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Robert S. McNamara

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Robert S. McNamara
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  • Born: 9 June 1916
  • Birthplace: San Francisco, California
  • Best Known As: U.S. Secretary of Defense, 1961-68

Robert Strange McNamara served as the United States Secretary of Defense under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (1961-68), overseeing military strategies and policies during the Cold War and the Vietnam War. A native of San Francisco, McNamara served in World War II and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war he went to work with the Ford Motor Company and rapidly rose in the ranks until he was named company president in 1960. Five weeks later he accepted Kennedy's offer to serve in the cabinet as the defense secretary. McNamara restructured the military and moved from a reliance on nuclear weapons to a flexible strategy of conventional and limited wars meant to contain the communist forces of the Soviet Union and China. The escalation of American involvement in Vietnam occupied McNamara's time and energy throughout his tenure, and McNamara's businesslike approach and use of non-military analysts rankled Pentagon officials, members of Congress and anti-war protesters. By 1967 he was openly skeptical that the U.S. could be victorious in Vietnam and resigned to become the president of the World Bank, a post he held from 1968 to 1981. Since then he has written about his experiences (1995's In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam) and lectured on contemporary politics. He was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2003 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, which was directed by Errol Morris.

 
 
Political Biography: Robert Strange McNamara

(b. San Francisco, 9 June 1916) US; Secretary of Defense 1961 – 8 The son of a wholesale shoe industry executive, McNamara was educated in state schools, graduated BA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937 and gained an MBA from Harvard in 1939. He began working for the accountants Price Waterhouse that year, but a year later he returned to Harvard as an assistant professor of business administration. During the Second World War he became a consultant to the US Department of War in 1942, he was commissioned captain in the USAF in 1943, was awarded the US Legion of Merit, and promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1946. He saw active service in England, India, China, and the Pacific. Retiring from active service in 1946, he has since then held the rank of colonel in the AF Reserve. On returning to civilian life he joined the Ford Motor Co., and between 1946 and 1961 held various managerial posts until eventually becoming company president in 1960 (the first non-member of the Ford family to hold that office). In 1961 Kennedy appointed McNamara Secretary of Defense. He continued to serve in this post under Lyndon Johnson until 1968.

McNamara occupied this highly sensitive position during a period of increased tension in East-West relations, marked by the building of the Berlin Wall (1961), the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961), and the Cuban missile crisis (1962) and the controversial escalation of American involvement in Vietnam. Although admitting to having shared in the responsibility for the latter policy at the time, he subsequently aroused controversy by expressing doubts about the wisdom of America's stance in Vietnam. Whilst in office he was instrumental in setting up the Defense Supply Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency with the Defense Intelligence School.

On leaving public office in 1968 McNamara became president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

 
Military History Companion: Robert Strange McNamara

McNamara, Robert Strange (b. 1916), US Secretary of Defense during the war in Vietnam. Born in San Francisco and educated at Berkeley, McNamara studied and then taught at Harvard University in the early 1940s. After a stint in the US Army Air Corps during WW II, he achieved technocratic fame for his incorporation of systems analysis into management at the Ford Motor Company, where he became president in 1960.

McNamara was appointed Secretary of Defense by John F. Kennedy in 1961 and was closely associated with the think-tank theology that produced MAD (mutually assured destruction) and other attempts to make sense of the nuclear weapons dilemma (see Wohlstetter). But his principal claim to infamy rests on the arrogance of his and other members of the ‘best and the brightest’ who so totally mismanaged US involvement in South-East Asia. Misled by optimistic military and intelligence assessments, he initially believed that US participation could be limited to support for the South Vietnamese forces. He soon found himself supervising the deployment of ever-larger US resources, which he and his team of systems analysts attempted to direct from Washington, down to the choice of targets and the bomb loads for individual air strikes. By October 1966 he had reached the blindingly obvious conclusion that the North Vietnamese had adopted ‘a strategy of keeping us busy and waiting us out (a strategy of attriting our national will) ’. Having no answers to people, his own as well as the Vietnamese, who did not respond according to his mathematical computations, by 1967 he had soured on the war to the point of calling for an immediate bombing halt and a stand-down in ground operations. But by that time he had committed the USA too deeply and wars cannot simply be walked away from. His resignation made little impact and he went on to further demonstrate his lack of sympathy or understanding for human nature at the World Bank. Recently he has produced his long-awaited mea culpa for Vietnam, which unsurprisingly concentrates on the stategic errors for which he was only partially responsible while skating over the ineffable hubris of his attempt to micro-manage the war tactically.

Bibliography

  • McNamara, Robert S., with VanDeMark, Brian, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York, 1995)

— Andrew Haughton/Hugh Bicheno

 
US Military History Companion: Robert S. McNamara

(1916–), secretary of defense and president of the World Bank

Born in San Francisco into a family of humble means, McNamara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an economics degree in 1937, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1939, where he also joined the faculty, teaching financial management systems based on statistical controls. During World War II, the Army Air Forces appointed McNamara and several of his colleagues as officers to develop methods of statistical control for managing the strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

Hailed for their brilliance in applying statistical methods to large‐scale organization in this pre‐computer age, McNamara and several other “stat control” officers were hired by the Ford Motor Company in 1946 to rejuvenate the flagging auto giant. The “whiz kids” introduced new managerial and product changes and built Ford into a success. Six of the men eventually became Ford executives.

Shortly after becoming company president in late 1960, McNamara resigned to become John F. Kennedy's secretary of defense, a position he held from 1961 to 1968. Kennedy's respect for McNamara's liberal Harvard connections, youthful vigor, and reputation for efficiency and success were key factors behind his appointment. With his confidence in civilianized, centralized defense decision making, McNamara appointed a team of civilian analysts—“defense intellectuals”—to apply quantitative systems analysis for “cost effectiveness” (capability as a return on investment) over procurement and other decisions of the military. The McNamara “revolution” at the Department of Defense (DoD) included program budgeting, evaluation of systems‐wide costs, five‐year plans linking defense spending with missions, and efforts at reducing interservice rivalry and redundancy and increasing coordination and efficiency. Although a number of the McNamara reforms proved successful and were permanently accepted by the Pentagon, others put him continually at odds with the top brass.

While reforming Pentagon practices, McNamara also engaged in the military buildup of the early years of the Kennedy administration. He improved the strategic nuclear forces, increasing the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine‐launched ballistic missiles (while reducing the number of manned bombers) and bolstering the capability of U.S. nuclear forces to survive a nuclear attack and thus mount a retaliatory “second strike.” After briefly supporting a “counterforce” policy of targeting only Soviet missiles, not cities, McNamara reluctantly returned to a deterrence policy of “Mutual Assured Destruction.” Endorsing the doctrine of Flexible Response, which envisioned U.S. capability of responding to a variety of levels of threat, McNamara also expanded U.S. conventional forces.

McNamara's influence on policymaking stemmed from his overwhelming use of quantitative analysis, his reputation for success, and his personal friendship with John Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, McNamara proposed the selective naval blockade which successfully sealed off the island.

During the Vietnam War (1960–75), McNamara supported the policies of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to prevent the victory of Communistled insurgents, later joined by North Vietnamese regular forces, to overthrow the U.S.‐backed government of South Vietnam. This included expanding U.S. military advisers' roles under Kennedy, and then under Johnson a policy of graduated escalation that sought to maintain the Saigon government with increasing use of U.S. ground, air, and naval forces while not disrupting Johnson's domestic reforms in the United States. Years later, McNamara said that the United States could have disengaged after Kennedy's death in 1963; but at the time, he supported Johnson's decision to remain committed. Linked to Johnson's conduct of the war, McNamara was attacked by peace and antiwar movements for continuing the war and by the political Right for restricting U.S. military force. By 1967, he privately advised the president to end the war through negotiations.

In February 1968 McNamara left the Pentagon to become president of the World Bank. He served as its head from 1968 to 1981, focusing on the Third World. In later years, he became a prolific author and lecturer suggesting in books such as Blundering into Disaster (1986) drastic limitations on nuclear weapons. McNamara's principal role during Vietnam, however, has continued to haunt him. His controversial memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995)—where the aging former secretary of defense called the war “terribly wrong”—outraged both supporters and critics of the war, and highlighted the deep divisions that still surrounded America's involvement in Vietnam.

[See also Civil‐Military Relations: Civilian Control of the Military; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Strategy: Nuclear Warfare Strategy and War Plans.]

Bibliography

  • David M. Barrett, Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisors, 1993.
  • Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara, 1993.
  • Paul Hendrickson, The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and the Five Lives of a Lost War, 1996.
  • H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, 1997
 
US Military Dictionary: Robert S. McNamara

McNamara, Robert S. (1916-) secretary of defense (1961-68), born in San Francisco. McNamara brought civilian management practices to the Department of Defense. Such reforms as centralized decision making and the application of quantitative cost analysis to procurement decisions kept McNamara at odds with the military brass. His tenure, which coincided with a period of heightened Cold War tensions and Vietnam War escalation, also saw a military buildup that included improved strategic nuclear forces and increases in intercontinental and submarine-launched missiles, as well as an expansion of conventional forces. His support of the Vietnam policies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson made him a prime target of attack as opposition to the war grew. McNamara resigned to become president of the World Bank, where he remained until 1981.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

 
Biography: Robert S. McNamara

Robert S. McNamara (born 1916) was a business executive, U.S. secretary of defense, and president of the World Bank.

Robert Strange McNamara was born in San Francisco on June 9, 1916, the son of Robert James McNamara, sales manager for a wholesale shoe company, and the former Clara Nell Strange. Educated in the public schools of Piedmont, California, McNamara proved an excellent student, achieving a straight "A" average at Piedmont High School. He continued his education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in philosophy and economics and earned the unusual distinction of being elected to Phi Beta Kappa at the end of his sophomore year. Following graduation in 1937, he was admitted to Harvard University's Graduate School of Business Administration. Two years later, after compiling a superb academic record, he was awarded the M.B.A. degree.

Military Career

In 1939 McNamara accepted a position in the San Francisco office of the accounting firm Price Waterhouse & Company. He returned to Harvard the following year as an assistant professor of business administration. With U.S. entry into World War II, McNamara volunteered for the Navy; his poor eyesight, however, prevented him from entering into active duty. Instead, McNamara remained in Cambridge and in 1942, as part of a special arrangement between the Harvard Business School and the U.S. Army, taught a course for Army Air Force officers. He also served as a special consultant to the Army Air Forces on the establishment of a statistical system to help monitor and control wartime logistical problems.

In 1943 he took a leave of absence from Harvard to serve with the Army Air Forces in England. While there he applied his accounting and statistical expertise to the B-17 bomber program, in the process earning a commission as a temporary captain in the Army Air Forces. He also worked on the development of the B-29, the long range bomber that was to play a critical role in the final years of the war. His role included working on the problem of flying the b-29 bombers from India to their forward bases in China and their targets in Japan without running out of fuel. Subsequently McNamara served with the Army Air Forces in India, China, and the Pacific and was released from active service in April 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. For his wartime service McNamara was awarded the Legion of Merit.

Success as Business Executive

Upon release from the military, McNamara initially intended to return to Harvard University. However, Col. Charles B. Thornton, who had worked with McNamara during the war, presented him with a more intriguing possibility. Thornton induced McNamara to join a group of statistical control specialists who were planning to apply the skills developed during their wartime service to the corporate world. Late in 1946 the financially plagued Ford Motor Company hired these nine so-called "Whiz Kids" as a unit. McNamara soon proved himself the most adept of the group; he rose rapidly through Ford's corporate hierarchy.

Initially named manager of the company's planning and financial offices, by 1949 McNamara had become comptroller. In August 1953 he was promoted to assistant general manager of the Ford division. Two years later he was elected manager of the Ford division, and in 1957 he advanced to vice-president in charge of all car and truck divisions, was elected to the board of directors, and was named to the company's powerful executive and administration committees. On November 9, 1960, McNamara succeeded Henry Ford 2nd as president of the Ford Motor Company, becoming the first non-family member to occupy that position. Ironically, he was to serve as Ford's president only for about one month before being offered the position of secretary of defense by President-elect John F. Kennedy.

During his years with Ford McNamara established a reputation as a brilliantly innovative manager. He helped modernize the company by setting up a comprehensive corporate accounting system. In addition, he helped increase sales; introduced the popular Falcon, one of the first compacts; and pioneered in the installation of seat belts and other safety features. By 1960 Ford ranked as the third largest industrial concern in the United States.

Secretary of Defense

McNamara was sworn in as secretary of defense on January 21, 1961. At considerable personal loss he had previously disposed of all his Ford Motor Company stock and stock options in order to avoid any possible conflict of interest. Kennedy wanted someone to manage the world largest bureaucracy and his choice of McNamara seemed logical. He continued to serve as secretary of defense until his resignation in 1968. During those years he solidified his reputation as a financial and managerial wizard while also emerging as one of the top national security and foreign policy advisers to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

His main task, McNamara explained to a New York Times correspondent the day after taking the oath of office, was "to bring efficiency to a $40 billion enterprise beset by jealousies and political pressures while maintaining American military superiority." He was assisted in reorganizing the Pentagon by many of the "whiz kids" who accompanied him from Ford. McNamara and his "whiz kids" established elaborate controls over department resource use, closed down uneconomical military based and refused to spend funds for weapon systems of which he did not approve. He consolidated seven of the Defense Department's assistant secretaryships under five aides, while creating a new Office of Management Planning and Organization Studies.

Applying the techniques of systems analysis to the Pentagon's huge bureaucracy, McNamara inaugurated a planning-programming-budgeting system. This innovation enabled him to project the first five-year budget in the history of the Defense Department, a plan that he unveiled to Congress in January 1963. Much of his energy during his first few years at Defense was devoted to revitalizing America's conventional forces and moving away from what he viewed as an excessive reliance on nuclear deterrence during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He accepted the doctrine of "flexible response," which called for the development of a broad choice of deterrent forces, ranging from the nuclear to the anti-guerrilla.

Under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson U.S. military involvement in Vietnam increased steadily, and Vietnam ultimately became McNamara's principal preoccupation. Unquestionably, that divisive war was the most difficult - and controversial - episode in his career. The secretary of defense fully supported President Johnson's decisions for escalation, including the dispatch of American combat troops in 1965 and the inauguration of a massive bombing campaign that same year. Publicly, he continued to support the U.S. war effort until his resignation, and his public projections were almost unfailingly optimistic. Privately, however, McNamara began to express doubts about the war as early as November 1965, following a disappointing trip to Saigon. As his disillusionment grew, in 1967 the Defense secretary commissioned a study of American involvement in Vietnam, a project that eventually became known as the Pentagon Papers following its unauthorized release in 1971. Increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of American policy in Vietnam and at odds with Johnson, in early 1968 McNamara resigned to accept a position with the World Bank.

President of the World Bank

McNamara served as president of the World Bank for 13 years, from 1968 to 1981. Under his direction the bank became the world's largest and most important single source of international development assistance. When McNamara took office the bank was lending about $1 billion a day; by 1980 that figure had grown to $12 billion. During his last year with the institution it was supervising over 1,600 projects with a total value of approximately $100 billion in more than 100 developing countries. In his final address to the World Bank's board of governors, McNamara said that the most fundamental problem facing the world was the persistence of widespread poverty. "This World Bank - born out of the ruins of World War II - has grown into one of the world's most constructive instruments of human aspiration and progress," McNamara exclaimed. "And yet, it has only barely begun to develop its full potential."

Following his retirement from the World Bank in 1981, McNamara continued to write and speak on a broad range of public issues, including world poverty, development strategies, nuclear policy, and South Africa. He also served on a number of corporate and other boards, including Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Washington Post, Trans World Airlines, Corning Glass Works, Bank of America, the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and the California Institute of Technology.

After leaving the World Bank, McNamara became a strong critic of nuclear arms. He argued that the U.S. and Soviet officials should each maintain "a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to discourage anyone else from using nuclear weapons" and that "nuclear weapons have no military purpose whatsoever other than to deter one's opponent from their use."

During the 1980s McNamara devoted much of his time to writing books and articles delineating his position on nuclear arms proliferation, arms control, comprehensive test bans, restriction of antiballistic missiles. He also proposed the establishment of "new rules" of conduct that could provide each side the chance to pursue their own agenda through diplomacy rather than threat or use of force. He suggested that each side's military forces be restructured to be defensive and reduced in number; that they refrain from becoming involved in regional conflicts; and that they work together to solve regional and global problems peacefully.

In 1995, McNamara released a new book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in which he reveals that he lied to Congress and the American people about the causes for U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara, while not entirely blaming himself, admits that his misunderstanding of Vietnam and Asian politics cost nearly 60,000 American lives. Many critics feel that the book is a self-serving way for McNamara to assuage his own guilt over his mishandling of the facts during the early years of the war. David Halberstam, author of The Best and the Brightest doesn't believe that McNamara understands what he did at all and stated, "the book is shallow and deeply disingenuous. For him to say 'we couldn't get information' borders on a felony, because he was creator of the lying machine that gave him that information. The point was to make a flawed policy look better."

Further Reading

A full-length biography is Deborah Shapley, Robert McNamara: Soldier of the American Century; A brief sketch of his career up to 1968 can be found in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972); Two studies of his tenure as Defense secretary are: William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (1964) and Robert M. Roherty, Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Role of the Secretary of Defense (1970); His involvement with the war in Vietnam has been treated in a large number of secondary works on that conflict, including George C. Herring, America's Longest War (1979) and Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (1983); McNamara is the author of The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (1968) and One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People: The Dimensions of Development (1973); A compilation of his speeches has also been published as The McNamara Years at the World Bank: Major Policy Addresses of Robert S. McNamara, 1968-1981 (1981). Also see a review of In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in National Review, July 10, 1995.

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Robert Strange McNamara

(born June 9, 1916, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. secretary of defense (1961 – 68). He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley (1937), earned a graduate degree at the Harvard Business School (1939), and later joined the Harvard faculty. He developed logistical and statistical systems for the military during World War II. After the war, he was one of the "Whiz Kids" hired to revitalize the Ford Motor Company, and in 1960 he became the first president of the company who was not a member of the Ford family. In 1961 he was appointed secretary of defense by John F. Kennedy. Though initially a supporter of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, by 1967 he advocated peace negotiations; his opposition to the bombing of North Vietnam caused him to lose influence with Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson. He resigned in 1968 to become president of the World Bank (1968 – 81).

For more information on Robert Strange McNamara, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: McNamara, Robert Strange
(măk'nəmâr'ə) , 1916–, U.S. Secretary of Defense (1961–68), b. San Francisco. He taught (1940–43) business administration at Harvard, served in World War II, and was (1946–60) an executive of the Ford Motor Company, where he was responsible for many of the managerial and product changes that enabled the company to regain its high rank among the nation's corporations. In Nov., 1960, he became the first president of the corporation who was not a member of the Ford family, but he resigned shortly afterward to become (Jan., 1961) President Kennedy's secretary of defense. McNamara introduced modern management techniques in the Defense Dept. and asserted civilian control over the defense establishment. He also shifted U.S. military strategy away from heavy reliance on nuclear weaponry and strengthened conventional fighting capacity. Although he at first supported escalation of the Vietnam War, growing doubts about the war led McNamara to resign from the cabinet. From 1968 to 1981 he was president of the World Bank. McNamara wrote The Essence of Security (1968), One Hundred Countries, Two Billion People (1973), and The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995).

Bibliography

See biography by D. Shapley (1988).

 
Wikipedia: Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara

In office
January 21, 1961 – February 29, 1968
President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson
Deputy Roswell Gilpatric, Cyrus Vance, Paul Nitze
Preceded by Thomas S. Gates
Succeeded by Clark M. Clifford

In office
April 1968 – June 1981
Preceded by George D. Woods
Succeeded by Alden W. Clausen

Born June 9 1916 (1916--) (age 91)
San Francisco, California
Political party Democratic
Spouse Margaret Craig (1. died)
Diana Masieri Byfield (2. present)
Religion Presbyterian

Robert Strange McNamara (born June 9, 1916) is an American business executive and a former United States Secretary of Defense. McNamara served as U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, during the Vietnam War. He resigned that position to become President of the World Bank (1968-1981). McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.[1]

Early life and career

Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, where his father was the sales manager of a wholesale shoe company; he got his middle name "Strange" from his mother's maiden name. He became an Eagle Scout, and graduated in 1937 from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of the International Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta, with a Bachelor of Arts in economics with minors in mathematics and philosophy, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his sophomore year, and earned a varsity letter in crew. He was a member of the UC Berkeley Golden Bear Battalion, Army ROTC. He then earned a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1939.

After earning his MBA, McNamara worked a year for the accounting firm Price Waterhouse in San Francisco. In August 1940 he returned to Harvard to teach in the Business School and became the highest paid and youngest Assistant Professor at the time. Following his involvement there in a program to teach the analytical approaches used in business to officers of the Army Air Forces (AAF), he entered the Army as a captain in early 1943, serving most of the war with the AAF's Office of Statistical Control. One major responsibility was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness, especially the B-29 forces commanded by Major General Curtis LeMay in China and the Marianas Islands.[2] He left active duty in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and with a Legion of Merit.

In 1946 McNamara joined Ford Motor Company, due to the influence of a Colonel he worked under named Charles "Tex" Thornton. Thornton had read an article in Life magazine which reported that the company was in dire need of reform. He was one of ten former WW II officers known as the "Whiz Kids", who helped the company to stop its losses and administrative chaos by implementing modern planning, organization, and management control systems. Starting as manager of planning and financial analysis, he advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions. McNamara opposed Ford's planned Edsel automobile and worked to stop the program even before the first car rolled off the assembly line. He eventually succeeded in ending the program in November 1960. McNamara also came close to terminating the Lincoln, forcing product planners to reinvent the car for 1961. On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of Ford from outside the family of Henry Ford. McNamara received substantial credit for Ford's expansion and success in the postwar period.

Secretary of Defense

President Kennedy and McNamara, 1962
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President Kennedy and McNamara, 1962

President-elect John F. Kennedy first offered the post of secretary of defense to former secretary Robert A. Lovett. Lovett declined but recommended McNamara; Kennedy had him approached by Sargent Shriver regarding either the Treasury or the Defense cabinet post less than five weeks after McNamara had become president at Ford. At first McNamara turned down the Treasury position; but eventually, after discussions with his family, McNamara accepted Kennedy's invitation to serve as Secretary of Defense.

Although not especially knowledgeable about defense matters, McNamara immersed himself in the subject, learned quickly, and soon began to apply an "active role" management philosophy, in his own words "providing aggressive leadership questioning, suggesting alternatives, proposing objectives and stimulating progress." He rejected radical organizational changes, such as those proposed by a group Kennedy had appointed, headed by Sen. W. Stuart Symington, which would have abolished the military departments, replaced the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) with a single chief of staff, and established three functional unified commands. McNamara accepted the need for separate services but argued that "at the end we must have one defense policy, not three conflicting defense policies. And it is the job of the Secretary and his staff to make sure that this is the case."

United States Civil Defense booklet,Fallout Protection commissioned by McNamara.
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United States Civil Defense booklet,Fallout Protection commissioned by McNamara.

Initially, the basic policies outlined by President Kennedy in a message to Congress on March 28, 1961 guided McNamara in the reorientation of the defense program. Kennedy rejected the concept of first-strike attack and emphasized the need for adequate strategic arms and defense to deter nuclear attack on the United States and its allies. U.S. arms, he maintained, must constantly be under civilian command and control, and the nation's defense posture had to be "designed to reduce the danger of irrational or unpremeditated general war." The primary mission of U.S. overseas forces, in cooperation with allies, was "to prevent the steady erosion of the Free World through limited wars." Kennedy and McNamara rejected massive retaliation for a posture of flexible response. The United States wanted choices in an emergency other than "inglorious retreat or unlimited retaliation," as the president put it. Out of a major review of the military challenges confronting the United States initiated by McNamara in 1961 came a decision to increase the nation's limited warfare capabilities. These moves were significant because McNamara was abandoning Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in favor of a flexible response strategy that relied on increased U.S. capacity to conduct limited, non-nuclear warfare.

He also created the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency.

Anti-communism

The Kennedy administration placed particular emphasis on improving ability to counter communist "wars of national liberation," in which the enemy avoided head-on military confrontation and resorted to political subversion and guerrilla tactics. As McNamara said in his 1962 annual report, "The military tactics are those of the sniper, the ambush, and the raid. The political tactics are terror, extortion, and assassination." In practical terms, this meant training and equipping U.S. military personnel, as well as such allies as South Vietnam, for counterinsurgency operations.

Increased attention to conventional strength complemented these special forces preparations. In this instance he called up reserves and also proceeded to expand the regular armed forces. Whereas active duty strength had declined from approximately 3,555,000 to 2,483,000 between 1953 (the end of the Korean conflict) and 1961, it increased to nearly 2,808,000 by 30 June 1962. Then the forces leveled off at around 2,700,000 until the Vietnam military buildup began in 1965, reaching a peak of nearly 3,550,000 by mid-1968, just after McNamara left office.

Crisis

In the broad arena of national security, McNamara played a principal part under both presidents Kennedy and Johnson, especially during international crises. The first occurred in April 1961, when a U.S.-supported Cuban exile group attempted to overthrow the Castro regime. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, effected by the Kennedy administration, proved embarrassing. When McNamara left office in 1968, he told reporters that his principal regret was recommending to Kennedy that he launch the Bay of Pigs operation, that "could have been recognized as an error at the time."

More successful, from his perspective, was participating in the Executive Committee, a small advisory group who counseled Kennedy during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He supported the president's quarantine of Cuba in preventing Soviet ships from delivering more weapons. During that crisis, the Pentagon alerted the U.S. military, ready to enforce the administration's demand that the Soviet Union withdraw its missiles from Cuba, believing that the outcome, "demonstrated the readiness of our armed forces to meet a sudden emergency," and "highlighted the importance of maintaining a properly balanced Defense establishment."

Similarly, he regarded using some 24,000 soldiers and dozens of Navy ships to put down a revolution in the Dominican Republic, in April 1965, as another successful test of the "readiness and capabilities of the U.S. defense establishment to support our foreign policy."

As Secretary of Defense, his principal goal was deterrence — convincing Moscow that a nuclear attack against the West would trigger U.S. retaliation against Russia, thereby, eliminating further Soviet military pursuits. McNamara also wanted to give the Soviets reason to refrain from attacking cities. "The very strength and nature of the Alliance forces," he said in the Ann Arbor speech, "make it possible for us to retain, even in the face of a massive surprise attack, sufficient reserve striking power to destroy an enemy society if driven to it."

Soon, he de-emphasized the no-cities approach, for several reasons: public fear that planning limited use of nuclear weapons would render nuclear war feasible; after identifying additional targets in the no-cities strategy, the U.S. Air Force requested more nuclear weapons; the assumption that such a policy would require major air and missile defense, necessitating a vast, expanded budget; and negative Soviet and North Atlantic Treaty Organization reactions. McNamara turned to "assured destruction," which he characterized as the capability "to deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States and its allies by maintaining the ability to inflict unacceptable damage upon any aggressor or aggressors after absorbing a surprise first strike". As defined, assured destruction meant that the U.S. would be able to retaliatorily destroy 20 to 25 per cent of the Soviet Union's population and 50 per cent of its industry. Later, the term mutual assured destruction meant each side's capacity to inflict sufficient damage on the other to constitute effective deterrence. In conjunction with assured destruction he stressed the importance of damage limitation, the use of strategic forces to limit the death of the population and damage to its industrial capacity, by attacking and diminishing the enemy's strategic offensive forces.

To make this strategy credible, McNamara accelerated modernization and expansion of weapons and delivery systems. He accelerated the production and deployment of the solid-fuel Minuteman ICBMs and the Polaris SLBMs, and, by FY 1966, had removed from operational status all of the older liquid-fuel Atlas and Titan I missiles. At the end of his tenure, the U.S. had deployed 54 Titan II and 1,000 Minuteman land-based missiles, and 656 Polaris missiles in 41 nuclear submarines. The size of this long-range strategic missile force remained stable until the 1980s, although the number of warheads increased much when the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) system was engaged in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

Other steps

McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 1967.
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McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 1967.

McNamara took other steps to improve U.S. deterrence posture and military capabilities. He raised the proportion of Strategic Air Command (SAC) strategic bombers on 15-minute ground alert from 25 percent to 50 percent, thus lessening their vulnerability to missile attack. In December 1961 he established the Strike Command (STRICOM). Authorized to draw forces when needed from the Strategic Army Corps (STRAC), the Tactical Air Command, and the airlift units of the Military Air Transport Service and the military services, Strike Command had the mission "to respond swiftly and with whatever force necessary to threats against the peace in any part of the world, reinforcing unified commands or… carrying out separate contingency operations." McNamara also increased long-range airlift and sealift capabilities and funds for space research and development. After reviewing the separate and often uncoordinated service efforts in intelligence and communications, McNamara in 1961 consolidated these functions in the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Communications Agency (the latter originally established by Secretary Gates in 1960), having both report to the secretary of defense through the JCS. The end effect was to remove the Intelligence function from the control of the military and to put it under the control of the Secretary of Defense. In the same year, he set up the Defense Supply Agency to work toward unified supply procurement, distribution, and inventory management under the control of the Secretary of Defense rather than the uniformed military.

McNamara's institution of systems analysis as a basis for making key decisions on force requirements, weapon systems, and other matters occasioned much debate. Two of its main practitioners during the McNamara era, Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, described the concept as follows: "First, the word 'systems' indicates that every decision should be considered in as broad a context as necessary… The word 'analysis' emphasizes the need to reduce a complex problem to its component parts for better understanding. Systems analysis takes a complex problem and sorts out the tangle of significant factors so that each can be studied by the method most appropriate to it." Enthoven and Smith said they used mainly civilians as systems analysts because they could apply independent points of view to force planning. McNamara's tendency to take military advice into account less than had previous secretaries and to override military opinions contributed to his unpopularity with service leaders. It was also generally thought that Systems Analysis, rather than being objective, was tailored by the civilians to support decisions that McNamara had already made.

The most notable example of systems analysis was the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS) instituted by United States Department of Defense Comptroller Charles J. Hitch. McNamara directed Hitch to analyze defense requirements systematically and produce a long-term, program-oriented Defense budget. PPBS evolved to become the heart of the McNamara management program. According to Enthoven and Smith, the basic ideas of PPBS were: "the attempt to put defense program issues into a broader context and to search for explicit measures of national need and adequacy"; "consideration of military needs and costs together"; "explicit consideration of alternatives at the top decision level"; "the active use of an analytical staff at the top policymaking levels"; "a plan combining both forces and costs which projected into the future the foreseeable implications of current decisions"; and "open and explicit analysis, that is, each analysis should be made available to all interested parties, so that they can examine the calculations, data, and assumptions and retrace the steps leading to the conclusions." In practice, the data produced by the analysis was so large and so complex that while it was available to all interested parties, none of them could challenge the conclusions.

Among the management tools developed to implement PPBS were the Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP), the Draft Presidential Memorandum (DPM), the Readiness, Information and Control Tables, and the Development Concept Paper (DCP). The annual FYDP was a series of tables projecting forces for eight years and costs and manpower for five years in mission-oriented, rather than individual service, programs. By 1968, the FYDP covered 10 military areas: strategic forces, general purpose forces, intelligence and communications, airlift and sealift, guard and reserve forces, research and development, central supply and maintenance, training and medical services, administration and related activities, and support of other nations.

The DPM, intended for the White House and usually prepared by the systems analysis office, was a method to study and analyze major Defense issues. Sixteen DPMs appeared between 1961 and 1968 on such topics as strategic offensive and defensive forces, NATO strategy and force structure, military assistance, and tactical air forces. OSD sent the DPMs to the services and the JCS for comment; in making decisions, McNamara included in the DPM a statement of alternative approaches, force levels, and other factors. The DPM in its final form became a decision document. The DPM was hated by the JCS and uniformed military in that it cut their ability to communicate directly to the White House. The DPMs were also disliked because the systems analysis process was so heavyweight that it was impossible for any service to effectively challenge its conclusions.

The Development Concept Paper examined performance, schedule, cost estimates, and technical risks to provide a basis for determining whether to begin or continue a research and development program. But in practice, what it proved to be was a cost burden that became a barrier to entry for companies attempting to deal with the military. It aided the trend toward a few large non-competitive defense contractors serving the military. Rather than serving any useful purpose, the overhead necessary to generate information that was often in practice ignored resulted in increased costs throughout the system.

The Readiness, Information, and Control Tables provided data on specific projects, more detailed than in the FYDP, such as the tables for the Southeast Asia Deployment Plan, which recorded by month and quarter the schedule for deployment, consumption rates, and future projections of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia.

ABM

Toward the end of his term McNamara also opposed an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system proposed for installation in the United States, arguing that it would be too expensive (at least $40 billion) and ultimately ineffective, because the Soviets would increase their offensive capability to offset the defensive advantage of the United States. Under pressure to proceed with the ABM program after it became clear that the Soviets had begun a similar project, McNamara finally agreed to a "thin" system, but he never believed it wise for the United States to move in that direction.

He always believed that the best defense strategy for the US was a parity of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union. An ABM system would be an ineffective weapon as compared to an increase in deployed nuclear missile capacity.

Cost reductions

McNamara's staff stressed systems analysis as an aid in decision making on weapon development and many other budget issues. The secretary believed that the United States could afford any amount needed for national security, but that "this ability does not excuse us from applying strict standards of effectiveness and efficiency to the way we spend our defense dollars…. You have to make a judgment on how much is enough." Acting on these principles, McNamara instituted a much-publicized cost reduction program, which, he reported, saved $14 billion in the five-year period beginning in 1961. Although he had to withstand a storm of criticism from senators and representatives from affected congressional districts, he closed many military bases and installations that he judged unnecessary to national security. He was equally determined about other cost-saving measures. But in the end, most of the cost savings were illusionary. Every base he closed resulted in a new construction project elsewhere to expand another base, relocation of forces projects and other related spending. The actual cost savings through consolidation of installations was often minimal or in some cases negative.

Due to the nuclear arms race, the Vietnam War buildup and other projects, total obligational authority increased greatly during the McNamara years. Fiscal year TOA increased from $48.4 billion in 1962 to $49.5 billion in 1965 (before the major Vietnam increases) to $74.9 billion in 1968, McNamara's last year in office. Not until FY 1984 did DoD's total obligational authority surpass that of FY 1968 in constant dollars.

Program consolidation

One major hallmark of McNamara's cost reductions was the consolidation of programs from different services, most visibly in fighter acquisition, believing that the redundancy created waste and unnecessary spending. McNamara directed the Air Force to adopt the Navy's F-4 Phantom and A-7 fighters, a consolidation that was quite successful. Conversely, his actions in mandating a premature across-the-board adoption of the untested M16 rifle proved catastrophic when the weapons began to fail in combat. McNamara tried to extend his success by merging development programs as well, resulting in the TFX dual service F-111 project. It was to combine Air Force requirements for an air superiority fighter and tactical bomber, His experience in the corporate world led him to believe that adopting a single type for different missions and service would save money. He insisted on the General Dynamics entry over the DOD's preference for Boeing because of commonality issues. Though heralded as a fighter that could do everything — fast supersonic dash, slow carrier and short airfield landings, tactical strike, and even close air support, in the end it involved too many compromises to succeed at any of them. The Navy version was drastically overweight and difficult to land, and eventually killed after a Grumman study showed it was incapable of matching the abilities of the newly revealed Mig-23 and Mig-25. The F-111 would eventually find its niche as a tactical bomber and electronic warfare aircraft with the Air Force.

However, many analysts believe that even though the TFX project itself was a failure, McNamara was ahead of his time as the trend in fighter design has continued toward consolidation — the F-16 and F/A-18 were developed as multi-role fighters, and most modern designs combine many of the roles the TFX would have had. In many ways, the JSF is seen as a rebirth of the TFX project, in that it purports to satisfy the needs of three American Air arms (as well as several foreign customers), fulfilling the roles of strike fighter, carrier-launched fighter, VSTOL, and CAS (and drawing many criticisms similar to those leveled against the TFX).

Vietnam War

During President John F. Kennedy's term, while McNamara was Secretary of Defense, America's troops in Vietnam increased from 500 to 16,000.

McNamara knew about the potential deadly effects of Dow Chemical’s Agent Orange even as it was being used in Vietnam, and long before veterans came home to die or waste away from the herbicide's after effects. Mutant births are still common in Vietnam.

McNamara has said that the Domino Theory was the main reason for entering the Vietnam War. In the same interview he states, "Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn." [1]

Departure from SoD

A 1968 Cabinet meeting with Dean Rusk, President Johnson and McNamara
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A 1968 Cabinet meeting with Dean Rusk, President Johnson and McNamara

As McNamara grew more and more controversial after 1966 and his differences with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over Vietnam strategy became the subject of public speculation, frequent rumors surfaced that he would leave office. In early November 1967, McNamara's recommendation to freeze troop levels, stop bombing North Vietnam and for the US to hand over ground fighting to South Vietnam was rejected outright by President Lyndon B. Johnson. McNamara's recommendations amounted to his saying that the strategy of the United States in Vietnam which had been pursued to date had failed. Largely as a result, on November 29 of that year, McNamara announced his pending resignation and that he would become President of the World Bank. Other factors were the increasing intensity of the anti-war movement in the United States, the approaching presidential campaign, in which Johnson was expected to seek re-election and McNamara's support over opposition by the JCS of construction along the 17th parallel separating South and North Vietnam of a line of fortifications running from the coast of Vietnam into Laos. The President's announcement of McNamara's move to the World Bank stressed his stated interest in the job and that he deserved a change after seven years as Secretary of Defense, much longer than any of his predecessors (and longer than any of his successors, to date).

Other sources give a different view of McNamara's departure from office. For example, Stanley Karnow in his book "Vietnam: A History" strongly suggests that McNamara was asked to leave by the President. McNamara himself has expressed lack of certainty about the question.[3]

McNamara left office on 29 February 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished Service Medal.

Shortly after McNamara departed the Pentagon, he published "The Essence of Security," discussing various aspects of his tenure and position on basic national security issues. He did not speak out again on defense issues or Vietnam until after he left the World Bank.

World Bank

McNamara served as head of the World Bank from April 1968 to June 1981, when he turned 65.[4] In his thirteen years at the Bank, he introduced key changes. He negotiated, with the conflicting countries represented on the Board, a spectacular growth in funds to channel credits for development, in the form of health, food, and education projects. He also instituted better methods of evaluating the effectiveness of funded projects. One notable project started during McNamara's tenure was the effort to prevent river blindness.[4]

The World Bank currently has a scholarship program under his name.[5]

Post-World Bank activities

In 1982 McNamara joined several other former national security officials in urging that the United States pledge not to use nuclear weapons first in Europe in the event of hostilities; subsequently he proposed the elimination of nuclear weapons as an element of NATO's defense posture. His memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view. Reviews were very mixed. The book was viewed as McNamara's attempt to apologize for his role in the war, but it also has been seen as shifting blame to other people and as an attempt to transform his image from an architect of the war into a virtual opponent.

United States political commentator Noam Chomsky claims that McNamara did not appear to be sorry for the Vietnam War itself, but rather for the expenditure of America's resources with no clear gain. He quotes McNamara from In Retrospect:

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

McNamara has maintained his involvement in politics during recent years, delivering statements critical of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq. [1] On January 5, 2006, McNamara and most living former Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries of State met briefly at the White House with President Bush, to discuss the War in Iraq.

The Fog of War

The The Fog of War movie poster
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The The Fog of War movie poster

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 Errol Morris documentary consisting mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage. It received an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialogue. As McNamara explains, it is a process of examining the experiences of his long and controversial period as the United States Secretary of Defense, as well as other periods of his personal and public life.

Personal information

McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, in 1940. The couple had two daughters and a son. Margaret McNamara, a former teacher, used her position as a Cabinet spouse to launch a reading program for young children, Reading Is Fundamental, which became the largest literacy program in the country. She died of cancer in 1981.

After his wife's death, McNamara dated Katharine Graham, with whom he had been friends since the early 1960s. According to Graham's autobiography, she and McNamara had planned to be traveling in California with two other friends (a married couple) on her 70th birthday, in 1987, so she could avoid any birthday celebration in Washington. Graham died in 2001.

In September 2004, McNamara wed Diana Masieri Byfield, an Italian-born widow who had lived in the United States for more than 40 years. It was her second marriage.[2]

As of August 2007, Robert McNamara is one of only four surviving members of the John F. Kennedy Cabinet and Administration Inner Circle. The others are former Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz, former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, and speech writer Theodore Sorenson.

McNamara's book In Retrospect was seen by many as ironic for the quantitative approach the author took to explaining the mistakes of the Vietnam War. McNamara is still seen as largely the chief architect for the failed policies of Vietnam.

Trivia

  • On September 29, 1972, a passenger on the ferry to Martha's Vineyard recognized McNamara on board and attempted to throw him into the ocean. McNamara declined to press charges. The man remained anonymous, but was interviewed years later by author Paul Hendrickson,[6] who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."
  • A picture of McNamara's 1995 meeting with General Vo Nguyen Giap hangs in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, near pictures of John Kerry, Elmo Zumwalt, Warren Christopher, and other American dignitaries who visited Vietnam after normalization of relations between the two countries.

Other affiliations

  • McNamara is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security.

See also

Books by Robert S. McNamara

  • (1968) The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office. New York, Harper & Row, 1968; London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1968. ISBN 0-340-10950-5.
  • (1973) One hundred countries, two billion people: the dimensions of development. New York, Praeger Publishers, 1973.
  • (1981) The McNamara years at the World Bank: major policy addresses of Robert S. McNamara, 1968-1981; with forewords by Helmut Schmidt and Léopold Senghor. Baltimore: Published for the World Bank by the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-8018-2685-3.
  • (1985) The challenges for sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: 1985.
  • (1986) Blundering into disaster: surviving the first century of the nuclear age. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. ISBN 0-394-55850-2 (hardcover); ISBN 0-394-74987-1 (pbk.).
  • (1989) Out of the cold: new thinking for American foreign and defense policy in the 21st century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. ISBN 0-671-68983-5.
  • (1992) The changing nature of global security and its impact on South Asia. Washington, DC: Washington Council on Non-Proliferation, 1992.
  • (1995) . (with Brian VanDeMark.) New York: Times Books, 1995. ISBN 0-8129-2523-8; New York: Vintage Books, 1996. ISBN 0-679-76749-5.
  • (1999) Argument without end: in search of answers to the Vietnam tragedy. (Robert S. McNamara, James G. Blight, and Robert K. Brigham.) New York: Public Affairs, 1999. ISBN 1-891620-22-3 (hc).
  • (2001) Wilson’s ghost: reducing the risk of conflict, killing, and catastrophe in the 21st century. (Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight.) New York: Public Affairs, 2001. ISBN 1-891620-89-4.

References

  1. ^ Radin, Beryl (2000), Beyond Machiavelli : Policy Analysis Comes of Age. Georgetown University Press.
  2. ^ Rich Frank: Downfall, Random House, 1999.
  3. ^ In The Fog of War he recounts saying to a friend, "Even to this day, Kay, I don't know whether I quit or was fired?" (See transcript)
  4. ^ a b Pages from World Bank History - Bank Pays Tribute to Robert McNamara. Archives. World Bank (March 21, 2003). Retrieved on 2007-05-26.
  5. ^ Robert S. McNamara Fellowships Program. Scholarships. World Bank. Retrieved on 2007-05-26.
  6. ^ Hendrickson, Paul: The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War. Vintage, 1997. ISBN 0-679-78117-X.
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