Robert McNamara: Education, Career, and Impact
Robert Strange McNamara (1916-2009) was a prominent American businessman and government official, most notably serving as the eighth United States Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His tenure coincided with the height of the Cold War and the escalating conflict in Vietnam. Prior to his influential role in national security, McNamara built a successful career in business, demonstrating his expertise in management and strategic planning.
Early Life and Education
Robert Strange McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, on June 9, 1916, to Robert James McNamara, a wholesale shoe industry executive, and Clara Nell McNamara. His early education took place in public schools, laying the foundation for his later academic achievements. He graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California in 1933, where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club and earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
In 1937, McNamara graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, complemented by minors in mathematics and philosophy. During his time at Berkeley, he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his sophomore year. He also earned a varsity letter in crew and was an ROTC Cadet in the Golden Bear Battalion at U.C.
Continuing his pursuit of higher education, McNamara attended Harvard Business School. In 1939, he earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA), further honing his skills in management and finance.
Early Career and World War II Service
Following his graduation from Harvard Business School, McNamara spent a year working for Price Waterhouse and Company, an accounting firm in San Francisco.
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In August 1940, McNamara returned to Harvard to teach at the Business School, where he instructed Army Air Corps officers in statistical techniques and war management from 1940 to 1943. His expertise in these areas led him to England, where he aided the Air Corps with efforts to support bombing operations. He continued to support the war effort through his statistical and management efforts. His wartime service involved developing logistical systems for bomber raids and statistical systems for monitoring troops and supplies. McNamara served under Curtis LeMay and saw action in Britain, India, China, and the Pacific. He was awarded the Legion of Merit and promoted to lieutenant colonel before leaving in April 1946. He 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 the XX Bomber Command B-29s doubling as transports for carrying fuel and cargo over the Hump, and his analysis of the jet stream on XXI Bomber Command operations influenced LeMay's decision to begin low-altitude firebombing raids against Japan.
Ford Motor Company and the "Whiz Kids"
Following the close of hostilities, McNamara returned to the United States and joined Ford Motor Company in 1946 as manager of planning and financial analysis. McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans helped turn around the financially troubled Ford Motor Company. 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. They helped the money-losing company reform its chaotic administration through modern planning, organization, and management control systems. They became known as the "whiz kids". Their expertise in statistical analysis and management techniques proved invaluable in revitalizing the company.
McNamara advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions. He served as general manager and vice president of Ford's automotive division during the 1950s. In November 1960, McNamara became the first man outside the Ford family to be named president of the Ford Motor Company, a testament to his leadership and business acumen.
Secretary of Defense
In 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy asked McNamara to join his cabinet as Secretary of Defense, despite McNamara being a registered Republican. McNamara accepted the offer and was sworn in as Secretary of Defense in January 1961.
As Secretary of Defense, McNamara brought the military under greater and more centralized civilian control. He enlarged his staff and moved to centralize decision-making authority. He created the Defense Intelligence Agency to assess intelligence operations of all three military branches and established the Defense Supply Agency to standardize the purchasing of items between the three military branches.
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McNamara also helped to develop the policies of "second strike capability" and "flexible response." Kennedy and McNamara rejected massive retaliation for a posture of flexible response. The United States wanted choices in an emergency other than "inglorious retreat or unlimited retaliation," as the president put it. Increased attention to conventional strength complemented these special forces preparations. The Berlin crisis in 1961 demonstrated to McNamara the need for more troops. In this instance he called up reserves and also proceeded to expand the regular armed forces.
McNamara played a much larger role in the formulation of nuclear strategy than his predecessors. In part this reflected both the increasing sophistication of nuclear weapons and delivery systems and Soviet progress toward nuclear parity with the United States. Basic NATO strategy in such an unlikely event, McNamara argued, should follow the "no-cities" concept. "General nuclear war," he stated, "should be approached in much the same way that more conventional military operations have been regarded in the past.
McNamara turned to "assured destruction,'' which he characterized as the capability "to deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States and its allies by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon any single aggressor, or combination of aggressors, even after absorbing a surprise first strike." As defined by McNamara, assured destruction meant that the United States would be able to destroy in retaliation 20 to 25 percent of the Soviet Union's population and 50 percent of its industrial capacity. Later the term "mutual assured destruction" meant the capacity of each side to inflict sufficient damage on the other to constitute an effective deterrent. To make this strategy credible, McNamara speeded up the modernization and expansion of weapon and delivery systems.
In December 1961 he established the Strike Command (STRICOM). Authorized to draw forces when needed from the Strategic Army Corps, the Tactical Air Command, and the airlift units of the Military Air Transport Service and the military services, Strike Command had the mission "to respond swiftly and with whatever force necessary to threats against the peace in any part of the world, reinforcing unified commands or . . . carrying out separate contingency operations." McNamara also increased long-range airlift and sealift capabilities and funds for space research and development. After reviewing the separate and often uncoordinated service efforts in intelligence and communications, McNamara in 1961 consolidated these functions in the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Communications Agency (the latter originally established by Secretary Gates in 1960), having both report to the secretary of defense through the JCS.
McNamara's institution of systems analysis as a basis for making key decisions on force requirements, weapon systems, and other matters occasioned much debate. McNamara relied heavily on systems analysis to reach several controversial weapon decisions. He canceled the B-70 bomber, begun during the Eisenhower years as a replacement for the B-52, stating that it was neither cost-effective nor needed, and later he vetoed its proposed successor, the RS-70. Similarly, McNamara terminated the Skybolt project late in 1962.
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Despite serious problems, McNamara initiated and continued the TFX (later F-111) aircraft. He believed that Navy and Air Force requirements for a new tactical fighter could best be met by development of a common aircraft. After extensive study of the recommendations of a joint Air Force-Navy evaluation board, McNamara awarded the TFX contract to General Dynamics.
The most notable example of systems analysis was the Planning Programming Budgeting System (PPBS) instituted by DoD Comptroller Charles J. Hitch. McNamara directed Hitch to analyze defense requirements systematically and produce a long-term, program-oriented Defense budget. PPBS evolved to become the heart of the McNamara management program. Among the management tools developed to implement PPBS were the Five Year Defense Plan (FYDP), the Draft Presidential Memorandum (DPM), the Readiness, Information and Control Tables, and the Development Concept Paper (DCP). The annual FYDP was a series of tables projecting forces for eight years and costs and manpower for five years in mission-oriented, rather than individual service, programs. The DPM, intended for the White House and usually prepared by the systems analysis office, was a method to study and analyze major Defense issues. The Development Concept Paper examined performance, schedule, cost estimates, and technical risks to provide a basis for determining whether to begin or continue a research and development program.
In the broad arena of national security affairs, McNamara played a principal part under both Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, especially during international crises. More successful from McNamara's point of view was his participation in the Executive Committee, a small group of advisers who counseled Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. McNamara supported the president's decision to quarantine Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from bringing in more offensive weapons.
The Vietnam War
During the Lyndon Johnson administration, McNamara became the prime architect of America's strategy in Vietnam. He believed that the build-up of conventional forces as a part of "flexible response" capability would enable the military to deal more effectively with communist guerrillas.
The Vietnam conflict came to claim most of McNamara's time and energy. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations had committed the United States to support the French and native anti-Communist forces in Vietnam in resisting efforts by the Communists in the North to control the country. role, including financial support and military advice, expanded after 1954 when the French withdrew. military advisory group in South Vietnam steadily increased, with McNamara's concurrence, from just a few hundred to about 17,000. In 1965, in response to stepped up military activity by the Communist Viet Cong in South Vietnam and their North Vietnamese allies, the United States began bombing North Vietnam, deployed large military forces, and entered into combat in South Vietnam. military commanders in Vietnam led to the commitment of troops.
Although he loyally supported administration policy, McNamara gradually became skeptical about whether the war could be won by deploying more troops to South Vietnam and intensifying the bombing of North Vietnam. He traveled to Vietnam many times to study the situation firsthand and became increasingly reluctant to approve the large force increments requested by the military commanders.
Ultimately, his growing disillusionment with the war led him to leave office as Secretary of Defense in 1968.
President of the World Bank
In 1968, McNamara resigned as Secretary of Defense and became president of the World Bank the following year, a post he held until 1981. McNamara eschewed the cautious, Wall Street-oriented approach of his predecessors. He adopted an aggressive mission that emphasized the claims and expectations of the Bank's developing member countries. The needs of the developing world - not the need to satisfy the investment community - became paramount in determining the type and quantity of the Bank's activities.
The Bank that McNamara left in 1981 was completely transformed from the institution he had entered thirteen years earlier. It was a much larger organization, and much more complex. Its membership had continued to expand, and with the People's Republic of China assuming full participation, it was well on its way to becoming a universal organization. The Bank began to address problems of income disparity and poverty and diversified into sectors of activity where progress was inevitably slow and unspectacular. And the Bank became more deeply involved in the economic and social conditions of its borrowers. It diversified its sources of funding, drawing from a growing number of international sources.
McNamara realized that the Bank could not solve by itself the world's problems; but it could provide leadership and the will to leverage the world's resources for development. McNamara believed that there was a direct link between concerns about military security and economic development. For McNamara the threat of warfare was a consequence of the widening income gap between the industrial and developing countries.
Upon his arrival at the Bank, McNamara was surprised at what he considered the small volume of lending the Bank had made compared to the vastness of the needs. He developed an elaborate system of numerical reporting tables that provide complete and up-to-date pictures of the lending program and country needs: the Bank's balance sheet, cash flow, lending program, and borrowing requirements. These reporting methods grew progressively more complex as McNamara insisted that more data be included in the reports.
One of his first actions upon taking office was to request a list from his managers of all the projects that should be undertaken, regardless of the financial, political or economic constraints. He used this list as the basis of his first five-year lending plan, and in September 1968 he proposed to the Governors at the Annual Meetings that the Bank double the volume of lending during the next five years. McNamara's second five year plan, introduced in 1973, was 40% higher than his first.
Bank commitments increased from an annual level of about $1 billion in 1968 to over $13 billion in fiscal 1981. The proposed increase in the Bank's activities required a rapid expansion in the number of staff. Between 1968 and 1973 the professional staff increased in number by 125%. The staff as a whole grew from 1,600 at the time he took over to 5,700 when he left in 1981. In addition to the increase in numbers, the nationality diversification of staff was increased.
With an expanding volume of business the system of large centralized projects departments and geographical regional departments became unwieldy and bureaucratic. In 1972 he hired McKinsey & Co. to analyze the existing structure and business and to make recommendations for change. McNamara followed the process closely and in 1972 a major reorganizaiton of the Bank took place. Responsibility for lending was placed in the hands of regional vice presidents, who had control over resources required to meet agreed output targets.
McNamara expanded the geographical range of the Bank's lending, and the Bank became actively engaged in all countries that needed help. He re-established lending relationships with Egypt and Indonesia, and the latter became one of the Bank's most important country programs. McNamara took personal charge of the membership negotiations with the People's Republic of China. In May 1980, the People's Republic of China assumed its membership in the Bank.
McNamara's sharply increased level of lending necessitated a quantum leap in mobilizing both conventional and concessional resources.
McNamara's efforts were successful. IDA replenishment amounts increased from an annual rate of $400 million in the second replenishment to $4 billion during the sixth. Some of this increase was automatically eaten up by rapid inflation during this period, but in real terms, IDA resources more than doubled between the fourth and sixth replenishments.
He asked Lester Pearson, former prime minister of Canada, to head a commission which was to be independent of the Bank but would work in close proximity to McNamara. The Pearson Commission report Partners in Development, issued in 1969, gave a fresh impetus to development assistance.
Throughout his tenure at the Bank, McNamara struggled to gain a clear understanding of the problems the developing countries were facing. One issue that came to characterize the McNamara presidency was the problem of population growth. McNamara believed that rapid population growth was the greatest barrier to economic progress. He turned to Hollis Chenery, head of the Bank's economic research department, who focused on the problems related to the uneven income distribution in developing countries.
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