Rostow, Walt Whitman

▪ 2004

      American economic historian and government official (b. Oct. 7, 1916, New York, N.Y.—d. Feb. 13, 2003, Austin, Texas), as an adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, advocated an ever-increasing American commitment to the Vietnam War (1955–75). He was a Rhodes scholar who taught at several prestigious universities in the U.S. and Britain and became well known with the publication of The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). Kennedy hired Rostow in 1961 as his deputy special assistant for national security affairs. Rostow chaired the State Department's policy planning council from 1961 to 1966, when he became Johnson's special assistant for national security affairs (the post later known as national security adviser). Even after most other government officials had become convinced that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, Rostow consistently pushed for its escalation, convinced that the U.S. was winning and that the war was necessary so that economic modernization could take place in Southeast Asia.

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