Defense: The Dilemma & the Design

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Rapid or Right? McNamara's critics are legion; they can be found in the Pentagon, the Congress and in foreign capitals. His love of computers, and his own computerlike mind, have led to the bitter quip that IBM really stands for "I, Bob McNamara." Complains a top general: "He's one of the most egotistical persons I know. It never dawns on him that he might get more help from the military. He doesn't take our advice." Another military official contends that he has "tremendous intellectual arrogance." Says a former civilian aide: "He will listen, but unless the discussion is in line with his preconceived ideas, he listens very impatiently. He constantly gives the impression of preferring to be rapid rather than right." Says an admiral who is critical of McNamara's monopoly of Pentagon authority: "The concentration of detailed decisions at the top tends to build the idea of the indispensable man at the top. And it tends to destroy the initiative of people down below."

Air Force brass, who find it harder than in the past to get their views out to the public, privately argue that McNamara, in his emphasis on conventional ground forces backed by strategic missile might, is playing a dangerous game with national security. They say that in his refusal to provide more than prototype funds for the RS-70 reconnaissance bomber, McNamara is sentencing the manned bomber to death. McNamara in fact does believe that the manned bomber will be obsolescent by the 1970s, and all his projected force plans reflect that conviction.

Other critics can see no difference between "mutual deterrence" and a "no win" cold war policy that simply accepts "nuclear stalemate." The idea that a thermonuclear war might be fought without either the U.S. or Russia striking the other's cities is considered by many to be nonsense. Among the doubters is Princeton University's Oskar Morgenstern, whose 1959 book. The Question of National Defense, was one of the first works McNamara read when he took over the Pentagon. Although he admires McNamara and most of his policies, Morgenstern wonders how the U.S. could confine its attack to military targets. "Do we even know these targets, considering our generally very poor record of intelligence? We did not know early enough about the buildup in Cuba. How could we possibly know where all the Russian bases are, when the Soviet Union is so much larger than Cuba, and infinitely more complicated?"