When Kennedy became president in 1961, he appointed Rostow as deputy to his national security assistant McGeorge Bundy. Through Rostow was just Bundy's deputy, in practice he served as an equal as initially Kennedy was greatly influenced by the advice he received from the renowned, world famous economist. Just before Kennedy was inaugurated as president on 20 January 1961, on 6 January 1961, the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in Moscow declaring that the Soviet Union was allegedly able and willing to support any "war of national liberation" anywhere in the Third World. Khrushchev's speech was largely a response to the Sino-Soviet split of 1960 as Mao Zedong had accused Khrushchev of "revisionism" and denounced the Soviet Union for not supporting Third World anti-colonial and nationalist movements. As such, Mao announced that he regarded himself as the proper leader of the world Communist movement, causing Khrushchev to strike back with his speech in Moscow announcing his willingness to support "wars of national liberation". Missing the context of Sino-Soviet rivalry, Kennedy and his advisers regarded Khrushchev's speech as a bold new Soviet gambit for world domination, making the subject of the Third World a key concern for him. The first meeting of the National Security Council under Kennedy on 28 January 1961 was entirely devoted to the subject of the Third World with the president reading out excerpts of Khrushchev's "wars of national liberation speech" to underline the danger. Rostow, who always saw the Third World as the main "battlefield" of the Cold War, enjoyed much influence with the new president at first. As the apostle of the modernization theory, Rostow laid out policies to counter Communism in the Third World.