The Social World

Tag: Foreign Policy

  • Did Robert McNamara know Vietnam was unwinnable?

    Did Robert McNamara know Vietnam was unwinnable?

    Former US defense secretary Robert McNamara was known in Washington as a relentless, humorless taskmaster or even “a computer on legs.” Then on February 9, 1962, a little over a year after taking office, McNamara made headlines when he danced the twist with Jackie Kennedy at a White House party. A few days later, the then-first lady sent by hand to McNamara a lighthearted Valentine collage she had made from the news coverage of their dance.

    After her husband’s assassination, their friendship deepened. Jackie’s opposition to the Vietnam War grew, as did her conviction that McNamara secretly opposed it. While McNamara’s wife was away, the two of them met for dinner in Jackie’s Fifth Avenue apartment, where she “erupted in fury and tears and directed her wrath at me…She turned and began, literally, to beat on my chest, demanding that I ‘do something to stop the slaughter!’”

    Jackie’s intuition that McNamara opposed the war was correct. “I want to give the order to get our troops out of there so bad that I can hardly stand it,” he told an aide. But her belief that he would do something to stop it was tragically mistaken.

    In McNamara at War: A New History, accomplished authors (and brothers) William and Philip Taubman draw on their experience of writing page-turning biographies to offer a compelling, fresh take on this complex “archetypal” American leader. Using previously unknown notes, letters and private diaries, the brothers focus on the psychological and emotional forces that drove McNamara to a double life in the 1960s – and the nation into disaster. In public, he was a leading advocate for the escalation of the Vietnam War. In private, he knew the war was unwinnable. And, to top it off, he may have had an affair with Jackie Kennedy.

    Few political leaders can have had their lives raked over as many times as McNamara; to keep readers interested in yet another version is a tough ask. But the Taubmans’ well-honed prose deftly captures McNamara’s journey from suburban San Francisco to Washington’s inner sanctums in a manner that should engage even the weariest of readers.

    He was born in San Francisco in 1916 to a distant father and a doting mother. Bright and ambitious, with a computer-like mind, he was trained at Harvard Business School in the use of data as a management tool. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed the direction of his life; he became a “balance-sheet warrior” in the United States Army Air Force. After the war, McNamara was among the army number-crunchers – dubbed the “whiz kids” – who were drafted in to use these newfangled managerial methods to save the mismanaged Ford Motor Company.

    It became clear that McNamara was whizzier than the rest as he swiftly climbed the corporate ladder. The brothers Taubman vividly capture the seesawing days after the 1960 election when McNamara was appointed as the new president of Ford, only to resign a month later when John F. Kennedy asked him to run the Pentagon. “It was one of the worst days of my life,” said Henry Ford II when he heard the news.

    The Taubmans wisely devote much of McNamara at War to the dramatic years from the 1960s onward in which he first “conquered Washington fast and furiously” and then fell into ignominy. They capture the excitement and glamour of his lightning-quick ascent to become a “star” of the cabinets of presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, a member of their inner circles and practically the most powerful man in Washington. Indeed, it was McNamara who instructed the joint chiefs to place American military forces around the world on alert in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination.

    With the help of new sources, the writers demonstrate how McNamara’s drive and inevitable growing egotism came at a cost to him psychologically – and to America. He would “plow under” those opposed to him, even when he was wrong, and he was blind to how easy it was for Johnson to manipulate him. His fear of excommunication from Johnson’s inner circle was the most potent weapon the president could use against him.

    The result was that McNamara became, in public, one of the leading hawks on Vietnam. He supported the military’s demands to send ever more soldiers into the war to such an extent that it became known as “McNamara’s War.” In private it was another story. He “pumped out” confidential memos and held private conversations in which he freely admitted that the Vietnam War couldn’t be won and that “I don’t know of a single square mile of Vietnam that has been pacified.”

    Unable to share his angst even with his family, McNamara paid an enormous psychological cost for his deceit. One day a Quaker, Norman Morrison, set himself on fire beneath McNamara’s Pentagon window to protest the war. Shortly after that tragedy, McNamara left the government to become president of the World Bank.

    In 1995, he wrote in his memoir that he had been “wrong, terribly wrong” about the war and repeated this in Errol Morris’s sublime 2003 documentary The Fog of War. But, as the Taubmans ask, was he still trying to “surmount” one last challenge before his death in 2009?

    McNamara at War is a riveting and troubling exploration of how someone so smart, successful and patriotic could help lead his country into a disaster he knew was inevitable. It makes us ask ourselves how many of today’s leaders are staying silent like McNamara. And the answer may not be something we want to hear.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.

  • Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    Trump’s state visit to the UK could not be going better

    So, the Donald was on his best behavior after all. There had been rumors flying around that President Trump would use his speech at the formal banquet that has been thrown in his honor by King Charles to make some pointed reference to free speech and its perceived absence thereof in Britain today. In the event, there was nothing but a series of emollient statements of praise for his hosts, their family and the country he was visiting, as well as, of course, himself.

    This threw up some incongruities – who would ever have imagined hearing Trump allude to Locke and Orwell? But his sentiments were warm (only partially reduced by his less-than-fluent delivery, reading at times haltingly off what looked like a giant prompt book). As such, they would have gone down well with those in St George’s Hall in Windsor Castle and far beyond.

    In truth, Trump’s state banquet was never expected to be a controversial or difficult event. Whether the King had wanted to host this second, unprecedented state visit for the American president or not, he was never going to make any public protestation, and so the speech of welcome that he gave his guest was typically warm and eloquent. He talked of the “enduring bond” between the two countries, in language soon echoed by Trump, and made a good joke, saying, in an allusion to George III and the War of Independence: “It is remarkable to think just how far we have come. My five times great-grandfather did not spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders.”

    Still, both men had their own agendas in mind, too, and they were expressed in polite yet pointed ways. The King talked with vigor of the enduring special relationship, but also – in lines presumably suggested by the government – he observed that “Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.” Was there the slightest hint of irony when he praised Trump – a man obviously angling for the Nobel Peace Prize – and his “personal commitment to finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable conflicts”? There almost certainly was.

    And even in his peroration, when Charles spoke of how “in renewing our bond tonight, we do so with unshakeable trust in our friendship and in our shared commitment to independence and liberty”, there was the hint of a suggestion that this commitment might present itself in rather different ways. Talk of Trump’s attempts to protect the environment may have been more wishful thinking on Charles’s part than demonstrable fact.

    The President, meanwhile, has had a splendidly indulgent day of watching military displays in his honor, all of which have taken place out of public view in the grounds of Windsor Castle, so as to avoid the embarrassment of any protests marring his fun. Therefore, when he delivered his remarks, they came from a place of apparent contentment – hence the sincerity of his warm words about the royals. Nevertheless, he was still unable to resist a spot of self-praise as he announced that America has gone from being “a very sick country” to the “hottest anywhere in the world”. The King, to his immense credit, kept his best poker face throughout.

    Still, everyone involved in organizing this state visit will, rightly, congratulate themselves on how well the day went. Even the gray, overcast weather did not turn into the downpour that occasionally threatened to materialize, and the pageantry and glitz on display (at a rumored cost of £15 million for the entire event) show that, when Britain attempts to put on a performance like this, it usually succeeds.

    The political aspects of Trump’s visit come today, and they will be harder-won than this largely decorative display of soft power. But this coming together of two very different men, with very different values, over watercress panna cotta and ballotine of Norfolk chicken could hardly have gone better, either for them or their respective countries. And Charles will also know that the occasion will not – cannot – occur again, either, which may have made the whole thing easier to bear with suitably well-bred equanimity.

  • The case for MAGA imperialism

    Empire has always been part of the American tradition. We are a sequel state to the greatest empire in world history. Our period of colonial tutelage under that empire taught the lessons of legitimate territorial expansion against French and Spanish rivals. Our continental aggrandizement after independence was necessary. Later overseas expansion, including periods of imperial apprenticeship in places such as Liberia, the Philippines and Panama, was further evidence of our colonial métier. Like it or not, imperialism and colonialism are congenital to the American experiment. This has been the case since 1779, when the Continental Congress branded a proposal to limit westward expansion an “intolerable despotism.” Since then, our imperial project has experienced constant cycles of confidence and self-doubt. Fair-weather friends – such as Niall Ferguson and Max Boot – scamper for the exit when times are tough. But history shows the need to stay the course. Making America great again will require the United States to take up its old vocation.

    The Trump administration inherits two of the most critical imperial roles that we currently undertake: the defense of Taiwan and the defense of Israel, two countries that are, properly speaking, imperial dependents: without American support they would not exist. So far, the US has borne those responsibilities admirably. But the past six months have shown that a more avowedly imperial policy represents the best means of advancing the national interest. Donald Trump’s highlighting of the misgovernance of Greenland and the Panama Canal region has been energizing through its cold-blooded pragmatism. The US has had interests in these jurisdictions for decades, but it was only the credible threat of imperial annexation that could extract the concessions made by Panama and the Danish Crown.

    Similarly, the revival of the very old idea of a North American union with Canada has been a jolt in the arm to our listless northern neighbor. It has elected a conservative in all but name as prime minister, is boosting defense spending to bear its fair share of the NATO burden, and is reinforcing the porous border that it long ignored. Mass immigration is being checked and fiscal balance taken seriously. We could not suffer our northern border becoming some semi-failed European welfare state with colorful socks, and it was only our threat to revise the verdict of 1812 that has forestalled this.

    Still outstanding on the overseas front is how to reconstruct Gaza into a stable and humane enclave which has been fumigated of terrorists. Trump (and Israel) recognize that there is no going back to Palestinian self-governance. Much as 60,000 Lebanese demanded a restoration of French rule after a port explosion leveled Beirut in 2020, there is a case for a restored western mandate in Gaza led by the US. Making America great again requires the US to take up these new loads of the “enlightened man’s burden” (which is apparently what Rudyard Kipling meant when he spoke of “the white man’s burden”) lest we fail in our historic mission as provider of ordered rule to places of strategic significance. The US military has been quietly building up its ranks and training civil affairs officers since being caught with its domestic governance pants down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The sooner the Trump administration initiates the project, the better. Lessons learned from the successful colonial occupation of Iraq and the failed one in Afghanistan can be applied. In time, a self-governing enclave could emerge.

    The other outstanding overseas imperial calling is in Yemen. The country has been a failed state since the British fled from their shrinking perimeter in Aden in 1967. The United Arab Emirates set up a de facto colonial regime in Aden in 2017, the Southern Transitional Council. It is now part of a larger, Saudi-orchestrated governing body for the non-Houthi areas of Yemen, the Presidential Leadership Council. Both are supported by the UN as well as the EU. Now that Iran’s ability to support the chaos in the rest of the country has been weakened, there is an opportunity for the US to form a governing coalition for the country as a whole with Abraham Accords partners. This would secure the maritime route through the Suez Canal and bring further security to both Saudi Arabia and Israel. That would be an imperial mission to applaud.

    Finally, there is the pressing question of restoring American rule in the US itself. The US-Mexico border that was delineated in 1848 never acted as a barrier to illegal immigration. Since then, tens of millions of people from around the world have used the southern border to colonize themselves as US subjects. But colonialism must be in the gift of the colonizer, not the colonized. Aside from a stronger border and an end to birthright citizenship, our growing imperial capacities must play a role here. The imperial waystation in South Sudan that the Supreme Court declared legal in early July, as well as our use of El Salvador for the same purpose, are examples of how our imperial network abroad can be used to protect our imperial gains at home.

    A more robust defense of our imperial story is also the best way to fight the “decolonizing” impulse at home. The great decolonizer Barack Obama represented a break with the long tradition of black patriotism since the American founding. The “return to Africa” neo-segregation of black communities that this encouraged could only be a farce since black people have no actual interest in decolonizing themselves from white communities.

    More serious was Obama’s encouragement of Native American separation and its entailed obliteration of American imperial history on the continent. Under the Obama and then Biden administrations, the entire Department of the Interior gave itself over to “decolonizing” American land management in favor of “Native American” groups. What is required now is to develop a robust legal strategy to combat this steady erosion of the republic.

    The US became an empire because most actual Indians, as with most California and Texas Mexicans, most Spanish Floridians and, later, most Filipinos and South Vietnamese and South Koreans, preferred American rule to the available “indigenous” alternatives. The Taiwanese prefer US suzerainty to rule by China and Israel certainly prefers it to erasure. The American experiment has been an imperial one from the very first; the sooner we affirm this – at home as well as abroad – the better.

  • Trump’s plan to smash the BRICS

    Trump’s plan to smash the BRICS

    Donald Trump has never lacked confidence. “I’m here to get the thing over with,” he said last week when announcing the meeting with Vladimir Putin. “President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace. And Zelensky wants to see peace. Now, President Zelensky has to get… everything he needs, because he’s going to have to get ready to sign something.”

    To many, that sounded like a variation on Trump’s much repeated election claim that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours: a grandiose statement that will probably bear little if any fruit this week. Indeed, the smart money is on the Alaska summit resulting in claims of a “historic breakthrough,” which will change little on the front lines.

    One of the challenges when assessing Trump’s administration has been how to separate the signal from the noise. The President’s personality and his stream of consciousness comments often give the impression of a man operating on instincts. Trump’s transactional instincts, though, made him think Putin would behave in a logical way – that the Russian leader would welcome the chance of a reset to calm an overheating economy, move Moscow away from the horrors of an estimated million men killed or wounded, and bring Russia back into the family of nations.

    The fact that, until now, Putin has rejected Trump’s overtures is revealing about the former’s view of the strength of his hand – as well as a misreading of his opposite number, something that is regularly reinforced in the Russian media’s lampooning of Trump.

    The President may have taken his time to play his cards, but he’s chosen a good time to play them – and not only in the case of Russia. The Alaska summit isn’t just about Ukraine: it’s a key point in an elaborate, even existential game of geopolitical chess that will define the coming decade, if not longer. It’s about Trump vs BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

    Few paid much attention when the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China first met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in 2006, at the first summit in Yekaterinburg in Russia three years later, or when South Africa joined in 2010 to form the BRICS grouping. This has subsequently expanded to ten full members, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates joining as full members last year and Indonesia joining in January.

    BRICS represent half the world’s population and 40 percent of its GDP in terms of purchasing power

    Taken as a group, BRICS represent around half the world’s population and some 40 percent of its GDP in terms of purchasing power parity. Although the aims and ambitions of its members diverge on many topics – including on what BRICS can and should do – the underlying theme is that global economic power needs to be passed from the West to the developing world, and that, as a result, a more balanced global order will emerge.

    Trump has had the BRICS group in his sights for a while – especially the possibility that they might act to create an alternative to the US dollar. Soon after last year’s election, he declared: “We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar, or they will face 100 percent tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy.” For BRICS to succeed, he said, they would need to “go find another sucker.”

    Trump has repeatedly returned to the BRICS problem. “BRICS was put there for a bad purpose,” he said earlier this year, shortly before meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Indeed, the BRICS bloc provides, if not all, then at least a major part of the framework through which Trump’s economic policy has been constructed. Just last month, he said that tariffs would apply not only to the BRICS countries, but to any that align with what he called their “anti-American policies.” He spoke about BRICS again soon after, saying that if the original members “ever really form in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly.” He added that the US “can never let anyone play games with us.”

    It’s no coincidence, then, that the efforts to push Russia into a settlement in Ukraine are taking place now. Trump announced 50 percent tariffs against Brazil – something that led to President Lula da Silva, tellingly, to say he would confer with fellow BRICS members. Likewise, the President has said he will probably “send someone else” to the G20 meeting being held (for the first time) in South Africa because of that country’s “bad policies.”

    The President ’s main concern is the group might act to create an alternative to the US dollar

    Trump also knows that Russia’s economy is in a bad way. The US having used tariffs to squeeze Putin’s allies in BRICS, Moscow looks increasingly vulnerable. Indeed, recent economic news coming out of Russia is bad. Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the central bank, warned in June: “We have adapted to some external challenges [but] now we are facing very turbulent times ahead.” Putin himself expressed that Russian officials not only had to be vigilant “not to allow stagnation or recession,” but also that it was crucial for Russia to “change the structure of our economy.”

    Although interest rates have been trimmed back to 18 per cent, things continue to look bleak. More than 50 coal producers have either closed or are closing. Steel production among the largest producers is down by a fifth, year on year. The chief executive of Domodedovo airport, one of the busiest in Russia – and, before the war, in Europe – is close to bankruptcy.

    Unseasonable frosts followed by extreme drought have had a dramatic impact on grain and food production, which have seen prices spike. The shortfalls compared with previous years are impacting Russia’s export economy and its foreign currency earnings.

    This comes on top of concerted action by the European Union to move away from Russian natural resources. A decade ago, Russia’s trade with the EU totaled around $420 billion a year. With sanctions, that had plummeted to roughly $60 billion last year; it’s projected to shrink further to only $40 billion this year. Alexander Grushko, the deputy foreign minister, warned last month that trade with the EU – once a linchpin of Russia’s economy – could “fall to zero” if current trends continue.

    Perhaps the best example to show the strain that Russia is under comes from seeing who sits behind its war economy. An estimated 40 percent of ammunition used on the front lines is supplied by North Korea – and significantly more in some places. Zvezda TV, a state-owned network run by the Russian defense ministry, has shown films of teenagers working in drone factories in Tatarstan, a region which has just seen the influx of a small army of industrial workers from North Korea – estimated to be 25,000-strong – to work as technicians, machinists and electronics assemblers.

    For all of Moscow’s tough talk, the reality is that minds are more focused than they have been since the start of the invasion. That’s why substantial groundwork has been done over the past few weeks – and why there’s more to the Alaska meeting than a photo opportunity.

    Trump’s push to get Russia to agree to a settlement – and the US’s efforts to encourage Kyiv to accept it – are part of a wider attempt to reshape the emerging multipolar new world order. Trump is not just gunning for Russia; he is trying to use US firepower against BRICS at the same time.

    Of the BRICS grouping, India is one country that Trump has had in his sights for a while. In 2020, relations between Trump and Modi were unusually warm. India was “one of the most amazing nations,” Trump declared. Things were similarly sweet when Modi visited the White House in February. Just as Trump sought to Make America Great Again, Modi was seeking to Make India Great Again. “When America and India work together, this MAGA plus MIGA becomes a mega partnership for prosperity,” Modi said.

    Trump has decided, however, to show that American power can focus minds. As India’s veteran external affairs minister S. Jaishankar put it, India sees its role as being to “engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbors in, extend the neighborhood, and expand traditional constituencies of support.”

    That sounds sensible; but balancing acts are tricky to pull off. Deep ties between Moscow and Delhi, which go back to before Indian independence and which remained strong during the Cold War, have been maintained since the fall of the Berlin Wall. India pointedly abstained from a vote at the UN to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and has abstained on subsequent occasions, too.

    Apart from membership of BRICS, the heavy dependence on Russian military hardware – including the delivery of two warships built in Russian shipyards in recent months – and a formal agreement reached between the two countries at the end of 2023 to deepen collaboration, India has seen its trade with Russia boom in recent years.

    Before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, trade between the two countries stood at around $12 billion a year; by the end of 2023, it had quintupled to $65 billion. Much of that was through the purchase of discounted oil – a great deal of which has in turn been sold on to markets elsewhere. So great have volumes been that India has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the biggest supplier of oil to Europe – impressive given that India is only a modest producer in its own right.

    That realisation is why Trump turned on Delhi last week, announcing a 50 percent tariff on Indian goods. India operates “strenuous and obnoxious trade barriers,” he said.

    But it was the fact that Delhi is siding with Moscow that underpinned his change of pace. The Indian government doesn’t “care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine,” Trump said. Russia and India “can take their dead economies down together, for all I care”. While officials in India said the US charges were “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” Trump used the opportunity to announce a new trade deal with Pakistan, adding that the US would help develop the latter’s “massive oil reserves,” and that perhaps one day Pakistan will be “selling oil to India”.

    This is part of a coherent effort to use US economic and political power to frame the world of today and tomorrow. There is intention, in other words, behind the lining up of different pieces of the geopolitical jigsaw at a time when, as Xi Jinping told Putin: “There are changes, the likes of which we have not seen for 100 years.”

    Trump is not just gunning for Russia; he is trying to use US firepower against BRICS at the same time

    Together with China and their fellow BRICS members, Putin believes that Moscow is driving these changes. Trump feels that the US needs to stand in the way.

    At a Senate hearing shortly before Trump’s inauguration, the Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio made the telling claim that “the post-war global order is not just obsolete, it is now a weapon being used against us”. He reiterated this at Nato headquarters in Brussels a few weeks later. This is why it is so essential to “reset the global order of trade,” he said.

    The view that we are in an age of existential competition is shared elsewhere. The influential Chinese scholar Liu Jianfei argues that not only is there a “great game” under way between rival superpowers, but this represents “a contest between national governance systems and the direction of global governance and international order.”

    The Alaska summit is a key moment in that contest – perhaps even a turning point.

    Of course, there’s a giant piece of the jigsaw missing here – and with good reason: China. The shadow-boxing between Trump and Xi is more nuanced, more intense and more evenly matched. That is where the battle over the global order goes next.

    For now, the question will be whether Trump’s grand strategy to break up the emerging multipolar order has enough force behind it to deliver the results he is hoping for. Or whether it might in fact strengthen, rather than weaken, those countries who feel their time has come.