History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense: Volume 5, The McNamara Ascendancy
Writing the history of a large government institution is always a challenging task, but the challenge is increased when the head of the institution is a controversial figure whose dramatic actions are difficult to assess outside the organizational context in which they occurred. Seen in this light, The McNamara Ascendency, the official history of the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the first four years of Robert S. McNamara’s tenure, is a remarkable achievement.
The authors begin with a mundane but necessary discussion of McNamara’s organizational changes, to include the creation of various joint organizations (Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Logistics Agency, et al.) and the implementation of the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System, McNamara’s attempt to eliminate duplication between the military services by budgeting along functional lines–general war offensive forces, general purpose forces, sealift, and airlift forces, etc. Inevitably, these changes produced conflict between a defense secretary with strongly held ideas and the military and congressional leaders whose opinions he disregarded. This portion of the study almost demands that the reader draw comparisons to Donald Rumsfeld’s second stint as secretary of defense. The authors conclude that although these clashes cost McNamara politically, he (like Rumsfeld for more than five years) was able to prevail because of strong presidential support and his own enormous pragmatism and ability.
Thereafter, the bulk of the book focuses on McNamara’s role in the issues of the day, including the Berlin Wall and attendant partial mobilization, the two crises over Cuba, the continuing issue of Laotian neutrality, and the inexorable U.S. slide toward involvement in Vietnam. Again, the historical parallels to Rumsfeld are unavoidable, as McNamara remained confident that the Vietnamese Communists would be defeated even as he tried (although vainly) to minimize and reduce U.S. troop commitments in the war zone.