Dean Rusk

Portrait of U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk

David Dean Rusk (February 9, 1909 – December 20, 1994) was the United States Secretary of State from 1961 to 1969 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Dean Rusk was born in Cherokee County, Georgia, where his name was given to a local middle school. He was educated in Atlanta, leaving school in 1925 to work for two years for a lawyer. Rusk then went to Davidson College in North Carolinaand joined the fraternity KA, graduating in 1931 and then went to St. John's College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, he received the Cecil Peace Prize in 1933.1934 to 1940 he taught at Mills College in Oakland, California. He studied law at the University of California, Berkeley, class of 1940. In World War II he joined the infantry as a reserve captain (he had been a ROTC Cadet Lieutenant Colonel), he served in Burma as a staff officer and ended the war as a colonel with the Legion of Merit and Oak Leaf Cluster.

He returned to America to work briefly for the War Department in Washington. He joined the Department of State in February 1945 working for the office of United Nations Affairs. In the same year, he suggested splitting Korea into a sphere of U.S. and one of Soviet influence at the 38th parallel north. He was made Deputy Under Secretary of State in 1949. He was made Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1950 and played an influential part in the US decision to become involved in the Korean War, and also Japan's postwar compensation for victorious countries, such as Rusk documents. However he was a cautious diplomat and always sought international support. Rusk had become a Rockefeller Foundation trustee in April 1950 and in 1952 he left the Department of State in 1952 to succeed Chester L. Barnard as president of the Foundation. On December 12, 1960, Rusk was named Secretary of State, assuming his office in January, 1961.

As Secretary of State he was consistently hawkish, a believer in the use of military action to combat Communism. During the Cuban missile crisis he initially supported an immediate military strike, but he soon turned towards diplomatic efforts. His public defense of US actions in the Vietnam War made him a frequent target of anti-war protests. Outside of his work against communism, he continued his Rockefeller Foundation ideas of aid to developing nations and also supported low tariffs to encourage world trade. Rusk also drew the ire of supporters of Israel after he let it be known that he believed the USS Liberty incident was a deliberate attack on the ship, rather than an accident.

Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.

Following his retirement, he taught international law at the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia (1970-1984).

He was the second-longest serving Secretary of State, behind Cordell Hull.

He married Virginia Foisie in 1937 and they had three children.

Dean Rusk

See also