Robert McNamara

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Robert McNamara
8th United States Secretary of Defense
In office January 21, 1961 – February 29, 1968[1]
President	John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson
Deputy	Roswell Gilpatric Cyrus Vance Paul Nitze
Preceded by	Thomas Gates
Succeeded by	Clark Clifford
President of the World Bank Group
In office April 1, 1968 – July 1, 1981
Preceded by	George Woods
Succeeded by	Tom Clausen
Personal details
Born	Robert Strange McNamara (1916-06-09)June 9, 1916 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Died	July 6, 2009(2009-07-06) (aged 93) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political party	Republican (until 1978)[2] Democratic (1978–2009)[2]
Spouse(s)	Margaret Craig (m. 1940; d. 1981) Diana Masieri Byfield (m. 2004)
Children	3 (including Craig)
Education	University of California, Berkeley (BA) Harvard University (MBA)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1940–1946
Rank	Lieutenant colonel
Unit	U.S. Army Air Forces

Robert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He played a major role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.^[3] McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.^[4]

He was born in San Francisco, California, graduated from UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School and served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After the war, Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for Ford Motor Company, these "Whiz Kids" helped reform Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted appointment as Secretary of Defense.

McNamara became a close adviser to Kennedy and advocated the use of a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and McNamara instituted a Cold War defense strategy of flexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short of massive retaliation. McNamara consolidated intelligence and logistics functions of the Pentagon into two centralized agencies: the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency, during the Kennedy administration, McNamara presided over a build-up in U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam. After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam escalated dramatically. McNamara and other U.S. policymakers feared that the fall of South Vietnam to a Communist regime would lead to the fall of other governments in the region.

McNamara grew increasingly skeptical of the efficacy of committing U.S. soldiers to Vietnam. In 1968, McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense to become President of the World Bank, he remains the longest serving Secretary of Defense, having remained in office over seven years. He served as President of the World Bank until 1981, shifting the focus of the World Bank towards poverty reduction, after retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including the California Institute of Technology and the Brookings Institution.

Early life and career[edit]

Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California,^[3] his father was Robert James McNamara, sales manager of a wholesale shoe company, and his mother was Clara Nell McNamara (née Strange).^[5][6][7] His father's family was Irish and, in about 1850, following the Great Irish Famine, had emigrated to the U.S., first to Massachusetts and later to California.^[8] He graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont in 1933, where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club^[9] and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. McNamara attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics with minors in mathematics and philosophy. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity,^[10] was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his sophomore year, and earned a varsity letter in crew. McNamara was also a member of the UC Berkeley's Order of the Golden Bear which was a fellowship of students and leading faculty members formed to promote leadership within the student body, he then attended Harvard Business School and earned an MBA in 1939.

After business school, McNamara worked a year for the accounting firm Price Waterhouse in San Francisco, then returned to Harvard in August 1940 to teach accounting in the business school and became the highest paid and youngest assistant professor at that time.^[11] Following his involvement there in a program to teach analytical approaches used in business to officers of the United States Army Air Forces, he entered the USAAF as a captain in early 1943, serving most of World War II with its Office of Statistical Control. One of his major responsibilities was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness, especially the B-29 forces commanded by Major General Curtis LeMay in India, China, and the Mariana Islands.^[12] McNamara established a statistical control unit for the XX Bomber Command and devised schedules for B-29s doubling as transports for carrying fuel and cargo over The Hump, he left active duty in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and with a Legion of Merit.

Ford Motor Company[edit]

In 1946, Charles "Tex" Thornton, a colonel under whom McNamara had served, put together a group of officers from his AAF Statistical Control operation to go into business together. Thornton had seen an article in Life magazine portraying Ford as being in dire need of reform. Henry Ford II, himself a World War II veteran from the Navy, hired the entire group of 10, including McNamara.

The "Whiz Kids", as they came to be known, helped the money-losing company reform its chaotic administration through modern planning, organization, and management control systems, the origins of the phrase "The Whiz Kids" can be explained as follows. Because of their youth, combined with asking lots of questions, Ford employees initially and disparagingly, referred to them as the "Quiz Kids", the Quiz Kids rebranded themselves as the "Whiz Kids".

Starting as manager of planning and financial analysis, McNamara advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions.

He was a force behind the Ford Falcon sedan, introduced in the fall of 1959—a small, simple and inexpensive-to-produce counter to the large, expensive vehicles prominent in the late 1950s. McNamara placed a high emphasis on safety: the Lifeguard options package introduced the seat belt (a novelty at the time) and a dished steering wheel, which helped to prevent the driver from being impaled on the steering column.^[13]

After the Lincoln line's very large 1958, 1959, and 1960 models proved unpopular, McNamara pushed for smaller versions, such as the 1961 Lincoln Continental.

On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of Ford Motor Company from outside the Ford family.

Secretary of Defense[edit]

President John F. Kennedy and McNamara, 1962

United States Civil Defense booklet Fallout Protection commissioned by McNamara

After his election in 1960, 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 then sent Sargent Shriver to approach him regarding either the Treasury or the Defense cabinet post less than five weeks after McNamara had become president at Ford. McNamara immediately rejected the Treasury position but eventually accepted Kennedy's invitation to serve as Secretary of Defense.

According to Special Counsel Ted Sorensen, Kennedy regarded McNamara as the "star of his team, calling upon him for advice on a wide range of issues beyond national security, including business and economic matters."^[14] McNamara became one of the few members of the Kennedy Administration to work and socialize with Kennedy, and he became so close to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that he served as a pallbearer at the younger Kennedy's funeral in 1968.^[15]

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 U.S. 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 U.S. initiated by McNamara in 1961 came a decision to increase the nation's "limited warfare" capabilities. These moves were significant because McNamara was abandoning President Dwight D. 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.

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.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, McNamara served as a member of EXCOMM and played a large role in the Administration's handling and eventual defusing of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was a strong proponent of the blockade option over a missile strike and helped persuade the Joint Chiefs of Staff to agree with the blockade option.

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 War) and 1961, it increased to nearly 2,808,000 by June 30, 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.^[16]

Nuclear Strategy –– Trial Doctrine[edit]

When McNamara took over the Pentagon in 1961, the United States military relied on an all-out nuclear strike to respond to a Soviet attack of any kind, this kind of strike would lead to the death of Soviet military forces and also civilians. This was the same nuclear strategy planned by the Strategic Air Command (SAC), led by General Curtis LeMay. McNamara did not agree with this kind of action, he sought for other options after seeing how this strategy could not guarantee the destruction of all Soviet nuclear weapons, leaving the United States vulnerable to retaliation. McNamara's alternative in the doctrine of counterforce was to try to limit the United States nuclear exchange by targeting only enemy military forces,^[17] this concept would be used to prevent retaliation and escalation by holding Soviet cities hostage to a follow up strike. McNamara later concluded that counterforce was not likely to control escalation but likely to provoke retaliation, the U.S. nuclear policy remained the same.

Other steps[edit]

McNamara took other steps to increase 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% to 50%, thus lessening their vulnerability to missile attack; in December 1961, he established the United States 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 less account 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.^{[18][citation needed]}

The most notable example^{[citation needed][19]} 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.^[20]

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 ten 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 Draft Presidential Memorandum (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 Joint Chief of Staff (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.^{[18][citation needed]} 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.^{[18][citation needed]}

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,^[21] 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.^{[21][citation needed]}

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[edit]

Toward the end of his term McNamara also opposed an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system proposed for installation in the U.S. in defense against Soviet missiles, arguing the $40 billion "in itself is not the problem; the penetrability of the proposed shield is the problem."^[22] 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 "light" system which he believed could protect against the far smaller number of Chinese missiles. However, he never believed it was wise for the United States to move in that direction because of psychological risks of relying too much on nuclear weaponry and that there would be pressure from many directions to build a larger system than would be militarily effective.^[23]

He always believed that the best defense strategy for the U.S. was a parity of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union.^[24] An ABM system would be an ineffective weapon as compared to an increase in deployed nuclear missile capacity.^[25]

Cost reductions[edit]

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 for national security, he was equally determined about other cost-saving measures.^[26]

Due to the nuclear arms race, the Vietnam War buildup and other projects, Total Obligational Authority (TOA) increased greatly during the McNamara years. Fiscal year TOA increased from $48.4 billion in 1962 (equal to $301 billion in 2016) to $49.5 ($295) billion in 1965 (before the major Vietnam increases) to $74.9 ($405) billion in 1968, McNamara's last year in office (though he left office in February).^[27] Not until FY 1984 did DoD's total obligational authority surpass that of FY 1968 in constant dollars.^{[citation needed]}

Program consolidation[edit]

One major hallmark of McNamara's cost reductions was the consolidation of programs from different services, most visibly in aircraft 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 Corsair combat aircraft, 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 Navy requirements for an Fleet Air Defense (FAD) aircraft^[28] and Air Force requirements for a 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 canceled after a Grumman study showed it was incapable of matching the abilities of the newly revealed Soviet MiG-23 and MiG-25 aircraft. The F-111 would eventually find its niche as a tactical bomber and electronic warfare aircraft with the Air Force.^{[citation needed]}

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 Falcon and F/A-18 Hornet emerged as multi-role fighters, and most modern designs combine many of the roles the TFX would have had. In many ways, the Joint Strike Fighter 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, V/STOL, and close air support (and drawing many criticisms similar to those leveled against the TFX).^{[citation needed]}

Vietnam War[edit]

McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 1967

During President John F. Kennedy's term, while McNamara was Secretary of Defense, America's troops in Vietnam increased from 900 to 16,000 advisers,^[29] who were not supposed to engage in combat but rather to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. The number of combat advisers in Vietnam when Kennedy died varies depending upon source, the first military adviser deaths in Vietnam occurred in 1957 or 1959 under the Eisenhower Administration, which had infiltrated Vietnam, through the efforts of Stanley Sheinbaum, with an unknown number of CIA operatives and other special forces in addition to almost 700 advisers.^[30][31]

The Truman and Eisenhower administrations had committed the United States to support the French and native anti-Communist forces in Vietnam in resisting efforts by the Communists in the North to unify the country, though neither administration established actual combat forces in the war. The U.S. role—initially limited to financial support, military advice and covert intelligence gathering—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 900 to 16,000.^[29] U.S. involvement escalated after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in August 1964, involving two purported attacks on a U.S. Navy destroyer by North Vietnamese naval vessels.^[32]

Records from the Lyndon Johnson Library have perhaps indicated that McNamara misled Johnson on the attack on a U.S. Navy destroyer by allegedly withholding calls against executing airstrikes from US Pacific Commanders.^[33] McNamara was also instrumental in presenting the event to Congress and the public as justification for escalation of the war against the communists;^[34] in 1995, McNamara met with former North Vietnam Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap who told his American counterpart that the August 4 attack never happened, a conclusion McNamara eventually came to accept.^[35]

President Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. Congress approved, with only Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR), and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), voting against,^[36] the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the U.S. and to prevent further aggression." Regardless of the particulars of the incident, the larger issue would turn out to be the sweeping powers granted by the resolution. It gave Johnson virtually unfettered authority to expand retaliation for a relatively minor naval incident into a major land war involving 500,000 American soldiers. "The fundamental issue of Tonkin Gulf involved not deception but, rather, misuse of power bestowed by the resolution," McNamara wrote later.^[37]

In 1965, in response to stepped up military activity by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and their North Vietnamese allies, the U.S. began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces and entered into combat in South Vietnam. McNamara's plan, supported by 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 June 30, 1968. The casualty lists mounted as the number of troops and the intensity of fighting escalated. McNamara put in place a statistical strategy for victory in Vietnam, he concluded that there were a limited number of Viet Cong fighters in Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.^{[citation needed]}

McNamara with Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt at The Pentagon in July 1966

Although he was a prime architect of the Vietnam War and repeatedly overruled the JCS on strategic matters, 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, a claim he would publish in a book years later, he also stated later that his support of the Vietnam War was given out of loyalty to administration policy. He traveled to Vietnam many times to study the situation firsthand and became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders.^[38]

McNamara said that the Domino Theory was the main reason for entering the Vietnam War; in the same interview he stated, "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."^[39]

Social equity[edit]

To commemorate President Harry S Truman's signing an order to end segregation in the military McNamara issued Directive 5120.36 on July 26, 1963. This directive, Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces, dealt directly with the issue of racial and gender discrimination in areas surrounding military communities. The directive declared, "Every military commander has the responsibility to oppose discriminatory practices affecting his men and their dependents and to foster equal opportunity for them, not only in areas under his immediate control, but also in nearby communities where they may live or gather in off-duty hours." (para. II.C.)^[40] Under the directive, commanding officers were obligated to use the economic power of the military to influence local businesses in their treatment of minorities and women, with the approval of the Secretary of Defense, the commanding officer could declare areas off-limits to military personnel for discriminatory practices.^[41]

Cuban Missile Crisis[edit]

The Cuban Missile Crisis was between the United States and the Soviet Union lasting for 13 days in October 1962, during this time, Robert McNamara was serving as Secretary of Defense and one of John F. Kennedy's trusted advisors. When Kennedy received confirmation of the placement of offensive soviet missiles in Cuba, he immediately set up 'Executive Committee', refereed to as 'ExComm', this committee included United States government officials, including Robert McNamara, to advise Kennedy on the crisis. Kennedy instructed ExComm to immediately come up with a response to the Soviet threat unanimously without him present, during this time it was confirmed the crisis had to be resolved within 48 hours by receiving two messages from Nikita Khruschev. The first message, an informal one, stated if the United States guaranteed to not invade Cuba then they would take the missiles out, the second message, a more formal one, was broadcast on the radio stating if the United States attacked then Cuba was prepared to retaliate with masses of military power. Although American defense planning focused on using nuclear weapons, Kennedy and McNamara saw it was clear the use of strategic weapons could be suicidal,^[42] on Tuesday October 16, ExComm had their first meeting.The majority of officials favored an air attack on Cuba in hopes to destroy the missile sites, although the vote was not unanimous which brought them to other alternatives. By the end of the week, ExComm came up with four different alternative strategies to present to the president: a blockade, an air strike, an invasion, or some combination of these.^[43] These actions are known as OPLAN 312, OPLAN 314 and OPLAN 316. A quarantine was a way to prevent the Soviets from bringing any military equipment in or out of Cuba,^[42] during the final review of both alternatives on Sunday October 21, upon Kennedy's request, McNamara presented the argument against the attack and for the quarantine. On Wednesday, October 24 at 10:00 a.m. EDT, the quarantine line around Cuba went into effect. Following Cuba's aftermath, McNamara stated, "There is no such thing as strategy, only crisis management."^[42]

Departure[edit]

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

McNamara wrote of his close personal friendship with Jackie Kennedy and how she demanded that he stop the killing in Vietnam,^[44] 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 an early November 1967 memorandum to Johnson, McNamara's recommendation to freeze troop levels, stop bombing North Vietnam and for the U.S. to hand over ground fighting to South Vietnam was rejected outright by the President. McNamara's recommendations amounted to his saying that the strategy of the United States in Vietnam which had been pursued to date had failed. McNamara later stated he "never heard back" from Johnson regarding the memo. 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 U.S., the approaching presidential campaign in which Johnson was expected to seek re-election, and McNamara's support—over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—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 (longer than any of his predecessors or successors).

Others 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 expressed uncertainty about the question.^[45]

McNamara left office on February 29, 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the Medal of Freedom^[46] 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 President[edit]

Robert McNamara served as head of the World Bank from April 1968 to June 1981, when he turned 65;^[47] in his 13 years at the Bank, he introduced key changes, most notably, shifting the Bank's focus toward targeted poverty reduction. He negotiated, with the conflicting countries represented on the Board, a growth in funds to channel credits for development, in the form of health, food, and education projects, he also instituted new methods of evaluating the effectiveness of funded projects. One notable project started during McNamara's tenure was the effort to prevent river blindness.^[47]

Reportedly, McNamara first heard about his appointment as President of the World Bank through a press-leak.^[48]

The World Bank currently has a scholarship program under his name.^[49]

As World Bank President, he declared at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources.

Post-World Bank activities and assessments[edit]

In 1982, McNamara joined several other former national security officials in urging that the United States pledge to not 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.

External video

Booknotes interview with Deborah Shapley on Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara, March 21, 1993, C-SPAN

In 1993, Washington journalist Deborah Shapley published a 615-page biography of Robert McNamara titled Promise and Power: the Life and Times of Robert McNamara. Shapley concluded her book with these words: "For better and worse McNamara shaped much in today's world – and imprisoned himself. A little-known nineteenth century writer, F.W. Boreham, offers a summation: 'We make our decisions. And then our decisions turn around and make us.'"

McNamara's memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view. According to his lengthy New York Times obituary, "[h]e concluded well before leaving the Pentagon that the war was futile, but he did not share that insight with the public until late in life; in 1995, he took a stand against his own conduct of the war, confessing in a memoir that it was 'wrong, terribly wrong.'" In return, he faced a "firestorm of scorn" at that time.^[3]

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 went on to win the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialog, 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.^[50]

McNamara maintained his involvement in politics in his later years, delivering statements critical of the Bush administration's 2003 invasion of Iraq,^[51] 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.^[52]

McNamara has been portrayed or fictionalized in several films^{[note 1]} and in at least one video game.^{[note 2]} Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme contained a song titled "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)".

Personal life[edit]

McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, on August 13, 1940, she was an accomplished cook, and Robert's favorite dish was reputed to be her beef bourguignon.^[53] 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.

The couple had two daughters and a son, the son Robert Craig McNamara, who as a student objected to the Vietnam War, is now a walnut and grape farmer in California.^[54] He is the owner of Sierra Orchards in Winters, California. Daughter Kathleen McNamara Spears is a forester with the World Bank,^[55] the second daughter is Margaret Elizabeth Pastor.^[3]

In the Errol Morris documentary, McNamara reports that both he and his wife were stricken with polio shortly after the end of World War II, although McNamara had a relatively short stay in the hospital, his wife's case was more serious and it was concern over meeting her medical bills that led to his decision to not return to Harvard but to enter private industry as a consultant at Ford Motor Company.

At Ford[edit]

When working at Ford Motor Company, McNamara resided in Ann Arbor, Michigan, rather than the usual auto executive domains of Grosse Pointe, Birmingham, and Bloomfield Hills. He and his wife sought to remain connected with a university town (the University of Michigan) after their hopes of returning to Harvard after the war were put on hold.

Alumnus of the Year[edit]

In 1961, he was named Alumnus of the Year by the University of California, Berkeley.^[56]

Almost thrown overboard[edit]

External video

Booknotes interview with Paul Hendrickson on The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, October 27, 1996, C-SPAN

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, who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."^[57]

Widowed[edit]

After his wife's death, McNamara dated Katharine Graham, with whom he had been friends since the early 1960s.^{[citation needed]} 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. She was married for more than three decades to Ernest Byfield, a former OSS officer and Chicago hotel heir whose mother, Gladys Tartiere, leased her 400-acre (1.6 km²) Glen Ora estate in Middleburg, Virginia, to John F. Kennedy during his presidency.^[58][59]

At the end of his life McNamara was a life trustee on the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, a trustee of the American University of Nigeria, and an honorary trustee for the Brookings Institution.

McNamara died in his sleep, at his home in Washington, D.C., early in the morning, at 5:30 a.m. on July 6, 2009, at the age of 93.^[60][61] He is buried at the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

McNamara's papers from his years as Secretary of Defense are housed in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

See also[edit]

• List of California Institute of Technology trustees
• List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
• List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines
• Project Dye Marker
• The Fog of War
• Path to War
• List of Eagle Scouts

Works[edit]

External video

Booknotes interview with McNamara on In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, April 23, 1995, C-SPAN

• (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. ASIN B001P51NUA^[62]
• (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) In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. (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.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• McCann, Leo "‘Management is the gate’ – but to where? Rethinking Robert McNamara’s ‘career lessons.’" Management and Organizational History, 11.2 (2015): 166-188.
• McMaster, Herbert R. Dereliction of duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam (1998).
• Rosenzweig, Phil. "Robert S. McNamara and the Evolution of Modern Management." Harvard Business Review, 91 (2010): 87-93.
• Shapley, Deborah. Promise and Power: The life and times of Robert McNamara (1993)
• Sharma, Patrick Allan. Robert McNamara's Other War: The World Bank and International Development (Uof Pennsylvania Press; 2017) 228 pages;.
• Slater, Jerome. "McNamara's failures—and ours: Vietnam's unlearned lessons: A review " Security Studies 6.1 (1996): 153-195.
• Stevenson, Charles A. SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense (2006). ch 3

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert McNamara.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Robert McNamara

• Robert McNamara on the JFK and LBJ White House Tapes
• Federal Bureau of Investigation Records: The Vault - Robert McNamara
• AP Obituary in The Washington Post
• The Economist obituary
• Robert McNamara - Daily Telegraph obituary
• McNamara's Evil Lives On by Robert Scheer, The Nation, July 8, 2009
• McNamara and Agent Orange
• Biography of Robert Strange McNamara (website)
• Historical Office US Department of Defense
• Interview about the Cuban Missile Crisis and Interview about nuclear strategy for the WGBH series War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.
• Annotated bibliography for Robert McNamara from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Oral History Interviews with Robert McNamara, from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• "Robert McNamara". Find a Grave. Retrieved June 12, 2013. 
• Conversations with History: Robert S. McNamara, from the University of California Television (UCTV)

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