Walt Whitman Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow
7th United States National Security Advisor
In office April 1, 1966 – January 20, 1969
President	Lyndon B. Johnson
Deputy	None
Preceded by	McGeorge Bundy
Succeeded by	Henry Kissinger
1st United States Deputy National Security Advisor
In office 1961–1961
President	John F. Kennedy
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Carl Kaysen
Personal details
Born	October 7, 1916 New York City, New York
Died	February 13, 2003 (aged 86)
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Elspeth Rostow
Children	Peter Rostow, Ann Rostow
Profession	Economist, Political theorist and advisor

Walt Whitman Rostow (also known as Walt Rostow or W.W. Rostow) (October 7, 1916 – February 13, 2003) was a United States economist and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Prominent for his role in the shaping of US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, he was a staunch anti-communist, and was noted for a belief in the efficacy of capitalism and free enterprise. Rostow served as a major adviser on national security affairs under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He strongly supported US involvement in the Vietnam War. In his later years he taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin with his wife, Elspeth Rostow, who later became dean of the school. He wrote extensively in defense of free enterprise economics, particularly in developing nations. Rostow wrote a book The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto (1960) which was used in several fields of social sciences.

His older brother, Eugene Rostow, also held a number of high government foreign policy posts.

Early life

Walt Rostow was born in New York City to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. His parents, Victor and Lillian Rostow, were active socialists and their three sons, Eugene Victor Debs Rostow, Ralph Waldo Emerson Rostow and Walt Whitman Rostow, were named after Eugene V. Debs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. Rostow entered Yale University at age 15 on a full scholarship, graduated at 19, and completed his Ph.D. there in 1940. He also won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford, where he completed a B.Litt. degree. In 1936, during the Edward VIII abdication crisis, he assisted the broadcaster Alistair Cooke, who reported on the events for the NBC radio network. After completing his education he started teaching economics at Columbia University.

Professional and academic career

During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services under William Joseph Donovan. Among other tasks, he participated in selecting targets for U.S. bombardment. (Nicholas Katzenbach would later joke, "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.") Rostow became Assistant Chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division in the United States Department of State in Washington, D.C., immediately after the war. From 1946 to 1947, he returned to Oxford to teach as the Harmsworth Professor of American History. Rostow became the Assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe in 1947, and was involved in the development of the Marshall Plan.

He spent a year at Cambridge University as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions. Rostow was Professor of Economic History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1950 to 1961 and a staff member of the Center for International Studies, MIT, from 1951 to 1961. In 1958, he became a speechwriter for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Contribution to economics

Rostow developed the Rostovian take-off model of economic growth, one of the major historical models of economic growth. The model argues that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages of varying length—traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. This became one of the important concepts in the theory of modernization in social evolutionism. He received the Order of the British Empire (1945), the Legion of Merit (1945), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1969).

Works

• "Investment and the Great Depression", 1938, Econ History Review
• Essays on the British Economy of the Nineteenth Century, 1948.
• "The Terms of Trade in Theory and Practice", 1950, Econ History Review
• "The Historical Analysis of Terms of Trade", 1951, Econ History Review
• The Process of Economic Growth, 1952.
• The Dynamics of Soviet Society (with others), Norton and Co. 1953, slight update Anchor edition 1954.
• "Trends in the Allocation of Resources in Secular Growth", 1955, in Dupriez, editor, Economic Progress
• An American Policy in Asia, with R.W. Hatch, 1955.
• "The Take-Off into Self-Sustained Growth", 1956, EJ
• A Proposal: Key to an effective foreign policy, with M. Millikan, 1957.
• "The Stages of Economic Growth", 1959, Econ History Review
• The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto, 1960.
• The United States in the World Arena: An Essay in Recent History (American Project Series), 1960, 568 pages.
• Politics and the Stages of Growth, 1971.
• How it All Began: Origins of the modern economy, 1975.
• The World Economy: History and prospect, 1978.
• Why the Poor Get Richer and the Rich Slow Down: Essays in the Marshallian long period, 1980.
• Eisenhower, Kennedy, and foreign aid, 1985.
• Theorists of Economic Growth from David Hume to the Present, 1990.
• The Great Population Spike and After, 1998

See also

• The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
• Rostovian take-off model
• Hearts and Minds (film)

Further reading

• America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), by David Milne.

External links

• Rostow's obituary
• Hodgson, Godfrey. "Walt Rostow: Obituary", in The Guardian, February 17, 2003.
• "Walt Rostow: Obituary", in The Times, February 19, 2003.
• In Memoriam, The University of Texas at Austin.
• Oral History Interviews with Walt Rostow, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library

Legal offices
Preceded by New office	Deputy National Security Advisor 1961 – 1961	Succeeded by Carl Kaysen
Preceded by McGeorge Bundy	United States National Security Advisor 1966–1969	Succeeded by Henry Kissinger