McNamara, Robert S.

McNamara, Robert S. (1916–), secretary of defense and president of the World Bank.Born in San Francisco into a family of humble means, McNamara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with an economics degree in 1937, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1939, where he also joined the faculty, teaching financial management systems based on statistical controls. During World War II, the Army Air Forces appointed McNamara and several of his colleagues as officers to develop methods of statistical control for managing the strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography

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

John Whiteclay Chambers II and and Brian Adkins