During the Cuba Missile Crisis, Rostow was mostly excluded from the decision-making process, having only meeting with Kennedy during the crisis where he advised him to stop Soviet ships carrying oil to Cuba, advice that was not taken. Unaware that Kennedy had promised not to invade Cuba and to pull American missiles out of Turkey as part of the resolution, Rostow saw the Cuba Missile Crisis as a triumph, which proved the superior power of the United States. Inspired by the Cuba Missile crisis, Rostow on 28 November 1962 called in a memo for the bombing of North Vietnam, writing: "The whole lesson of the Cold War including the recent Cuba crisis is that Communists do not escalate in response to our actions". In 1962, Rostow started to advocate what became known in Washington as the "Rostow Thesis", namely if the United States bombed North Vietnam along the same lines that Germany and Japan were bombed in World War II, then the North Vietnamese would have to cease trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.