Diebold, a supporter of the Bretton Woods economic system and a free trade economist, shaped and studied global economic policy following World War II.
 
A graduate of Swarthmore College (1937) and The London School of Economics (1939), he influenced government officials and policy makers as a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a member of the council’s War & Peace Project.
 
Diebold authored numerous books in addition to being a prolific reviewer of economic books in Foreign Affairs.  He also oversaw the Council’s work on Canadian relations for several years after his 1983 retirement.
 
In 1948, the creation of a multilateral institution for trade, to complement the IMF and the World Bank, was successfully negotiated in Havana.  However, the life of this institution, the International Trade Organization, was short lived.  As a proponent of free trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, Diebold authored a reflective history of the seminal, yet short lived organization: “Can we invent new means of attaining old aims?  How can we devise a policy that is not only promising, but politically acceptable?”  Prescient, Diebold’s goals were formalized after eight rounds of GATT negotiations, and forty-seven years, with the creation of the World Trade Organization.