Issues I Was Involved in During Pentagon Years
For starters here is a summary list of the issues I was involved in during the 3 Pentagon Years I spent either in the Army Planning Staff (2 years) or in the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs where I was the Principle Staff Assistant for Counterinsurgency (1) year.
On Army Plans and Policy Staff (2 years)
Alert Against Possible Attempted Coup after Pres Kennedy's Assasination, Nov 23, 1963
US-USSR Test Ban Treaty
Input for Annual Long Range Army Strategic Plan
Staff input and Reviews for the Chief of Staff of the Army for issues before the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Study of the projected global strategic 'Interests' of the United States
Small Study for the Army Chief Planner of What 'Signals' North Korea got that triggered their entry into the Korean War in 1950.
Study of the residual capabilites of the US Army after a Nuclear War exchange striking the US, and proposed winning strategy afterward.
Study of the types of future wars the US is most likely to become involved in, and the appropriate US strategies for achieving US goals in them.
Proposals for recasting within the Army, the concepts for dealing with wars below the Conventional Warfare spectrum.
On the Secretary of Defense's Staff (1 year)
Completion of Analysis of the locus, roots, US remedies for coming Insurgent Wars
Development of a rational US Spectrum of War Scale
Briefings of National Security, Intelligency Agency, Department of State staffs and principals on our Army Analysis of future US wars.
Backup for Secretary of Defense Testifying to Congress on the long range political value of US Military Assistance Programs
Drafting of Secretary of Defense McNamara's Major Policy Speech to the North American Association of Newspaper Editors May 18th, 1968.
Response to queries - press, academic institutions, foreign governments - for the analysis behind Secretary of Defense's 1968 speech.
Communicating with the UK Defense staff on the significance of the 1968 McNamara Speech.
During the second year, while still in the Army staff I had collaborated with Classmate Paul Gorman on two of the major studies - Post Nuclear, and Counterinsurgent strategies. Both, at the time, were Classified studies. And its findings and recommendations were available only on a need to know and secret security clearance basis to Pentagon officials. But the results of the Second One, on Insurgencies, with data drawn from unclassified sources, and which policy recommendations were open intergovernmental recommendations to the public, and became widely circulated by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's Speech in 1968 were mine alone.
In the next sections I will summarize in some cases, and elaborate in others, the intellectual issues that were involved - and the positions I took - in many cases against the conventional Washington "Wisdom" about wars the US would be engaged in. At the time, the Vietnam War was growing in size of US committment and costs, and there had to be a rethinking about the nature and threat to US interests of 'insurgent' wars and how the US should respond to them.
Vietnam was just a harbinger of world change, which even the Army resisted dealing with effectively in conjunction with allies and other than military agencies of the Federal Government.