David Milne (4) (1976–)

American Rasputin is a story of what happens when an ideologue gets close to the levers of power. Rostow came from humble origins, his parents middle-class Jewish immigrants who were anti-Tsarist first and pro-Socialist second. Rostow rose through Yale, Oxford, and Columbia on the strength of his skills as an academic economist. In World War 2, he served in the OSS, picking targets in Nazi Germany for bombardment, and gaining a healthy respect for the ability of airpower to cripple a nation. show more In 1960, he published his magnum opus, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, a major work in development economics, which argued that Communism was pathological, that all countries proceeded towards a liberal democratic capitalist modernity, and that the United States had an obligation to use its preeminence to lift the Third World out of poverty and past communism.

Rostow had been making contact with political figures in the Eisenhower administration, but he had a real alliance with President Kennedy. Rostow was first deputy national security adviser and then head of the State Department planning group, where he began advancing the line that would define his career. North Vietnam was the major problem in American foreign policy, and had to be dealt with using maximum force. Through 1961 and 1962, Rostow was the loudest voice pushing for bombing North Vietnam. When Operation Rolling Thunder kicked off, Rostow demanded bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, and even invasions of Laos and North Vietnam.

Rostow was a canny bureaucratic infighter, and became a close confidant of LBJ through the darkest days of his presidency; hence the "American Rasputin" moniker, given to him by adversary and chief peace negotiator Averell Harriman. Rostow was able to manage LBJ's anxieties about being shown up by Kennedy's whiz kids, castigating those in the administration who had lost confidence in the war. With little formal power, Rostow made few of the actual decisions that mattered, but he carefully managed the available policy options to justify escalation and further bombing.

Rostow faded from public life after leaving office, moving to Austin to head the LBJ School of Public Policy. He never lost his essential contention that the Vietnam War was justified, that more bombing and more troops could have turned the tide, and his theory of economic modernization justified a more aggressive foreign policy. This biography is a fascinating portrait of a proponent of muscular liberalism, and how much harm can be done in the name of opportunity and security. show less