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.
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Cite this article
David Milne, “'Our equivalent of guerrilla warfare': Walt Rostow and the Bombing of North Vietnam, 1961-1968,” The Journal of Military History 71, no. 1 (January 2007): 169–204.