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Biographies in American Foreign Policy
Dean Rusk: Defending the American Mission Abroad
Dean Rusk compared his position as secretary of state in the 1960s to a soldier in a foxhole, defending America against the communist alliance. Author Thomas W. Zeiler writes that the foxhole really represented the universalist ideals Rusk cherished, beliefs that were overrun by the Cold War, by the realism of the two presidents he served, and ultimately by the Vietnam War. With an eye closely on Rusk's liberal internationalism, Dean Rusk uses the secretary of state as a foil to explain to students the accomplishments of United States leadership in the world and the pitfalls the nation encountered due to the tensions between realpolitik and liberal ideology. Through the career of Rusk, the book reflects on the uses and abuses of predominant power in diplomacy, and interprets well-known events and issues in the comparative framework of idealism and realism. In explaining Rusk's policies and decisions, it also analyzes the evolving uses and interpretations of Wilsonianism, the major ideology shaping twentieth-century American diplomacy. Dean Rusk follows the course of the Cold War, the defining international conflict of the last 50 years.
235 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1999
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September 28, 2021
Secretary of State Dean Rusk served his term during the whirl of the Cold War and witnessed conflicts and crises as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, the Six-Day War and the Biafra famine. Remembered by his Special Assistant, Emory C. Swank, as “even-tempered, considerate, and kind . . . with natural reserve and reticence and no fondness for small talk” and by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. as Buddha-like in "A Thousand Days," Dean Rusk was peculiarly out of place in the violent and unpredictable times in which he lived. Both valued and despised for his restraint and equanimity, he channeled his skills into securing compromises and avoiding the type of diplomatic fiasco that would trigger a nuclear war.
As Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969, Dean Rusk was one of America's major Vietnam War policy-makers. He supported American military involvement in Vietnam because he viewed the conflict as an important test of America's determination to contain communism around the world. As the war's popularity diminished, though, Rusk's unfaltering defense of American actions in Vietnam made him a controversial figure. Even after leaving public life in 1969, he continued to consider the American effort in Vietnam noble and right.
David Dean Rusk was born in February 1909 in Cherokee County, Georgia. His parents were Frances Rusk, a schoolteacher, and Robert Rusk, a farmer and postal worker. Rusk's parents struggled to provide their five children with clothing and shelter, but taught them to value education as a tool that could lift them out of poverty.
Rusk hearkened to his parents' teaching. After completing high school in Atlanta in 1926, he used saved earnings and scholarship assistance to enroll at Davidson College in North Carolina. He graduated from there with honors in 1931 and then went on to receive a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which enabled him to earn a master's degree in International Relations from Oxford University in 1934. The same year Rusk returned to the United States and accepted a faculty position with Mills College in California. Three years later, he joined the faculty of the University of California and married Virginia Foisie, with whom he eventually had three children.
In December 1940 Rusk was drafted into military service. Although he was initially made an infantry captain, as the Second World War progressed, Rusk was transferred to posts that took greater advantage of his abilities as an administrator and analyst. From 1941 to 1943, he worked in Army Intelligence in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, he was transferred to India, where he became an important member of General Joseph Stilwell's staff.
By the time Rusk was discharged from military service in 1946, he had gained a considerable reputation as a devoted and able administrator. He spent the next several years moving up through the diplomatic ranks in both the State Department and the Department of Defense. He appeared as an important voice on such issues as the Korean War, United Nations policies, and other international affairs. Furthermore, he became a recognized expert on European-Asian relations. Rusk was sympathetic to Asian peoples who wanted to be free of European colonialism, and he played an important part in President Harry Truman's decision to support Indonesian independence in 1949. However, Dean Rusk also became known during as a staunch anti-Communist, who believed that the United States should take the lead in guarding the world from Communist aggression.
In 1952 Rusk left the State Department to accept the presidency of the Rockefeller Foundation, a charity trust. He led the foundation for the next eight years, overseeing a variety of health, education, and economic programs within underdeveloped and impoverished countries. During this time, his reputation as one of the United States' leading foreign policy experts continued to grow, so when John F. Kennedy succeeded Dwight Eisenhower in the White House, the president-elect offered Rusk the position of Secretary of State. Rusk gladly accepted the offer, which made him one of the nation's most powerful foreign policy-makers.
After joining the Kennedy White House, Rusk once again proved his skills as a manager and administrator. In addition, he advised Kennedy on several major foreign policy issues, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – this tense week in which the United States and the Soviet Union moved to the brink of war after the U.S. discovered that Soviet missiles had been installed in Cuba. The crisis did pass after the Soviets agreed to remove the missile threat in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Communist Cuba, but Kennedy became frustrated with Rusk's cautiousness, and as time passed it became clear that the president placed greater value on the advice of some other cabinet members, such as Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
Rusk became more noticed and influential during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Rusk's steadiness, loyalty, and Southern background appealed to the new President, who was a Texan. That is why the Secretary of State soon emerged as one of the Johnson administration's primary architects of American policy toward South Vietnam.
Dean Rusk viewed the Vietnam War as an important test of America's determination to contain communism and maintain its position as the world's leading democracy. He believed that if the United States broke its commitment to defend South Vietnam from its Communist neighbors, China or Russia might invade other countries in the belief that Americans would not intervene. He thought that such an invasion might then lead to a nuclear war between the United States and either China or Russia.
This belief led Rusk to support more hawkish American military policies toward Vietnam in the mid-1960s, when it appeared that the South was in danger of falling to the Communists. He abandoned his previous opposition to using American troops in the conflict and joined McNamara in urging for a military strategy of gradual escalation toward North Vietnam. Persuaded by this advice, Johnson committed large numbers of American troops to the South's defense and launched bombing campaigns against the Viet Minh. Before long, the United States had assumed primary responsibility for defeating the Communists in Vietnam.
From 1965 to 1969, Rusk carried out Johnson's instructions regarding the Vietnam War. In February 1966 he testified before the Senate that America's position toward North Vietnam was actually quite reasonable:
"We are not asking anything from Hanoi except to stop shooting their neighbors in Laos and South Vietnam," he declared. "We are not asking them to give up an acre of territory. We are not asking them to surrender a single individual, nor to change the form of government. All we are asking them to do is to stop sending armed men and arms, contrary to specific agreements and contrary to international law, into South Vietnam for the purpose of shooting somebody. . . . We are not asking them to surrender a thing except their appetite to take over South Vietnam by force." The deepening American military involvement failed to defeat the Communists, though. Instead, the war dragged on with no end in sight.
The American people became bitterly divided about continued American commitment to the conflict, and as one of President Johnson's major architects of Vietnam policy, Rusk became a frequent target of the American anti-War movement. Yet Rusk never stopped defending the American military presence in Vietnam. "We believe that the South Vietnamese are entitled to a chance to make their own decisions about their own affairs and their own future course of policy. . . without having them imposed on them by force from North Vietnam or from the outside," he declared in one 1965 appearance before a Senate foreign relations committee.
Rusk eventually became one of the administration's leading spokesmen on the war effort. He even offered strong public defenses of policies he privately disagreed with, such as Johnson's decision to bomb cities in North Vietnam. While he frequently acknowledged that there may have been flaws in some aspects of the American policy, the Secretary of State never relinquished his support of the overall strategy the Johnson administration pursued.
By the late 1960-s, Rusk's vigorous pro-war statements had made him a favorite target of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Every time the Secretary of State made a public appearance anti-War demonstrations broke out. Rusk's son Richard publicly criticized his father for his role in continuing an "immoral" war. This situation compelled Rusk to curtail his public appearances dramatically in the last year of his service.
Dean Rusk retired from public life in 1969, when Richard Nixon became president and established a new Republican administration to run the country. By the time he departed, Rusk had served as Secretary of State for eight years – the second-longest term in that office in American history. His years of service and his widely recognized skills in managing the affairs of the State Department, he left the American government as a deeply controversial figure whose name provoked acutely negative reactions in many Americans. He remained in the annals of history – first and foremost – as a defender of the protracted, costly, and generally unpopular Vietnam quagmire.
DEAN RUSK: Defending the American Mission Abroad is not a stellar work, but it is a well-written, concise, and informative biography. Worth a read if you want to know more about the Secretary of State "to whom power did not gravitate."
As Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969, Dean Rusk was one of America's major Vietnam War policy-makers. He supported American military involvement in Vietnam because he viewed the conflict as an important test of America's determination to contain communism around the world. As the war's popularity diminished, though, Rusk's unfaltering defense of American actions in Vietnam made him a controversial figure. Even after leaving public life in 1969, he continued to consider the American effort in Vietnam noble and right.
David Dean Rusk was born in February 1909 in Cherokee County, Georgia. His parents were Frances Rusk, a schoolteacher, and Robert Rusk, a farmer and postal worker. Rusk's parents struggled to provide their five children with clothing and shelter, but taught them to value education as a tool that could lift them out of poverty.
Rusk hearkened to his parents' teaching. After completing high school in Atlanta in 1926, he used saved earnings and scholarship assistance to enroll at Davidson College in North Carolina. He graduated from there with honors in 1931 and then went on to receive a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, which enabled him to earn a master's degree in International Relations from Oxford University in 1934. The same year Rusk returned to the United States and accepted a faculty position with Mills College in California. Three years later, he joined the faculty of the University of California and married Virginia Foisie, with whom he eventually had three children.
In December 1940 Rusk was drafted into military service. Although he was initially made an infantry captain, as the Second World War progressed, Rusk was transferred to posts that took greater advantage of his abilities as an administrator and analyst. From 1941 to 1943, he worked in Army Intelligence in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, he was transferred to India, where he became an important member of General Joseph Stilwell's staff.
By the time Rusk was discharged from military service in 1946, he had gained a considerable reputation as a devoted and able administrator. He spent the next several years moving up through the diplomatic ranks in both the State Department and the Department of Defense. He appeared as an important voice on such issues as the Korean War, United Nations policies, and other international affairs. Furthermore, he became a recognized expert on European-Asian relations. Rusk was sympathetic to Asian peoples who wanted to be free of European colonialism, and he played an important part in President Harry Truman's decision to support Indonesian independence in 1949. However, Dean Rusk also became known during as a staunch anti-Communist, who believed that the United States should take the lead in guarding the world from Communist aggression.
In 1952 Rusk left the State Department to accept the presidency of the Rockefeller Foundation, a charity trust. He led the foundation for the next eight years, overseeing a variety of health, education, and economic programs within underdeveloped and impoverished countries. During this time, his reputation as one of the United States' leading foreign policy experts continued to grow, so when John F. Kennedy succeeded Dwight Eisenhower in the White House, the president-elect offered Rusk the position of Secretary of State. Rusk gladly accepted the offer, which made him one of the nation's most powerful foreign policy-makers.
After joining the Kennedy White House, Rusk once again proved his skills as a manager and administrator. In addition, he advised Kennedy on several major foreign policy issues, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 – this tense week in which the United States and the Soviet Union moved to the brink of war after the U.S. discovered that Soviet missiles had been installed in Cuba. The crisis did pass after the Soviets agreed to remove the missile threat in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Communist Cuba, but Kennedy became frustrated with Rusk's cautiousness, and as time passed it became clear that the president placed greater value on the advice of some other cabinet members, such as Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
Rusk became more noticed and influential during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Rusk's steadiness, loyalty, and Southern background appealed to the new President, who was a Texan. That is why the Secretary of State soon emerged as one of the Johnson administration's primary architects of American policy toward South Vietnam.
Dean Rusk viewed the Vietnam War as an important test of America's determination to contain communism and maintain its position as the world's leading democracy. He believed that if the United States broke its commitment to defend South Vietnam from its Communist neighbors, China or Russia might invade other countries in the belief that Americans would not intervene. He thought that such an invasion might then lead to a nuclear war between the United States and either China or Russia.
This belief led Rusk to support more hawkish American military policies toward Vietnam in the mid-1960s, when it appeared that the South was in danger of falling to the Communists. He abandoned his previous opposition to using American troops in the conflict and joined McNamara in urging for a military strategy of gradual escalation toward North Vietnam. Persuaded by this advice, Johnson committed large numbers of American troops to the South's defense and launched bombing campaigns against the Viet Minh. Before long, the United States had assumed primary responsibility for defeating the Communists in Vietnam.
From 1965 to 1969, Rusk carried out Johnson's instructions regarding the Vietnam War. In February 1966 he testified before the Senate that America's position toward North Vietnam was actually quite reasonable:
"We are not asking anything from Hanoi except to stop shooting their neighbors in Laos and South Vietnam," he declared. "We are not asking them to give up an acre of territory. We are not asking them to surrender a single individual, nor to change the form of government. All we are asking them to do is to stop sending armed men and arms, contrary to specific agreements and contrary to international law, into South Vietnam for the purpose of shooting somebody. . . . We are not asking them to surrender a thing except their appetite to take over South Vietnam by force." The deepening American military involvement failed to defeat the Communists, though. Instead, the war dragged on with no end in sight.
The American people became bitterly divided about continued American commitment to the conflict, and as one of President Johnson's major architects of Vietnam policy, Rusk became a frequent target of the American anti-War movement. Yet Rusk never stopped defending the American military presence in Vietnam. "We believe that the South Vietnamese are entitled to a chance to make their own decisions about their own affairs and their own future course of policy. . . without having them imposed on them by force from North Vietnam or from the outside," he declared in one 1965 appearance before a Senate foreign relations committee.
Rusk eventually became one of the administration's leading spokesmen on the war effort. He even offered strong public defenses of policies he privately disagreed with, such as Johnson's decision to bomb cities in North Vietnam. While he frequently acknowledged that there may have been flaws in some aspects of the American policy, the Secretary of State never relinquished his support of the overall strategy the Johnson administration pursued.
By the late 1960-s, Rusk's vigorous pro-war statements had made him a favorite target of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Every time the Secretary of State made a public appearance anti-War demonstrations broke out. Rusk's son Richard publicly criticized his father for his role in continuing an "immoral" war. This situation compelled Rusk to curtail his public appearances dramatically in the last year of his service.
Dean Rusk retired from public life in 1969, when Richard Nixon became president and established a new Republican administration to run the country. By the time he departed, Rusk had served as Secretary of State for eight years – the second-longest term in that office in American history. His years of service and his widely recognized skills in managing the affairs of the State Department, he left the American government as a deeply controversial figure whose name provoked acutely negative reactions in many Americans. He remained in the annals of history – first and foremost – as a defender of the protracted, costly, and generally unpopular Vietnam quagmire.
DEAN RUSK: Defending the American Mission Abroad is not a stellar work, but it is a well-written, concise, and informative biography. Worth a read if you want to know more about the Secretary of State "to whom power did not gravitate."
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