Verrone on Milne, 'America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War'
H-War Verrone on Milne, 'America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War' Review published on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 David Milne. America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. 336 pp. $26.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-374-10386-6. Reviewed by Richard Verrone (Texas Tech University)Published on H-War (March, 2009) Commissioned by Janet G. Valentine JFK's and LBJ’s True Believer Of all the advisors that graced the West Wing of the White House during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson years, Walt Whitman Rostow was, according to author David Milne, the truest and most fervent hawk. He was also a reverent Cold War ideologue who believed in the power of the U.S. military in spreading American-style democracy. Milne, a lecturer in American politics and foreign policy at the University of East Anglia, casts longtime national security advisor to JFK and LBJ, Walt Rostow, as a man of great intellect and powerful persuasiveness who was able to gain the ear of his boss, the president of the United States, particularly LBJ. Because of this, Rostow had his version of how to counter the Soviet Union, defeat the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and win the war in Vietnam implemented. In the insightfulAmerica’s Rasputin, Milne explains Rostow's diplomatic and military ideology when it came to fighting communism around the world, particularly in the third world, and lays at his feet much of the direct responsibility for the U.S. debacle in Southeast Asia.
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