Robert McNamara | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 1961 | |
| President of the World Bank Group | |
| In office April 1, 1968 – June 30, 1981 | |
| Preceded by | George David Woods |
| Succeeded by | Alden W. Clausen |
| 8thUnited 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 S. Gates Jr. |
| Succeeded by | Clark Clifford |
| 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. |
| Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
| Political party |
|
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3, includingCraig |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley (BA) Harvard University (MBA) |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service | |
| Years of service | 1943–1946 |
| Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
Robert Strange McNamara (/ˈmæknəˌmærə/; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighthUnited States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under PresidentsJohn F. Kennedy andLyndon B. Johnson at the height of theCold War. He remains the longest-serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years. He played a major role in promoting the U.S. involvement in theVietnam War.[3] McNamara was responsible for the institution ofsystems analysis inpublic policy, which developed into the discipline known today aspolicy analysis.[1][4]
McNamara graduated from theUniversity of California, Berkeley, andHarvard Business School.[5] He served in theUnited States Army Air Forces duringWorld War II. After World War II,Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for theFord Motor Company, reforming Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted an appointment as secretary of defense in theKennedy administration.
McNamara became a close adviser to Kennedy and advocated the use of a blockade during theCuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and McNamara instituted a Cold War defense strategy offlexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short ofmassive retaliation. During the Kennedy administration, McNamara presided over a build-up of U.S. soldiers inSouth Vietnam. After the 1964Gulf 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 wouldlead to the fall of other governments in the region.
McNamara grew increasingly skeptical of the efficacy of committing U.S. troops to South Vietnam. In 1968, he resigned as secretary of defense to becomepresident of the World Bank. He served as its president until 1981, shifting the focus of theWorld Bank from infrastructure and industrialization towards poverty reduction. After retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including theCalifornia Institute of Technology and theBrookings Institution. In later writings and interviews, including hismemoir, McNamara expressed regret for some of the decisions he made during the Vietnam War.[6]
Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Clara Nell McNamara (née Strange) and Robert James McNamara. His father was sales manager of a wholesale shoe company,[3] whose family wasIrish and, in about 1850, following theGreat Irish Famine, had emigrated to the U.S., first toMassachusetts and later to California.[7]
McNamara graduated fromPiedmont High School inPiedmont, California in 1933, where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club[8] and earned the rank ofEagle Scout. According to McNamara, scouting helped him set his values and was where he first developed an interest inpublic service.[7]
McNamara attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated in 1937 with aB.A. ineconomics with minors inmathematics andphilosophy. He was a member of thePhi Gamma Deltafraternity,[9] was elected toPhi Beta Kappa in his sophomore year, and earned avarsity letter increw. McNamara was anROTC Cadet in the Golden Bear Battalion at U.C. Berkeley.[10] McNamara was also a member of the UC Berkeley'sOrder of the Golden Bear, a fellowship of students and leading faculty members formed to promote leadership within the student body.[11]
In 1937, McNamara took a summer job as a sailor on theSSPresident Hoover. He was aboard when the Chinese Air Forcebombed the ship near Shanghai Harbor. He was not injured.[12][Note 1]
McNamara then attendedHarvard Business School, where he earned aM.B.A. in 1939. Immediately thereafter, McNamara worked for a year atPrice Waterhouse, a San Franciscoaccounting firm. He returned toHarvard in August 1940 to teach accounting in the Business School and became the institution's highest-paid and youngestassistant professor at that time.[6][13][14]
Leading into World War II, McNamara had two deferments from thedraft — a family deferment due to having a minor child and an educational deferment, as he was teaching in an Officer Candidate School at Harvard.[7][Note 2][15]
Following his involvement in a Harvard program to teach analytical approaches used in business to officers of theUnited States Army Air Forces (USAAF), McNamara relinquished his deferment and entered the USAAF as acaptain in early 1943,[1] serving most ofWorld War II with its Office of Statistical Control.[6] One of his major responsibilities was the analysis of U.S. bombers' efficiency and effectiveness by establishing a statistical control unit under the command ofCurtis LeMay, first in theEighth Air Force in Europe and then theTwentieth Air Force in India, China, and the Mariana Islands.[16] McNamara was able to show that the nearly 20% abort rate of Eighth Air Force bombers was largely due to fear, which prompted LeMay to personally lead missions (to McNamara's admiration) and threaten courts martial. McNamara devised schedules for theXX Bomber Command B-29s doubling as transports for carrying fuel and cargo overthe Hump, and his analysis of thejet stream onXXI Bomber Command operations influenced LeMay's decision to begin low-altitudefirebombing raids against Japan. During the war McNamara developed a negative view of the majority of officers (LeMay was an exception) because they largely refused to cooperate with his analytical work.[Note 3][17] He left active duty in 1946 with the rank oflieutenant colonel[1] and with aLegion of Merit.[18]
In 1946,Tex Thornton, a colonel under whom McNamara had served, put together a group of former officers from the Office of Statistical Control to go into business together. Thornton had seen an article inLife magazine portraying theFord Motor Company as being in dire need of reform.Henry Ford II, himself a World War II veteran from the Navy, hired the entire group of ten, including McNamara.[19][20]
They helped the money-losing company reform its chaotic administration through modern planning, organization, and management control systems. Because of their youth, combined with asking many questions, Ford employees initially and disparagingly referred to them as the "Quiz Kids". The Quiz Kids rebranded themselves as the "Whiz Kids".[19]
Starting as manager of planning and financial analysis, McNamara advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions. McNamara had Ford adopt computers to construct models to find the most efficient, rational means of production, which led to much rationalization.[21] McNamara's style of "scientific management" with his use of spreadsheets featuring graphs showing trends in the auto industry were regarded as extremely innovative in the 1950s and were much copied by other executives in the following decades.[21] In his1995 memoirs, McNamara wrote: "I had spent fifteen years as a manager [at Ford] identifying problems and forcing organizations—often against their will—to think deeply and realistically about alternative courses of action and their consequences".[21] He was a force behind theFord 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 1956Lifeguard options package available on full-size Fords introduced theseat belt (a novelty at the time), padded visor, and dished steering wheel, which helped to prevent the driver from being impaled on the steering column during a collision.[22][23]
In 1958, as VP of Operations, McNamara recommended discontinuing the unprofitable Lincoln line.[24] After theLincoln line's very large 1958, 1959, and 1960 models proved unpopular, McNamara pushed for smaller versions, such as the1961 Lincoln Continental.[25] This resulted in rising sales.[24]
On November 9, 1960, McNamara became the first president of the Ford Motor Company from outside theFord family sinceJohn S. Gray in 1906.[26]
After hiselection in 1960,President-elect John F. Kennedy offered McNamara the chance to be either Secretary of Defense orSecretary of the Treasury; McNamara came back a week later, accepting the post of Secretary of Defense. McNamara's salary as the CEO of Ford was $3 million per year while by contrast the position of the Defense Secretary paid only $25,000 per year.[27]
According to Special CounselTed 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."[28] McNamara became one of the few members of the Kennedy Administration to socialize with Kennedy,[29] and he became close to Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy,[30] eventually serving as a pallbearer at the younger Kennedy's funeral in 1968.[31][32]
Aside from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the war in Indochina (Laos and Vietnam), other conflicts that involved the U.S. Defense Department under Robert McNamara included support for the CubanBay of Pigs Invasion, confrontations atGuantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba,reconnaissance flights around the periphery of the Soviet Union and over China, theCongo Crisis, theBerlin Crisis of 1961,riots in the Panama Canal Zone, intervention in theDominican Civil War, theanti-communist purge in Indonesia, the beginning of theKorean DMZ Conflict, and theUSSLiberty incident. All but theLiberty incident were seen as part of theCold War or potentially so.
When President Kennedy received confirmation of the placement of offensive Soviet missiles inCuba, he immediately set up the 'Executive Committee', referred to as 'ExComm'. This committee included Robert McNamara, and was instructed by Kennedy to come up with a response to the Soviet threat unanimously without him present.
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". McNamara's "quantitative" style based upon much number-crunching by computers about trends in Vietnammissed the human dimension. Aspects of the war such as popular views and attitudes in South Vietnam, and South Vietnamese presidentNgô Đình Diệm's "divide and rule" strategy of having multiple government departments compete against one another as a way of staying in power were missed by McNamara's "quantitative" approach as there was no way that computers could calculate these aspects of the war.[33]
After theGulf of Tonkin incident, 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 off the Gulf of Tonkin and stated it was imperative that Congress pass the resolution as quickly as possible.[34] Records from the Lyndon Johnson Library show McNamara may have misled Johnson on the purported attack on the Maddox by allegedly withholding recommendations from U.S. Pacific Commanders against executing airstrikes.[35]
In November 1965, McNamara, who had 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]
In October 1966, McNamara returned from yet another visit to South Vietnam, full of confidence in public and doubt in private. 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". Though McNamara reported to Johnson that American forces were inflicting heavy losses on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, 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.[37]
By 1967, McNamara was suffering visibly from the nervous strain as he went days without shaving and he suffered spasms where his jaw would quiver uncontrollably for hours.[38] McNamara would later deny that he was ever at risk of a breakdown.[12]
McNamara commissioned the Vietnam Study Task Force on 17 June 1967.[39] By January 1969,The Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, as the Pentagon Papers were officially titled, was finished but widely ignored within the government.[40][41]
McNamara left office on 29 February 1968; for his efforts, the President awarded him both theMedal of Freedom[42] and theDistinguished Service Medal.[43]
Robert McNamara served ashead of the World Bank from April 1968 to June 1981, when he turned 65.[44] A safe was installed in McNamara's office at the World Bank to house his papers relating to his time as Defense Secretary, which was a normal courtesy extended to former Defense Secretaries who might face controversy over their actions and wish to defend themselves by quoting from the documentary record.[41] When the Pentagon Papers were finished in April 1969, and a copy of the Papers were brought into McNamara's office, he became angry and said: "I don't want to see it! Take it back!"[41] By 1969, McNamara wanted to forget the Vietnam war and did not want any reminders of his former job.[45]
In his 13 years at the Bank, he introduced key changes, most notably, shifting the Bank's economic development policies toward targeted poverty reduction. Prior to his tenure at the World Bank, poverty did not receive substantial attention as part of international and national economic development; the focus of development had been on industrialization and infrastructure. Poverty also came to be redefined as a condition faced by people rather than countries. According to Martha Finnemore, the World Bank under McNamara's tenure "sold" states poverty reduction "through a mixture of persuasion and coercion."[46] McNamara 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 under McNamara's leadership was the effort to the creation of theOnchocerciasis Control Program to eradicateriver blindness by an alliance of the World Bank, WHO, UNDP and FAO.[47][44][48]
The World Bank currently has ascholarship program under his name.[49]
In March 1968, McNamara's friend SenatorRobert Kennedy entered the Democratic primaries with aim of challenging Johnson. Kennedy asked McNamara to tape a statement praising his leadership during the Cuban Missile Crisis with the understanding that the statement was meant for a TV ad.[38] McNamara praised Kennedy's "shrewd diplomacy", saying he had "remained calm and cool, firm, but restrained, never nettled and never rattled". Though this was a violation of World Bank rules, McNamara felt guilty over refusing Kennedy's requests to resign and decline the World Bank presidency. He was attacked for the tape with theNew York Times in an editorial lambasting him for his "poor judgement and poorer taste". For a moment, McNamara feared he would be fired from the World Bank.[45]
In 1972, McNamara visited Santiago to meet PresidentSalvador Allende to discuss the latter's policy of nationalization, especially of the copper mining companies.[50] McNamara's son,Craig McNamara was living in Chile at the time, but the two did not meet owing to the rift over the Vietnam war.[51] McNamarafils stated in 1984: "I think my father truly respected Allende-his compassion, his humility. But he disapproved of the nationalizations".[50] The meeting with Allende concluded with McNamara ending all World Bank loans to Chile.[50] On 11 September 1973, Allende was overthrown in a coup d'état led by GeneralAugusto Pinochet. In 1974, McNamara visited Santiago to meet Pinochet and agreed to the World Bank resuming loans to Chile.[50] Craig McNamara, who was visiting the United States at the time of the coup and chose not to return to Chile was outraged by the decision to resume the loans, telling his father in a phone call: "You can't do this-you always say the World Bank is not a political institution, but financing Pinochet clearly would be".[50] McNamarapere flatly stated in reply: "It's too late. I've already made my decision".[50] McNamarafils felt that his father's claim that he had to cease loans to Chile because the Allende government's nationalization policy was an "economic" matter that fell within the purview of the World Bank, but human rights abuses under Pinochet were a "political" matter that was outside of the World Bank's purview was disingenuous and dishonest. Craig McNamara stated: "I was really upset by that. That was hard to mend".[52]
In 1975 McNamara was called to give testimony before theUnited States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities chaired by SenatorFrank Church. Retired General Edward Lansdale and others had already given testimony regardingOperation Mongoose, a program created by President Kennedy to assassinate leading Cubans including Fidel Castro. McNamara blasted Lansdale's released testimony “for what I consider loose and irresponsible and at times contradictory testimony in the press...I am damn annoyed at the damage he has done to dead people [i.e., the Kennedys]” despite his knowledge that Lansdale's testimony was substantially true.[Note 4][53]
As World Bank President, he declared at the 1968Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group that countries permitting birth control practices would get preferential access to resources. During the 1975-1977emergency in India, McNamara remarked "At long last, India is moving to effectively address its population problem," regarding the forced sterilization.[54][55][56] Many deaths occurred as a result of both the male and the female sterilization programs, due to poor sanitation and quality standards in the Indian sterilization camps.[57]
From 1981 to 1984, McNamara served on the board of trustees atAmerican University in Washington, D.C.[58]
He was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1981.[59]
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.[citation needed]
McNamara maintained his involvement in politics in his later years, delivering statements critical of theBush administration's2003 invasion of Iraq.[60] On 5 January 2006, McNamara and most living former Secretaries of Defense andSecretaries of State met briefly at the White House with President Bush to discuss the war.[61]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Booknotes interview with McNamara onIn Retrospect, April 23, 1995,C-SPAN |
McNamara's memoir,In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, published in 1995, presented an account and analysis of the Vietnam War from his point of view.[32] According to his lengthyNew 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]
In November 1995, McNamara returned to Vietnam, this time visiting Hanoi.[62] Despite his role as one of the architects of Operation Rolling Thunder, McNamara met with a surprisingly warm reception, even from those who survived the bombing raids, and was often asked to autograph pirate editions ofIn Retrospect which had been illegally translated and published in Vietnam.[63] During his visit, McNamara met his opposite number during the war, GeneralVõ Nguyên Giáp who served as North Vietnam's Defense Minister.[63] During his conversation, McNamara brought up theGulf of Tonkin incident and asked Giáp what happened on 4 August 1964. "Absolutely nothing", Giáp replied. Giáp confirmed that theattack on 4 August 1964 had been imaginary while also confirming that theattack on 2 August happened.[64]
The American historian Charles Neu who was present at the McNamara-Giáp meeting observed the differences in the style of the two men with McNamara repeatedly interrupting Giáp to ask questions, usually related to something numerical, while Giáp gave a long leisurely monologue, quoting various Vietnamese cultural figures such as poets, that began with Vietnamese revolts against China during the years 111 BC–938 AD when Vietnam was a Chinese province. Neu wrote his impression was that McNamara was a figure who thought in the short term while Giáp thought in the long term.[63]
Perhaps the earliest assessment of Robert McNamara wasDavid Halberstam's 1972 bookThe Best and the Brightest. Halberstam reported on McNamara's propensity to lie:
Bob McNamara was a remarkable man in a remarkable era; if at the beginning he seemed to embody many if not most of the era’s virtues, at the end of it he seemed to embody its pathos, flaws and tragedy...He would, for instance, lie, dissemble, not just to the public, they all did that in varying degrees, but inside, in high-level meetings, always for the good of the cause, always for the right reason, always to serve the Office of the President. Bob knew what was good for the cause, but sometimes at the expense of his colleagues. And indeed, experienced McNamara watchers, men who were fond of him, would swear they knew when Bob was lying; his voice would get higher, he would speak faster, he would become more insistent.[65]
Halberstam also excoriated McNamara's disregard for valuable information that was not quantified; he reported onone incident in 1965 in Da Nang and concluded “...he did not serve himself nor the country well; he was, there is no kinder or gentler word for it, a fool.”[66]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Booknotes interview with Deborah Shapley onPromise and Power, 21 March 1993,C-SPAN |
In 1993, Washington journalist Deborah Shapley published a 615-page biography of Robert McNamara titledPromise 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.'"[67]
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003Errol Morris documentary consisting mostly of interviews with Robert McNamara and archival footage.[12] It went on to win theAcademy Award for Documentary Feature. The particular structure of this personal account is accomplished with the characteristics of an intimate dialogue. 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.[68]
McNamara married Margaret Craig, his teenage sweetheart, on 13 August 1940. She was an accomplished cook, and Robert's favorite dish was reputed to be herbeef bourguignon.[69]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. Later that summer, her ashes were scattered by her family on a mountainside meadow at Buckskin Pass, nearSnowmass Village, Colorado.
The couple had two daughters and a son. Their son,Robert Craig McNamara, who as a student objected to the Vietnam War, is a farmer in California.[70]
When working atFord Motor Company, McNamara resided inAnn Arbor,Michigan, rather than the usual auto executive domains ofGrosse Pointe,Birmingham, andBloomfield Hills. He and his wife sought to remain connected with a university town (theUniversity 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.[71]
| External videos | |
|---|---|
| Booknotes interview with Paul Hendrickson onThe Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, 27 October 1996, C-SPAN |
On 29 September 1972, a passenger on the ferry toMartha'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 authorPaul Hendrickson, who quoted the attacker as saying, "I just wanted to confront (McNamara) on Vietnam."[72]
After his wife's death, McNamara datedKatharine 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 toErnest Byfield, a formerOSS officer and Chicago hotel owner, thirty years her senior, whose first wife, Gladys Rosenthal Tartiere, leased her 400-acre (1.6 km2) Glen Ora estate inMiddleburg, Virginia, to John F. Kennedy during his presidency.[73][74]
At the end of his life, McNamara was a life trustee on the Board of Trustees of theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech), a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security, a trustee of theAmerican University of Nigeria, and an honorary trustee for theBrookings Institution.
McNamara died at his home in Washington, D.C., at 5:30 am on 6 July 2009, at the age of 93.[75][3] He is buried at theArlington National Cemetery inArlington County, Virginia, with the grave marker also commemorating his wives.[76]
McNamara's papers from his years as Secretary of Defense are housed in theJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum inBoston, Massachusetts.
Articles
Books
Memoranda
Transcripts
SeeRobert McNamara as Secretary of Defense § Media for the full list.
Documentary films
Thirteen pallbearers carried the casket from the train, including ... former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara....
Craig McNamara is owner of Sierra Orchards, a diversified farming operation producing walnuts and grape rootstock. He is a California Agricultural Leadership Program graduate, American Leadership Forum senior fellow and College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Dean's Advisory Council member. McNamara helped structure a biologically integrated orchard system that became the model for UC/SAREP (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program) and created the FARMS Leadership Program, introducing rural and urban high school students to sustainable farming, science and technology. He was one of 10 U.S. representatives at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome.
According to a 1961 entry in Contemporary Biography, McNamara was a registered Republican. He changed his party affiliation to Democrat in 1978, according to public records in the District of Columbia.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | United States Secretary of Defense 1961–1968 | Succeeded by |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | President of the World Bank Group 1968–1981 | Succeeded by |
| Business positions | ||
| Preceded by | President of the Ford Motor Company November 9, 1960 – January 1, 1961 | Succeeded by John Dykstra |
