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David Dean Rusk

Also Known As Dean Rusk , Rusk

Former United States Secretary of State

Education

  • Graduate - Davidson College
  • Master's degree - St. John's College, Oxford
  • A.B. in political science - Davidson College

Overview

David Dean Rusk was the United States secretary of state from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the second-longest serving Secretary of State after Cordell Hull from the Franklin Roosevelt administration. He had been a high government official in the 1940s and early 1950s, as well as the head of a leading foundation. He is cited as one of the two officers responsible for dividing the two Koreas at the 38th parallel.

Born to a poor farm family in Cherokee County, Georgia, Rusk graduated from Davidson College and was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he immersed himself in English history and customs. After teaching at Mills College in California, he became an army officer in the war against Japan. He served as a staff officer in the China Burma India Theater, becoming a senior aide to Joseph Stilwell, the top American general. As a civilian he became a senior official in 1945 at the State Department, rising to the number three position under Dean Acheson. He became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1950. In 1952, Rusk left to become president of the Rockefeller Foundation.

After Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election, he asked Rusk to serve as secretary of state. Rusk was a quiet advisor to Kennedy, rarely making his own views known to other officials. He supported diplomatic efforts during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and, though he initially expressed doubts about the escalation of the U.S. role in the Vietnam War, he became known as one of its strongest supporters. Asked to stay on by President Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Rusk was known to be a favorite of Johnson's. He left the Secretary role in January 1969, and taught international relations at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Secretary of State :

On December 12, 1960, Democratic President-elect John F. Kennedy nominated Rusk to be Secretary of State. Rusk was not Kennedy's first choice; his first choice, J. William Fulbright, proved too controversial. David Halberstam also described Rusk as "everybody's number two". Rusk had recently written an article titled "The President" in Foreign Affairs calling for the president to direct foreign policy with the secretary of state as a mere adviser, which had Kennedy's interest after it was pointed out to him. After deciding that Fulbright's support for segregation disqualified him, Kennedy summoned Rusk for a meeting, where he himself endorsed Fulbright as the man best qualified to be Secretary of State. Rusk himself was not particularly interested in running the State Department as the annual pay for secretary of state was $25,000 while his job as director of the Rockefeller Foundation paid $60,000 per year. Rusk only agreed to take the position out of a sense of patriotism after Kennedy insisted that he take the job. 

Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek explained Rusk's choice thus:

By process of elimination, and determined to run foreign policy from the White House, Kennedy came to Dean Rusk, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation. Rusk was an acceptable last choice, with the right credentials and the right backers. A Rhodes scholar, a college professor, a World War II officer, an Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East under Truman, a liberal Georgian sympathetic to integration, and a consistent Stevenson supporter, Rusk offended no one. The foreign policy establishment — Acheson, Lovett, liberals Bowles and Stevenson, and The New York Times — all sang his praises. But most of all, it was clear to Kennedy from their one meeting in December 1960 that Rusk would be a sort of faceless, faithful bureaucrat who would serve rather than attempt to lead.

Kennedy tended to address Rusk as "Mr. Rusk" instead of Dean.

Rusk took charge of a department he knew well when it was half the size. It now employed 23,000 people including 6,000 Foreign Service officers and had diplomatic relations with 98 countries. He had faith in the use of military action to combat communism. Despite private misgivings about the Bay of Pigs invasion, he remained noncommittal during the executive council meetings leading up to the attack and never opposed it outright. Early in his tenure, he had strong doubts about US intervention in Vietnam, but later his vigorous public defense of US actions in the Vietnam War made him a frequent target of anti-war protests. Just as had under the Truman administration, Rusk tended to favor hawkish line towards Vietnam and frequently allied himself in debates in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council with equally hawkish Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

Early Life

David Dean Rusk was born February 9, 1909 in rural Cherokee County, Georgia. The Rusk ancestors had emigrated from Northern Ireland around 1795. His father Robert Hugh Rusk (1868–1944) had attended Davidson College and Louisville Theological Seminary. He left the ministry to become a cotton farmer and school teacher. Rusk's mother Elizabeth Frances Clotfelter was of German and Irish extraction. She had graduated from public school, and was a school teacher. When Rusk was four years old, the family moved to Atlanta, where his father worked for the U.S. Post Office. Rusk came to embrace the stern Calvinist work ethic and morality.

Like most white Southerners, his family was Democratic; young Rusk's hero was President Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern president since the Civil War era. The experience of poverty made him sympathetic to black Americans. As a 9 year old, Rusk attended a rally in Atlanta where President Wilson called on the United States to join the League of Nations. Rusk grew up on the mythology and legends of the "Lost Cause" so common to the South, and he came to embrace the militarism of Southern culture as he wrote in a high school essay that "young men should prepare themselves for service in case our country ever got into trouble." At the age of 12, Rusk had joined the ROTC, whose training duties he took very seriously. Rusk had an intense reverence for the military and throughout his later career, he was inclined to accept the advice of generals. 

He was educated in Atlanta's public schools, and graduated from Boys High School in 1925, spending two years working for an Atlanta lawyer before working his way through Davidson College, a Presbyterian school in North Carolina. He was active in the national military honor society Scabbard and Blade, becoming a cadet lieutenant colonel commanding the Reserve Officers' Training Corps battalion. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1931. While at Davidson, Rusk applied the Calvinist work ethic to his studies. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He studied international relations, taking an MA in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). He immersed himself in English history, politics, and popular culture, making lifelong friends among the British elite. Rusk's rise from poverty made him a passionate believer in the "American Dream", and a recurring theme throughout his life was his oft-expressed patriotism, a place in which he believed that anyone, no matter how modest their circumstances, could rise up to live the "American Dream". 

Rusk married Virginia Foisie (October 5, 1915 – February 24, 1996) on June 9, 1937. They had three children: David, Richard, and Peggy Rusk.

Rusk taught at Mills College in Oakland, California, from 1934 to 1949 (except during his military service), and he earned an LL.B. degree at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 1940.

Career

  • United States - Former Secretary of State

Reference

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