316 three paragraphs: Ibid.*
316 four pages: DPM, McNamara to Kennedy, Nov. 21, 1962, pp. 7–10.*
316 “We might”: Ibid., p. 9.*
316 no longer to cite counterforce: Richard Kugler, * The Politics of Restraint: Robert McNamara and the Strategic Nuclear Forces, 1963–69,” Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, 1975, pp. 82–83.
317 “Assured Destruction”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY 1965–69 Strategic Retaliatory Forces,” Dec. 6, 1963, pp. 1–5, 1–12, 1–13 (FOIA/DoD).*
317 30 percent and half: Ibid., p. 1–5.*
317 400 megatons: This calculation did not appear until the next year’s DPM, but interviews with those involved reveal that it had been done by the time of the 1963 DPM. See DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY 1966–70 Programs for Strategic Offensive Forces, Continental Air and Missile Defense Forces, and Civil Defense,” Dec. 3, 1964, p. 11 (FOIA/DoD).* A similar idea appears in the 1963 DPM, p. 1–14.*
317 double to 800: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Dec. 3, 1964, p. 11.*
317 “diminishing marginal returns”: Ibid.;* and Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 207.
318 1,200 megatons: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Dec. 6, 1963, p. 1–12.*
319 “Damage-Limiting”: Ibid., p. 1–5.*
319 “coercive strategy”: Ibid., p. 1–20.*
319 “the destructive”: Ibid., p. 1–2;* emphasis added.
319 numbers and targeting: Ibid., p. 1–37.* (Columns labeled Force II are the relevant ones; see p. 1–15.*)
319 held in reserve: This is specified in DPM, McNamara to Kennedy, Nov.21, 1962, p. 15; there is no mention of it in the ‘63 DPM, though interviews with those involved reveal that the concept remained unchanged.*
320 Soviet SLBMs and hardening: Ibid., pp. 7–8.*
320 “I do not”: Ibid., p. 8.*
320 “The prospects”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Dec. 6, 1963, p. 1–6.*
321 twenty-nine graphs and relationship: Damage Limiting: A Rationale for the Allocation of Resources by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., prepared for DDR&E, Jan. 21, 1964, especially pp. 3, 4 (FOIA/DoD).
321 difference of 55 or 60 percent: Ibid., p. 48.
321 One plotted the cost: Ibid., Figure 11 and pp. 23–24. That McNamara was riveted by the graph was indicated in interviews.
322 second graph: Ibid., Figure 23 and pp. 40–42.
322 “kill probability” =.8: Ibid., p. 8; and interviews.
324 shelters most cost effective: Ibid., pp. 16, 49, 51, Figures 5, 8.
324 McNamara used shelter argument: See DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY 1966–70 Programs for Strategic Offensive Forces, Continental Air and Missile Defense Forces, and Civil Defense,” Dec. 3, 1964, pp. 21, 35, 65–66 (FOIA/DoD);* and interviews.
324 March 12: A Summary Study of Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces of the U.S. and U.S.S.R., prepared for DDR&E, Sept. 8, 1964, p. 11 (FOIA/DoD).
324 damage-limiting feasible: Ibid., p. 177.
325 McNamara to Johnson and Bundy: Kugler, op. cit., p. 104.
325 ‘64 DPM against counterforce, bomber, air defense: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Dec. 3, 1964, pp. 3–6, 12, 14–29, 31–34, 54–58, 63.*
325 1,000 Minutemen: Ibid., pp. 29–30,44–46.*
325 urban damage not best: Ibid., p. 17.*
325 “fully hardened”: Ibid., pp. 46, 48.*
325 “would permit”: Ibid., p. 52; cf. p. 48;* emphasis added.
326 destroy will, not ability: DPM, McNamara to Kennedy, Nov. 21, 1962, p. 9.*
326 Enthoven work on Soviet Army: Enthoven and Smith, op. cit., chap. 4; and interviews.
327 Kaufmann against battlefield nuclears: He dealt most directly with this issue in a notorious review—W. W. Kaufmann, “The Crisis in Military Affairs,” World Politics, Jan. 1958—of Harvard Professor Henry Kissinger’s best seller, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957). Kissinger criticized the Dulles massive-retaliation policy, but advocated instead the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield in a war against the U.S.S.R. Kaufmann agreed with Kissinger’s case against Dulles; indeed, it was essentially derivative of the case made earlier by himself and Bernard Brodie. But Kaufmann coolly and devastatingly ripped Kissinger’s other arguments to shreds, pointing out a dozen or so internal contradictions. Kaufmann argued, in contradiction to Kissinger, that nuclear weapons—even those of very low yield, much less the half-megaton monsters that Kissinger deemed permissible for battle-zone use—would destroy the territory we were trying to defend.
Kaufmann thought Kissinger was opportunistic, appearing—in his anti-Dulles arguments—to criticize the Eisenhower Administration, while in fact telling those officials just what they wanted to hear: that their policy of using nuclear weapons in ground wars was intellectually respectable. Two years later, when the Democrats seemed bound for victory in the 1960 election, waving the banner of “flexible response” and stronger conventional forces for NATO, Kissinger wrote another book, The Necessity for Choice (New York: Harper & Bros., 1961), renouncing his past optimism about battlefield nuclears and cheering conventional forces after all—prompting Kaufmann, then still at RAND, to compose a satirical ditty titled “I Wonder Who’s Kissinger Now.”
Kaufmann’s point about Kissinger’s opportunism—expounded more heavily still in a RAND memo, “Mr. Kissinger Builds His Dream-house” (RAND M-4969, Sept. 23, 1957; provided to author)—was probably correct. Kissinger’s book was circulated throughout Eisenhower’s national security bureaucracy and was much admired, including by Ike himself. (See Memo, Gordon Gray to Andrew Goodpaster, Nov. 20, 1957, White House Central File, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 7, Atomic Energy & Bomb (10) folder; memo, Eisenhower to Acting Sec. of State, July 31, 1957, Ann Whitman File, DDE Diary Series, Box 25, July 1957, DDE Dictation; both in DDEL.)
327 Kaufmann impact: In 1964, the package of DPMs that McNamara sent to Johnson included, for the first time, a DPM on “Theater Nuclear Forces,” which opposed tactical nuclear weapons as substitutes for conventional forces. It was drafted by Kaufmann. (DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Theater Nuclear Forces,” Dec. 1964; also for Oct. 1965, Jan. 1967, Jan. 1968, Jan. 1969; all FOIA/DoD. That Kaufmann wrote them comes from interviews.)
23: VIETNAM: STALEMATE
328 “a willingness”: Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton Univ. Press, 1960), p. 566.
328 “means for placing”: McGeorge Bundy to McNamara, NSAM #2, Feb. 3, 1961, Collection of NSC Documents, NA/MMB.
328 Taylor as adviser: NSC Action #2407, Apr. 22, 1961, ibid.
328 counterinsurgency Vietnam: NSC Action #2411, Apr. 27, 1961, ibid.
328 Special Group: NSAM #124, Jan. 18, 1962, ibid.
328 “the panhandle”: Memo, Rostow to Kennedy, “Southeast Asia,” Aug. 4, 1961, National Security File, Box 231a, Regional Security, Southeast Asia, 8/1-8/7/61, JFKL.
329 “we could make”: Memo, Rostow to Kennedy, “Southeast Asia,” Oct. 5, 1961, National Security File, Regional Security, Southeast Asia, General, 10/1-10/5/61, JFKL.