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Robert S. McNamara was Secretary from January 21 1961 to February 29,
1968 and is one of the longest serving secretaries.
McNamara was born on 9 June 1916 in San Francisco. He graduated in 1937
from the University of California (Berkeley) with a degree in economics and
philosophy, earned a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of
Business Admin-istration in 1939, worked a year for the accounting firm of
Price, Waterhouse in San Francisco, and then in August 1940 returned to
Harvard to teach in the business school. He entered the Army Air Forces as
a captain in early 1943 and left active duty three years later with the
rank of lieutenant colonel.
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." 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."
<>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. 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.
Increased attention to conventional strength com-plemented these special
forces preparations. The Berlin crisis in 1961 demonstrated to McNamara the
need for more troops. 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.
McNamara played a much larger role in the formulation of nuclear
strategy than his predecessors. In part this reflected both the increasing
sophistication of nuclear weapons and delivery systems and Soviet progress
toward nuclear parity with the United States. Central in McNamara's
thinking on nuclear policy stood the NATO alliance and the U.S. commitment
to defend its members from aggression.
McNamara took other steps to improve U.S. deterrence posture and
military capabilities. He raised the portion of 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) with the authority to draw forces when needed from the
Strategic Army Corps, the Tactical Air Command, and the airlift units of
the Military Air Transport Service and the military services.
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 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 contributed to his unpopularity with service
leaders.
The most notable example of systems analysis was
thePlanning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) instituted by DoD
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.
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.
PPBS was suspect in some quarters, especially among the military,
because it was civilian-controlled and seemed to rely heavily on impersonal
quantitative analysis. In spite of the criticism, the system persisted in
modified form long after McNamara had left the Pentagon.
McNamara's staff stressed systems analysis as an aid in decisionmaking
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.
In the broad arena of national security affairs, McNamara played a
principal part under both Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson,
especially during international crises. The first of these occurred in
April 1961, when a Cuban exile group with some support from the United
States attempted to overthrow the Castro regime. The disastrous failure of
the Bay of Pigs invasion, carried through by the Kennedy administration
based on planning begun under Eisenhower, proved a great embarrassment.
When McNamara left office in 1968, he told reporters that his principal
regret was his recommendation to Kennedy to proceed with the Bay of Pigs
operation, something that "could have been recognized as an error at
the time."
More successful from McNamara's point of view was his participation in
the Executive Committee, a small group of advisers who counseled Kennedy
during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. McNamara supported the
president's decision to quarantine Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from
bringing in more offensive weapons. During the crisis the Pentagon placed
U.S. military forces on alert, ready to back up the administra-tion's
demand that the Soviet Union withdraw its offensive missiles from Cuba.
McNamara believed that the outcome of the missile crisis "demonstrated
the readiness of our armed forces to meet a sudden emergency" and
"highlighted the importance of maintaining a properly balanced Defense
establishment." Similarly, McNamara regarded the use of nearly 24,000
U.S. troops and several dozen naval vessels to stabilize a revolutionary
situation 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."
The Vietnam conflict came to claim most of McNamara's time and energy.
The U.S. role, including financial support and military advice, expanded
after 1954 when the French withdrew. During the Kennedy administration, the
U.S. military advisory group in South Vietnam steadily increased, with McNamara's
concurrence, from just a few hundred to about 17,000. U.S. involvement
escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 when North
Vietnamese naval vessels reportedly fired on two U.S. destroyers. President
Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases and
Congress approved almost unanimously the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
authoriz-ing the president "to take all necessary measures to repel
any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression."
In 1965, in response to stepped up military activity by the Communist
Viet Cong in South Vietnam and their North Vietnamese allies, the United
States began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces, and
entered into combat in South Vietnam. Requests from top U.S. military
commanders in Vietnam led to the commitment of 485,000 troops by the end of
1967 and almost 535,000 by 30 June 1968. The casualty lists mounted as the
number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated.
Although he loyally supported administration policy, McNamara gradually
became skeptical about whether the war could be won by deploying more
troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam. The
Tet offensive of early 1968, although a military defeat for the enemy,
clearly indicated that the road ahead for both the United States and the
South Vietnamese government was still long and hard. By this time McNamara
had already submitted his resignation, chiefly because of his
disillusionment with the war.
As McNamara grew more and more controversial after 1966 and his
differences with the president and the JCS over Vietnam policy became the
subject of public speculation, frequent rumors surfaced that he would leave
office. Yet there was great surprise when President Johnson announced on 29
November 1967 that McNamara would resign to become president of the World
Bank.
McNamara left office on 29 February 1968; for his dedicated efforts, the
president awarded him both the Medal of Freedom and the Distinguished
Service Medal. He served as head of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.
Shortly after he departed the Pentagon, he published The Essence of
Security, discussing various aspects of his tenure and his position on
basic national security issues. He did not speak out again on defense
issues until after he left the World Bank. 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 book, In Retrospect,
published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War
that dwelt heavily on the mistakes to which he was a prime party and
conveyed his strong sense of guilt and regret.
Although McNamara had many differences with military leaders and members
of Congress, few could deny that he had had a powerful impact on the
Defense Department, and that much of what he had done would be a lasting
legacy.
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