Pragmatist in the Pentagon
HERMAN, GEORGE E.
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. By George E. Herman Pragmatist in the Pentagon The Kennedy Administration is dragging the Department of Defense into the 1960s with surprising speed. The two chief...
...Some Army officials say that the gripes from reservists called up late last summer are a result of McNamara's lack of direction...
...In this way, he is not likely to raise the familiar bugaboos which set off conditioned reflexes among Congressional partisans of one service or another...
...To military men its symbol is the new black belt buckle now nestling, without discrimination, against Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine stomachs...
...And he has incorporated this task so neatly and reasonably that it will be difficult for the services to make a persuasive case against him before Congress...
...He usually cuts off all emotional and historical arguments with sharp, highly direct questions: How much will it cost...
...His major aides in the Pentagon are Roswell L. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Charles J. Hitch, his budget chief...
...The section on Strategic Retaliatory Forces lumps together, with fine impartiality, Air Force bombers and their missiles, ICBMs and Navy Polaris submarines...
...At the same time and by similar means, the Defense Secretary has initiated a system of integrating the services which will be hard to stop or reverse...
...Military leaders have not yet decided whether modernization is for the better or the worse and what, if anything, can be done about it...
...Having served as assistant secretary, then secretary, of the Air Force, he provides experience in a staff made up almost entirely of newcomers...
...The Spartan brevity and sometimes almost accusatory tone of the questions have made senior officers angry...
...For the change is being accomplished not by simply overriding old objections and prejudices, but by a process usually described as "thinking in other categories...
...McNamara is a 46-year-old Phi Beta Kappa, a former able-bodied seaman, former member of the Army Air Force, former assistant professor of business administration and, most recently and briefly, President of the Ford Motor Company...
...But McNamara's new language and new technique, his vigorous use of statutory power to make major military decisions himself, have already made the Pentagon a vastly changed place...
...The National Defense section, for example, includes the military functions of the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission and other related defense activities...
...it did not...
...The key weapon in his organizational blitzkrieg is program packaging...
...Morale is also poor among the top brass, bedeviled by McNamara's short, sharp questions and aware they are gradually being separated from more and more of their traditional titles and responsibilities...
...The whole system of unified development and purchasing makes sense to the men on Capitol Hill who control the purse strings with jealous care...
...The morale picture is not all dark, however...
...This is clearly a sign of victory...
...The missing sense of purpose among the reservists should have come from the civilian leadership of the armed forces...
...The two chief instruments of the change are the statutory powers of the President and the personal abilities of the Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara...
...Yet the Army is bigger, better equipped, more flexible and mobile, and a much more important branch of the services...
...Military men do not agree that all Pentagon problems can be put in such chilly terms...
...Language is the father of thought, and when the military men learn McNamara's language they will find themselves thinking as he does...
...Thinking in other categories, he has carefully avoided all talk of unification or merging...
...The Air Force, for example, is no longer faced with the agonizing decision of how much of its budget should go into longrange missiles and how much into planes designed solely to move the Army...
...He wants their help and advice, their suggestions and reactions...
...Hitch is a mild, scholarly man, formerly with the RAND Corporation...
...A Navy publication says that since the Secretary wants military assistance in his decisions, it is up to the military to learn the new language of program packaging in order to get their viewpoints across...
...For the first time, various Federal activities were linked together by purpose or function, without regard for which agency was responsible for part or all of the work...
...The non-military public got its first real look at this process late last month, when the President submitted to Congress his budget for the fiscal year 1963...
...But you will be told, disarmingly, that the figures are not really significant and so were not printed...
...But McNamara launched a new kind of war for which they were totally unprepared...
...The result often makes them even angrier: a brief statement beginning with the now familiar McNamara phrase: "I have decided...
...The major complaint against the Secretary is that he has little feeling for people outside of tables of organization...
...The still unanswered question is how well the fierce and formidable energies of the new Secretary of Defense will overcome the historic resistance of the Pentagon to change...
...McNamara now decides such questions himself...
...He came as a tough-minded observer, a student of administration, a lightning-fast absorber of facts and situations, and a convinced and decisive innovator...
...On the job he is so fast-moving as to seem brusque and impolite...
...The science of administration does not entirely reflect the nature of the human animal, either singly or in armies...
...But at the same time it has upgraded the importance of the military establishment in our foreign policy...
...What is significant are the programs themselves, not who is responsible for them...
...More than any other secretary of defense within memory, he thoroughly understands the lack of efficiency in private business...
...The President has endorsed increased allowances for living quarters and an eventual pay raise...
...He applies the technical tools of the modern economist to Pentagon problems, and backs program packaging and the use of the budget as an agency of Pentagon administration...
...This kind of response might in time attenuate even the drive of a Robert S. McNamara...
...And there is a certain feeling of excitement as well as worry over the ferment of change...
...There are a thousand ways of footdragging in response to even a direct military command...
...True, the Kennedy Administration has downgraded the importance of public statements of policy by military leaders, and has limited the range of their professional responsibilities...
...McNamara is fond of using abstract logic, administrative theory and frequent test runs on the computers...
...Nowhere in the budget will you find the old familiar breakdowns of how much money goes to the Army, Navy and Air Force...
...But he wants it his way, not theirs...
...Above all, McNamara is a pragmatist...
...To Congress it means reducing supply inventories by about $200 million, a saving of $25 million a year...
...What are the alternatives...
...When McNamara and his team of "whiz kids" took over, the generals and the admirals were prepared to fight another Pentagon battle...
...This new technique of program packaging and budgeting has enabled Secretary McNamara to take two major steps toward greater centralization: First, he has taken over, through his existing statutory powers, a function of the service commands which was both a cherished privilege and a constant embarrassment...
...If you ask for the figures the Department of Defense will readily supply them...
...Off the job he is a convinced vacationer (skiing and mountain climbing), a sensitive gourmet and a consumer of fine vintage wines...
...So may determined Congressional opposition...
...The new Defense Supply Agency has already absorbed 46 separate agencies...
...This is not to say that the Secretary does not consult his top military aides...
...He wants it not in the language of sentiment, service traditions and historic roles, but in terms of principled management and administration...
...George E. Herman, a frequent New Leader contributor, is White House correspondent for CBS News...
...And within this category, the many sub-functions of defense are listed according to purpose rather than service...
...How does it relate to a similar program in the other services...
...Victory notwithstanding, McNamara's new emphasis on management has some dangers...
...McNamara came to the Pentagon with no desire to remake the Department in the image of private business...
...The Army command has been stripped down and streamlined into a strange new shape...
...Gilpatric, untypically, was personally selected by President Kennedy...
...But he retains no visible partiality for the Air Force and enthusiastically backs the McNamara approach...
...It will be hard to argue it down...
...The man who has succeeded in laying this groundwork for unification has a remarkable history...
...They have little recourse, however...
...The only conditioned reflex which is sure to be triggered is the one concerning efficiency and economy...
...As for the opposition, it has not yet crystallized in any visible form...
Vol. 45 • February 1962 • No. 3
