Background

Eugene Rostow was born on August 25, 1913, in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He was the son of Victor A. and Lillian Rostow, Russian-Jewish immigrants. They were socialists, and he was named after Eugene Victor Debs, the American socialist party leader.

Education

Rostow attended New Haven High School. After graduating in 1933 with a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, Rostow studied economics for two years at King's College, Cambridge. He then returned to the United States to receive a Bachelor of Laws in 1937, and a Master of Arts in 1944.

Career

After graduation, Eugene Rostow worked for a year in private practice in New York. Thereafter he taught at the Yale Law School off and on from 1938 until his retirement in 1984.

Back problems precluded him from wartime military service, so he worked for the Lend-Lease Administration. In 1945 he wrote an article denouncing, as one of its most serious mistakes, the supreme court's endorsement of President Roosevelt's internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans. After the war, he helped develop the Marshall Plan, which offered United States financial aid to foster economic recovery in Europe.

In 1964 Rostow became a professor of law and public affairs and was dean of the Yale Law School from 1955 to 1965.

During his teaching career, Rostow served as an adviser to the State Department (1942-1944) and was the assistant executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe (1949-1950). He was also a member of the United States attorney general's national committee for the study of anti-trust laws (1954-1955); a member of the advisory council of the Peace Corps; and consultant to the Under Secretary of State from 1961 to 1966 and Under Secretary of State from 1966 to 1969.

Rostow's appointment to the Johnson administration came at a time when the country was turning against the commitment in Vietnam. Rostow was outraged by the excesses of the radical students, and contemptuous of what he saw as the naivety of liberals, his former friends, who denounced the war. For Rostow, as for many American Jews of his generation, the lesson of Hitler and appeasement was transferred to Vietnam, to dealing with the Soviet Union and to the Middle East. It was not long before he was taking other conservative views, on communications and broadcasting policy and on affirmative action.

Far more important to him was his anger at President Nixon's, and Henry Kissinger's, détente with the Soviet Union. The row climaxed post-Watergate, with Nixon's replacement by Gerald Ford.

The committee on the present danger was set up to attack Kissinger's disarmament policies and Rostow became its chairman. This was an important episode in the rightward shift of United States foreign policy and Rostow's legal credentials and sharp, moralistic style added to the committee's credibility.

In the years of President Carter (1977-1980), the committee was in the wilderness but when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, its members were everywhere. In what one arms control expert called "a masterpiece of miscasting," Rostow became head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, with Donald Rumsfeld as his adviser. Rostow was soon fired, probably because he had made too many enemies in the administration, to right and left.

As early as the 1970s Rostow was attacking Israel's critics. He made himself useful to that country and especially to its United States supporters by lending his prestige to a number of Israeli contentions, chiefly the proposition that there was no legal reason why Israel should not build West Bank settlements.

He worked with a number of conservative military men in Washington. He was also involved in the setting up of the Touro School of Law, to teach Jewish law. After leaving Yale he held a distinguished chair at the National Defence University in Washington. Well into his 80s he poured out articles, reviews, and letters.

After his retirement, he spent a year at Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1990 was a fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Books by Rostow include "Planning for Freedom" (1955), "Law, Power and the Pursuit of Peace" (1969), "Middle East: Critical Choices for the USA" (1977), "Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States" (1903).

Achievements

• Eugene Victor Debs Rostow was an influential figure in and out of government who served in the State Department. He was a legal scholar who helped build Yale Law School's eminence. Rostow was the highest-ranking Democrat in the Reagan administration, as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Works

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  • The Sovereign Prerogative: The Supreme Court and the Quest for Law.

    (Rostow's position is that in the exercise of the "soverei...)

    1962
  • A national policy for the oil industry 1948
  • Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States, 1759 to the Present 1993
  • A breakfast for Bonaparte: U.S. national security interests from the Heights of Abraham to the nuclear age 1993
  • Law, power, and the pursuit of peace 1968
  • The Ideal in Law 1978

Religion

Eugene was a Judaist.

Politics

Rostow was an opponent of arms limitation under President Ford, head of the arms control agency under President Reagan, and in his 70s and 80s a champion of Israel and of the Likud party's defiant policies. Even after joining the Reagan administration, he thought of himself as a Democrat, albeit a distinctly conservative one.

Personality

Rostow had a tenacious capacity for work, a clear mind, and a trenchant style.

Connections

In 1933 Rostow married Edna Greenberg. The couple had three children: Victor, Jessica, and Nicholas.

Father:

Victor A. Rostow

Mother:

Lillian Rostow

Brother:

Walt Rostow

Walt Whitman Rostow was an American economist, professor, and political theorist who served as National Security Advisor to President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.

Brother:

Eugene Victor Debs

Eugene Victor Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.

Wife:

Edna (Greenberg) Rostow

Son:

Victor Rostow

Daughter:

Jessica Rostow

Son:

Nicholas Rostow

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, vol. 212
  2011