Abstract
Victor Hugo’s aphorism that there is no more powerful force in history than an idea whose time has come, is not as true as those many merchants of ideas who quote it so often and so hopefully would like to believe. As much as excellent and original ideas are neglected and disparaged, foolish and dangerous ones are trumpeted and celebrated. To affect history, an idea must have political strength as much as substantive content. The civilian strategists gained notice because their concepts and prescriptions were bold and imaginative. Their historical moment came in January 1961, because they succeeded in influencing an incoming Administration. To a remarkable extent their concepts were adopted as working guidelines for American defence policy. Few ideas so novel and far-reaching can have been given such a severe test so soon after their original formulation.
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Notes
Roswell L. Gilpatric, ‘Address before the Business Council, Hot Springs, Virginia, 10 October 1961’. Reprinted in Documents on Disarmament 1961 (Washington, DC: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1962), pp. 542–50.
William M. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 49.
John, F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace (New York: Harper & Row 1960), pp. 37–8.
The best account of the development of strategic doctrine under the Kennedy Administration is contained in Desmond Ball, Policies and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). An enthusiastic account of the first few years is found in Kaufmann’s The McNamara Strategy. This probably contains a few recycled words, as Kaufmann quotes liberally from McNamara’s speeches and statements, a number of which were drafted by Kaufmann. Two of McNamara’s former aides, Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, have provided in How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program 1961–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) a thorough description of the McNamara approach in action, with some lucid explanations of most of the important themes of the period. The views of McNamara in the later 1960s are found in a collection of his speeches: Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 1968).
Robert S. McNamara, ‘Defense arrangements of the North Atlantic community’. Department of State Bulletin, 47 (9 July 1962), pp. 67–8.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 25. See also Thomas Schelling, Controlled Response and Strategic Warfare (London: IISS, June 1965).
Morton Halperin, ‘The “no cities” doctrine’, New Republic (8 October 1962).
This was one of four articles in New Republic which discussed the new strategy. The others were an editorial on ‘McNamara’s strategy’ (2 July 1962); Michael Browner, ‘Controlled thermonuclear war’ (30 July 1962); and Robert Osgood, ‘Nuclear arms: uses and limits’ (10 September 1962).
Testimony of Secretary McNamara, House Armed Services Committee, Hearings on Military Posture (1963), p. 332.
Claude Witze, ‘Farewell to counterforce’, Air Force Magazine (February 1963). Compare this to the approving tones of John Loosbrock in ‘Counterforce and Mr. McNamara’ in the same magazine in September 1962.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 769.
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© 2003 Lawrence Freedman
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Freedman, L. (2003). City-Avoidance. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_15
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