In August 1954, Rostow and fellow CIA-connected MIT economics professor Max F. Millikan convinced Eisenhower to massively increase US foreign aid for development as part of a policy of spreading what he saw as "American-style" economic growth in Asia and elsewhere, backed by the military. Unlike many of the first generation of "Cold Warriors" who saw the Cold War in essentially Euro-centric terms, Rostow viewed the Cold War as a global struggle in which the Third World was its most important battlefield. Rostow often accused people such as George F. Kennan and Dean Acheson of being racists because they viewed Europe as being far more important than Asia. On 26 February 1958, Rostow first met Senator John F. Kennedy, who was impressed with the academic who understood power. On 27 February 1958, Rostow appeared as a witness before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where as prearranged, Kennedy asked him a question about American economic aid to India, which led to the reply the "present aid program, which amounts to about $290 million this year, is grossly inadequate". The purpose of the testimony was to embarrass Eisenhower whom both men believed was neglecting the Third World. Rostow wrote two speeches for Kennedy, which he delivered on the Senate floor, attacking the Eisenhower administration for ignoring India, while the Soviet Union was not, and led ultimately India being granted $150 million in exchange credits from the Import-Export Bank later that year. In September 1958, Rostow left to take a professorship at Cambridge University, where he started writing his "magnum opus", a book intended to debunk Marxism as a theory that became "The Stages of Economic Growth". At a time when Nikita Khrushchev was boasting that the Soviet Union with its Five Year Plans would soon surpass the United States as the world's dominant economic power because what he interpreted as Marxist theory explained both the past and the future, there was much desire in the American political and intellectual establishments to assess its ideological dimensions.