Robert McNamara

Robert McNamara
Official portrait, 1961
President of the World Bank Group
In office
April 1, 1968 – June 30, 1981
Preceded byGeorge Woods
Succeeded byTom Clausen
8th United States Secretary of Defense
In office
January 21, 1961 – February 29, 1968[1]
PresidentJohn F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
DeputyRoswell Gilpatric
Cyrus Vance
Paul Nitze
Preceded byThomas Gates
Succeeded byClark Clifford
Personal details
Born
Robert Strange McNamara

(1916-06-09)June 9, 1916
San Francisco, California, U.S.
DiedJuly 6, 2009(2009-07-06) (aged 93)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting placeArlington National Cemetery
Political party
Spouses
(m. 1940; died 1981)
Diana Masieri Byfield
(m. 2004)
Children3, including Craig
EducationUniversity of California, Berkeley (BA)
Harvard University (MBA)
Signature
Military service
Branch/serviceUnited States Army
Years of service1940–1946
RankLieutenant colonel
UnitU.S. Army Air Forces Office of Statistical Control

Robert Strange McNamara (/ˈmæknəmærə/; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson at the height of the Cold War. He remains the longest-serving secretary of defense, having remained in office over seven years. He played a major role in promoting the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam War.[3] McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.[4]

McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Business School.[5] He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After World War II, Henry Ford II hired McNamara and a group of other Army Air Force veterans to work for Ford Motor Company. These "Whiz Kids" helped reform Ford with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. After briefly serving as Ford's president, McNamara accepted appointment as secretary of defense.

McNamara became a close adviser to Kennedy and advocated the use of a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy and McNamara instituted a Cold War defense strategy of flexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short of massive retaliation. McNamara consolidated intelligence and logistics functions of the Pentagon into two centralized agencies: the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Defense Supply Agency. During the Kennedy administration, McNamara presided over a build-up of U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam. After the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam escalated dramatically. McNamara and other U.S. policymakers feared that the fall of South Vietnam to a Communist regime would lead to the fall of other governments in the region.

McNamara grew increasingly skeptical of the efficacy of committing U.S. troops to South Vietnam. In 1968, he resigned as secretary of defense to become president of the World Bank. He served as president until 1981, shifting the focus of the World Bank from infrastructure and industrialization towards poverty reduction. After retiring, he served as a trustee of several organizations, including the California Institute of Technology and the Brookings Institution. In his later writings and interviews, he expressed regret for the decisions he made during the Vietnam War.

  1. ^ "Robert S. McNamara – John F. Kennedy / Lyndon Johnson Administration". Office of the Secretary of Defense – Historical Office. Archived from the original on February 7, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
  2. ^ a b "Robert S. McNamara dies at 93; architect of the Vietnam War". The Los Angeles Times. July 7, 2009. Archived from the original on March 1, 2020. Retrieved February 20, 2020. According to a 1961 entry in Contemporary Biography, McNamara was a registered Republican. He changed his party affiliation to Democrat in 1978, according to public records in the District of Columbia.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTobit was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Radin, Beryl (2000), Beyond Machiavelli : Policy Analysis Comes of Age. Georgetown University Press.[ISBN missing][page needed]
  5. ^ Network, Cable News (July 6, 2009) [July 6, 2009]. "Robert McNamara, ex-defense secretary, dies - CNN.com". www.cnn.com. Archived from the original on February 28, 2024. Retrieved July 4, 2024.