McNamara, Robert S. (1916–)

Secretary of Defense

Robert S. McNamara served as secretary of defense from 1961 through early 1968, during the presidential administra-tions of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. During his tenure, his institution of a quantitatively oriented, civilian-dominated approach to military budgeting and decision making revolutionized the Pentagon but outraged military [Page 467]leadership. McNamara was a major architect of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War, for which he has subsequently been widely criticized.

Robert Strange McNamara was born on June 9, 1916, in San Francisco. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1937 with a degree in econom-ics. In 1939, McNamara completed a master's degree in business administration from Harvard University; soon after, he returned to Harvard to accept a faculty position in the business school. During World War II, McNamara served in the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), performing systems analysis—providing quantitative inputs into com-plex operational planning—for operational forces. In November 1945, McNamara joined a group of former USAAF systems analysts hired by Henry Ford II to shake up the management of the Ford Motor Company. After 15 years of success at Ford, McNamara became president of the company in October 1960.

Just seven weeks later, McNamara was asked to join the cabinet of president-elect John F. Kennedy as secretary of defense. The main strategic concept of the Kennedy admin-istration was “flexible response,” a focus on building up U.S. conventional military forces that had been neglected under the cost-saving, nuclear-dependent “massive retaliation” strategy of the Eisenhower administration. To implement the flexible response strategy over the objections of the often hidebound military services, McNamara sought to impose a more centralized, civilian-directed management system. Once in office, he quickly organized a group of exceptionally talented aides, many of them young academics, who upset the civilian–military balance of power in the Pentagon. McNamara's “Whiz Kids,” as they came to be known, spoke the common language of quantitative systems analysis, which under McNamara became the basis of Pentagon deci-sion making. The uniformed military leaders had been accustomed to using their professional judgment to justify service programs. Under McNamara, these sorts of argu-ments were swept aside in favor of quantitative analysis. The military services deeply resented McNamara's lack of defer-ence to their professional expertise, yet the Programming, Planning, and Budgeting System (PPBS) that McNamara instituted remains in place today.

McNamara also played a major role in shaping U.S. nuclear strategy, ultimately settling on “assured destruction”: in place of the established commitment to nuclear supremacy, the United States would moderate its increases in strategic nuclear forces, concentrating instead on main-taining a retaliatory force sufficient to inflict a level of destruction upon the Soviet Union that would deter Soviet leaders from an initial strike. During the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara counseled against the mil-itary strike advocated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff—his argu-ment in favor of “overt military action” short of war formed the basis of the “quarantine” that successfully resolved the most dangerous U.S.–Soviet confrontation of the Cold War. This experience left McNamara convinced that he needed to impose even stricter control over the military services.

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