Action in the E Ring

(See Cover)

Comrades, we live at a splendid time: Communism has become the invincible force of our century. The further successes of Communism depend to an enormous degree on our will, our unity, our foresight and resolve. Through their struggle and their labor, Communists, the working class, will attain the great goals of Communism on earth. Men of the future, Communists of the next generations, will envy us.

--Nikita Khrushchev, addressing party conference, Jan. 6, 1961

I think most of our people cannot understand that we are actually at war. They need to hear shells. They are not psychologically prepared for the concept that you can have a war when you don't have actual fighting.

--Admiral Hyman Rickover, addressing U.S. Senate Committee on Defense Preparedness, Jan. 6, 1958

The President of the U.S. leaned back in his overstuffed leather chair, propped his size-10 1/2 black Oxfords on a footrest, reached out his hand and sent a world globe spinning in its cradle. Then he thumped it to a stop with his finger. leaned forward and squinted. In the week of Laos, John F. Kennedy was thoroughly aware of Khrushchev's battle cry--and he didn't have to hear shells to believe that there is a war on.

The war, as President Kennedy sees it, is not likely to take the form of a big nuclear blowoff, although he intends to be prepared for one. The 19605. he thinks, will be an era of messy internal struggles where opposing sides are fed help and guidance by the two major world powers. "The struggle." said he, "is changing. It's not a question of troops marching across a frontier. We face the problems of having 'Spains' all over in the next decade. Laos is an example--Viet Nam. the Congo. It is a question of subversion and paramilitary political techniques. The force of events in those areas will mean military and paramilitary struggles for the next decade."

In walking into the decade as commander in chief of the forces of freedom, John Kennedy is not preoccupied with bombers, carriers or divisions for their own sake. But he is fond of the statement made in 1954 by General Walter Bedell Smith, then Under Secretary of State: "It will be well to remember that diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield." Says the President: "I'm interested in what our objectives are, not the military struggle." Despite the setbacks in his first major crisis, he has determined on one single-minded answer to the single-minded challenge he reads into Nikita Khrushchev: the U.S. must win the cold war.

Fusion. In the 14 years of this global war it never wanted, the U.S. has used a number of key words to explain its defense philosophy: containment, deterrence, massive retaliation, balance of terror, limited war, etc. But somehow it has given short shrift to the key word "win." The omission was strange, for if the last years proved anything, they proved that nothing less than winning would serve as a defense philosophy against the Soviets' clear declaration of undeclared war.

To Kennedy, the concept of winning brought no visions of apocalyptic preventive attack--in fact last week he specifically pledged that the U.S. would never launch such an attack. It meant a fusion of arms and diplomacy, a re-examination of weapons and weapons systems in the light of their ability to counter and best the Communists at all levels. It meant decisions made at the White House--a command post located, to the President's mind, midway between the State Department and the Pentagon. And in matters of brass-tacks operation it meant a Pentagon of a thousand capabilities, run not to compromise a thousand rivalries but to achieve the skillful use of American force with single-minded purpose and sureness. Kennedy is convinced that his Secretary of Defense, serious, bespectacled Robert McNamara, 44, the ex-Air Force whiz kid who came to Washington from the presidency of the Ford Motor Co., is the kind of man to run his kind of Pentagon.

Doctrine for Action. Last week the Kennedy-McNamara blueprint for action was unveiled in the President's special defense message to Congress. Like all Kennedy messages, it was short on specific recommendations (TIME, March 31) and long on doctrine. Also like all Kennedy messages it showed the hand of the Administration's team of scholars, reflecting concepts that came more out of thoughtful books than thoughtful brass. If the doctrine is a guide for action, Robert McNamara is going to have the liveliest administration since the Defense Department was first formed.

"The primary purpose of our arms," wrote the President, "is peace, not war--

"To make certain that they will never have to be used;

"To deter all wars, general or limited, nuclear or conventional, large or small;

"To convince all potential aggressors that any attack would be futile;

"To provide backing for diplomatic settlement of disputes;

"To insure the adequacy of our bargaining power for an end to the arms race;

"Diplomacy and defense are no longer distinct alternatives, one to be used where the other fails--both must complement each other."

Major elements in the Kennedy-McNamara new look:

P: The U.S.'s strategic nuclear force still remains the keystone of national security, but the Kennedy corollaries bring it sharply up to date. The U.S. is still committed to receiving the first surprise blow," but to make the privilege as unattractive as possible to the Soviets, Kennedy put major emphasis on the submarine-borne Polaris missile, since Polaris subs will be able to survive the blow and retaliate from the sea. Kennedy's program: ten additional Polaris subs (bringing the total force to 29), to be turned out at the rate of one a month by 1963. To make Polaris submarines even less vulnerable, the President provided extra funds to extend the range of the Polaris missile from 1,500 miles to 2,500 miles so submarines will not have to lie so close inshore to reach Soviet targets.

P: Backing up Polaris is the long-range, solid-fueled Minuteman, the Air Force's second-generation missile. Kennedy's program: 150 additional Minutemen, plus a new stand-by production line. The plan to put Minutemen on mobile railroad cars was pigeonholed, but three additional fixed installations were approved.

P: To lengthen the range and life of the B-52 bomber, still the backbone of the U.S. deterrent, the President called for a speedup in the 1,000-mile air-to-ground Skybolt nuclear-tipped missile. He also asked for money to increase the Strategic Air Command's ground-alert readiness from 33 1/2% to 50%, and maintenance of the twelve-plane, 24-hour airborne alert (TIME, March 17). And to build greater safety into the command system whose responsibility it is to order these deterrent forces into action, Kennedy wants massive improvement in communications and warnings systems, all aimed at assuring a fail-safe intelligence system so that "our retaliatory power does not rest on decisions made in ambiguous circumstances, or permit a catastrophic mistake."

P: "The free world's security," wrote the President, "can be endangered not only by a nuclear attack, but also by being nibbled away at the periphery, regardless of our strategic power, by forces of subversion, infiltration, intimidation, indirect or non-overt aggression, internal revolution, diplomatic blackmail, guerrilla warfare or a series of limited wars." The Kennedy requirements: fresh hardware, from trucks to non-nuclear field weapons and ammunition, some to be stockpiled overseas; a boost from 50 to 129 long-range planes for airlift; increased sealift and tactical aircraft; a token addition of 13,000 men for expansion of Polaris, SAC, the Marine Corps and guerrilla forces.

Selective Response. The Kennedy program is laced with signs of basic new decisions. In the buildup of conventional forces, Kennedy & Co. intend to sink without a trace whatever might be left of the Dulles doctrine of replying massively to less-than-total attacks with instant retaliation "by means and at places of our own choosing." Largely at the urging of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the Kennedy Administration is moving away from attempting to defend any very large segment of the globe with the threat of nuclear war, although the threat still is the kingpin of NATO. Nevertheless, Kennedy planners are thinking more clearly about nuclear attack than their predecessors. They plan not only to survive but to be able to operate carefully in the pandemonium of a post-attack environment. The message promises careful, selective response even when the U.S. is under fire. The President wants the decision-making power in his own hands or those of his ranking civilian survivor. He sees precision command as an opportunity to reduce losses in event of war, to fight a carefully controlled campaign, and suggests even the possibility of an ability to communicate with an enemy during a campaign. Glaring void in the otherwise far-sighted nuclear attack plan: lack of any provision for nuclear fallout shelters, which would cut casualties by millions.

If the President gets credit for new doctrine, McNamara will catch most of the blame for drastic cuts he has ordered in existing programs. Among them: curtailment of the liquid-fueled, obsolescent Titan ICBM and "low reliability" Snark missiles and a virtual end to the development of the Air Force's cherished Mach 3 bomber of the future, North American's B-70, as well as the perennially experimental nuclear airplane. These slashes are sure to bring cries of anguish from pressure groups (both in and out of the Pentagon) and contractors, but none will be so loud or perhaps so damaging to the Administration as those following Kennedy's announcement that the Pentagon will close down 73 military installations in the U.S. and overseas. Moving fast, McNamara issued orders to shutter the first 52 bases--and moving just as fast in outraged protest were scores of community voices and Congressmen whose districts will be affected.

Just Bigger. By all that is hallowed in the much-revered dens of Pentagon bureaucracy. Defense Secretary Robert S. (for Strange, his mother's maiden name) McNamara should be tiptoeing through the cutbacks and the rest of his job with all of the lip-biting hesitancy of a young maiden at her first prom. Any deskman in the top-ranking E Ring of the Pentagon knows that a new Secretary should appear tongue-tied by military terminology, respectful of military uniform, and humble at the talk of potential military destruction. But Bob McNamara, his well-slicked hair carefully parted, his rimless glasses gleaming, approaches his job with a confidence that almost borders on irreverence, which is the way he conducted himself in his years at Ford. The size of the job does not awe him. "I hate to say this." he murmurs with a trace of shyness. "After all, I came from a compa ny of pretty good size. And when you get up to this size, much greater size doesn't mean very much."

Figures & Signs. McNamara was born in San Francisco in 1916. His father, a sales manager for a shoe firm, was 25 years older than his mother. Both doted constantly on their first and only son (a second child. Margaret, was born three years later). Young Bob was an early reader, fast with figures but sickly, and he was 15 before he showed signs of wanting to break out of the protective parental eggshell. He did: he went to sea as an ordinary hand, traveled once through the Panama Canal, once to the Orient and four times to Hawaii.

An economics major at the University of California, Bob McNamara made Phi Beta Kappa, finished his courses with a spectacularly high grade of 288 points out of a possible 315. From Cal, he moved off to Harvard Business School for his master's degree in business administration, returned to the West Coast to work briefly for an accounting firm--and to marry Former Classmate Margaret Craig--and skipped back once more to Harvard, where he taught for three years. As he traveled, he carried with him a reputation as a precise, studious, even strait-laced sort of man who could read a paper in a flash and memorize it. He even took the trouble to amass a card file of jokes suitable for all classroom occasions, and noted carefully on each card the date the joke was told and the class reaction (sample: "GOATS-GHOSTS. Laughter").

Body by Ford. In 1943 McNamara quit Harvard and joined the Army Air Forces as a captain, wound up at war's end as member of a ten-man team of specialists in statistical control. They hired themselves out to Ford in a body and were dubbed the "Whiz Kids." Whizzier than most of the others was Kid McNamara. Ford named him company controller in 1949, group vice president (for all cars and trucks) in 1957, president in 1960.

In the power-driven world of autoland. McNamara stood out like an old-fashioned running board. He avoided the after-hours society of other carmakers, bought a $50,000 English Tudor home at Ann Arbor, the seat of the University of Michigan. There the McNamaras cultivated friends on the faculty, held informal book-club seminars, developed a taste for sauteed rattlesnake meat, followed the arts, spent their vacations mountain climbing, hiking and skiing. Once, after studiously reading a how-to book on golf, he gave it a swing, fared so badly that he chucked the whole thing. His mechanical ability was about as good as his golf. One humid morning, when his Ford refused to start, he yelled for his wife, who simply raised the hood, dried off the damp spark plugs. "Try it now," said she. It worked, and so, that day, did Bob McNamara.

Safety Bug. An elder in the Presbyterian Church, McNamara practiced his ethics in his business life as well as in family affairs. He resolutely refused business gifts, insisted on renting cars on business trips out of town. He bugged Ford officials on safety in the days of the big-horsepower competition, forbade his people to attend or to support auto racing. He refused to follow company requests that he urge subordinates to support the Republican Party, but won his demand that employees be encouraged to back the party of their choice (he supported both, calls himself an independent, voted for Kennedy in '60).

At Ford, McNamara was a veritable Thunderbird-dog, always questioning, always jacking up his associates, always pressing for improvements. He wrote memos on the back of his church bulletin during Sunday services, shot them out to his people the next day. To many Ford-men, McNamara was nothing short of a genius ("The friendly computer" recalls one associate); to others, he was an opportunistic thinking machine without a soul. Before he left Ford for Washington, he had become a millionaire (1960 income: $410,000).

Bull Run? When Kennedy offered McNamara the defense job, McNamara studied the situation with his characteristic detachment--"just as he does everything," says his wife Marg. "He would say: 'A--which would be best for Marg and the children? B--would I be of more value here or in Washington?' C, D, and so on--considerations from all angles." When he joined the breakfast procession of potential appointees at Kennedy's Georgetown house, McNamara told the President elect: "I talked over the defense job with Tom Gates [Ike's Defense Secretary], and after seeing what it's all about, I am convinced I can handle it." Replied Kennedy with a smile: "I talked over the presidency with Eisenhower, and after hearing what it's all about, I'm convinced I can handle it." With that, the new Defense Secretary was hired.

Had McNamara listened too closely to Democratic oratory about U.S. defenses during the campaign, he might have expected to take over a department comparable in style, power and esprit to the Union forces at First Bull Run. But he knew better. Working side by side with Tom Gates for a month before inauguration, he came to comprehend the vastness of the 2,500,000-man U.S. armed forces soon to be at his command. They are second to none, and far and away the most powerful force in the history of warfare. U.S. Air Force bombers prowl the skies on day and night alert throughout the world. The Navy's fleets and task forces have effective control of all the earth's major bodies of water, with missiles below and nuclear bombers overhead. Aboard ships and strung across Pacific outposts are the ready Marines, many of them veterans of Korean fighting and of crisis moves in Quemoy and Lebanon. The crack Seventh Army, massed 150,000 strong in Europe, keeps a cool watch on Berlin and provides the shield for NATO; the Korea-trained 82nd Airborne Division is at Fort Bragg, N.C., ready for the next call.

In lonely stations in the Arctic and tropics, men grow eyesore in their never-ending study of radarscopes. In the far Pacific, men from Navy patrols check in on the trust territory islands of Agrihan, Pagan, Aquijan, Sarigan. In the Mediterranean, while Russian "trawlers" trail the Sixth Fleet like beggars, sailors call at Tobruk to deliver and dedicate playground equipment for Libyan children. In a tightly guarded basement room at SAC headquarters in Omaha, hand-picked intelligence officers feed information on weather, geography, fuel and aerodynamics into beady-eyed monster machines that crank out 16 million computations, and then read the results into the ready ICBMs that form part of the U.S. retaliatory force.

The Stimulator. To all this, and to the momentous question marks of the cold war. Bob McNamara has brought a penetrating mind and bottomless vigor. Says he: "I see my position as being that of a leader, not a judge. I'm here to originate, to stimulate new ideas and programs, and not just to adjudicate arguments. You've got to do things differently or else you're not improving them." Up at 6 a.m., and in the office at 7:10 six days a week, he puts in chock-full twelve-hour days, moves fast.

Skipping the traditional oral intelligence briefings that come packaged with map board, pointer and colonel attached, he demands tightly written papers that he can scan with his built-in, wide-screen-camera mind. Answers to hard questions are demanded with computer speed. The Pentagon's "action officers" now act; "project officers" project. Says a staffer: "I've never been so flattened out since law school. Among other things, he's piling on the work to find out who can produce; if you can't, you're out." And McNamara keeps a special task force at work scouting good new men to replace the outs.

Shortly after he took hold, the new Secretary made what is called in Pentagonese some "quick and dirty fixes." Given the charter by President Kennedy, he rescinded Dwight Eisenhower's morale-damaging order calling for a cut in the number of military dependents abroad (to slow down the dollar drain), and thus won the undying, somebody-back-there-likes-us gratitude of the troops. Polaris got a new step-up, and a fast order for new troop-transport planes shot out of the E Ring like a bullet. Publicly McNamara stumbled only once--and that was to his credit. In early February he casually told Washington newsmen that he did not think that the U.S. stood in any danger from a missile gap. Since the missile gap had been a standard item of the Democratic attack on the Eisenhower Administration, Republicans made the most of Administration discomfiture. McNamara himself went quietly back to his work.

The Flow. McNamara's chill ways with Pentagon brass and the press win him few warm friends. He lost most of those when he began carrying out Kennedy's injunction to run the Pentagon from the top down. As often as not, he turned to his top civilian assistants (see box), rather than to military professionals, for advice. "The ideas," as one veteran bureaucrat said, "came from the top.'' The work of the Chiefs of Staff in the decision-making over such key questions as the size of the retaliatory force and the role of conventional warfare was sharply curtailed. The chiefs gave their opinions, and General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was kept constantly informed, but the creative reshaping came from civilians in the Pentagon and such outside experts as Harvard Professor Henry (The Necessity for Choice) Kissinger. White House Special Assistants Jerry Wiesner and McGeorge Bundy. Secretary of State Rusk and others.

Budget recommendations, as well, flowed downhill. In the past, the process started with budget men in the services, moved through the service chiefs, on up through the service secretaries to the Joint Chiefs, and then to the Defense Secretary, who became the arbitrating go-between for the White House, Pentagon and Budget Bureau. This time the budget work started from the recommendations of civilian task forces, continued through McNamara and then to the military chiefs and services (as a sort of courtesy ploy), and finally to the White House. The New Frontiersmen claim proudly that their approach to the budget is not so much "Vhat limit should be put on spending?" as "What do we have to spend to do what we have to do?" Nonetheless, the massive Pentagon requests are clipped just about as hard as before. Kennedy, said one aide, "may have the brain of an Irishman, but he's got the heart of a Boston banker."

The double insurance of nuclear plus conventional force will by definition cost many billions more before the forces are in being. The Pentagon will get its money's worth if Secretary McNamara can indeed shape the armed forces to carry forward U.S. diplomatic aims as well as deter the enemies. But the Pentagon's success will have little meaning unless the diplomats devise policies worth implementing. And diplomatic-military success, in turn, depends on whether the Commander in Chief follows through on the doctrine to which he has subscribed: to win the cold war.

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