Robert McNamara was complex giant in the field. Since his passing on Monday, several prominent IR scholars and practitioners have eulogized his life in a variety of ways. Most authors, however, note the disjointed nature of his legacy—great achievement in modernizing the Department of Defense, but also enormous failure in Vietnam. As someone often consumed by the power of numbers, for me McNamara's most compelling accomplishment was his dogged persistence in applying the quantitative approaches to management that garnered him great success at Ford Motor Company to the Department of Defense....
A McNamara Syndrome?
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