Word: mcnamara
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...McNamara has presided over a fundamental reorganization of the armed services to increase efficiency and save money. Where top Pentagon officials formerly had to wade through as many as eleven separate-and often conflicting-intelligence reports from the services daily, they now get a single, four-page summary from the unified Defense Intelligence Agency. Millions of dollars have been saved on items ranging from belt buckles to bloomers by the creation of a single Defense Supply Agency. Instead of the charming, old-fashioned practice of trying to cut up the defense budget pie more or less equally among the services...
While plunging into such specifics, McNamara never lets them blur the end purpose of his cold war strategy. That strategy was explained to Congress fortnight ago in a 198-page report that House Armed Forces Committee Chairman Carl Vinson, who has fought some McNamara policies, described as "one of the most significant documents ever presented to Congress...
Facing Facts. McNamara's strategy reflects his willingness to face fearful facts and counter them with his own cold logic. The U.S., contends McNamara, has a definite nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union (soon after taking office he impolitically dismissed the "missile gap" that Kennedy campaigned on in 1960). McNamara intends to maintain the advantage. Even if the Russians were to launch a surprise nuclear attack, the U.S., with its hardened missiles and its Strategic Air Command bombers-half of them now on 15-minute alert - could strike back and destroy the Soviet Union. But, reasons McNamara, as Russia...
...McNamara, such a "balance of terror" should constitute a "mutual deterrent" against war. Even if nuclear war were to explode, McNamara has a theory that it might be limited. To achieve this, he would in effect hold Soviet cities as hostages. That is, he would have the U.S. first respond to attack by striking only at Soviet missile sites and military installations; he would then serve an ultimatum to the enemy to quit shooting or suffer destruction of its cities...
...McNamara is fully aware of the imponderables in the theory. "The Soviet leaders always say that they would strike at the entire complex of our military power, including Government and production centers, meaning our cities," he concedes. "If they were to do so, we would, of course, have no alternative but to retaliate in kind. But we have no way of knowing whether they would actually do so. It would certainly be in their interest as well as ours to try to limit the terrible consequences of a nuclear exchange. Whether they would accept it [the alternative of trying...