Word: rusk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...truth, no one can assess for certain the extent of Rusk's influence on Johnson. Schlesinger claimed that Johnson has followed Rusk's policy against his own "instincts and goals;" other observers believe that the President has used Rusk as a "hard-liner" to buttress himself against criticism. In either case, Rusk was calling for a militant policy towards the Viet Cong as early as 1961. Whatever his effect on the President, Rusk's "doctrine" is distinctly...
That doctrine rests firmly on the basis of eighteenth century Newtonian science. According to that conception, there are certain laws in nature which man can learn through experiment. For Rusk, the experience at Munich in 1938 represents a "laboratory exercise in the anatomy and physiology of aggression" from which certain "eternal truths" emerged, namely, that "aggression" must be stopped by force. Modern scientific thought would hardly call its laws "eternal truths," yet Rusk continues to pride himself on the scientific nature of his thinking...
...Rusk, in this respect, resembles his Southern predecessor, John C. Calhoun, who believed that political affairs were "subject to laws as fixed as matter itself." Like Calhoun, Rusk grew up in the back country of the rural South yet still adopted the ways of a Southern gentleman...
...better understand the Rusk doctrine if one recalls that Rusk, like Calhoun, underwent a complete reversal of his political position. Just as Calhoun began his career as a nationalist. Rusk started out as a doctinaire isolationist on the State Department China Desk just before World War II. Pearl Harbor, apparently, had the same traumatic effect on Rusk that the tariff of 1828 had on Calhoun, for today Rusk has re-emerged as the champion of "globalism." Rusk believes that the effect of personalities must be eliminated from international affairs and that the affairs of men must be managed without passions...
...Rusk, in short, displays this kind of one-track thought which we have come to associate with Southern Senators. Compromise does not exist for such high minded gentlemen: honor will not permit it. Furthermore, Rusk tends to identify his personal honor with the national honor. "I am honored to have my name associated with the doctrine that the United States must honor its pledged word," Rusk has said repeatedly. What appears to bother Rusk most of all about the war in Vietnam, one suspects is the lack of chivalry on the other side...