David Milne's absorbing new book puts Walt W. Rostow exactly where he belongs – front and center among the leading architects of the long American war in Vietnam. Over the past decade, scholars have devoted new attention to the intellectual history and political impact of post-1945 theories of Third World modernization. Milne makes a vital contribution to that literature by exploring the career of a most influential figure. According to Milne, Rostow's professional trajectory reflects a consistent belief in the power of economic development as a crucial social lever. From his work selecting German targets for Allied bombing, through his scholarship as an MIT economist, his service in the Kennedy State Department, and finally his powerful role as national security adviser to Lyndon Johnson, Rostow envisioned a world moving through uniform stages toward liberal capitalism. When Vietnamese revolutionaries threatened to derail that hopeful vision, Rostow also responded aggressively, recommending at various times a US invasion of North Vietnam, proposing the use of nuclear weapons, and obstructing peace agreements he feared would give communists the upper hand. Arguing that even Ho Chi Minh would value the preservation of his tiny industrial base over Vietnamese reunification, Rostow also relentlessly advocated an accelerated US bombing campaign designed to force Hanoi to stop infiltrating men and munitions to the South.

Milne's analysis is insightful and compelling. Determined to prove Karl Marx wrong, Rostow promoted his own brand of economic determinism. Applied to the war in Vietnam, moreover, his ideologically driven approach was disastrous. The realities of Vietnamese nationalism, history, and culture found no place in Rostow's framework, and he easily disregarded disconfirming evidence while pushing the United States deeper into disaster. At a broader level, Milne's book also illustrates the extent to which Cold War liberals blended altruistic, reformist ideals with the deployment of lethal force. Convinced of the malleability of the postcolonial world, they sought to direct its progress through foreign aid and development programs where possible, and through violence when necessary.

Milne might have done more to explore Rostow's thinking about America's ultimate purposes in Vietnam. In a war to preserve liberal ideals, what did Rostow make of Saigon's own corrupt, repressive regime? What does this suggest about the depth of the modernizing commitment to democracy? In a few spots, Milne's narrative also goes astray. After describing the fraudulent election that put Ngo Dinh Diem into power in South Vietnam, Milne writes that the United States had “little option” but to support him, a claim that runs against the grain of recent work by scholars like Seth Jacobs who have emphasized the many “roads not taken” by America in Vietnam. Milne also writes that “Diem pursued policies that accorded with his and his wife's religion” (83), an unfortunate slip given the fact that the dictator never married.

On the whole, however, this is an outstanding book. It deepens our understanding of the forces and ideas that led the United States to plunge into a brutal war in Vietnam. On another level, it also suggests disturbing parallels with more recent American visions of wholesale transformation in Iraq, the wider Middle East, and beyond.