Dean Rusk : Southern statesman

Author

Mark Kenneth Williams

Date of Award

8-2003

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

History

Major Professor

Russell D. Buhite

Abstract

This dissertation is a biographically informed study of Dean Rusk, one of the most important American policy officials in the twentieth century. As an assistant secretary of state under President Truman and as secretary of state during the Kennedy and Johnson 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 significant because it combines components of the methodologies of social and cultural history with the primary source material of military/ diplomatic studies to produce an original analysis of the development of Rusk's worldview and its effects on the American Cold War experience. This work begins with an examination of the roots of Rusk's ideology, which are traced to his early years in the American South. A native Georgian, Rusk was born in 1909 and grew up in poverty on 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 life from his childhood and adolescence in Georgia to his days as a college student in North Carolina, analyzing several key aspects of the Southern cultural experience influencing his ideological development. Arguing that Rusk's formative experiences in the region provide the key to understanding the statesman's nature and motivations, the author posits that Southern culture engendered Rusk's worldview. After evaluating how Rusk's formative experiences in the South were reenforced by education at Oxford and military service during World War II, the application and effect of his worldview during policy debate over issues such as the Korean War, SinoAmerican relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam War are examined. The research material for this project is comprised mainly of primary sources, including memoirs, family correspondence, oral histories, and government documents, many of which are recently declassified.

Recommended Citation

Williams, Mark Kenneth, "Dean Rusk : Southern statesman. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2003.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5207