{"id":26149,"date":"2017-09-26T18:35:57","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T23:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26149"},"modified":"2017-09-26T18:35:57","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T23:35:57","slug":"how-an-economic-theory-helped-mire-the-united-states-in-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26149","title":{"rendered":"How an economic theory helped mire the United States in Vietnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

How an economic theory helped mire the United States in Vietnam<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\"File
Rostow, front right, visited Vietnam in 1961.
\nAP Photo\/Fred Waters<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Questions of how the U.S. got mired in the Vietnam War and whether it was ultimately winnable have fascinated historians<\/a> for half a century \u2013 most recently in Ken Burns\u2019 new 18-hour documentary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A little-remembered aspect of the debacle is the important role played by a prominent economic historian named Walt Whitman Rostow<\/a>, whose theories on economic development helped persuade Americans \u2013 and two presidents \u2013 that the fight in Vietnam was right and that we must prevail.<\/p>\n

The Burns documentary, from what I have seen, does not dwell much on economics, my area of expertise. But this was an important part of why Americans were there.<\/p>\n

Rostow\u2019s rise<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Rostow, left, looks over a map with Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor in 1961 ahead of their trip to Vietnam to observe and evaluate the political and military situation there and report back to President Kennedy. From his earliest days at the White House, Rostow urged more involvement in the Vietnam. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>AP Photo\/Bill Allen<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption>
<\/figcaption>Rostow came to prominence in the 1960s after his theories on economic development caught the eye<\/a> of the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy, who was campaigning for president.<\/figure>\n

In 1960, Rostow, then a professor at MIT, published an influential book called \u201cThe Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto<\/a>.\u201d The book describes how an economy transitions through five distinct stages of development, from basic (little use of technology, like much of central Africa and South Asia in the mid 20th century) to advanced (characterized by high levels of mass consumption, such as the U.S. or France).<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How an economic theory helped mire the United States in Vietnam Rostow, front right, visited Vietnam in 1961. AP Photo\/Fred Waters Questions of how the U.S. got mired in the Vietnam War and whether it was ultimately winnable have fascinated historians for half a century \u2013 most recently in Ken Burns\u2019 new 18-hour documentary. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[4918,5679,16175,827,16176,1440,16177,14968],"class_list":["post-26149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-economic-theory","tag-mit","tag-peter-hilsenrath","tag-united-states","tag-university-of-the-pacific","tag-vietnam","tag-walt-rostow","tag-washingtonsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26149"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26150,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26149\/revisions\/26150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}