"Our equivalent of guerrilla warfare": Walt Rostow and the Bombing of North Vietnam, 1961-1968

Abstract

This article examines the contribution that Walt Rostow made to the shaping of U.S. military strategy during the second Indochina War. It links Rostow's work as an economic historian with the advice that he dispensed in the field of strategic bombing. In 1964, Rostow explained to Secretary of State Dean Rusk that "Ho [Chi Minh] has an industrial complex to protect: he is no longer a guerrilla fighter with nothing to lose." Rostow's economic determinism led him to advocate the bombing of North Vietnam more forcefully than any of his civilian colleagues.

Inteligência na Guerra Fria: acirramento e estabilização (1961-1975)

“…Entretanto, apesar de imint e sigint não fornecerem o tipo de informação que seria decisivo num conflito como o do Vietnã, também não eram necessários recursos muito sofisticados de humint para verificar que havia algo errado com as estimativas e análises finais produzidas pela IC. Mesmo com estimativas de inteligência inconclusivas, depois da ofensiva do Tet em fevereiro de 1968 e das grandes manifestações anti guerra em Washington em outubro do mesmo ano, o próprio McNamara passou a descrer da política formulada, embora isso não tenha abalado a convicção de Lyndon Johnson e de Walt Rostow, seu novo assessor de segurança nacional (Milne 2007).…”

De/Recolonising Development: Fanon, Rostow, and the Violence of Social Change

“…The logic of his political economic analysis was demonstrated repeatedly. For example, between 1965 and 1966 the Indonesian army, increasingly under the direction of General Suharto and with the support of the CIA (which provided lists of suspected communists to the Indonesian army), engaged in the genocide of over one million suspected communists, leftists, ethnic Chinese and Javanese people (Melvin 2018). Following the genocide Suharto instituted his "new order"-an anti-communist, pro-US, free-market orientated regime-with the assistance of the "Berkeley mafia"-a group of US-trained Indonesian economists.…”

“…His long‐established idea—of combining military, political, and economic force to the US's advantage in the Cold War—were adopted by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. As David Milne (2007:201) notes, “Rostow was not the sole reason why America bombed North Vietnam, but his contribution was of fundamental importance”.…”