The first crisis that confronted Johnson and Rostow was the Buddhist Uprising in South Vietnam where an attempt by Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ to dismiss General Nguyễn Chánh Thi led to a civil war within the civil war as units of the South Vietnamese Army fought one another, much to the consternation of Johnson who could not believe that America's allies in South Vietnam were fighting each other. Rostow for his part advised the president to fully support Kỳ, charging that the Buddhist Struggle Movement which had rallied behind Thi was being used by the Communists. Rostow told Johnson: "We are faced with the classic revolutionary situation-like Paris in 1789 and St. Petersburg in 1917". Rostow claimed that the Buddhists were just being used by the Viet Cong just as Lenin used Kerensky to take power in 1917, but fortunately American forces were there to save the day. Rostow concluded: "In the face of defeat in the field and Kerensky's weaknesses, Lenin took over in November. This is about what would happen in Saigon if we were not there, but we are there". As the civil war within the civil war between Kỳ and Thi greatly disturbed Johnson, Rostow's advice to side with Kỳ was decisive. The fact that Kỳ expressed much admiration for Hitler, who in his own words was his "only hero" apparently did not offend Rostow. One of Rostow's aides later wrote "Rostow was like Rasputin to a tsar under siege". Rostow's opponent, George Ball wrote about Rostow's influence: "He played to Johnson's weaker side, always creating an image of Johnson standing against the forces of evil. He used to tell him how Lincoln was abused by everybody when he was at a certain stage of the Civil War...He spent a great deal of time creating a kind of fantasy for the president". In August 1966, Harriman warned Rostow against escalating the war to the brink of a nuclear war with China to best preserve life on plant Earth, only to be told "it is only in extreme crises that such settlements will come".