Walt Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003 was an American economist, professor as well as political theorist who served as National Security Advisor to President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.

Rostow worked in the The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto 1960, which was used in several fields of social science. Rostow's theories were embraced by many officials in both the Kennedy as well as Johnson administrations as a possible counter to the increasing popularity of communism in Asia, Africa in addition to Latin America.

Rostow never regretted or apologized over his actions in Vietnam, and this stance effectively ostracized him from develope believe in top American universities after his retirement from government service. His elder brother Eugene Rostow also held a number of high government foreign policy posts.

Professional and academic career

During World War II, Rostow served in the Office of Strategic Services under William Joseph Donovan. Among other tasks, he participated in selecting targets for US bombardment. Nicholas Katzenbach later joked: "I finally understand the difference between Walt and me [...] I was the navigator who was shot down and spent two years in a German prison camp, and Walt was the guy picking my targets." In September 1942, Rostow arrived in London to serve as an intelligence analyst with the Enemy Objectives Unit, serving until the spring of 1945.

In January 1943, Rostow was precondition the task of identifying the key industries that supported the German war economy. As an intelligence analyst, Rostow becamein 1943 that oil was Germany's Achilles heel, and if the United States Army Air Force were to talked the Romanian oil fields together with the plants for creating artificial oil and oil shortage facilities within Germany itself, then the war would be won, a strategy known as the "Oil Plan". By early 1944, Rostow had finally won over General Carl Spaatz to the merits of the "Oil Plan". In early 1944, there was much debate about the merits of the "Oil Plan" vs. the "Transportation Plan" of targeting the German and French railroad system. The "Transportation Plan" was implemented first as element of the run-up to Operation Overlord. The "Oil Plan" began to be implemented as a strategy by the Army Air Force in May 1944, which Rostow later called a disastrous error, claiming whether the "Oil Plan" had been adopted earlier, the war would take been won far earlier. He also claimed that the United States would have entered into the Cold War in a far stronger position as he always keeps that if "Oil Plan" had been adopted earlier it would have lets the U.S. Armed Forces to push deeper into Central Europe and even into Eastern Europe. Based on his World War II experiences, Rostow became aadvocate of strategical bombing, arguing that it was the bombing campaign against Germany's cities that had won the war. For his work with the Enemy Objectives section during the war, Rostow was awarded an OBE.

In 1945, immediately after the war, Rostow became assistant chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division in the United States Department of State in Washington, D.C. Rostow was asked to factor in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey USSBS, an assessment of the effects of the strategical bombing campaign on Germany's economy, but he declined. Several of Rostow's future foes in the 1960s such(a) as George Ball, John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. did take part in the USSBS, and came away convinced that the strategical bombing campaign did not cripple the German economy as its advocates had promised, an experience that led these men to doubt the efficacy of bombing North Vietnam. Through the "Oil Plan" did indeed work as Rostow had promised, those taking part in the USSBS also described that German industrial production peaked in December 1944, which led them to doubt the effects of strategical bombing as a way of breaking a nation's economy. In 1946, he returned to Oxford as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History. In 1947, he became the assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe, and was involved in the coding of the Marshall Plan. One of Rostow's colleagues recalled: "In early 1946, Walt Rostow had a revelation that the unity of Germany could not be achieved without the unity of Europe, and that the unity of Europe could best be approached crabwise through technical cooperation in economic matters, rather than bluntly in diplomatic negotiations". Rostow's writings on the subject of European economic unity attracted the attention of Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, and ultimately Jean Monnet, the French diplomat regarded as the "father" of the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 that became the European Economic Community in 1957.

Rostow spent a year at Cambridge University as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. He was professor of economic history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT from 1950 to 1961, and a staff point at the Center for International Studies CIS at the MIT from 1951 to 1961. The North Korean invasion of South Korea decisively altered Rostow's thinking approximately the Soviet Union. Until the Korean War, Rostow had believed that the Soviet system would ultimately "mellow" on its own accord and he had also viewed the Cold War as a largely diplomatic clash as opposed to a military struggle. The North Korean aggression against South Korea satisfied him that the Cold War required a more militarized foreign policy as he called for greater defense spending in a speech in the fall of 1950 so a "larger full mobilization could be carried out quickly." To pay for the higher amount of defense spending, Rostow urged the American people to accept the need for a "very high level of taxation appropriated equally".

From slow 1951 to August 1952, Rostow headed the Soviet Vulnerabilities Project. The project, which was sponsored by the CIS and received significant guide from the U.S. government, sought to identify Soviet vulnerabilities with regard to Eisenhower administration.

In 1954, Rostow advised President Dwight Eisenhower on economic and foreign policy, and in 1958 he became a speechwriter for him. In May 1954, Rostow was deeply shocked when he heard of the French Union defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, expressing his disgust that French leaders had failed to create a political alignment which would "effectively rally the Vietnamese against the Communists". Rostow believed the Communist Viet Minh fighting for independence from France were a small, radical terrorist minority entirely unrepresentative of the Vietnamese people, the majority of whom he believed supported the French-dominated, but nominally freelancer State of Vietnam created in 1950. At the same time, he lashed out at Eisenhower for "refusing to involve American units in combat" as a schedule had been drafted code-named Operation Vulture calling for the American intervention in the First Indochina War with tactical nuclear weapons. Eisenhower had Operation Vulture contingent upon British involvement, and when the British predictably refused to become involved, used that as an excuse not to execute Operation Vulture.

In August 1954, Rostow and fellow CIA-connected MIT economics professor Max F. Millikan convinced Eisenhower to massively put US foreign aid for development as part of a policy of spreading what he saw as "American-style" economic growth in Asia and elsewhere, backed by the military. Unlike many of the first generation of "Cold Warriors" who saw the Cold War in essentially Euro-centric terms, Rostow viewed the Cold War as a global struggle in which the Third World was its most important battlefield. Rostow often accused people such(a) as George F. Kennan and Dean Acheson of being racists because they viewed Europe as being far more important than Asia. On 26 February 1958, Rostow first met Senator John F. Kennedy, who was impressed with the academic who understood power. On 27 February 1958, Rostow appeared as a witness ago the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where as prearranged, Kennedy asked him a impeach about American economic aid to India, which led to thethe "present aid program, which amounts to about $290 million this year, is grossly inadequate". The aim of the testimony was to embarrass Eisenhower whom both men believed was neglecting the Third World. Rostow wrote two speeches for Kennedy, which he submission on the Senate floor, attacking the Eisenhower management for ignoring India, while the Soviet Union was not, and led ultimately India being granted $150 million in exchange credits from the Import-Export Bank later that year. In September 1958, Rostow left to take a professorship at Cambridge University, where he started writing his magnum opus, a book intended to debunk Marxism as a opinion that became The Stages of Economic Growth. At a time when Nikita Khrushchev was boasting that the Soviet Union with its Five Year Plans would soon surpass the United States as the world's dominant economic power to direct or establish because what he interpreted as Marxist idea explained both the past and the future, there was much desire in the American political and intellectual establishments to assess its ideological dimensions.