O Positive

It started as a standard McNamara-style speech: loaded with projections, statistics, computerized comparisons. But as the Secretary of Defense plunged deeper into his oration, the 600 members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, meeting in Montreal, began to realize that this was a different speech by a different Robert Strange McNamara. Its message not only had little to do with military hardware, but, even more surprising, was fundamentally concerned with the suffering majority of mankind--a subject that has not conspicuously engaged the Secretary's attention or exactly matched his image during his five years at the Pentagon.

First, McNamara startled his audience by rejecting the notion that U.S. security depends entirely on "a vast, awesome arsenal of weaponry." Then, roving far from his Washington beat, he made an eloquent plea for a compassionate diplomacy, aimed essentially at the deprived and backward countries of the world--the "hungering half of the human race," whose "mounting frustrations are likely to fester into eruptions of violence and extremism." Said McNamara: "Security is not military hardware--though it may include it. Security is not traditional military activity--though it may encompass it. Security is development. If security implies anything, it implies a minimal measure of order and stability."

Building Bridges. The U.S. must help new nations, he said, but added wisely that economic aid is "futile unless the country in question is resolute in making the primary effort itself." Communist subversion of new nations is always a threat, but McNamara vowed soberly that "it would be a gross oversimplification to regard Communism as the central factor in every conflict throughout the underdeveloped world."

He suggested that "there is nothing to be gained from our seeking an ideological rapprochement" with Communist countries. Instead, he urged that the U.S. "build bridges" to end "the isolation of great nations like Red China, even when that isolation is largely of its own making." Americans, he said, might thus arrest "potentially catastrophic misunderstandings and increase the incentive on both sides to resolve disputes by reason rather than by force." The differences could be spanned with "properly balanced trade relations, diplomatic contacts and, in some cases, even by exchanges of military observers."

At one point McNamara even skimmed daringly close to saying that the U.S. has no moral or legal obligation to defend such beleaguered regimes as that of South Viet Nam. "Neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the U.S. is, should or could be the global gendarme," he said. "The U.S. has no mandate from on high to police the world and no inclination to do so. There have been classic cases in which our deliberate nonaction was the wisest policy of all. Where our help is not sought, it is seldom prudent to volunteer. Military force can help provide law and order--but only to the degree that a basis for law and order already exists in a developing society."

Though every word rang true emotionally and intellectually, McNamara's speech struck cynics as a public-relations ploy to replace the celebrated ice water in his veins with good old O positive blood, the universal type. The depth--and warmth--of his message even triggered talk that he might be presenting his public credentials for Secretary of State.

Price & Premium. Nevertheless, the section of McNamara's speech that caught most of the headlines was far closer to his proper bailiwick--the draft. Said he: "Our present Selective Service System draws on only a minority of eligible young men. It is an inequitable system. We could move toward remedying that inequity by asking every young person in the U.S. to give one or two years of service to his country--whether in the Peace Corps or in some other volunteer development work at home or abroad."

It was as explosive a nonmilitary proposal as any that McNamara has yet offered. Both the White House and the Defense Secretary went to pains the next day to make it clear that the Johnson Administration had no intention of offering new proposals to change the Selective Service System.

Encouraged nonetheless by McNamara's "concrete proposal," South Carolina Democrat L. Mendel Rivers, House Armed Services Committee chairman, called a committee session to hear Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey's opinions on current draft procedures. Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson suggested that a bipartisan committee begin a study of the system.

While the Selective Service System may need some refinements in social, fiscal or academic terms, it would make little sense to compel tomorrow's doctors, scientists and industrial captains to spend prime years in menial Government service. Despite the immediate inequity of deferring college men ahead of others, in one way or another the U.S. has always placed a comparable premium on achievement and excellence.

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