University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2003 Dean Rusk : Southern statesman Mark Kenneth Williams Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Williams, Mark Kenneth, "Dean Rusk : Southern statesman. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2003. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5207 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Mark Kenneth Williams entitled "Dean Rusk : Southern statesman." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Russell D. Buhite, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertationwritten by Mark Kenneth Williams entitled "Dean Rusk: Southern Statesman." I have examined the finalpaper copy of this dissertation for formand content andrecommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements forthe degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Russell D. Buhite, Major Professor We have read this dissertation Accepted forthe Council: � J Graduate Studies DEAN RUSK: SOUTHERN STATESMAN A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville MarkKenneth Williams August, 2003 11 Copyright © 2003 by MarkKenneth Williams. All rights reserved. 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply gratefulfor Dr. Russell D. Buhite's willingness to serve as director of this dissertation. An inspirational teacher and outstanding mentor and scholar,his guidance, unlimited patience, and sense of humor were essential to the successful preparation of this manuscript. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. John Muldowny, Dr. G. Kurt Piehler, and Dr. Charles Aiken for serving on my committee and fortheir invaluable suggestions and assistance. Also, I am indebted to the skilled archivists at the presidential libraries,as well as the National Archives and the Richard Russell Library, who made my researchat their respective facilitiesa pleasant and productive experience. Finally, many thanksto my wife,Jane, forhelp with researchand providing me with sustaining love and support. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation is a biographically informedstudy of Dean Rusk, one of the most important American policy officialsin the twentieth century. As an assistant secretaryof state under President Trumanand as secretaryof state during the Kennedy andJohnson administrations, Rusk was practitioner of an ideology centered on principles of honor, credibility, fidelity, democracy, and the sanctity of national sovereignty. Dean Rusk: Southern Statesman is significantbecause it combines components of the methodologies of social and cultural history with the primary source material of military/diplomatic studies to produce anoriginal analysis of the development of Rusk's worldview and its effectson the AmericanCold War experience. This work begins with an examination of the roots of Rusk's ideology, which are traced to his early yearsin the American South. A native Georgian, Rusk was bornin 1909 and grew up in povertyon a rural tenant farm,as well as in urban Atlanta, and he resided in the South until 1931. The dissertation delineates the course of Rusk's early lifefrom his childhood and adolescence in Georgia to his days as a college student in North Carolina, analyzingseveral key aspects of the Southerncultural experience influencinghis ideological development. Arguingthat Rusk's formative experiences in the region provide the key to understanding the statesman's nature and motivations, the authorposits that Southernculture engendered Rusk's worldview. Afterevaluating how Rusk's formativeexperiences in the South were reenforced by education at Oxfordand military service during World War II, the application and V effectof his worldview during policy debate over issues such as the Korean War, Sino­ American relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War are examined. The researchmaterial for this project is comprised mainly of primary sources, including memoirs, family correspondence, oral histories, and governmentdocuments, many of which are recently declassified. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO THE CRUCIBLE OF SOUTHERN CULTURE 10 CHAPTER THREE A GEORGIA BOY GOES TO OXFORD 60 CHAPTER FOUR "WHEN ARMEDBATTALIONS BEGIN TO MARCH:" DEAN RUSK AND WORLD WA R II 93 CHAPTER FIVE "TROUBLED TIMES:" DEAN RUSK IN THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION 137 CHAPTER SIX SECRETARY RUSK 184 CHAPTER SEVEN APPRAISING A SOUTHERNSTATESMAN 234 BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 VITA 252 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION "History sees with a compound eye through many facets.... " 1 Dean Rusk to RobertKennedy, 1965 Few officials wielded greater influenceon twentieth century American diplomacy than Dean Rusk. Rising quickly frommid-level bureaucrat during the Truman years to secretary of state during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Rusk forged a career in government service that spanned most of the history of the Cold War, involving him in many of the most important foreign policy decisions of the period. This important but frequentlymisunderstood American diplomat, whose tenure as secretary of state is surpassed only by Cordell Hull's, merits increased andvigorous scholarly attention. A native Georgian, Rusk was bornin 1909 and grew up in poverty on a rural tenant farm, as well as in urban Atlanta, residing in the South until 1931. Educated at Davidson College and Oxford, he served in the China-Burma-India theater in World War II, entering the Truman administration at the conclusion of the conflict.As an assistant secretary of state under Truman, Rusk implemented the containmentdoctrine, shaped policy toward the newly emergent states of Israel and the People's Republic of China, wrestled with decolonization, and helped guide America through the Korean War. In the 1 Transcript of Telephone Conversation, Robert Kennedy to Rusk, July 7, 1965, Folder: Transcripts of Telephone Calls 7/11/65-10/09/65, Box 54, Record Group (hereafter cited as RG) 5379, Rusk Files, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. - 2 1960s, when the United States was perhaps at the historic apex of its economic and military power relative to the rest of the globe, Secretary of State Rusk was at the center of an American foreignpolicy structure beset by crises over Berlin, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, North Korea, and the Middle East. He was a major architect and vocal public proponent of United States involvement in Vietnam, and for millions of Americans, he became emblematic of the government's efforts to prosecute the war. Despite Rusk's obvious significance, for most of the nearly fourdecades since his tenure as secretary of state, he has remained a somewhat puzzling figureto scholars of the Cold War. Indeed, in an early assessment of the Kennedy presidency, the enigmatic elements of Rusk and his diplomacy prompted historian Arthur Schlesinger to hope that "historians in due course may be able to ascertain what the Secretary wanted the government to do during the great crises of those years."That Rusk has defiedmore precise examination for so long is due in part to his reticent, self-effacing nature and because the bulk of the documentary evidence relative to his years in officehas only recently come to light through declassification. Moreover, Rusk has been inextricably entwined with the intense confusion, controversy, and debate surrounding America's experience in Vietnam.2 The Vietnam War is the aspect of Rusk's career to which the non-academic community is most strongly connected through familiarity and the attribution of singular significanceto the conflict, and the general public's lingering and contrasting images of 2Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: JohnF. Kennedy in the White House (New York, 1965), 403. 3 Rusk and the struggle have obscuredperception of the secretary of state. To his most extreme liberal detractors Rusk has seemed an immoral war monger, to staunch supporters a somewhat benign yet patriotic defenderof American interests and traditions. Others have viewed him as a myopic and overly aggressive interventionist, while those holding to conservative revisionism of the Vietnam War have labeled Rusk an inept and cautious bureaucrat who worked behind the scenes to restrict the military,thus denying the United States a genuine opportunity forvictory in the struggle. Initial scholarly evaluations of Rusk mirror the American public's variedbut largely negative assessment. He emerges fromearly portraitsof the Kennedy-Johnson years, such as Arthur Schlesinger's, A Thousand Days(1965), and David Halberstam's, The Best and the Brightest ( 1969), as a bland, ineffectualfigure unable or unwilling to control an unwieldy State Department. Conventional andmisguided in his assumptions and recommendations