1. Hard crisp bread originally used as ship's stores
2. A sweet or plain bread baked, sliced, and baked again until dry and crisp

(David) (1909-1994) US Democrat politician. He was secretary of state to presidents J F Kennedy and L B Johnson 1961–69, and became unpopular through his involvement with the Vietnam War.
Rusk was born in Georgia, the son of a Presbyterian minister, and studied politics at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. He taught political science on his return to the US, before military service during the World War II, where he was involved in intelligence and guerrilla operations in Burma (now Myanmar). He joined the US State Department after the war and progressed to becoming assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs 1950–51. He was prominent in Korean War negotiations; convinced of the need not to appease communist expansionism, he played a key part in the US decision to defend South Korea against invasion by North Korea.
In 1952, when the Republican general Dwight Eisenhower was elected US president, Rusk left the State Department to become president of the internationalist Rockefeller Foundation. John F Kennedy appointed Rusk as his secretary of state on assuming the presidency 1961. Rusk advised against the unsuccessful April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. During the Cuban missile crisis the following year, when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev backed down, he commented famously: “We’re standing eyeball to eyeball, and the other fellow just blinked.”
Despite criticism from peace campaigners, Rusk never wavered in his advocacy of a firm interventionist line in Vietnam in an effort to halt the perceived spread of communism. He continued as secretary of state under President Lyndon Johnson, before retiring 1969 to teach international law at the University of Georgia. Liberal on social issues but hawkish and internationalist on external matters, Rusk was an archetypal “defense Democrat”.

City in Texas (USA).