= Walt Whitman Rostow = '''Walt Whitman Rostow''' was [[UnitedStates/ExecutiveOfficeOfThePresident|national security advisor]] and [[UnitedStates/DepartmentOfState|director of Policy Planning]]. <> ---- == History == Rostow rose through the [[UnitedStates/CentralIntelligenceAgency|OSS]] during [[WorldHistory/WorldWar2|World War 2]]. In 1947, he served as executive secretary for the [[WorldHistory/UnitedNations/EconomicAndSocialCouncil|UN Economic Commission for Europe]]. He became involved in planning the [[WorldHistory/MarshallPlan|Marshall Plan]] in this capacity. Beginning in 1954, he advised [[UnitedStates/DwightDEisenhower|Eisenhower]] on economics and foreign policy. He held several, brief professorships at Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT. He formulated and published his [[TheStagesOfEconomicGrowth|theories on international development]] in this time. Rostow became a major advisor to [[UnitedStates/JohnFKennedy|JFK]] during his campaign; he is credited with the New Frontier speech, the flexible response doctrine, etc. He was appointed [[UnitedStates/ExecutiveOfficeOfThePresident|deputy national security advisor]] in 1961; [[UnitedStates/LyndonBJohnson|Johnson]] promoted him to advisor in 1963. He had been sidelined during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but played a significant role in the planning of the Vietnam War and in the management of Israeli expansionism (Samu incident, Six Day War, etc.). Following [[UnitedStates/RichardNixon|Nixon's]] election, he returned to academia and taught at the University of Texas at Austin. ---- == Legacy == Rostow's theories on [[TheStagesOfEconomicGrowth|international development]] and [[CounteringGuerillaAttack|geopolitical warfare]] were massively influential on U.S. foreign policy from the [[UnitedStates/JohnFKennedy|JFK]] presidency onward. As a result, the retrospective reckoning of those policies' outcomes is also a reckoning of his own work. ---- CategoryRicottone