Defense: The Dilemma & the Design

(See Cover)

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara stood at complete and unmilitary ease behind the lectern on the stage of the State Department auditorium. In cool and well-punctuated sentences, with never an uh or an er, he recited fact after fact, figure after figure, in response to the blunt questions of newsmen.

McNamara's manner was that of a professor patiently explaining a simple matter to a slightly backward class. Yet his audience, over television, was the U.S. itself. And his mission, undertaken at the specific order of President Kennedy, was to tell the nation about the state of Soviet military strength in Cuba. "In recent days," said McNamara, "questions have been raised in the press and elsewhere regarding the presence of offensive weapons systems in Cuba. I believe beyond any reasonable doubt that all such weapons systems have been removed from the island and none have been reintroduced."

His didactic task completed, McNamara returned to his huge desk in the Pentagon's E Ring. He had applied the tidiest mind in Washington to clearing away the cobwebs of confusion about Cuba. And that, as far as he was concerned, was that.

Effective & Efficient. Despite McNamara's performance, the clamor over Cuba continued, and with good cause (see box). Nor is Cuba the only problem afflicting McNamara. For under Robert Stranre McNamara, 46, perhaps the most efficient, effective Defense Secretary the U.S. has ever had, the role of U.S. weaponry in the defense of the free world and the roles allotted to its allies have become a subject of deep dispute. At some points, the questions turned on diplomacy, not weaponry, and what blame there was to be meted out did not belong to him. Nevertheless, since he has become the most powerful man in President Kennedy's Cabinet, only in the record and personality of McNamara, his policies in the present and his design for the future, can real understanding be reached of the angry words that last week swirled throughout the capitals of the Western Alliance.

That there could be any argument about his policies is a source of astonishment to McNamara. He is utterly convinced of the inevitability of his views. He believes that any problem can be solved by examination of the facts, consideration of the available "options," and application of logical decisions. His computer machines and his cost-performance analyses are legend in Washington. Like no Defense Secretary before him, he has seized control of the Pentagon. Military leaders can offer advice, but McNamara makes the decisions (it is curiously significant of McNamara's Pentagon that aides recently were able to count up the number of major decisions he had made in the previous month and produce the precise figure of 629). No item, right down to the number of beds to be installed in an Air Force hospital, is too trivial for his attention. Yet not even his critics argue that he bogs down in detail.

New Shape, New Strategy. In the two years since he left the presidency of Ford Motor Co. to take over the Pentagon, McNamara has changed the whole size and shape of the U.S. defense establishment—and its grand strategic design. The price for such progress is an increase of $8.4 billion over the last Eisenhower defense budget. Items: