Vietnam War, 1961-1975

Robert S. McNamara served as U.S. Secretary of Defense (SOD) for Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. McNamara participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis negotiations in 1961 and became a key formulator of Vietnam policy. This thesis challenges scholarship that characterizes McNamara as a fierce hawk who relentlessly executed military escalation in Vietnam. By drawing parallels between McNamara’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, and by exploring how McNamara’s concept of loyalty to the presidency influenced his decisions, this thesis argues that the SOD was willing to escalate the situation militarily as a form of political communication with the adversary. To McNamara, military pressure was a means to create avenues for diplomacy. McNamara became increasingly uncomfortable – and ultimately resigned in 1968 - when the Johnson administration pursued military escalation without an organized campaign towards negotiations. He was therefore not as hawkish as other scholars have claimed.

Analyzing the effect of military expenditure on economic growth has been an essential task for U.S economists. This thesis analyzed macroeconomic components for the last 70 years by estimating the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model and vector autoregressive model. To interpret the empirical analysis, historical analysis of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Wars in the Middle East, was made. One found the negative effect of military spending during wartime on the economic growth of the United States. This thesis suggests that the policymakers and military commanders should focus on shortening the state of war to minimize economic damage to the United States.

In the years 1965 to 1968 of the Viet Nam War, high level U.S. military officials ordered arbitrary reductions of official estimates of the enemy order of battle. The motivation for their policy reflected the difficulties posed by this war. As divisiveness in the U.S. increased over support for the war, signs of progress in the war were in demand, but impressive military progress was not being made, although ARVN reports through 1966 reported military success. With bilateral intelligence, more accurate reports were made. The Johnson Administration called for dramatic progress reports. Among these, MACV's reports on enemy force estimates were useful to portray success. However, revised estimates showed increasing numbers, both in enemy force size and battalion and larger-scale enemy-initiated attacks. These reports were suppressed by destruction or modified through arbitrary cuts by military officials. Thus news on the war was falsified to the public.

Telomeres is a manuscript-length lyric essay in many parts that traces the relationship of the narrator and her father as they both navigate the landscape of post-traumatic stress disorder after his return from Vietnam.