Word: mcnamaras
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...McNamara finally presented two alternative schemes, one involving an investment of $12.2 billion and an other costing $21.7 billion. The less ex pensive approach might reduce the death toll to 40 million (from an estimated high of 120 million). The second sys tem might lower fatalities to 30 million. Yet these calculations were essentially academic numbers games based on constantly changing realities. They presumed a static Russian defensive capability as it existed in 1967. McNamara himself pointed out the big drawback: "We can be certain that the Soviets will react to offset the advantage we would hope to gain...
...Like McNamara and others, Bethe has long doubted that any defense system can effectively discriminate between real warheads and a variety of decoys and "penetration aids" that the offense is likely to use. Spartan, operating in space, faces a handicap in this area because it is only after the real birds
...away in talks with the Russians? These are points that have never been satisfactorily answered, even by those who first promoted the Sentinel's anti-Chinese system. McNamara led with his chin when he acknowledged in 1967 that only "marginal grounds" supported the decision to authorize an ABM. That speech has been an arsenal of criticism for ABM opponents ever since...
...fact is that Lyndon Johnson's decision, dutifully but reluctantly implemented by McNamara, was based at least as much on domestic political considerations as on international factors. Sentinel, wags said at the time, was really a defense against American Republicans, not Chinese Communists. Johnson might well have halted the Sentinel project last summer if he could have arranged, as the Soviets wished, to begin arms-control talks. He had on his desk an unsigned message confirming his willingness to negotiate on the night that Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin brought him word of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. That...
Miscalculations of the rival's intentions are common. In 1960, there was fear of a "missile gap." In 1965, the U.S. concluded that the Russians had given up quantitative arms competition, only to see them spurt forward later. And before leaving office, McNamara acknowledged that, overall, the U.S. had spent too much on weaponry during his tenure because of mistaken estimates of Russian intentions. However, the Russians have accelerated their buildup, tripling their supply of land-based missiles in little more than two years. The U.S. remains ahead in overall nuclear-delivery capability, but Russia continues to close...