Former U.S. Secretary of Defense says greatest threat to peace and prosperity is drawing little attention.
By: Jennifer Potash
The greatest threat to peace and prosperity may be one that draws little attention in public policy and the press nuclear attack, according to former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who spoke Thursday at Princeton University.
"Nuclear war serves no military purpose whatsoever," he said. "It’s totally useless."
Spending the approximately $1 billion per year defense experts estimate is needed to contain nuclear weapons would be an effective use of the U.S. Department of Defense’s funds, he said.
A seemingly unimposing figure Mr. McNamara is 88 years old and, by his own admission, losing his hearing his entrance into the room caused an immediate hush in the audience and he drew a standing ovation at the conclusion of the event.
The subject of his talk was the follies of U.S. and NATO nuclear policy, but he did cover topics ranging from current U.S. foreign policy of preemption to the lessons learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mr. McNamara said he was proven wrong in his belief that Iraq had nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, adding that the lack of those weapons proved the international inspections were working.
"There was no imminent threat," he said. "It would be very difficult to convince me of a situation when we should use a preemptive strike."
Alarmed by the current federal budget deficit, Mr. McNamara urged immediate action and suggested cutting the $400 billion defense budget by about $60 billion a year.
"We can afford it," he said.
Predicting there is a better than 50-percent chance of a nuclear strike against U.S. targets, Mr. McNamara urged the audience to lobby elected officials holding hearings on nuclear proliferation and shift U.S. nuclear policy from deterrence to stopping terrorists from obtaining nuclear materials.
"I absolutely guarantee that if we continue on our present course, it will have many implications on the Middle East, but also on the Far East," he said. "And that is a tremendous danger to us when terrorists are seeking to acquire (nuclear weapons)."
His talk at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs drew several hundred people the Dodds Auditorium was full as was every classroom in the building with members of the university and public watching the event via closed-circuit broadcast.
Despite the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the United States still clings to an outmoded and dangerous nuclear program with an inventory of 6,000 weapons including 2,000 that can be launched within 15 minutes on the basis of only a warning of an incoming strike, Mr. McNamara said.
The analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the United States was perilously close to a nuclear war for 13 days in October 1962, revealed that the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba all made errors, he said.
"We came within a hairsbreadth of a nuclear disaster," he said. "And this was all shaped by misinformation, mistake and miscalculation."
Still a controversial figure he was the subject of documentary director Errol Morris’s 2003 film "The Fog of War" Mr. McNamara did not want to dwell on questions related to Vietnam or how that conflict compares to the current U.S. effort in Iraq.
"I’ve written several books on Vietnam and you should go read them," he said.
He did note that leaders in the corporate world, churches and governments "are reluctant to force controversial issues to the table because they know those deliberations will tear them apart."