Historians/History

Robert S. McNamara: The War Wizard Passes

by John Prados

John Prados is a senior fellow of the National Security Archive in Washington DC and director of its Vietnam and Iraq Documentation Projects. His current book is Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (University Press of Kansas).

Americans no doubt will view the death of Robert S. McNamara with considerable ambivalence. The 93-year old McNamara has fingerprints on many of the key events of his era, whether it be innovation of the nuclear doctrine of “mutual assured destruction,” the acceptance of seat belts in automobiles, the studies behind the firebombing of Japan in World War II, the response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the conduct of the Vietnam war, or the Third World development policies of the World Bank. Auto enthusiasts have probably not forgiven McNamara for championing the Edsel when he worked as president of the Ford Motor Company, any more than have defense hawks for McNamara’s implantation of “whiz kid” systems analysts at the Pentagon. But for most Americans it will be McNamara’s role on Vietnam that defines his place in history. The public outpouring of scorn that followed McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect amply illustrates the controversy that surrounded him. Many were angry that McNamara, the war criminal, let tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese go to their deaths; while others vilified the man, who served Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson as secretary of defense, for holding back U.S. airpower and the military in the Southeast Asian war.

Robert Strange McNamara was nothing if not a complex character, by turns hard-nosed, even savage, then sensitive, but always acute and aware, if not attuned to the full implications of what he was seeing. It is probably fair to say that McNamara approached life—and policy—as a puzzle, the pieces of which, if he could only find them and fit them in place, would yield a brighter future. That problem-solving attitude McNamara took with him into World War II, Ford, the Kennedy-Johnson era Pentagon, and the World Bank. The technique was both McNamara’s gift and his curse, giving him a different lens to find ways forward but also rigidities and limitations that restricted his vision. His core notion, in my view, is that anything could be managed. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Vietnam war, of which McNamara was a principal architect.

A great deal of the controversy over the book In Retrospect flowed from McNamara’s effort to show that he had not merely looked at Vietnam from the simple perspective of the warfighter. McNamara wrote of the lack of American understanding of Vietnam, his efforts to inject dynamism into war strategy, and even a role in Johnson administration peace feelers to North Vietnam. He admitted failure at certain key moments to force a deeper debate over whether to escalate in Vietnam, and came to apologize for his role. All this engendered belly laughs from many, not to mention heaps of sarcasm and outright rejection.

The irony in all this is that the formerly secret records of the Vietnam war bear out McNamara’s account. He certainly did attempt to manage the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Air Force generals who champed at the bit, but the record shows—and the analysts who wrote the Pentagon Papers confirm—that the generals were never able to promise a sure solution to the dilemmas of Vietnam. McNamara’s periodic memoranda to President Johnson show skepticism as early as 1965. Moreover, as documented in my book Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975, McNamara finally did compel Lyndon Johnson in late 1967 to reconsider U.S. escalation strategy, contributing to LBJ’s change of heart after the Tet Offensive. That act, which amounted to McNamara falling on his sword, also led to President Johnson booting him out of the administration.

Long after, in retirement, Robert McNamara did something almost none of his colleagues from the Vietnam war era attempted, which was to systematically revisit the record of those days in a view toward trying to understand what had happened. I have known Mr. McNamara, very slightly to be sure, for almost twenty years. We first met when I interviewed him for a book I was writing in conjunction with a veteran of the Battle of Khe Sanh. We collaborated most closely during the period from 1996 to 1998, when McNamara was a moving force behind an effort to bring together former top officials and historians from both the United States and North Vietnam to directly discuss the course of the war. Organized by the Brown University academics James Blight and janet lang [this is how she signs her name], the resulting conference took place in Hanoi with preparatory and follow-up sessions elsewhere. I compiled the documentary briefing book for that conference and numbered among the historians on the U.S. delegation.

I mention this to introduce a story that I think illustrates Robert McNamara’s sensibilities as well as his limitations. In the briefing book were a pair of CIA memoranda that dealt directly with the notorious “Domino Theory,” one of the justifications for war frequently cited by U.S. officials, McNamara not least among them. The CIA papers, one from 1964, the other from 1968, neatly boxed the high period of American escalation, and called into question the essential rationale of the argument. The delegation was in Bangkok, en route to Hanoi, and I was sunning by a pool, when McNamara came over to me and sat down. He wanted to talk about the 1968 CIA memo, which of course lent weight to McNamara’s 1967 de-escalation arguments. He was very excited. He asked if there were other documents like that—and I mentioned the 1964 paper. That had been written at the dawn of escalation, when McNamara was on board for the ride. He was not interested in that paper. Robert McNamara wanted an inquiry, but one within specific boundaries that were inside his head.

Similarly, there was much talk about the peace feeler codenamed “Pennsylvania” in which McNamara had effectively acted in place of Secretary of State Dean Rusk. There the blinder was that the approach to Hanoi was about peace talks themselves, not about starting negotiations. As the actual Vietnam peace talks would demonstrate there was a big gap between the sides when it came to a settlement. McNamara had telescoped from opening talks to peace in Vietnam.

For all his rigidities and dualities—not just on Vietnam but in everything in which he participated—Robert S. McNamara at least sought to understand what had happened and his role in key events of the time. And he felt remorse, which is more than can be said for some of his contemporaries. Moreover, Robert McNamara accepted the criticisms heaped upon him without flinching. For these things he deserves some credit.