Darth Wong wrote:I would be more interested in what you thought he believed his own justifications were. Generally speaking, people believe there is a good reason for what they're doing, even if they know they are doing unsavoury things to reach that goal. Of course, the exception would be sociopaths for whom their only motivation is self-gratification, but his actions don't seem to fit that mould.
McNamara was a perfect storm of problems. One particular category came from his own character shortcomings. he was egotistical to the point where he would not tolerate any dissenting voice in his presence. Everything within his environment was defined so that it gave him the answers he wanted and only the answers he had pre-defined. So, for example, if he wanted a report on a specific program, his request for that program would be so phrased that the resulting document would give him the answer he wanted. Any contrary viewpoint was rigidly excluded; if he was talking with somebody and he found himself in disagreement with said person, he would simply turn around and walk away. If that person was in a departmentf or which MacNamara had executive responsibility, that person would be fired.
Another problem was that McNamara had a grossly inflated idea of his own capabilities. He took it for granted that any idea he had was right, any opinion he held was correct and that anybody who thought otherwise was, at best, incompetent. he assumed he was a better car designer than car designers, a better marketing manager than marketers and a better manager than managers. This, remember, was the man responsible for the Edsel. he had a habit of making up his mind on an issue at a very eraly stage and then holding that position regardless. Any additional information had to be in accordance with thepreconception or it would be either ignored or changed to fall in with his opinion.
Finally, McNamara believed that everything could be solved by 'managing' an issue. That included technical problems as well as managerial ones. If a program didn't meet its targets, it was because it wasn't being properly managed and needed more management. So, programs under his rule became loaded with layer after layer of additional managers.
A diversion into strategy here. Under Eisenhower, the US strategy was containment. The idea was that because our economy was much healthier than the USSR, we could eventually outresource them. All we had to do was sit and wait. Eisenhower also believed that nobody was idiot enough to start a nuclear war and that meant the only way one would start was if people miscalculated. So, the objective was to reduce the scope for miscalculation. That meant thinking very carefully about things and indulging in no foreign adventures. Take things very easily and carefully said Ike, and we'll all live through this. So, Eisenhower saw a need to do two things; one was to reduce the cost of the US defense system as much as possible, the other was to eliminate the means by which a nuclear mistake could happen. Both meant gutting the US Army. Accordingly, Eisenhower gutted it. He turned the US Army into a nuclear tripwire that was so weak it could only fight with nuclear weapons. That meant no campaigns in foreign countries; after all if one doesn;t have a powerfula rmy, one is not tempted to use it.
In nuclear matters, Eisenhower's strategy was simple. First build up a massive nuclear striking arm that could devastate an enemy. that meant nobody could survive attacking us; even if we went down we would take them with us. The second phase was, once the massive striking force was established, build up a powerful defense which would keep pace with the enemy threat to that defense. Because we were slashing defense expenditure elsewhere, we could afford it. The idea was that the USSR would see us building up our nuclear striking force, they would try and respond. As their striking force increased, we would be increasing our defensive force to compensate for it while maintaining our striking force. The USSR would see the defensive screen forming, try to counter it and their economy would collapse under the strain. More or less what happened in the 1980s.
Of course the Army didn't like this at all and the Kennedies made the weakness of the US Army a key point in their 1960 election campaign. They also claimed a massive missile gap existed between the USSR and USA because they had concentrated on building missiles while we built obsolete bombers. Be it noted, that was completely untrue, there was a missile gap but it was ehavily in our favor AND KENNEDY KNEW IT. He also knew our bombers could go straight through the USSR air defenses with only minimal losses. Anyway, that's the defense grounds on which Kennedy fought the 1960 election.
As we all know he won. What people usually don't know is that McNamara wasn't his first choice as SecDef, in fact he was the third, the first two having turned the position down because they could not, in conscience, go along with the deception that had been practiced during the election. McNamara was the third choice and he accepted the post. He knew nothing about defense (he worked for Ford automobiles) but by teh time he finished opening the door of his office, he was an expert, in his opinion anyway.
His orders from Kennedy were simple. Rebuild the US Army intoa powerful fighting force and fit it for an active interventionary role. All teh talk about bearing any burden was part of that. McNamara had to rebuild teh Army and to do that he needed money and trained men, He got them by gutting Aradcom and using the resources and personnel to build a new Army. That was the army that went to Vienam and screwed up so badly. Not surprising, it was an army of conscripts led by anti-aircraft gunners. He needed more money the Kennedy's were pushing missiles, McNamara obeyed orders, pushed missiles instead of bombers because they were 'more modern' and 'less expensive'. In fact, in terms of cost per warhead delivered, bombers actually cost less than missiles but that's another matter.
In the need to free up more resources for the Army and to justify the shift to missiles, he capped the number of warheads we were to have procured. In this of course he missed the point completely but his justifications were after-the-fact. The need was to save money first (to continue running the big new Army) and all his justifications were intended to achieve that. So, the bomber re-equipment plan was scrapped and missile deployment limited. The massive strategic striking force lead we'b built up in teh 1950s was tossed away and teh defense force that was to have complemented in was still-born.
The only thing McNamara understood was management and his motto was "if some is good, more is better". So he managed more and more. And he assumed because he was RSM, he could manage anything better than anybody. He managed the war in Vietnam, the involvment, build-up, strategy, tactics, operational concepts, political initiatives, everything came from McNamara. We all know where that went.
A terrible, criminally incompetent man.
Thanks Stuart and everyone who wrote this magnificent work into being!