LESSONS OF THE VIETNAM FAILUREBookshelf: War Lessons from Robert McNamara
Robert McNamara was the architect of the wasteful, unwinnable U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In retrospect, he stressed the importance of understanding local conditions and having an exit strategy: “Before each operation there should be a paper on how to get out. And if you can’t get out, don’t do it.” As the administration is considering expanding its questionable military efforts in the Caribbean into an invasion of Venezuela, it would do well to heed McNamara’s advice.
Robert McNamara was considered one of the brightest stars of his generation. He excelled at Harvard Business School, where he went on to teach, rose through the ranks of the Ford Motor Company to become chief executive, and was appointed secretary of defense by president John Kennedy at the age of 44. He capped his career serving for over a decade as president of the World Bank.
In charge of the Pentagon under presidents Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 to 1968, McNamara was one of the key architects of the Vietnam war. However, the war also proved to be his personal undoing.
Starting from 1965, McNamara oversaw the massive deployment of US troops to Vietnam, whose field presence peaked in the late 1960s at over half a million. In what is generally seen as his greatest military misjudgment, McNamara continued the deployment for more than two years after he had received intelligence indicating that the war was unwinnable, failing to urge Johnson to cut his losses and withdraw.
Peace was only reached years after Johnson and McNamara left office. Ultimately, the conflict claimed the lives of over 60,000 US servicemen and an estimated 1–3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. McNamara took much of the blame for the unpopular war, which weighed on him personally for the rest of his life.
Relying on newly disclosed diaries and letters, and recent interviews, in McNamara at War, Philip and William Taubman paint a fresh picture of this controversial figure, disclosing his professional and personal vulnerabilities. They also provide valuable insights into the lessons that McNamara took away from Vietnam.
Philip Taubman, a former New York Times Washinton bureau chief, is currently affiliated with Stanford University and has written an acclaimed biography of US statesman George Schultz. His co-author and brother William teaches political science at Amherst College and has published a Pulitzer prize-winning biography of the Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev.
From childhood, McNamara aspired to excel at everything he tackled. And throughout his career he was notorious for his obsession with numerical efficiency. The authors shed important new light on McNamara’s assignment as a staff officer at the Guam headquarters for the 1945 firebombing air attacks on Tokyo.
