Robert McNamara

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, which would kill Soviet military forces and 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 approach. He sought other options after seeing that this strategy could not guarantee the destruction of all Soviet nuclear weapons, thus 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.[22] This would 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 to provoke retaliation. The U.S. nuclear policy remained the same.

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.

NATO Military Committee chairman General Adolf Heusinger meeting with McNamara at the Pentagon, 1964

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.[23]

The most notable example[24] 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.[25]

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.

Kennedy and McNamara with Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in April 1962

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.[23] 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.[23]

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.[26] 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.[26]

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.

President Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and McNamara in October 1962

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', referred 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 Khrushchev. 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.[27] 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.[28] 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.[27] 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."[27]

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.[29]

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 $314 billion in 2018) to $49.5 ($307) billion in 1965 (before the major Vietnam increases) to $74.9 ($421) billion in 1968, McNamara's last year in office (though he left office in February).[30] Not until FY 1984 did DoD's total obligational authority surpass that of FY 1968 in constant dollars.

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, though later congressional investigations revealed the causes of these failures as negligence and borderline sabotage on behalf of the Army ordnance corps' officers. McNamara tried to extend his success by merging development programs as well, resulting in the TFX dual service project to combine Navy requirements for a Fleet Air Defense (FAD) aircraft[31] 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.

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).[32]

McNamara pointing to a map of Vietnam at a press conference in April 1965

McNamara, South Vietnamese PM Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and President Johnson in Honolulu in February 1966

During President John F. Kennedy's term, while McNamara was Secretary of Defense, America's troops in South Vietnam increased from 900 to 16,000 advisers,[33] who were not supposed to engage in combat but rather to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).[34]

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.[33] 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.[35]

In the Kennedy administration, McNamara was closely allied in debates in the cabinet with Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, with both favoring greater American support for South Vietnam.[36]^:249 In October 1961, when General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Whitman Rostow advised sending 8,000 American combat troops to South Vietnam, McNamara rejected that recommendation as inadequate, stating that 8,000 troops would "probably not tip the scales decisively", instead recommending to Kennedy that he send 6 divisions to South Vietnam, advice the president rejected.[36]^:253 In May 1962, McNamara paid his first visit to South Vietnam, where he told the press "every quantitative measurement...shows that we are winning the war".[36]^:254 McNamara's "quantitative" style based upon much number-crunching by computers about trends in Vietnam missed the human dimension such as popular views and attitudes in South Vietnam, and that the South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm favored a "divide and rule" strategy of having multiple government departments compete against one another as a way of staying in power.[36]^:254 In 1962, McNamara ordered planning to withdraw the American advisers from South Vietnam in 1964 as according to Pentagon calculations the war should be won by then.[36]^:267 At the time, McNamara told Kennedy: "There is a new feeling of confidence that victory is possible".[36]^:268

On 2 January 1963, McNamara's rosy projections and assumptions based upon what his computers had told him about Vietnam were rudely shattered by the Battle of Ap Bac, that began when three Viet Cong (VC) companies were encircled by the ARVN's 7th Division in the village of Ap Bac.[36]^:260–1 Despite being outnumbered by a factor of 10-1 and being outgunned having only rifles compared to the 7th Divisions's tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and helicopters, the VC defeated the 7th Division in the ensuing battle and escaped into the jungle.[36]^:260–2 Colonel John Paul Vann, the American adviser attached to the 7th Division summed up the battle in a report in his usual earthy language as: "A miserable fucking performance, just like what it always is".[36]^:262 Vann, a colorful figure whose outspokenly blunt criticism of how the war was being fought made him a favorite of the media, was much disliked by McNamara, who did not appreciate the criticism as he continued to insist that the war was being won.[36]^:262–3

Vann's reports criticizing Diệm's regime as corrupt and incompetent were most unwelcome to McNamara who contended that the reforms advocated by Vann were unnecessary.[36]^:263 In March 1963, Vann resigned from the Army as he was informed that his career was over. After the Battle of Ap Bac, a debate began in the Kennedy cabinet about the viability of the Diệm regime, which was reinforced by the Buddhist crisis, which began in May 1963.[36]^{:263, 279–82} When the subject of supporting a coup against Diệm was first raised by Kennedy at a National Security Council meeting in August 1963, McNamara spoke in favor of retaining Diệm.[36]^:263 Unable to gain a consensus about what to do, in September 1963, Kennedy sent McNamara and General Taylor on a "fact-finding mission" to South Vietnam.[36]^:293 Kennedy wanted a negative assessment of Diệm to justify supporting a coup, but McNamara and Taylor instead wrote about the "great progress" achieved by Diệm and confidently predicted that the "bulk" of the American advisers would leave in 1965 as by that point they predicted the VC insurgency would be crushed.[36]^:293–4 McNamara predicated that if Diệm continued his policies, by 1965 the insurgency would be "little more than organized banditry".[37] With the CIA and the ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. urging support for a coup while the Pentagon was opposed, Kennedy vacillated and finally being unable to make up his mind, gave the power of decision to Lodge.[36]^:299–301 Lodge, who detested Diệm, gave his approval to the generals plotting against him.[36]^:301

On 1 November 1963, the coup was launched.[36]^:304–5 After the presidential palace was overrun in the fighting, Diệm was captured trying to flee Saigon and executed on 2 November 1963.[36]^:308–11 The new government in Saigon was headed by General Dương Văn Minh. On 22 November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and succeeded by Lyndon Johnson. In December 1963, Johnson sent McNamara on another "fact-finding mission" to South Vietnam to assess General Minh's performance.[36]^:325 On 19 December 1963, McNamara reported the situation was "very disturbing" as the "current trends, unless reversed in the next two or three months, will lead to neutralization at best or more likely to a Communist-controlled state".[36]^:325 He also admitted that the computer models and statistics, which he had attached such importance to, were "grossly in error" with government control of rural areas had "in fact been deteriorating...to a far extent than we realized" since July.[36]^:325 Regarding Minh's regime McNamara wrote at present "there is no organized government in South Vietnam".[36]^:325 Through McNamara admitted that the new regime was "indecisive and drifting", he advised Johnson to undertake "more forceful moves if the situation does not show early signs of improvement".[36]^:325 On 30 January 1964, General Minh was overthrown in a bloodless coup d'état by General Nguyễn Khánh.[36]^:336 The change in leadership did not affect the war. Lyman Kirkpatrick of the CIA reported in February 1964 after visiting Saigon that he was "shocked by the number of our people and of the military, even those whose job is always to say we are winning, who feel the tide is against us".[36]^:340 The same month saw a VC battalion in the Mekong Delta escape from South Vietnamese troops, who had been rated as some of the very best in the ARVN by the American advisers who had trained them.[36]^:340

On 8 March 1964, McNamara visited South Vietnam to report to President Johnson about how well the new regime of Khánh was handling the war.[36]^:341 Upon landing in Saigon, McNamara told the press: "We shall stay for as long it takes to ...win the battle against the Communist insurgents".[36]^:341 During his visit, McNamara spoke memorized phrases in mangled Vietnamese (McNamara kept forgetting that Vietnamese is a tonal language) in speeches praising Khánh as South Vietnam's "best possible leader".[36]^:342 McNamara pressed Khánh to put South Vietnam on a war footing by conscripting all able-bodied young men into the military, which he promised he would do.[36]^:343 Khánh did not keep his promise as wealthy and middle class South Vietnamese families objected to having their sons conscripted, and as a result the burden of conscription called by Khánh's national service law fell only on sons of poor families, provoking much resentment.[36]^:343 After returning to Washington on 13 March, McNamara reported to Johnson that the situation had "unquestionably been growing worse" since his last visit in December 1963 with 40% of the countryside now under "Vietcong control or predominant influence"; most of the South Vietnamese people were displaying "apathy and indifference"; the desertion rate in the ARVN was "high and increasing" while the VC were "recruiting energetically".[36]^:342 The "greatest weakness" accordingly to McNamara was the "uncertain viability" of Khánh's government, which might be overthrown at any moment as the ARVN was ridden with factionalism and intrigue.[36]^:342

To save South Vietnam, McNamara recommenced that the United States make it "emphatically clear" it's willingness to support Khánh to the hilt.[36]^:342 Other recommendations, which were accepted in a National Security Council "action memorandum" called for the United States to pay for an increase in the ARVN, provide the Republic of Vietnam Air Force with more planes and helicopters, and the United States should pay for more civil servants to administer rural South Vietnam.[36]^:342 More importantly, the "action memorandum" redefined the Vietnam War as not only important for Asia, but for the entire world as the document asserted the global credibility of the United States was now at stake as it was claimed all of America's allies would lose faith in American promises if the South Vietnamese government was overthrown.[36]^:342 The "action memorandum" argued that to "lose" South Vietnam would fatally weaken American global leadership, making the war a "test case" of American willingness to continue as a global power.[36]^:342

Despite the fact that South Vietnam by 1964 was receiving a sum of American economic and military aid that ran to $2 million per day, the South Vietnamese state was falling apart with corruption reaching such a point that most South Vietnamese civil servants and soldiers were not being paid while the projects for "rural pacification" that the United States had paid for had collapsed as the money had instead been stolen.[36]^:343 The advice that McNamara and other American officials gave to the South Vietnamese to make reforms to crackdown on corruption and make the government more effective were always ignored as by this point the South Vietnamese government knew very well that the Americans having repeatedly promised in public that they would never permit the "loss" of South Vietnam were now prisoners of their own rhetoric.[36]^:383 The threats to withhold aid were bluffs, which the South Vietnamese exposed by simply ignoring the American advice, leading to a situation whereas Stanley Karnow, the Vietnam correspondent for the Time noted:"...America lacked leverage...For the South Vietnamese knew that the United States could not abandon them without damaging its own prestige. So despite their reliance on American aid, now more than a half-billion dollars a year, they could safely defy American dictates. In short, their weakness was their strength".[36]^:383 One South Vietnamese minister told Karnow at the time: "Our big advantage over the Americans is that they want to win the war more than we do".[36]^:383 To compensate for the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese state, by late winter of 1964, senior officials in the Johnson administration such as McNamara's deputy, William Bundy, the assistant secretary of defence, were advocating American intervention in the war.[36]^:344 Such intervention presented a constitutional problem to intervene on the scale envisioned would mean waging war, and only Congress had the legal power to declare war.[36]^:344 Fearful of causing a war with China, Johnson was opposed to the plans of Khánh to invade North Vietnam, and he was even less enthusiastic about having the United States invade North Vietnam.[36]^:343 To declare war on North Vietnam would lead to irresistible political pressure at home to invade North Vietnam. As such, the solution to this problem that was floated was for Congress to pass a resolution granting Johnson the power to wage war in Vietnam.[36]^:344

By 1964, the U.S. Navy sent destroyers into the Gulf of Tonkin to support raids by South Vietnamese commandos on North Vietnam and to gather intelligence.[36]^:365–7 On 2 August 1964, one destroyer, the USS Maddox was involved in a naval skirmish with North Vietnamese Vietnam People's Navy torpedo boats within North Vietnamese waters.[36]^:367–8 On 4 August 1964, the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, initially claimed to have been attacked by the North Vietnamese torpedo boats in international waters on a stormy night, but shortly afterward reported there was probably no attack.[36]^:369–71 Captain John J. Herrick of the Maddox reported that the "torpedo boats" were almost certainly just radar "blips" caused by the "freak weather effects" of the storm and the reports of an attack on his ship were due to an "overeager" radar operator who mistook the radar blips for torpedo boats.[36]^:371 Johnson promptly seized upon the reports of an attack on a Navy warship in international waters to ask Congress to pass a resolution giving him the authority to wage war in Vietnam.[36]^:371 McNamara via Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp Jr. of the Pacific fleet put strong pressure on Herrick to say that his ship had been attacked by torpedo boats, despite his strong doubts on the subject.[36]^:371–2 On 5 August 1964, McNamara appeared before Congress to present proof of what he claimed was an attack on the Navy's warships in international waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and stated it was imperative that Congress pass the resolution as quickly as possible.[36]^:374 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.[38] McNamara was also instrumental in presenting the event to Congress and the public as justification for escalation of the war against the communists.[39] In 1995, McNamara met with former North Vietnam Defense Minister Võ Nguyên Giáp who told his American counterpart that the August 4 attack never happened, a conclusion McNamara eventually came to accept.[40]

President Johnson ordered Operation Pierce Arrow, retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. Congress approved, with only Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR), and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), voting against,[41] 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.[42] Through Johnson now had the authority to wage war, he proved reluctant to use it, for example not ignoring the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to bomb North Vietnam after a VC attack on Bien Hoa Air Base killed five Americans and destroyed 5 B-57 bombers.[36]^:402–3 Knowing of Johnson's hesitance, on 1 December 1964 McNamara recommended a "graduated" response program, urging Johnson to launch Operation Barrel Roll, a bombing offensive against the part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the southern part of neutral Laos, which was approved by the president.[36]^:406 On Christmas Eve 1964, the VC bombed the Brinks Hotel in Saigon killing two Americans.[36]^:408 Despite McNamara's recommendations to bomb North Vietnam, Johnson still procrastinated.[36]^:409

In January 1965, McNamara together with the National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy co-wrote a memo to President Johnson stating "both of us are now pretty well convinced that our present policy can lead only to disastrous defeat" as it was hopeless to expect the unstable and corrupt South Vietnamese government to defeat the VC who were steadily "gaining in the countryside".[36]^:411 Bundy and McNamara wrote "the time for has come for hard choices" as the United States now had the alternatives of either negotiating with North Vietnam to "salvage what little can be preserved" or resort to intervention to "force a change".[36]^:411 Both Bundy and McNamara stated that they favored the latter, arguing that the commitment of U.S troops to fight in South Vietnam and a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam were now required.[36]^:411 McNamara's hawkish stance on Vietnam was well known in Washington and many in the press often referred to the war as "McNamara's war" as he was the one in the cabinet always pressing for greater American involvement.[36]^:498

In 1965, in response to stepped-up military activity by the VC 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. In February 1965, the VC attacked the American airfield at Pleiku, killing 8 Americans and destroying 10 aircraft.[36]^:412 After hearing of the attack, Johnson assembled his national security team together with the Speaker of the House of Representative, John McComack and the Senate Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, to announce "I've had enough of this".[36]^:413 Only Mansfield and the Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, objected to Johnson's plans to bomb North Vietnam.[36]^:413 Aircraft from the carrier, USS Ranger, launched Operation Flaming Dart bombing the North Vietnamese army base at Đồng Hới later that day.[36]^:413 On 11 February, Johnson ordered more bombing raids, and 2 March approved Operation Rolling Thunder, a strategic bombing offensive against North Vietnam that was originally planned to last 8 weeks, and instead went on for 3 years.[36]^:414–5 After the bombing raids started, General William Westmoreland of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), cabled Johnson to say that Da Nang Air Base was vulnerable as he had no faith in the ability of the South Vietnamese to protect it, leading him to ask for American troops to be deployed instead.[36]^:415 On 8 March 1965, two battalions from the United States Marine Corps were landed at Danang, making the beginning of the ground war for the United States.[36]^:415–6 On 20 April, McNamara urged Johnson to send 40,000 troops to Vietnam, advice that was accepted.[36]^:420 By June 1965, Westmoreland was reporting that South Vietnam was faced with a "collapse", which would require 180,000 troops to stop, which would be just a "stopgap", and another 100,000 troops would be needed "to seize the initiative from the enemy".[36]^:422

McNamara's advice in July 1965 to Johnson to commit more 180,000 troops to South Vietnam together with a stepped up aerial offensive to destroy North Vietnam's economy was called by Bundy "rash to the point of folly".[36]^:424 Bundy stated for Johnson to agree to McNamara's request to send more troops "was a slippery slope toward total U.S. responsibility and corresponding fecklessness on the Vietnamese side".[36]^:424 Bundy argued that as it was the responsibility of the South Vietnamese government to stop the VC and that if the Americans continued to do all the fighting, then the United States would lack the necessary leverage to pressure Saigon into making reforms, turning "...the conflict into a white man's war, with the United States in the shoes of the French".[36]^:422–4 To resolve the debate, later in July 1965, McNamara visited South Vietnam on yet another "fact-finding mission" for President Johnson and met the new South Vietnamese Premier, Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ who had just overthrown Khánh.[36]^:425 Kỳ wore a flamboyant uniform which he had designed himself of a white jacket, black pants, red socks and black shoes which led McNamara to dub him as looking "like a saxophone player in a second-rate nightclub".[36]^:425 McNamara was not impressed with Kỳ, reporting to Johnson that he saw little evidence that he was capable of winning the war, and the United States would have to send more troops to South Vietnam.[36]^:425 Upon his return to the United States, McNamara told the press that the U.S forces in Vietnam were inflicting "increasingly heavy losses" on the VC, but in private told President Johnson that the situation was "worse than a year ago".[36]^:425

McNamara also advised the president that by early 1966 he would have to send 100,000 more troops to South Vietnam in order to win the war, and mobilize the reserves and state National Guards as well.[36]^:425 Johnson accepted the first recommendation while rejecting the latter, disregarding Bundy's warnings that to send more troops would paradoxically mean less leverage over South Vietnam.[36]^:425 To mobilize the reserves and National Guard would mean having to call up hundreds of thousands of men from civilian life, which would inevitably disrupt the economy, which in turn would require ending the peacetime economy and putting the economy on a war footing. Johnson rejected a wartime economy as imposing too many sacrifices on ordinary Americans that would threaten his chances at reelection. Because the reserves were never called up, the Army had to send much of its manpower to Vietnam, leaving the U.S divisions in Western Europe in a "skeletal" condition as there was a shortage of volunteers.[36]^:550 To make up the shortfall, the Army had to rely upon the draft, which caused much domestic opposition, especially as the way in which draft system operated with generous exemptions for those attending university and college led to the burden of the draft falling disproportionately upon men from poorer families.[36]^:550 As most of the 18 and 19-year-old draftees had a high school degree or less, this also led to a decline in the Army's intellectual standards with many officers complaining that most of the draftees were not intelligent enough to be trained for technical duties or promoted up the ranks.[36]^:550 Throughout the war, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle Wheeler, pressed very strongly for the reserves and national guards to be called out, saying the war was steadily ruining the U.S. Army.[36]^:550–1

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 VC fighters in South Vietnam and that a war of attrition would destroy them. He applied metrics (body counts) to determine how close to success his plan was.[43] Faced with a guerrilla war, the question of holding territory was irrelevant as the VC never operated for extended periods in areas where the Americans were strong and if the Americans occupied an area in force, the VC simply moved to other areas where the American presence was weaker.[43] McNamara devised the "body count" measurement to determine how well the Americans were doing, reasoning if the Americans were inflicting heavy losses as measured by the "body count", it must be a sign that they were winning.[43] General William Peers wrote critically of the "body count" strategy, stating: "...with improper leadership, 'body count' could create competition between units, particularly if these statistics were compared like baseball standings and there were no stringent requirements as to how and by whom the counts were to be made".[43] The obsession with "body counts" led to much exaggeration of the losses inflicted on the enemy as the officers with the highest "body counts" were promoted while also fueling a grisly competition between units to achieve the highest "body counts" that led to innocent civilians being killed to inflate their daily "body counts".[43] It is generally accepted by historians that the vast daily losses that U.S. officers claimed to have inflicted on the VC were fabricated as many officers desperate for a promotion reported "body counts" well above what they were actually achieving.[43] The commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, Westmoreland, had decided with the support of McNamara to defend all of South Vietnam, believing that he could win via a strategy of attrition as he would simply inflict enough losses to destroy the enemy.[36]^:480 The U.S. Army had sabotaged the efforts of Kennedy and McNamara to develop a more counterinsurgency role by simply declaring that the Army's basic unit, the division, was flexible enough to engage against guerrillas while also promising that the traditional fondness for using maximum firepower would not present a problem as firepower use would be "discriminating".[44] In Vietnam, this led to divisions, whose size limited them and their supply trains to the road, using massive amounts of firepower against guerrillas who were often "nimble" enough to evade all of the firepower brought to bear.[45] Instead, the standard tactics of bringing massive firepower to bear in the form of napalm and artillery strikes against the guerrillas, often killed civilians, fueling support for the VC.[45] Through the Special Forces did fight in Vietnam, but only as an adjutant to the traditional infantry and armored divisions, which did most of the fighting.[45] In a 1966 memo, McNamara admitted that the sort of counterinsurgency war envisioned by Kennedy with the Special Forces leading the fight had not occurred, which he wrote the responsibility for "undoubtedly lies with bad management" on the part of the Army.[46]

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

Up to November 1965, McNamara who been a supporter of the war, first started to have doubts about the war, saying at a press conference that "it will be a long war", which completely contradicted his previous optimistic statements that the war would be brought to a close soon.[36]^:480 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 war was given out of loyalty to administration policy. He traveled to South Vietnam many times to study the situation firsthand and became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders.[47] In February 1966, during the Honolulu conference, McNamara during an "off-the-record" chat with a group of journalists spoke about the war in very jaded terms, saying that frankly Operation Rolling Thunder was a failure.[36]^:498 McNamara stated that North Vietnam was a backward Third World country that did not have the same advanced industrial infrastructure of First World nations, making the bombing offensive useless.[36]^:498 McNamara told the journalists "No amount of bombing can end the war".[36]^:498 Karnow, one of the journalists present during the "off-the-record" conversation, described McNamara's personality as having changed, noting the Defense Secretary who was normally so arrogant and self-assured, convinced he could "scientifically" solve any problem, as being subdued and clearly less self-confident.[36]^:498

In October 1966, McNamara returned from yet another visit to South Vietnam, full of confidence in public and doubt in private.[36]^:500 McNamara told the media that "process has exceeded our expectations" while telling the president he saw "no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon".[36]^:500 Though McNamara reported to Johnson that American forces were inflicting heavy losses on the North Vietnamese and VC, he added that they could "more than replace" their losses and that "full security exists nowhere" in South Vietnam, even in areas supposedly "pacified" by the Americans.[36]^:500 Worse of all, McNamara complained that the South Vietnamese were still not carrying their full share of the load, as they expected the Americans to do all the fighting for them, stating: "This important war must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves. We have known this from the beginning. But the discouraging truth is that, as was the case in 1961 and 1963 and 1965, we have not found the formula, the catalyst, for training and inspiring them into effective action".[36]^:500

Because the effects of Operation Rolling Thunder were more easily measured than with the ground war, McNamara was especially troubled by the revelation that the bombing offensive had not caused the collapse of North Vietnam's economy as predicated.[36]^:499–500 In June 1967, American bombers hit North Vietnam's hydroelectric plants and reduced North Vietnam capacity to generate electricity by 85%, accordingly to McNamara's calculations.[36]^:457 At the same time, he also calculated that the annual amount of electricity generated in North Vietnam was equal only to a fifth of the electricity generated every year at the Potomac Electric Power Company's plant in Alexandria, Virginia, making the destruction of North Vietnamese power plants meaningless to the outcome of the war as the amount of electricity generated was so small.[36]^:457 He also calculated in 1967 that over the last two years, American bombers had inflicted damage on North Vietnam equal to about $300 million while at the same time, Rolling Thunder had cost the U.S. Air Force about 700 aircraft shot down over North Vietnam whose total value was about $900 million, making the bombing campaign uneconomical.[36]^:457 McNamara's doubts were encouraged by his civilian aides such as Leslie H. Gelb and John McNaughton, who complained that their wives and teenage children were chiding them as "war criminals" when they came home from work.[36]^:506 McNamara's own teenage son, Robert Craig McNamara, was opposed to the war and denounced his father when he came from work every day.[48] McNaughton told McNamara that after having talked to some of the young people that "a feeling is widely and strongly held...that 'the Establishment' is out of its mind" and the dominant opinion was "that we are trying to impose some U.S. image on distant peoples we cannot understand and that we carry the thing to absurd lengths."[36]^:506

McNamara commissioned the Vietnam Study Task Force on June 17, 1967. Intended as the official record of US military involvement in Indochina, the final report ran to 3,000 pages and was classified as "Top Secret – Sensitive". The report was ultimately leaked to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a former aide to McNamara's Assistant Secretary of Defense, John McNaughton. The leak became known as the Pentagon Papers, revealing that McNamara and others had been aware that the Vietnam offensive was futile. Subsequent efforts by the Nixon administration to prevent such leaks led indirectly to the Watergate scandal. 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."[49]

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.)[50] 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.[51]

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."[52] 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.[53]

President Lyndon B. Johnson and McNamara at a cabinet meeting, 1968

He always believed that the best defense strategy for the U.S. was a parity of mutually assured destruction with the Soviet Union.[54] An ABM system would be an ineffective weapon as compared to an increase in deployed nuclear missile capacity.[55]

Cabinet meeting with Dean Rusk, President Johnson and McNamara, 9 February 1968

McNamara wrote of his close personal friendship with Jackie Kennedy and how she demanded that he stop the killing in Vietnam.[56] 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.

Senator John C. Stennis was a conservative Southern Democrat who enjoyed much influence as a senior member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee.[36]^:507 Stennis saw himself more as a champion of the military rather than its overseer, and as such the military often leaked information to him, in the full knowledge that he would take up their cause on Capitol Hill.[36]^:508 Reflecting their unhappiness with McNamara's leadership, in the spring of 1967 senior generals and admirals let Stennis know of their belief that the Defense Secretary was mismanaging the war, which led him to schedule hearings for the Senate Armed Forces Committee in August 1967 to examine the charge that "unskilled civilian amateurs" (i.e. McNamara) were not letting "professional military experts" win the war as he charged that McNamara had placed too many restrictions on bombing North Vietnam to protect innocent North Vietnamese civilians.[36]^:508 The chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator Richard Russell Jr., was opposed to the war, but he expressed his opposition in the most cautious and lukewarm terms as he did not wish to appear unpatriotic, and so the hawkish Stennis enjoyed more power than his title of deputy chairman of the committee would suggest.[36]^{:484, 491}

The hearings opened on 8 August 1967, and Stennis called as his witnesses numerous admirals and Air Force generals who all testified to their belief that the United States was fighting with "one arm tied behind its back", implicitly criticizing McNamara's leadership as they complained of "overtly restrictive controls" about bombing North Vietnam that they claimed were preventing them from winning the war.[36]^:508 When McNamara himself appeared as a witness before the Senate Armed Forces Committee, he defended the war in very lukewarm terms that strongly suggested he had lost faith in the war, testifying that the bombing campaign against North Vietnam was ineffective, making the question of the bombing restrictions meaningless.[36]^:509 McNamara testified that the bombing campaign had failed to reduce the supplies coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail as the Viet Cong needed only 15 tons of supplies per day to continue to fight and "even if the quantity were five times that amount, it could be transported by only a few trucks".[36]^:509 McNamara went on to say that the bombing raids had not damaged the North Vietnamese economy which was "agrarian and simple" and the North Vietnamese people were unfamiliar with "the modern comforts and conveniences that most of us in the Western world take for granted".[36]^:509 McNamara also stated that North Vietnamese morale was not broken by the bombing offensive as the North Vietnamese people were "accustomed to discipline and are no strangers to deprivation and death" while everything indicated the leadership in Hanoi were not affected by the bombing raids as he lacked "any confidence that they can be bombed to the negotiating table".[36]^:509 McNamara concluded that only some sort of genocide could actually win the war, stating: "Enemy operations in the south cannot, on the basis of any reports I have seen be stopped by air bombardment-short, that is, of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people".[36]^:509 Besides Stennis, the other members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee were senators Henry M. Jackson, Strom Thurmond and Stuart Symington, all of whom were very hostile to McNamara in their questioning of him.[36]^:509

Stennis wrote the committee report which accused McNamara of having "consistently overruled the unanimous recommendations of military commanders and the joint chiefs of staffs", whom Stennis wrote had proposed "systematic, timely and hard-hitting actions".[36]^:509 Stennis damned McNamara for putting in bombing restrictions to protect North Vietnamese civilians and claimed that the war could be easily won if only McNamara would just obey all of the advice he received from the military.[36]^:509 Stennis was not influenced by the hearings as he had written the committee's report before the hearings had even began.[36]^:509 Johnson saw the hearings as proof that it was time to dismiss McNamara, whom he believed was "cracking up" under the strain of the war, as reflected in the Defense Secretary's criticism of the Rolling Thunder bombings.[36]^:509–11 Stennis, an ardent white supremacist who had fiercely opposed Johnson's civil rights legislation, was an old enemy of Johnson's, which led the president to decide not to sack McNamara in August 1967 as that would be seen as a victory by Stennis, and instead to wait a few months to fire McNamara.[36]^:509–10 In an interview with his biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson stated that McNamara was "cracking up" as the pressures of the war were too much for him, and so he decided to fire him as it would have been "a damn unfair thing to force him to stay".[36]^:511 Johnson had long resented and hated the Kennedy brothers, whom he charged looked down upon him as "white trash" from Texas. Senator Robert F. Kennedy had emerged as a leading critic of the war by 1967, and Johnson stated to Kearns of his belief that McNamara had suffered a nervous breakdown, of which Senator Kennedy, a close friend of McNamara, had taken advantage.[36]^:511 Johnson told Kearns: "Every day, Bobby [Kennedy] would call up McNamara telling him that the war was terrible and immoral, and that he had to leave".[36]^:511 To soften the blow, Johnson claimed to Kearns that he had talked it over with McNamara and had decided to offer him the presidency of the World Bank, "the only job he really wanted then".[36]^:511

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.[36]^:511 The historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr stated that he was present during a conversation between McNamara and Senator Robert F. Kennedy during which the former told the latter that he only learned from reading the newspapers of Johnson's announcement that he had just "resigned" as Defense Secretary and had been appointed president of the World Bank.[36]^:511 McNamara himself expressed uncertainty about the question.[57][58]

McNamara left office on February 29, 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both the Medal of Freedom[59] and the Distinguished Service Medal. McNamara's last day as Defense Secretary was a memorable one. The hawkish National Security Adviser, Walt Whitman Rostow, argued at a cabinet meeting that day that the United States was on the verge of winning the war. Rostow urged Johnson to send 206,000 more American troops to South Vietnam to join the half-million already there and to drastically increase the number of bombing raids on North Vietnam.[60] At that point, McNamara, snapped in fury at Rostow, saying: "What then? This goddamned bombing campaign, it's worth nothing, it's done nothing, they dropped more bombs than on all of Europe in all of World War II and it hasn't done a fucking thing!"[61] McNamara then broke down in tears, saying to Johnson to just accept that the war could not be won.[62] Henry McPherson, an aide to the president recalled the scene: "He reeled off the familiar statistics-how we had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on all of Europe during World War II. Then his voice broke, and there were tears on his eyes as he spoke of the futility, the crushing futility of the air war. The rest of us sat silently-I for one with my mouth open, listening to the secretary of defense talk that way about a campaign for which he had, ultimately, been responsible. I was pretty shocked".[36]^:512

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.

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.

In 1961, he was named Alumnus of the Year by the University of California, Berkeley.[75]

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."[76]

After his wife's death, McNamara dated Katharine Graham, with whom he had been friends since the early 1960s. 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.[77][78]

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 at his home in Washington, D.C., at 5:30 a.m. on July 6, 2009, at the age of 93.[79][80] 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.