Robert mcnamara cuban missile crisis

Learn from your mistakes. Pass the lessons on to those who may face similar problems in the future. And don’t be afraid to challenge authority.

This, in essence, was the message Robert S. McNamara brought to the Kennedy

School’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Wednesday (March 3). Now a forceful and peripatetic year-old, McNamara has served as president of Ford Motor Co., U.S. secretary of defense, and president of the World Bank. He is also a prolific author.

The presentation was titled “The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara,” which also happens to be the title of an Academy Award-winning documentary film by Errol Morris, now in theaters. Moderator Graham T. Allison Jr., director of the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, showed clips of the film (which consists of a lengthy and remarkably frank interview with McNamara supplemented by archival footage), then asked the former Cabinet member questions based on what had been shown.

Also sharing the stage was Ernest May, the Charles Warren Professor of American History, who worked with McNamara on a book about the Cuban missile crisis (“The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis,” edited by May and Philip Zelikow).

“The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis was that the combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations,” McNamara warned in the first clip.

He emphasized this point with a terrifying story about an interview he had with Fidel Castro in in which the Cuban leader revealed that there had been Russian nuclear warheads on the island at the time of the crisis. McNamara asked Castro whether he knew this, and he replied that he had.

“Did you recommend that the Russians use them?” McNamara had asked.

“Yes, I did,” Castro said.

“And what would have happened to Cuba?”

“It would have been totally destroyed.”

When Allison, who called the crisis “the most dangerous

American businessman and Secretary of Defense (–)

This article is about the U.S. business executive and Secretary of Defense. For other uses, see Robert McNamara (disambiguation).

Robert Strange McNamara (; June 9, – July 6, ) was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from to 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. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.

McNamara was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and Harvard Business School. He served in the United States Army Air Fo

RM: Had Khrushchev not announced publicly on the 28th of October - a Sunday - that he was removing the missiles, I believe that on Monday the majority of President Kennedy's military and civilian advisers would have strongly urged air attacks, with the likelihood of a sea and land invasion. I think Kennedy would have resisted that. I know I would have. But it was a very, very deep controversy, and a very, very dangerous period. Some of us thought then the risks were very, very great. We underestimated them. We didn't learn until nearly 30 years later, that the Soviets had roughly nuclear warheads on this isle of Cuba, at a time when our CIA said they believed there were none. And included in the were some 90 tactical warheads to be used against a US invasion force. Had we attacked Cuba and invaded Cuba at the time, we almost surely would have been involved in nuclear war. And when I say "we", I mean you - it would not have been the US alone. It would have endangered the security of the West, without any question.

RM: Luck. Luck was a factor. I think, in hindsight, it was the best-managed geopolitical crisis of the post-World War II period, beyond any question. But we were also lucky. And in the end, I think two political leaders, Khrushchev and Kennedy, were wise. Each of them moved in ways that reduced the risk of confrontation. But events were slipping out of their control, and it was just luck that they finally acted before they lost control, and before East and West were involved in nuclear war that would have led to destruction of nations. It was that close.

RM: Well, in one sense it was easy - as compared to Vietnam, for example. I was involved with Vietnam over essentially over seven years, and I was doing a thousand other things while I was working on Vietnam. In the Cuban missile crisis, I was involved with it 24 hours a day. For 12 days, I didn't go home, I stayed in the Pentagon. I left the Pentagon only to come to the White House or the State De