Robert McNamara Quotes
We're not trying to start a war; we're trying to send a political message.
Instructing the navy not to act precipitously during the Cuban missile crisis:
Robert McNamara,1916-2009, U. S. Secretary of Defense (Democrat), Instructions to the Chief of Naval Operations during the Cuban missile crisis, October, 1962
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
with Russia over the independence of Berlin and West Germany
See Benedict Spinosa for an earlier absense or war view. Also, JFK more recently.
This appears to be the first American utterance of a longstanding doctrine of foreign policy.
The report was from Heinrich von Tschirschky, the German ambassador to Austria-Hungary. He recommended that Germany persuade Austria-Hungary to not attack Serbia, not realizing the German leaders had already planned a war with Russia and saw the issues between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia was a good excuse to implement their war plans (see {642092}).
Robert Strange McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He played a major role in escalating the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.
