After sitting on the three-man U.N. committee that negotiated the Korean ceasefire, Pearson in 1952 was elected U.N. Assembly President. For his unruffled performance. Pearson was nominated by Denmark, with Britain and France, to succeed Lie as Secretary-General, once again was vetoed by the Russians. The job went to Dag Hammarskjold. In 1955 Pearson took off for Moscow at the invitation of Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov-something that no NATO Foreign Minister before him in the tense 1950s had done. Pearson talked trade with the Russians, "did my best to disabuse them of some of their...