Clemons and McBeth - MavDISK

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42 PARTI . THEORYANDPRACTICE commonly cited, but not necessarily con-ect, example of the rational model producing poor policy can be found in the history of U.S. involvement in the conflict we call the Vietnam War. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara served both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson during the Vietnam War. Vietnam was, in fact, often called McNamara's war. Prior to his arrival at the Pentagon, McNamara had been the president of Ford Motor Company. He and his whiz-kid staff tried to bring with them an approach widely known as systems analysis. This management approach to organization and budgeting was based on statistics, defining clear objectives, examining long-term cost and benefit ratios, and systematically monitoring and evaluating progress." McNamara and the Pentagon were routinely attacked for an oven-eliance on quantification- including the infamous use of body counts to prove that our side was winning. Jerome Agel (1972,76), in an essay indirectly aimed at systems analysis, once took a slap at the legendary Public Broadcasting System show Sesame Street, arguing that "kids are razzle-dazzled with four following three-which is exactly what the guys who gave us Vietnam and pollution know." The general critique was that while carefully counting the trees, the managers of our war effort completely missed the forest. It is not too much to claim that the close association of the rational model with the can-ying out and defense of U.S. policy in Vietnam was enough to largelydiscreditthis model in the minds of a great manypeople. . For example, in their history of U.S. foreign policy from 1939 to the mid-1990s, America Ascendant, Thomas G. Paterson and J. Gan-y Clifford (1995) state: "Management" became one of the catchwords of the time. They had an inordinate faith in data. When a White House assistant attempted to persuade Secretary of Defense Roben McNamara, the "whiz kid" from Ford Motor, that the Vietnam venture would fail, McNamara shot back: "Where is your data? Give me something I can put in the computer. Don't give me your poetry." Danger lurked in a heavy reliance on quantified information. (p. ISI) Stanley Kamow (1991), author of the premier text on the Vietnam War writes the following: McNamara. . . looked at the figures and concluded optimistically after only forty-eight hours in the country that "every quantitative measurement. . . shows that we are winning the war." No conflict in history was studied in such detail as it was being waged. . . . But the statistics somehow failed to convey an accurate picture of the problem, much less of- fer solutions. For the missing element in the "quantitative measurement" that guided McNamara and other U.S. policy makers was the qualitative dimension that could not easily be recorded. . . . (p. 271) Approaching the Vietnam challenge like industrial managers. . . . Washington strategists reckoned that larger investments of men, money and material would logically yield larger results. (p. 284) And Loren Baritz (1998), author of Backfire (arguing that American exceptionalism and ;ulture, our technology and our bureaucracy, led inexorably to the disaster of Vietnam) almost ~ot it right when discussing the noise, political, and bureaucratic problems that affected the rnalysts and blocked rational analysis. But, in the end, he, too, resorts to the familiar critique, :iting a critic who characterized systems analysis as a model that "discourages the study of one's )pponents, his language, politics, culture, tactics, and leadership." He sums this up with the - 'The management technique known as "systems analysis" is not to be confused with the idea of political systems introduced in Chapter I. t CHAPTER2 . THE RATIONAL PUBliC POliCY METHOD 43 observation that "By now, this is a familiar point. Systems analysis reinforced the traditional American assumption that the enemy, or anyone else, is just like us" (p. 248). Yet we believe that even a shallow reading of McNamara's (1996) own riveting and moving history of the Vietnam War, In Retrospect, makes clear that the problem could not have been the following of the rational model, because it was not used.7To help you decide whether it was used or not, we will briefly delineate the rational model. We will then present the minicase, McNamara's Retrospective: Rational Decision Making? The Rational Model The rational model suggests the determination, clarification, weighting, and specification of goals/objectives/values (in other words, of the ends). Next, all plausible, available alternative means should be listed and their likelihood of achieving the ends carefully scrutinized. All relevant consequences and reactions (including side-effects, spillovers, and externalities) would be forecast. Then methods are to be ranked, and the most appropriate method and implementing agent(s) chosen, to achieve the most desirable outcome. Decisions should then be made about how to measure success, gather feedback, and evaluate the policy. Review would happen as the policy environment is scanned, changes noted, and adjustments (or even policy termination) occur. All of this is to happen with analysts operating with stony neutrality, robotlike efficiency, and no politics to taint the expert's choices. In essence, the rational model is about the following: Gathering sufficientdata and expert analysis. Understandingthe problem (includingits seriousness,scope, and sociopoliticalhistory). Discerning and operationalizing goals with clarity and precision so as to make them achievableand prioritized. Intense and thorough thinking so that the ends drive the selection of the means. Reasoned choicebased on calculation,comparison,and cost-benefitratios' so as to maximize the probability of the effective and efficient attainment of the determined objectives. In addition, the rational model assumes that more information is always better, that the cognitive limits of our brains are a bad thing, and that providing decision makers with more choices is a good thing. Figure 2-1 shows a policy decision that hinges on rational analysis. Presumably, an objective expert would have studied the problem and gathered facts to analyze. Goals would have been carefully thought through, articulated, and operationalized so that the costs and benefits of the alternative means evaluated are relevant to the desired ends.' In this example, only two alternatives policies are being weighed, but in the rational model all possible alternatives are considered. If all of this happens accordingly, theoretically the decisional teetertotter will tilt toward the policy most likely to produce the optimal outcome. Of course, later policy evaluation will review how the policy is working and begin the process all over again. The following mini-case quotes exclusively and extensively from McNamara's tale. This verbal. and roughly chronological, quote collage will allow you to decide for yourself if the U.S. pursuit of the Vietnam War was hurt by, or perhaps would have been helped by, use of the rational model. 'We can, however, criticize the attempt to use it, the resources devoted to trying to use it, the tactical policy consequences of the attempt, and its power as an argument justifying a policy that was arguably not rational. 'Chapter g, "The Positivist Toolbox," has a thorough discussion of cost-benefit analysis (CBA). 'Once again, see Chapter g for a discussion of cost-benefit analyses.
44 FIGURE 2-1 PARTI . THEORY AND PRACTICE THE DECISIONAL TEETER-ToTTER: A GRAPHIC PRESENTATION OF THE RATIONAL Moon I I t I CHAPTER2 . THE RATIONAL PUBUC POUCy METHOD 4S The risk of Chinese escalation and the possibility that air attacks would neither break the will nor decisively reduce the ability of the North to continue supporting the insurgency in the South were recognized. But, because no better alternative appeared to exist, the majority of the group meeting in Saigon favored such attacks! This was the sort of desperate energy that would drive much of our Vietnam policy in the years ahead. Data and analysis showed that air attacks would not work. . . . (p. 114) lhave reported the Honolulu discussion in some detail for tWo reasons: (1) we came close to the brink of a major escalation-without adequately examining its consequences or alternatives-but at the last moment drew back. . . . (p. 122) The Joint Chiefs agreed we should prepare plans for U.S. air strikes against North Vietnamese targets and the Ho Chi Minh Trail. . . . Neither then nor later did the chiefs fully assess the probability of achieving these objectives, how long it might take, or what it would cost in lives lost, resour.ces expended, and risks incurred. (p. 152) In retrospect, it is clear that our presentation to the President was full of holes. We failed to confront several basic questions. (p. 162) All of us should have anticipated the need for U.S. ground forces when the first combat aircraft went to South Vietnam-but we did not. (p. 175) 'Senior army officers and field commanders proved far more realistic about the potential of airpower in Vietnam than did senior air commanders. For their part, senior air force generals and navy admirals were probably equally realistic about the limitations of ground operations.Each could see clearly the weaknesses of the other but was unable to realize their own limitations... but I did not sense-nor was I made aware of-the important and revealing divisions among them. These divisions were therefore never fully debated at the highest level. They should have been. (p. 176) Meanwhile, the Joint Chiefs, CINCPAC, Westy. and I all continued to react on a day-today basis to the gathering force of events when we-and especially I, as secretary-should bavebeen far more forceful in developing a military strategy and a long-term plan for the force structure to carry it out. (p. 182) Decisions were deferred as we groped for the least bad road to follow. (p. 191) Looking back, I clearly erred by not forcing-then or later, in Saigon or Washington-a knock-down, drag-out debate over the loose assumptions, unasked questions, and thin analyses underlying our military strategy in Vietnam. I had spent twenty years as a manager identifying problems and forcing organizations-
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