Robert McNamara

Robert Strange McNamara (born the June 9th 1916 with Oakland in California) was business man and political American, secretary with defense starting from 1961, then president of the the World Bank of 1968 with 1981.

Biography

McNamara is graduate university of Berkeley in economy, mathematics and philosophy. It continues a formation in Management starting from 1937 within the Harvard Business School, thus acquiring management sciences become characteristic of its model of control.

After climbhaving quickly climbed the military hierarchy, McNamara takes part, under the orders of the general LeMay, with the war against Japan and is regarded as one of the initiators, in 1945, of the dropping of incendiary bombs on the archipelago (100.000 died in one night with Tokyo and 67 mainly destroyed cities).

In November 1960, McNamara, considered as one of the most brilliant managers of the country, becomes, at the 44 years age, the first president of the Ford Motor Company not to be a family member. But after only five weeks, it is called with the government by the president John F. Kennedy and becomes then Secrétaire with Defense. One hopes on his talents “to manage” to control the soldiers. It was thus at the sides of the president to face the crisis of the missiles of Cuba in 1962.

But it is especially during the Guerre of Vietnam that its role was particularly important. This one requires of him much time and energy at the Department of Defense. But it ends up regarding the victory as impossible and wishes to disengage the country. This position is contrary with that of the president Lyndon B. Johnson, who wishes to prolong a strong American presence in Vietnam. McNamara is finally dislocated of its functions of secretary to Defense and named president of the the World Bank by president Johnson.

It arrives at the seat of the Banque overflowing of energy, powerful, active, " poussant" to obtain results. It brings with him the firm belief that the problems of the Pays in the process of development can be regulated. He affirms the need for analyzing the problems seriously and for determining them for better applying the suitable remedies.

If McNamara realized that the bank could not solve by itself the problems of the world, he thinks nevertheless that with will, it is possible to increase the planetary resources and to generalize the development. According to him, a direct link exists between the military security and economic development. The war is a consequence of the increase in the variations of Revenu between the industrialized Pays and those in the process of development.

One of its first actions as a president is to require a list of the directors of all the projects which must be undertaken, independently of the financial, political constraints or économiques. This list is used as bases of its foreground of loan over five years and, in September 1968, it proposes to the governors (i.e. with the representatives of each Member State), at the time them annual meetings, to double the volume of the loans during the five years to come. The second five-year plan of McNamara, presented in 1973, considers an increase in the loans of 40% compared to the first. Engagements of the bank passed from approximately 1 billion USD in 1968 to more than 13 billion USD in 1981.

Anecdotes

According to McNamara itself, when president Kennedy learned that his future Secretary with Defense read Teilhard of Chardin, he failed to reconsider his decision, because he was afraid to face an intellectual.

McNamara came to Paris with president Kennedy; he was accepted with dining in Matignon by the Prime Minister Michel Debré; Mrs Debré realized the following day that covers in vermeil whose McNamara had been useful had disappeared and claimed to him; this one restored them by saying that it was accustomed to taking covers of the houses where it dined in remembering for his children! (source: Release, September 16th, 2005)

Catalog of films

The Fog off War , documentary of Errol Morris, left in 2003 (the Oscar of best documentary the in 2004), on its life in the middle of the Cold war and especially of the War of Vietnam.

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