Walt Whitman Rostow Walt Whitman Rostow ( also known as Walt Rostow or W . W . Rostow ) ( October 7 , 1916 – February 13 , 2003 ) was a United States economist and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to U . S . President Lyndon B . Johnson in 1964 - 8 . Prominent for his role in the shaping of US foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s , he was a staunch anti - communist , noted for a belief in the efficacy of capitalism and free enterprise , strongly supporting US involvement in the Vietnam War . Rostow is known for his book " The Stages of Economic Growth : A Non - Communist Manifesto " ( 1960 ) , which was used in several fields of social science . His older brother Eugene Rostow also held a number of high government foreign policy posts . Early life . Rostow was born in New York City to a Russian Jewish immigrant family . His parents Victor and Lillian Rostow , were active socialists , and their three sons were named after Eugene V . Debs , Ralph Waldo Emerson , and Walt Whitman . Rostow entered Yale University at age 15 on a full scholarship , graduated at 19 , and completed his Ph . D . there in 1940 . He also won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Balliol College , Oxford , where he completed a B . Litt . degree . In 1936 during the Edward VIII abdication crisis , he assisted broadcaster Alistair Cooke , who reported on the events for the NBC radio network . After completing his education he started teaching economics at Columbia University . Professional and academic career . During World War II Rostow served in the Office of Strategic Services under William Joseph Donovan . Among other tasks , he participated in selecting targets for U . S . bombardment . Nicholas Katzenbach would later joke , " I finally understand the difference between Walt and me [ . . . ] I was the navigator who was shot down and spent two years in a German prison camp , and Walt was the guy picking my targets . " In 1945 immediately after the war , Rostow became assistant chief of the German - Austrian Economic Division in the United States Department of State in Washington , D . C . . From 1946 to 1947 he returned to Oxford as the Harmsworth Professor of American History . In 1947 he became the assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe , and was involved in the development of the Marshall Plan . Rostow spent a year at Cambridge University as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions . He was professor of economic history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1950 to 1961 , and a staff member of the Center for International Studies at MIT from 1951 to 1961 . In 1954 he advised President Dwight Eisenhower on economic and foreign policy , and in 1958 he became a speechwriter for him . In August 1954 Rostow and fellow CIA - connected MIT economics professor Max F . Millikan convinced Eisenhower to massively increase U . S . foreign aid for development as part of a policy of spreading American - style capitalist economic growth in Asia and elsewhere , backed by the military . The Stages of Economic Growth . In 1960 Rostow published " The Stages of Economic Growth : A Non - Communist Manifesto " , which proposed the Rostovian take - off model of economic growth , one of the major historical models of economic growth , which argues that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages of varying length : traditional society , preconditions for take - off , take - off , drive to maturity , and high mass consumption . This became one of the important concepts in the theory of modernization in social evolutionism . Rostow ' s thesis was criticized at the time and subsequently as universalizing a model of Western development that could not be replicated in places like Latin America or sub - Saharan Africa . The book impressed presidential candidate John F . Kennedy , who appointed Rostow as one of his political advisers . When Kennedy became president in 1961 , he appointed Rostow as deputy to his national security assistant McGeorge Bundy . Later that year Rostow became chairman of the U . S . State Department ' s policy planning council . After Kennedy ' s assassination , his successor Lyndon B . Johnson promoted Rostow to Bundy ' s job after he wrote Johnson ' s first state of the union speech . As national security adviser Rostow was responsible for developing the government ' s policy in Vietnam , and was convinced that the war could be won , becoming Johnson ' s main war hawk and playing an important role in bringing Johnson ' s presidency to an end . When Richard Nixon became president , Rostow left office , and over the next thirty years taught economics at the Lyndon B . Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin with his wife Elspeth Rostow , who later became dean of the school . He wrote extensively in defense of free enterprise economics , particularly in developing nations . Honors and awards . Rostow received the Order of the British Empire ( 1945 ) , the Legion of Merit ( 1945 ) , and the Presidential Medal of Freedom ( 1969 ) .