Volume 11, Number 8 · November 7, 1968
McNamara and the Militarists
By I.F. Stone
The Essence of Security
by Robert S. McNamara
Harper & Row, 168 pp., $4.95
The catchword most often associated with Robert S. McNamara's seven years as Secretary of Defense was 'systems analysis.' Yet the greatest deficiency in the book which brings together his most important public papers during those years is his incapacity for analyzing systems, though of another order. No one would guess from these antiseptic pages that there are such things as militarism, or a military-industrial complex, or just plain politics, and that they represent systems, i.e., inescapable relationships which affected the problems McNamara faced in the Pentagon and the decisions he made.
Review, 5051 words
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