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The McNamara Phenomenon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard Brodie
Affiliation:
University of California
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Extract

THE Kennedy Administration had not been long in office when one began to hear from Pentagon friends that the man whom the President had chosen as his Secretary of Defense was not just extraordinary; he was un phénomène.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1965

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References

1 See the first of his three chapters, entitled “The Requirements of Deterrence,” in the symposium edited by him entitled Military Policy and National Security (Princeton 1956)Google Scholar.

2 “The Crisis in Military Affairs,” World Politics, X (July 1958), 579603Google Scholar.

3 See his “Kennedy in the Presidency: A Premature Appraisal,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXIV (September 1964), especially p. 325Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, the speech that Mr. Acheson delivered on September 30, 1963, at the Fifth Annual Conference, in Cambridge, England, of the Institute for Strategic Studies. Bearing the title “The Evolution of NATO,” it is published in No. 5 of the Adelphi Papers issued by the Institute. It is almost needless to say that Mr. Acheson's views have received an overwhelmingly unsympathetic and indeed often hostile reception among his European audiences, who prefer to think of NATO as a defensive alliance.

5 See my “What Price Conventional Capabilities in Europe?” The Reporter, May 23, 1963Google Scholar.

6 We certainly made no “direst threats” of massive or other nuclear retaliation in the case of the so-called “Berlin Blockade” of 1948–1949, the gravest crisis we have had in Europe since World War II. Moreover, we now have abundant evidence (which I have outlined in a paper not yet published) to support the conclusion that in that affair the United States was completely bluffed concerning ground access—that is, that Stalin was clearly determined to avoid getting into hostilities with the United States over the issue and in fact never made any threat of the use of force to deny us such access. Thus, the ground “probe” that various highly placed persons were advocating at the time would almost certainly have met with no active resistance. Stalin of course wanted us to interpret his actions as a denial of access, so long as we made no trouble over it.

7 Among Secretary McNamara's words were: “… in any event Khrushchev knew without any question whatsoever that he faced the full military power of the United States, including its nuclear weapons. … we faced that night the possibility of launching nuclear weapons and Khrushchev knew it, and that is the reason, and the only reason, why he withdrew those weapons.” {Department of Defense Appropriations for 1964, Part I, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 88th Congress, 1st Session, 1963, 30–31.)

8 See especially pp. 18 and 54 of the mimeographed version released to the press.

9 See especially The Great Debate (New York 1965)Google Scholar; trans, from Le grand débat.