Mike LaSusa SIS600, Brenner 04-29-2015

Walt Whitman Rostow: the wrong man at the wrong place with the wrong idea

In the introduction to the anthology The Policy Makers, editor Anna Kasten Nelson argues that the year 1961 marked the end of that era when secretaries of state held the primary position of influence in foreign policy-making, as presidents began turning to their national security assistants for advice1. One of the first was Walt Whitman Rostow. In his chapter on Rostow in Nelsons volume, historian Lloyd Gardner fleshes out this proposition, arguing that Rostows hawkeyed optimism and missionary zeal, combined with his reputation as a highly-intelligent brains trust2 and his close relationships with presidents John F. Kennedy and especially Lyndon Johnson, all contributed to Rostows deep influence on U.S. policy regarding the escalation of U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam during the 1960s. Other authors have come to similar conclusions as Gardner did about Rostows role during this period and it is doubtful that even the late Rostow himself would contest Gardners basic description of him as a hawkeyed optimist who, in Nelsons paraphrase, never lost his belief that the war could be won3. However, Rostow would also likely admit that the eventual implementation of policies he advocated depended upon the support of other high-level decision-makers, especially the President. In Americas Rasputin, David Milne provides an analysis of Rostows Vietnam legacy which informs much of this essay, in which he stresses that Rostows was not a lone voice in advocating for a campaign of graduated bombing, his most significant contribution to military strategy regarding U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia during the 1960s4. Rostows missionary zeal and unshakable confidence in his beliefs were constant features of his personality throughout his life5. Rostows basic ideology, as Cold War scholar Odd Arne Westad summarized it, held that as soon as a countrys natural development had been perverted by a socialist revolution then only outside support (potentially entailing U.S. military intervention) could relaunch that countrys trajectory toward capitalism and democracy6. The Rostow Thesis, as it became known, held that the United States must deal with externally supported insurgencies through bombing their source7. Regarding the conflict in Vietnam, the ide fixe of the application of this hawkish worldview, in Milnes words, was bombing the north, the alleged source of the insurgency in South Vietnam8. As early as 1961, when Rostow was serving as National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundys deputy and later as head of the State Department Policy Planning Commission during President 1 Nelson, The Policy Makers, Introduction, pg 2 2 Gardner, The Policy Makers, Walt Whitman Rostow: Hawkeyed Optimist, pg 62 3 Nelson, pg 2 4 Milne, Americas Rasputin, pg 11 5 Purdum, 2003 6 Westad, The Global Cold War, pg 332 7 Milne, pg 134 8 Milne, pg 98

John F. Kennedys administration, he found allies in the military who similarly supported increasing American intervention in Vietnam to stem what was seen as the growing threat of communist insurgencies backed by China and the Soviet Union in a key geostrategic region. In October 1961, Rostow and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Maxwell Taylor, reported to the White House following their trip to Vietnam that the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the weak and unpopular American-backed leader of South Vietnam, was threatening to collapse under pressure from one such insurgency9. Rostows own views on the necessity of increased American military intervention in Vietnam in order to save Diem had been informed by a report from earlier that year authored by Gen. Edward Lansdale, a Defense Department counterinsurgency expert who had extensive field experience in Southeast Asia. Rostow described Lansdales assessment as an extremely vivid and well-written account of a place that was going to hell in a hack and he came in to see the president with this [report] in [his] hand10. Once Rostow got Kennedy to read it, the report seemed to make an impression on the president, who asked Rostow to go deeply into the problem of Vietnam11. Rostow would go on to advocate greatly expanding the U.S. military role in Vietnam and Southeast Asia more generally, but such hawkish recommendations were not pursued by the Kennedy administration12. This may have been due, at least in part, to the influence of dissenting voices within President Kennedys trusted inner circle. As David Halberstam writes in his chronicle of the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest, an alternative appraisal of the situation provided by Kennedys ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, concluded almost the opposite of Taylor and RostowAbove all, [Galbraith] pushed for political, rather than military solutions to the problem13. Rostow worked to counter Galbraiths advice, submitting various memos to Kennedy attempting to rebut his analysis14. However, others in the administration had their doubts about the efficacy of a potential military escalation and bombing campaign, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy15. Rather than following the advice of Rostow and other hawks, Kennedy opted for something of a muddled compromise in his response to the deterioration of Diems authority and by extension the American position in Vietnam. He increased the U.S. troop presence in the south to 16,000 in 1963, but according to diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber, Kennedy also continued to pressure Diem to hurry reforms and listen to U.S. advice16. Halberstam may have put it best when he wrote ironically that Rostow was the wrong man at the wrong place with the wrong idea as the situation in Vietnam continued to worsen from the point of view of American policymakers17. After the fall of Diem and the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963, President Lyndon Johnson inherited what Rostow later described as

9 LaFeber, The American Age, pg 592 10 Rostow, 1964; cited in Milne, pg 85 11 Rostow, 1972; quoted in Milne, pg 86 12 Milne, pg 91 13 Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, pg 152 14 Rostow, 1961(a) and 1961(b) 15 Bundy, 1961 16 Lafeber, pg 594 17 Halberstam, pg 513

the great crisis of 1964-1965not narrowly in Vietnam, but a crisis in Asia18. At a time when more moderate courses of action seemed to have failed to halt the spread of Soviet and Chinese-backed communist influence in this important region, Milne argues, the Rostow Thesis which claimed certainty that the United States could defeat the southern insurgency by bombing North Vietnam brought Rostow to Johnsons attention as someone with original ideas and absolute commitment to the cause of defeating Southeast Asian communism19. In other words, Rostow said what the President wanted to hear20. Following the August 1964 confrontation between American and North Vietnamese naval vessels, known as the Tonkin Gulf incident, and the November 1964 attack at the Bien Hoa air base, which killed four U.S. soldiers and injured several others, Johnson ordered a national security working group, headed by William Bundy (brother of national security adviser McGeorge), to examine alternatives for bombing on the Rostow criteria21. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the group recommended a Rostovian model of graduated military pressures directed systematically against the DRV [North Vietnamese Government], consisting principally of progressively more serious airstrikes, of a weight and tempo adjusted to the situation as it developsThis could and, this author thinks it is important to note, did eventually lead to such measures as air strikes on all major military-related targets, aerial mining of DRV ports, and a US naval blockade of the DRV22. Many other important figures in the Johnson administration continued to recommend various forms of escalation, including bombing, against Vietnam throughout 196523. Both State and Defense referred to the option of bombing Vietnam as the Rostow Thesis, writes Milne. The usage of such terminology suggests that Rostows influence even from the distant remove of the [State Departments] Policy Planning Council was profound24. But as he also notes, Johnsons coterie of foreign policy advisors opted for the Rostow Thesis not with enthusiasm, but resignation25 it seemed there were no other viable options on the table26. This provides evidence that Rostow served more as an ideas man27 than a decision-maker in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. For example, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, while likely influenced by the Thesis long advocated by Rostow and his allies in the military, appeared to come to the conclusion that American escalation was necessary on his own accord. As Milne writes, McNamara had taken a trip to Vietnam in July 1965 and had become convinced that the United States could defeat the South Vietnamese insurgency through the application of its superior military force. The national security adviser [McGeorge Bundy] was equally convinced that America could not duck this battle. But the foundations on which these men made their recommendations were not formed in

18 Rostow, 1993 19 Milne, pg 11 20 Ibid 21 Ibid, 147 22 Document 6, Chapter 13; in Merrill and Patterson, pg 422 23 Bundy, 1965. 24 Ibid 25 Ibid, pg 147 26 Halberstam, Chapter 23 27 Milne, pg 154

a vacuum; they were shaped by many influences, one of which was the man who fashioned a Vietnam bombing strategy before anyone else, namely, Walt Rostow28. Rostows contribution to the making and prolonging of the Vietnam War was as important as any one of that more visible foreign policy trio consisting of national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, defense secretary Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, writes Milne29. But as he astutely points out; It should be made clear that while Rostows ideas were present at the crucial escalatory meetings of the Vietnam War, his person was not. His impact on the decisionmaking process prior to the launch of [the graduated bombing campaign against North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968, known as Operation] Rolling Thunder was significant, although he should not be placed alongside Bundy and McNamara as a direct participatory force for escalation in Vietnam more broadly30. In point of fact, McNamara later admitted his culpability in the horror that continued to unfold in Vietnam over the next decade. Looking back, McNamara wrote in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect, I clearly erred by not forcing then or later, in either Saigon or Washington a knock-down, drag-out debate over the loose assumptions, unasked questions, and thin analyses underlying our military strategy in Vietnam31. All the while, official Washington continued to view its deteriorating position in Southeast Asia with chagrin. A temporary pause in bombing in late 1965 advocated by McNamara had proved unsuccessful and by 1966 President Johnson increasingly saw links between winning the only woman I really loved (the Great Society programs at home) and the bitch of a war in Asia, as Lafeber put it32. The mounting financial and human costs of the war appeared to threaten the presidents ability to deliver on promises made to domestic constituencies. Historian Fredrik Logevall writes that for Johnson, who had promised he would not be the president who lost Vietnamit was not merely his countrys and his partys reputation that [he] took to be on the line, but also his own33. Rostow shared with Johnson a personal investment in the outcome of the war, though for different reasons. As Milne put it, the mere existence of communist nation-states became an affront to [Rostows] academic vision as laid out in his 1960 opus The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto34. For Rostow, Vietnam was a test case for his thesis that U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia including counter-insurgency operations, ground warfare and escalatory airstrikes targeting the alleged sources of the insurgency was necessary to save the region from communist influence and, most crucially, to create the conditions that would eventually allow Western political and economic structures to take root and flourish there. In Milnes words, economic determinismis the sine qua non of Rostows conclusions in Stages35.

28 Milne, pg 148 29 Ibid, pg 13 30 Ibid, pg 148 31 Document 9, Chapter 13; in Merrill and Patterson, pg 426 32 Lafeber, pg 611 33 Logevall, Lyndon Johnson and His Advisers Pursue Personal Credibility and War; in Merrill and Patterson, pg 443 34 Milne, pg 43 35 Ibid, pg 64

By the time of Rostows appointment as national security adviser in April 1966, Johnsons national security team had committed to a bombing campaign in Vietnam but had split on the issue of targeting petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) facilities, with McNamara, Bundy and Rusk all opposed to the measure as immoral, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Earle Wheeler, Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Rostow argued it was a necessary part of the escalation strategy. Bundy had left the administration, in part because of this issue, clearing the way for Rostow to replace him. McNamara and Rusk somewhat reluctantly went along with Johnson as he sided with now-national security adviser Rostow and his allies. As Milne writes, Over the course of 1966, as Rostow gained closer proximity to the president, Johnson escalated the war to include targets opposed by both his secretary of state and his secretary of defense36. Rostows reputation as a respected academic and expert on world affairs, combined with his earlier service during World War II as an analyst tasked with identifying bombing targets in Germany, gave him credibility with presidents Kennedy and Johnson, both of whom were veterans of the same war. However, even Johnson had to overcome some doubts about Rostows suitability as a replacement for McGeorge Bundy once the latter tendered his resignation in December 1965. I like Rostow, Johnson remarked to Robert McNamara in late February 1966, but I dont want to get started off here and get everybody thinking that were going back to war and hardliner [sic]37. Rostow thoroughly believed in the validity of his thesis, but he also maintained that Johnson made decisions regarding U.S. policy independently38. Quoting President Johnsons own words as evidence, Rostow pointed out decades later that his boss shared his belief that the real crisis in Asia during the mid-1960s was not the momentary threat of communism itself. Rather that danger stems from hunger, ignorance, poverty, and disease. We must whatever strategy involved keep these enemies at the point of our attack39. That is to say, Johnson (along with many other members of his administration) generally agreed with the logic underlying the Rostow Thesis: that the perversion of communism had to be eliminated with military force so the natural development of the region along democratic capitalist lines could unfold. Rostow certainly fed the presidents need for new ideas to protect South Vietnam and constant reassurance that the war was winnable, writes Milne, and Walt Rostow provided both with a smile. But, in contrast, President Kennedy once knocked Rostow with the backhanded compliment that Walt can write faster than I can read and at another time said of his then-advisor Walt is a fountain of ideas; perhaps one in ten of them is absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, six or seven are not merely unsound, but dangerously so40. Kennedy, unnerved by Rostows extreme hawkishness on Southeast Asia policy, but still fundamentally in agreement with Rostows liberal, Cold War ideology, had moved him out of the White House and over to the State Department where, as chairman of the Policy Planning Council, he tasked Rostow with developing broader guidance for U.S. foreign policy.

36 Milne, pg 157 37 Johnson, as quoted in Milne, pg 163 38 Rostow, 1993 39 Johnson, as quoted by Rostow, 1993 40 Kennedy, as quoted in Milne, pg 99

On the other hand, as Gardner acknowledges, Johnson brought Rostow closer to the White House as the president became more convinced of the need for continued escalation in Vietnam. Gardner writes that Rostow continued spooning out megadoses of an elixir of optimism even as the situation grew worse and the nations patience grew thin, but at the same time he admits that it was President Johnson who dared congress to rescind the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, under whose authority American military involvement in Vietnam was sanctioned41. Similarly, Milne describes Rostow as the prophet of American victory in Vietnam42 but unlike Gardner, he acknowledges more fully the role played by President Johnson, who continued to bring Rostow closer as the President came to view a military victory in Vietnam as indispensible to achieving his domestic policy goals. As Rostow established this bond of trust and familial intimacy with the president, Milne writes, his views came to guide U.S. policy toward the Vietnam War. The graduated bombing of North Vietnamheightened sharply in intensity following his promotion to national security adviser in April 1966. The amount of U.S. ordnance dropped on North Vietnam increased from 33,000 tons in 1965 to 128,000 tons in 196643. However, Milne correctly adds that [t]his sharp increase in bombing is not solely attributable to Rostows ascension in influence vis--vis Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, but his contribution helped allay doubts and gave a critical boost to the Joint Chiefs of Staffs case for escalation44. The periods during which Rostow had the closest personal and professional relationships with presidents Kennedy and Johnson were when he was telling those presidents what they wanted to hear. This often coincided with broader support reluctant, tacit or otherwise for Rostovian policies among other influential members of the policymaking establishment. When Rostows hardline approach to Vietnam fell out of favor with the White House, so did his influence on U.S. policymaking in Southeast Asia (and vice versa). This is not to say that individuals like Rostow cannot or do not have a substantial influence on the policymaking process, only that their impact is constrained by various factors that are often outside their immediate control, including other individuals in positions of power within the network of government bureaucracies. None of this necessarily discounts Gardners essential thesis that Rostows unwavering optimism, his nimble and productive mind, and his (misguided) confidence in the correctness of his basic strategy toward Vietnam, combined with his close relationship (at times) with two presidents, all played influential roles in U.S. policy in Vietnam during the 1960s. However, a narrow focus on Rostows role runs the risk of attributing to him too much influence relative to other high-level policymakers, including Johnson, McNamara, Bundy and Rusk, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, many of whom advocated or acquiesced to policies along the lines of those advocated by Rostow. Additionally, while they can be highly insightful in certain respects, such tightly-focused analyses as Gardners can underemphasize important explanatory factors that existed in the contemporary bureaucratic, domestic and international contexts during which key decisions were made.

41 Gardner, pg 71-73 42 Milne, pg 148 43 Milne, pg 11 44 Ibid, pg. 11

Bibliography

Bundy, McGeorge. Notes for Talk with Secretary Rusk Nov. 15. November 15, 1961. National Security Archive Item Number: VI00876. Bundy, McGeorge. The History of Recommendations for Increased U.S. Forces in Vietnam. July 24, 1965. National Security Archive Item Number: VI01612. Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. (2006). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations. Cengage Learning.

- Document 6, Chapter 13: President Lyndon B. Johnsons Advisers Chart the Path to Military Escalation, December 1964.

- Document 9, Chapter 13: Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara Concludes That He Erred, 1995.

Gardner, Lloyd. Walt Whitman Rostow: Hawkeyed Optimist. In Anna Kasten Nelson, ed. (2009). The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Halberstam, David. (1972). The Best and the Brightest. Random House. LaFeber, Walter. (1994). The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present. W.W. Norton & Company. Logevall, Fredrik. Lyndon Johnson and His Advisers Pursue Personal Credibility and War. In Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. (2006). Major Problems in American Foreign Relations. Cengage Learning. Milne, David. (2008). Americas Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War. Hill and Wang.

- Johnson, Lyndon Baines. (27 February 1966). Telephone conversation with Robert McNamara. Tape WH6602.10. Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

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Library #44. - Rusk, Dean. (29 Nov. 1965). Telephone conversation with Lyndon Johnson. Tape

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Rostow, Walt Whitman. Commentary on John Kenneth Galbraith's Letter on Vietnam. November 24, 1961(b). National Security Archive Item Number: VI00882. Rostow, Walt Whitman. (1993). Hampden-Sydney College Vietnam Symposium: Concepts, Policies, and Results. Hampden Sydney, Virginia. Accessed via: Westad, Odd Arne. (2007). The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge University Press.