walt rostow: the wrong man in the wrong place with the wrong idea

8/9/2019 Walt Rostow: the wrong man in the wrong place with the wrong idea

1/8

Mike LaSusaSIS600, 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 thatthe 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 securityassistants for advice”1. One of the first was Walt Whitman Rostow. In his chapter on Rostow in

Nelson’s volume, historian Lloyd Gardner fleshes out this proposition, arguing that Rostow’s“hawkeyed optimism” and “missionary zeal,” combined with his reputation as a highly-

intelligent “brains trust”2 and his close relationships with presidents John F. Kennedy andespecially Lyndon Johnson, all contributed to Rostow’s 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 Rostow’s role during this period and it is doubtful that even the late Rostow himself would contest Gardner’s basic

description of him as a “hawkeyed optimist” who, in Nelson’s paraphrase, “never lost his beliefthat the war could be won”3. 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 America’s Rasputin, David Milne provides an analysis of

Rostow’s Vietnam legacy which informs much of this essay, in which he stresses that “Rostow’swas 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 Asiaduring the 1960s

4.

Rostow’s “missionary zeal” and unshakable confidence in his beliefs were constant features of

his personality throughout his life5. Rostow’s basic ideology, as Cold War scholar Odd ArneWestad summarized it, held that “as soon as a country’s ‘natural’ development had been

perverted by a socialist revolution then only outside support” (potentially entailing U.S. militaryintervention) “could relaunch that country’s trajectory toward capitalism and democracy”

6. The

“Rostow Thesis,” as it became known, “held that the United States must deal with externallysupported insurgencies through bombing their source”

7. Regarding the conflict in Vietnam, the

“idée fixe” of the application of this hawkish worldview, in Milne’s words, was “bombing thenorth,” the alleged source of the insurgency in South Vietnam8.

As early as 1961, when Rostow was serving as National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy’s

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, America’s Rasputin, pg 11

5 Purdum, 2003

6 Westad, The Global Cold War, pg 332

7 Milne, pg 1348 Milne, pg 98


2/8

John F. Kennedy’s administration, he found allies in the military who similarly supportedincreasing 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. InOctober 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.

Rostow’s own views on the necessity of increased American military intervention in Vietnam inorder 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 fieldexperience in Southeast Asia. Rostow described Lansdale’s 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] hand”

10. 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 Vietnam”

11. 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

Kennedy’s 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 Kennedy’s

ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, concluded “almost the opposite of Taylor andRostow…Above all, [Galbraith] pushed for political, rather than military solutions to the

problem”13

. Rostow worked to counter Galbraith’s advice, submitting various memos toKennedy attempting to rebut his analysis

14. However, others in the administration had their

doubts about the efficacy of a potential military escalation and bombing campaign, includingSecretary of State Dean Rusk and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy

15. Rather than

following the advice of Rostow and other hawks, Kennedy opted for something of a muddledcompromise in his response to the deterioration of Diem’s authority and by extension the

American position in Vietnam. He increased the U.S. troop presence in the south to 16,000 in1963, but according to diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber, Kennedy also continued to pressure

Diem to “hurry reforms and listen to U.S. advice”16

.

Halberstam may have put it best when he wrote ironically that Rostow was “the wrong man atthe 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 ofKennedy in November 1963, President Lyndon Johnson inherited what Rostow later described as

9 LaFeber, The American Age, pg 59210

Rostow, 1964; cited in Milne, pg 8511

Rostow, 1972; quoted in Milne, pg 8612

Milne, pg 9113

Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, pg 15214

Rostow, 1961(a) and 1961(b)15

Bundy, 196116 Lafeber, pg 59417 Halberstam, pg 513


3/8

the “great crisis of 1964-1965…not narrowly in Vietnam, but a crisis in Asia”18

. At a time whenmore 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 Johnson’s attention as someone with original ideas and

absolute commitment to the cause of defeating Southeast Asian communism”

19

.

In other words, “Rostow said what the President wanted to hear”20

. Following the August 1964

confrontation between American and North Vietnamese naval vessels, known as the Tonkin Gulfincident, 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 byWilliam Bundy (brother of national security adviser McGeorge), to “examine alternatives for

bombing on the Rostow criteria”21. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the group recommended aRostovian model of “graduated military pressures directed systematically against the DRV

[North Vietnamese Government],” consisting “principally of progressively more seriousairstrikes, of a weight and tempo adjusted to the situation as it develops…This could” – and, this

author thinks it is important to note, did – “eventually lead to such measures as air strikes on allmajor military-related targets, aerial mining of DRV ports, and a US naval blockade of the

DRV”22

.

Many other important figures in the Johnson administration continued to recommend variousforms of escalation, including bombing, against Vietnam throughout 1965

23. “Both State and

Defense referred to the option of bombing Vietnam as the Rostow Thesis,” writes Milne. “Theusage of such terminology suggests that Rostow’s influence – even from the distant remove of

the [State Department’s] Policy Planning Council – was profound”24

. But as he also notes,“Johnson’s coterie of foreign policy advisors opted for the Rostow Thesis not with enthusiasm,

but resignation”25

– it seemed there were no other viable options on the table26

. This providesevidence that Rostow served more as an “ideas man”

27 than a decision-maker in the Kennedy

and Johnson administrations.

For example, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, while likely influenced by the “Thesis” longadvocated 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 atrip 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 nationalsecurity 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, 199319 Milne, pg 1120

Ibid21

Ibid, 14722

Document 6, Chapter 13; in Merrill and Patterson, pg 42223

Bundy, 1965.24

Ibid25

Ibid, pg 14726 Halberstam, Chapter 2327 Milne, pg 154


4/8

a vacuum; they were shaped by many influences, one of which was the man who fashioned aVietnam bombing strategy before anyone else,” namely, Walt Rostow

28.

“Rostow’s 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, writesMilne29

. But as he astutely points out; “It should be made clear that while Rostow’s ideas were present at the crucial escalatory meetings of the Vietnam War, his person was not. His impact on

the decision–making 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 forcefor escalation” in Vietnam more broadly

30. 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 looseassumptions, unasked questions, and thin analyses underlying our military strategy in

Vietnam”

31

.

All the while, official Washington continued to view its deteriorating position in Southeast Asiawith 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 onlywoman 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 president’s 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 lostVietnam…it was not merely his country’s and his party’s reputation that [he] took to be on the

line, but also his own”33

.

Rostow shared with Johnson a personal investment in the outcome of the war, though fordifferent reasons. As Milne put it, “the mere existence of communist nation-states became an

affront to [Rostow’s] academic vision” as laid out in his 1960 opus The Stages of EconomicGrowth: A Non-Communist Manifesto

34. For Rostow, Vietnam was a “test case” for his thesis

that U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia – including counter-insurgency operations, groundwarfare and “escalatory” airstrikes targeting the alleged “sources” of the insurgency – was

necessary to save the region from communist influence and, most crucially, to create theconditions that would eventually allow Western political and economic structures to take root

and flourish there. In Milne’s words, “economic determinism…is the sine qua non” of Rostow’sconclusions in Stages

35.

28 Milne, pg 14829

Ibid, pg 1330

Ibid, pg 14831

Document 9, Chapter 13; in Merrill and Patterson, pg 42632

Lafeber, pg 61133

Logevall, Lyndon Johnson and His Advisers Pursue Personal Credibility and War; in Merrill and Patterson, pg

44334 Milne, pg 4335 Ibid, pg 64


5/8

By the time of Rostow’s appointment as national security adviser in April 1966, Johnson’s

national security team had committed to a bombing campaign in Vietnam but had split on theissue 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 forRostow 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 thecourse 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 defense”36

.

Rostow’s reputation as a respected academic and expert on world affairs, combined with hisearlier 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 wereveterans of the same war. However, even Johnson had to overcome some doubts about Rostow’s

suitability as a replacement for McGeorge Bundy once the latter tendered his resignation inDecember 1965. “I like Rostow,” Johnson remarked to Robert McNamara in late February 1966,

“but I don’t want to get started off here and get everybody thinking that we’re going back to warand 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 Johnson’s own wordsas 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 thatdanger stems from hunger, ignorance, poverty, and disease. We must whatever strategy involved

keep these enemies at the point of our attack”39

. That is to say, Johnson (along with many othermembers 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 president’s need for “new ideas to protect South Vietnam and constant

reassurance that the war was winnable,” writes Milne, and “Walt Rostow provided both with asmile.” 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 so”40

. Kennedy, unnerved by Rostow’s extreme hawkishness on Southeast Asia policy, but still fundamentally in

agreement with Rostow’s liberal, Cold War ideology, had moved him out of the White Houseand 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, 199340 Kennedy, as quoted in Milne, pg 99


6/8

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 nation’s 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 TonkinResolution,” under whose authority American military involvement in Vietnam wassanctioned

41. Similarly, Milne describes Rostow as the “prophet of American victory in

Vietnam”42

but unlike Gardner, he acknowledges more fully the role played by PresidentJohnson, 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,” Milnewrites, “his views came to guide U.S. policy toward the Vietnam War. The ‘graduated’ bombing

of North Vietnam…heightened sharply in intensity following his promotion to national securityadviser 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 1966”

43

. However, Milne correctly adds that “[t]his sharpincrease in bombing is not solely attributable to Rostow’s ascension in influence vis-à-vis

Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, but his contribution helped allay doubtsand gave a critical boost to the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s case for escalation”44.

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 tohear. This often coincided with broader support – reluctant, tacit or otherwise – for Rostovian

policies among other influential members of the policymaking establishment. When Rostow’shardline 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 likeRostow 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, includingother individuals in positions of power within the network of government bureaucracies.

None of this necessarily discounts Gardner’s essential thesis that Rostow’s unwavering

optimism, his nimble and productive mind, and his (misguided) confidence in the correctness ofhis 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, anarrow focus on Rostow’s 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 theJoint 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, suchtightly-focused analyses as Gardner’s can underemphasize important explanatory factors that

existed in the contemporary bureaucratic, domestic and international contexts during which keydecisions were made.

41 Gardner, pg 71-73

42 Milne, pg 148

43 Milne, pg 1144 Ibid, pg. 11


7/8

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. Johnson’s Advisers Chart the Path toMilitary Escalation, December 1964.”

- Document 9, Chapter 13: “Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara ConcludesThat 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.” InDennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. (2006). Major Problems in American Foreign

Relations. Cengage Learning.

Milne, David. (2008). America’s 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.- Rostow, Walt Whitman. (1972). The Diffusion of Power. Macmillan & Co.

- Rostow, Walt Whitman. (11 April 1964). Oral history. John F. Kennedy PresidentialLibrary #44.

- Rusk, Dean. (29 Nov. 1965). Telephone conversation with Lyndon Johnson. TapeWH6511.09. LBJ Library.

Nelson, Anna Kasten, ed. (2009). Introduction. The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign

Policy from 1947 to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Purdum, Todd. “Walt Rostow, Adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, Dies at 86.” The New YorkTimes. Feb. 15, 2003.

Rostow, Walt Whitman. “Comments on [John Kenneth Galbraith]'s Attached Memorandum.”

November 13, 1961(a). National Security Archive Item Number: VI00866.


8/8

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.

walt rostow: the wrong man in the wrong place with the wrong idea

Documents