Defense: The Dilemma & the Design

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Such criticism, from within and outside the Pentagon, perplexes Robert McNamara. But it does not persuade him to change his mind. Conviction of his correctness, or at least of the correctness of the answers that his methods will produce, is a McNamara strength. "His greatest weakness," says a longtime associate, "is his failure to understand the impact of logical decisions on human beings." An ally's feelings of its own nationalistic pride, a neighbor nation's sense of envy, a friendly leader's misgivings about future U.S. intentions, are factors that must influence U.S. policy, even though they cannot be run through a Univac 1107. And it is the failure to take them sufficiently into account that has involved the Kennedy Administration in its present troubles with its allies. It could be argued that the diplomatic niceties are not McNamara's affair, but it is not an excuse that McNamara himself makes. He is deeply involved in it all.

The NATO alliance, stretching from Nome to Mount Ararat in Turkey, is like nothing else in history—a treaty pledge by 15 nations that an attack on one is an attack on all. Its strength lies in U.S. atomic power, the so-called nuclear umbrella that would protect all NATO members. In Europe, where the wisecrack at the time of NATO's creation was that all the Russian army needed to reach the English Channel was shoes, the theory was that a conventional force of ground troops would serve as a "shield" to fend off any initial Soviet attack in Europe until the U.S. could unleash its nuclear retaliation on Russia itself.

From Shield to Trip Wire. Europe felt safe enough to rebuild itself, and its leaders (even De Gaulle on occasion) expressed their gratitude. But NATO required steady exertion and expense, and when NATO nations failed to supply the promised manpower, the shield was called a "trip wire" which would merely sound the alarm that would set off the U.S. nuclear punch. In 1958, the NATO troops were given nuclear artillery and intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The U.S., under the 1946 McMahon atomic energy act, insisted that it retain control of all nuclear warheads. The McMahon Act was passed at a time when the U.S. had secrets it thought the Russians did not know, and when it had reason to question the security practices of both Britain and France.

Finally, after prolonged controversy, Congress permitted a special nuclear arrangement with Great Britain. France was excluded—a fact that made De Gaulle all the more determined to develop his own force de frappe. The U.S. was disapproving, and McNamara himself made a speech deploring the "proliferation" of nuclear powers and vowing he would have no part of it. It was hard for Europeans to understand why an ally should be denied secrets that a common enemy already knew.