Why Not an Anti-Missile Missile?

Few Americans in public life have been more fiercely criticized than Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. I am inclined to believe that most of the attacks have been badly targeted. They have been directed against some of his basic decisions on weaponry: his change of the deterrent mix in favor of missiles over manned aircraft; his refusal to approve additional nuclear- powered warships; his selection of the TFX variable geometry plane; his refusal to put the Nike-X antimissile missile system into production. (My own primary complaint concerns none of these hardware matters but, rather, McNamara’s sentimental, cliche-ridden political ideas, most lately exhibited in his Toronto speech.)

It has become almost impossible for a lay person, perhaps for anyone, to weigh all the pluses and minuses that ideally should determine the basic decisions about weaponry. There are too many variables, and too many kinds of variable: not only the mass of physical and technological fact, but the whole range of economic, political and psychological consequences, the estimates of enemy capabilities and responses, the attitudes and needs of allies, the repercussions on domestic opinion, the chance of unexpected technological breakthrough . . .: all of these raised to still greater orders of complication by the long lead-time (ten, fifteen, even twenty years) which almost guarantees that a new weapons system will be obsolescent before it is deployed. Judgment must be attempted, moreover, under the reeling impact of ruthless psywar campaigns mounted by the great defense corporations, military establishments and political factions. The most the ordinary citizen can do is to try to see the main line.

JB

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James Burnham

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Few Americans in public life have been more fiercely criticized than Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. I am inclined to believe that most of the attacks have been badly targeted. They have been directed against some of his basic decisions on weaponry: his change of the deterrent mix in favor of missiles over manned aircraft; his refusal to approve additional nuclear- powered warships; his selection of the TFX variable geometry plane; his refusal to put the Nike-X antimissile missile system into production. (My own primary complaint concerns none of these hardware matters but, rather, McNamara’s sentimental, cliche-ridden political ideas, most lately exhibited in his Toronto speech.)

It has become almost impossible for a lay person, perhaps for anyone, to weigh all the pluses and minuses that ideally should determine the basic decisions about weaponry. There are too many variables, and too many kinds of variable: not only the mass of physical and technological fact, but the whole range of economic, political and psychological consequences, the estimates of enemy capabilities and responses, the attitudes and needs of allies, the repercussions on domestic opinion, the chance of unexpected technological breakthrough . . .: all of these raised to still greater orders of complication by the long lead-time (ten, fifteen, even twenty years) which almost guarantees that a new weapons system will be obsolescent before it is deployed. Judgment must be attempted, moreover, under the reeling impact of ruthless psywar campaigns mounted by the great defense corporations, military establishments and political factions. The most the ordinary citizen can do is to try to see the main line.