America's Rasputin

"America's Rasputin is interesting for what it shows about a particular position—one which emerged during the Vietnam War and has come into its own during the Iraq war."—Daniel Sullivan, The Weekly Standard

"Few liberal intellectuals and government officials championed the Vietnam War more ardently than Walt Rostow, the subject of Milne's informative and pointed biography . . . Milne persuasively argues that Rostow was, in many ways, the first foreign-policy neoconservative, anticipating and formulating many of the illusory arguments that Paul Wolfowitz and others would make during the run-up to the Iraq War about extending the benefits of American hegemony abroad."—Jacob Heilbrunn, The National Interest

"[An] exemplary and fresh look at a man once so influential in the shaping of foreign policy."—Murray Polner, History News Network

"David Milne's absorbing new book puts Walt W. Rostow exactly where he belongs—front and center among the leading architects of the long American war in Vietnam. Over the past decade, scholars have devoted new attention to the intellectual history and political impact of post-1945 theories of Third World modernization. Milne makes a vital contribution to that literature by exploring the career of a most influential figure . . . Milne's analysis is insightful and compelling . . . Milne's book also illuminates the extent to which Cold War liberals blended altruistic, reformist ideals with deployment of lethal force . . . This is an outstanding book. It deepens our understanding of the forces and ideas that led the United States to plunge into a brutal war in Vietnam. On another level, it also suggests disturbing parallels with more recent American visions of wholesale transformation in Iraq, the wider Middle East, and beyond."—Michael E. Latham, Fordham University, Journal of American Studies

"In his comprehensive examination of Walt Rostow's role in Vietnam decision making, David Milne adds a valuable and nuanced perspective on the questions of how and why Vietnam became an American war and what went wrong there. America's Rasputin is a well researched and critical yet sensitive treatment of an exceptional man who wielded significant influence in the Lyndon Johnson Administration during a critical phase of the Vietnam War."—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam

"America's Rasputin is a splendid book, beautifully written, persuasively argued, and deeply researched. Milne's cautionary tale of ideas and idealism taken to their extremes is as historically important as it is currently relevant. Our understanding of the Vietnam War—and of American foreign policy in general—is greatly enhanced by this book."—Andrew Preston, author of The War Council

"David Milne has given us an absorbing history of the rise to power of Walt Rostow and his disastrous impact on US foreign policy. The first civilian to advise Kennedy to deploy combat troops to South Vietnam and the first to urge bombing the North, Rostow was a true ideologue who believed an American version of democracy could be exported to other countries—if necessary by force. An American Rasputin—as Averrell Harriman described him—who refused to admit the limits of American power, Rostow helped bring about the worst military defeat in American history. The parallels with the present time—when America faces an even worse disaster in Iraq—are clear. A book that vividly illuminates the dangers of ideology in foreign policy, America's Rasputin could not be more timely."—John Gray, author of Black Mass

"Original, insightful study of the intellectual eminence grise behind two presidents and their disastrous policies in Vietnam. Although Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara are usually blamed for the military escalation in Vietnam, this convincing, well-documented study by Milne emphasizes Walt Rostow's key role in creating the self-justifying rationale that mired America in war for a decade. Having emerged from academia—first Yale, then Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then MIT as a professor of economic history—Rostow formed his ideological posture while watching the rise of McCarthyism and the Korean War. His magnum opus was a full-throttle repudiation of Marx called The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, in which he extolled the benefits of liberal capitalism predicated on mass consumption and opined that underdeveloped nations needed substantial American assistance to arrive at capitalist rewards. As Milne cogently points out, this sounded positive in theory but did not hold up in practice, a fact Rostow refused to recognize. He caught John Kennedy's ear with such rousing assertions as, 'This country is ready to start moving again' and catchphrases like 'New Frontier,' both of which became standards in the candidate's stump speeches; President Kennedy appointed the rising anticommunist zealot his deputy special assistant for national security affairs. Rostow was able to convince Kennedy (and later LBJ) that capitalism would surely eclipse communism in the battle for economic supremacy. He was isolated by Kennedy's minions when he advocated attacking North Vietnam and invading Laos, but the more hawkish President Johnson elevated him to national security adviser. Milne demonstrates skillfully that LBJ's bombing policy came largely from Rostow, while his relentless positive spin kept the besieged president from knowing the full extent of the catastrophe until public opinion had turned against him. An astute look at the debacle of the Vietnam War through the life and work of the unrepentant prophet of America's victory over communism."—Kirkus Reviews

"British professor Milne borrows the title of his book from a comparison made by a critic of Rostow's influence on Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, but the Rostow presented here has none of the Russian monk's cynicism or pragmatism. Rostow began as an idealist who put his faith in the American Dream's exportability in both its political and economic contexts. Like President Kennedy, he believed in taking the Cold War to America's enemies—and extending it to those likely to fall under Communist influence. With the force of a powerful intellect and a persuasive personality, Rostow supported intervention in Vietnam, the war's successive Americanization and staying the course. His idealism hardened into ideology in the Johnson years. Milne describes Rostow's principled refusal to concede that the war was un-winnable and his inability to recognize the consequences of a truncated Great Society and intensified Cold War. An unrepentant Rostow spent the remaining years of his career indicting others for their irresolution in waging what he still considered a necessary war. Milne's indictment of Rostow depends on his interpretation of Vietnam as misguided and its consequences as uniformly bleak. Both interpretations are becoming debatable enough to make this book a polemic as well as a scholarly study."—Publishers Weekly