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The Rice Thresher
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Former U.S. Secretary of Defense speaks
Robert S. McNamara, the eighth U.S. secretary of defense, spoke Monday night about the mistakes he and other officials made in prolonging the Vietnam War. McNamara served as secretary of defense from 1961-'68 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He is best known for his role in the Vietnam War, but his term of service also included the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. McNamara participated in a three-person panel sponsored by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy. He discussed his new book, Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy, in Baker Hall Monday night. The panel discussion also included the co-authors of Argument Without End, James Blight, a professor of international relations at Brown University, and Robert Brigham, a professor of history at Vassar College. After discussing the book, which was the result of extensive collaboration between Vietnamese and American officials and scholars, the three panelists answered questions from the audience. Baker Institute Director Edward Djerejian said McNamara is "an individual who took on responsibility that had very tangible and tragic results. "Here's a man who is 83 years old who has taken it upon himself to ... educate the public about the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam," Djerejian said. "I think it's a very worthy effort on his part, and I think it's a good sign of his character." In his remarks, McNamara concentrated on the Vietnam War. He said the entire war was a mistake, both on the part of the U.S. government and on the part of the North Vietnamese. "It was a tragedy for us, it was a greater tragedy for them," he said. "At no point during the Vietnam War was the security of the United States at stake." According to McNamara, a source of many of the problems on the American side was an overwhelming lack of knowledge of the Vietnamese people and government. He said no one in the State Department at the time was competent to advise on Vietnamese culture and government, a problem he blamed at least partially on the anti-communist movement of the 1950s, which led to the resignation or dismissal of many experts on Asian cultures. "Our mutual ignorance was mind-boggling," he said. "We ascribed to them motives that didn't exist at all and capabilities that didn't exist at all." McNamara also spoke about problems in the organization of the U.S. government and his own lack of government experience when he was appointed by Kennedy in 1961. An executive in the automotive industry, he was familiar with the corporate world, he said, but not government. "There's a danger to the country of taking the president of Ford Motor Company and making him secretary of defense," McNamara said. McNamara also spoke about the potential for more situations like the Vietnam War. "We did not then and do not today know how to organize for ... what I call 'wars in slow motion,'" McNamara said. During the question-and-answer period, he discussed the modern example of the 1994-'95 bloody political conflict in Rwanda between members of the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. He said he approved of the lack of U.S. intervention in that conflict. "I don't think we should substitute U.S. lives for African lives to solve an African problem," McNamara said. He said these situations would be best handled by an international organization such as the United Nations, but added that there is currently no organization strong enough to shoulder the burden. "If we believe we should deal with crimes against humanity, we must try to strengthen multilateral organizations [like the UN]," he said. McNamara, Blight and Brigham also made an appearance Monday afternoon at Political Science 378, "American National Security Policy," commonly known as "Bombs and Rockets." Political Science Professor Richard Stoll, assistant director of the Baker Institute, said McNamara asked to attend a class, and Stoll's course seemed the most appropriate choice. After McNamara gave a short talk on the Vietnam War, the three authors answered questions from students. "I thought [his remarks] were very interesting. He's clearly trying to understand on a more complete level the lessons of Vietnam," Stoll said. Stoll said he was glad the students got the opportunity to talk to McNamara, who he said was very frank and open in his responses to student questions. "I think he will go down as one of the most powerful secretaries of defense we've ever had," Stoll said. McNamara resigned as secretary of defense in 1968 to become president of the World Bank, a position he held until retiring in 1981. Argument Without End is McNamara's second book on the Vietnam War. His other work on the subject is the 1995 book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. - back -
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