Thinking In Time

The Uses Of History For Decision Makers

Richard E. Neustadt

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781451667622
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Leadership

"A convincing case that careful analysis of the history, issues, individuals, and institutions can lead to better decisions—in business as well as in government" ( BusinessWeek ). Two noted professors offer easily remembered rules for using history effectively in day-to-day management of governmental and corporate affairs to avoid costly blunders. "An illuminating guide to the use and abuse of history in affairs of state" (Arthur Schlesinger).

1
Success Story

“They’re too busy. Can’t read what they get now. They’ll glance at papers in the limousine, thumb them while someone is talking, or just wing it. If you do get their attention, you can’t keep it. They will have to catch a plane or go to a press conference.”

So an experienced diplomat responded to our argument that government officials should make better use of history. He was right. It may be easier to get a million dollars of public money than a minute from a president or a cabinet officer. The Bay of Pigs debacle (discussed later) occurred in part because President John F. Kennedy and his key advisers could never give it sustained attention for more than forty-five minutes at a time.1 The same strains work on governors, mayors, and many officials much less exalted.

But we are not asking a lot. In government and outside, decision-makers use history now. They draw every day on the past experience of other people. They assign aides bits and pieces of historical research: going to the files or checking memories and comparing recollections. They look at a great many words on paper. A former high official wrote us, “Although the public impression is that Presidents and Secretaries of State have no time to read or think, the truth is that most of them spend an enormous amount of time reading material generated both in the government and outside.”2 We argue chiefly that uses now made of history can be more reflective and systematic, hence more helpful.

This book is about how to do it. With stories of success and failure we suggest practices which, if made routine, could at least protect against common mistakes. We have tried to make the stories entertaining. We think them also instructive, even for readers too young to vote. Our particular target audience, however, consists of decision-makers and the women and men who work for them (or hope to do so) as direct or personal staff. Almost every executive has a split personality. He or she wants to act and feels impatient with those who block action. Presidents feel so about Congress, the bureaucracy, foreign allies, and the press; cabinet officers feel so about Presidents; assistant secretaries feel so about cabinet officers; and so on down to the bottom rungs of management. At the same time, every executive fears being hustled into action by those impatient people down below. The same holds true for legislators; they also make decisions and have decisions thrust upon them. Good staff work consists of helping a boss with both sets of concerns—clearing obstacles on one side while setting them up on the other. This book is intended to be a manual for such staff work. We hope the bosses will read it and tell their aides to put its recommendations into practice. We hope the aides will use it and use it and use it.

We start with a pair of stories about successes: the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the social security reform of 1983. Not everyone will agree that those were successes, but the participants so regarded them, and the majority of journalists so label them. Knowing mostly tales with less happy endings, we are not inclined to apply more rigid criteria. In the one case the missiles were withdrawn and nuclear war didn’t happen. In the other, the system didn’t run out of cash and wage-earners weren’t penalized. Both met immediate issues without ending longer-run concerns. Castro remains an unrepentant Communist; cost-of-living adjustments still give Budget Directors fits. The priorities, however, appeared sound to most contemporaries and appear so still, in retrospect. The results are enough for us. Besides, one case is foreign, one domestic, one occurred under Democrats, the other under Republicans. They thus argue that effective use of history is independent of policy area or party.

We turn now to the first of the two stories; the other follows in our second chapter. Then we sum up what both show about using history better.

For President Kennedy, the acute phase of the missile crisis started about 8:45 A.M. on Tuesday, October 16, 1962, when his National Security Assistant, McGeorge Bundy, came to his bedroom to report that a U-2, a high-flying reconnaissance airplane, had brought back photographs showing Russians at work in Cuba on launch sites for medium-range nuclear missiles.3

Kennedy reacted with a mixture of alarm and anger. Five years earlier the Russians had startled the world by sending “Sputnik” rockets into space. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, said this showed Russia could destroy the United States with intercontinental nuclear missiles. Americans feared a “missile gap” opening in the Russians’ favor. Elected in 1960 partly on a promise to close that gap, Kennedy as President gave high priority to a big defense buildup. By the time new intelligence had proved Khrushchev to be bluffing, the United States was on the way to creating a missile gap about two hundred to one in its own favor. Relations had been tense, especially when the Russians suddenly put up a wall between East and West Berlin. More recently tension had eased. Kennedy reached a few agreements with Khrushchev. He hoped for more. Now this!

And in Cuba! The revolution of 1959 putting in power Fidel Casto and a Communist regime had shocked Americans at least as much as Sputnik had. Kennedy in 1960 held out hope that he would also get Cuba back into Washington’s orbit. His failure to do so gave Republicans an issue for 1962. Castro helped them by asking for—and getting—Soviet military aid. Republican Senator Kenneth Keating of New York charged that the Russians were going to base nuclear missiles in Cuba. Other Republicans echoed him. Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, running for reelection, called for an invasion of the island. No one, however, produced solid evidence of anything but defensive, nonnuclear air defense missiles. CIA analysts pointed out to Kennedy that the Russians had never placed nuclear missiles even in Eastern Europe: Why would they put them in Cuba? (The answer probably was that a medium-range missile in Eastern Europe could reach the Soviet Union; one in Cuba could not. But that point was easier to see after the fact.)

By late August Kennedy felt worried. He began daily reviews of relevant intelligence. On September 4 he assured the public that the government had no evidence that any Soviet offensive weapons were going into Cuba. For Khrushchev’s ears he added, “Were it to be otherwise, the gravest issues would arise.” Afterward he received reassurances not only from his intelligence services but directly from Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. To Theodore Sorensen, the President’s chief domestic policy adviser and speechwriter, Dobrynin said that everything the Russians were doing in Cuba was “defensive in nature.” Dobrynin said the same to Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General (and the President’s brother).

The news Bundy brought to the President’s bedroom that Tuesday morning was thus not utterly unforeseen. It was none the less shocking. Kennedy’s immediate response was to name a handful of men with whom he wanted to take counsel. The group would come to be called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council—ExComm for short. It included Bundy, Sorensen, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon. Robert Kennedy took part continuously. Others were eventually asked in.

For a week, the President and ExComm managed to keep the matter secret. Kennedy preserved a noncommittal smile when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko repeated to his face assurances that Russia would do nothing provocative before November’s congressional elections. By various ruses, Kennedy and the others kept the White House press corps ignorant of their day-and-night debates.

When Kennedy and his ExComm first went to work, they used history—and did not use it—in very standard ways. In cases of which we know, debate in serious decision situations starts at least nine times out of ten with the question: What do we do? Background and context get skipped. The past comes in, if at all, in the form of analogy, with someone speaking of the current situation as like some other. That may be to put a familiar face on something strange. It may be for advocacy—because the analogue’s supposed lesson supports the speaker’s preference as to what to do. Otherwise, all concern is for the present, with seldom a glance backward or, in any focused way, toward the future. Of such usual practice we shall offer many examples. Here, even in the missile crisis, one sees it at the outset.

Recordings of ExComm’s first meetings are now publicly available. Anyone visiting the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston can hear excerpts. The group assembles in the Cabinet Room of the White House a little before noon. Experts from the Central Intelligence Agency explain the U-2 photographs. A few questions are asked about details. Then, in a measured Southern accent, part rural Georgian and part Rhodes Scholar, Secretary Rusk starts substantive discussion by setting forth two choices: give an ultimatum for withdrawal of the missiles or stage a quick surprise strike to destroy them. The crackling, confident voice of McNamara asserts that “any air strike must be directed not solely against the missile sites, but against the missile sites plus the airfields plus the aircraft . . . plus all potential nuclear storage sites.” Joint Chiefs Chairman General Maxwell Taylor says clearly, “What we’d like to do is . . . take ’em out without any warning whatever,” but he tallies other military options, including a naval blockade. After some back and forth, Kennedy himself, his famous Boston cadence soft-voiced and hesitating, sets the terms for the rest of the day’s debate. He specifies three choices: “One would be just taking out these missiles. Number two would be to take out all the airplanes. Number three is to invade.” His conclusion as the group recesses is, “We’re certainly going to do Number One. We’re going to take out these missiles.”

During the initial meeting analogies make an appearance. Saying that the Russians may be trying to draw attention to Cuba because they plan a move elsewhere, perhaps against Berlin, Rusk speaks of the “Suez-Hungary combination,” alluding to 1956, when Western preoccupation with Suez had made it easier for the Soviets to use tanks to crush a revolution in Hungary. Subsequently, “Suez” becomes shorthand for such a diagnosis.

For subsequent days’ debates, we do not yet have verbatim transcripts. We have to reconstruct from contemporary memoranda and later reminiscence. Wednesday saw members of ExComm hold various meetings with Kennedy not present. He had concluded that second-level people such as Rusk’s deputy, George Ball, or McNamara’s, Roswell Gilpatric, were more likely to speak up with the President not in the room. The scene shifted too. An antiseptic conference room on the seventh floor of the new State Department building became from then on the principal meeting place.

From some early point Robert Kennedy had begun to feel queasy about an air strike. On Tuesday he spoke against going for both missiles and bombers. “I would say that, uh, you’re dropping bombs all over Cuba if you do the second. . . . You’re going to kill an awful lot of people, and, uh, you’re going to take an awful lot of heat on it.” Expressing similar doubts, George Ball invoked an analogy. “This, uh, come in there on Pearl Harbor just frightens the hell out of me.” Robert Kennedy later recalled passing his brother a note which said, “I know now how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.” On Wednesday Robert Kennedy emphasized this analogy. Arguing now against any surprise air strike at all he said that it would be “a Pearl Harbor in reverse, and it would blacken the name of the United States in the pages of history.” Notes on the Wednesday meetings prepared for the President by Sorensen referred several times to “Pearl Harbor.”4

All this parallels what we see as standard practice, far from any ideal. The records of the ExComm suggest myopic concentration on what to do tomorrow. Reference is made now and then, partly for word-saving, partly for advocacy, to analogies from recent history. Looking back now, one can see signs of practice contrary to the usual. If action had been taken either the first day or the second, however, those signs would be scarcely noticeable. The decision would almost surely have been for an air strike. Whether the President would have chosen to hit not only the missile sites but also bombers and air defenses, we cannot guess. Whatever his choice, and whatever happened in the longer term, historians looking back (assuming there were any) would see Kennedy’s decision as a product of usual practice.

In fact, Kennedy was not to announce a decision until Monday, October 22—after more than six days of nearly continuous debate. Then, telling the world what the Russians were doing, he was to proclaim a naval “quarantine.” That course of action, initially mentioned in passing by General Taylor, had found its first champion in Vice President Lyndon Johnson. By the evening of the first day it had also become McNamara’s favorite option—“this alternative doesn’t seem to be a very acceptable one,” he said, “but wait until you work on the others.”5 At some point—probably early on—the President came to the same opinion. By the weekend there was near-consensus. The U.S. Navy would stop any new missiles from going to Cuba. Kennedy would thus buy time for trying to talk the Russians into removing the missiles already there. By the following weekend, however, having used the time to no avail, it seemed, Kennedy was back at his starting point. The question again was whether to bomb only the missile sites or to go also for airfields. But on the second Sunday Khrushchev announced that he would withdraw the missiles. The story thus became one of success.

It may be that the only decision-making that mattered was Moscow’s. The main American contribution may have been delay that allowed the Soviets to collect themselves. We suspect that American decisions and nondecisions had some more independent influence on the outcome. Whatever the case, as we look back, it seems clear to us that deliberate prolonging of the crisis, together with various moves aimed at producing a peaceful settlement, originated in or were at least much influenced by resort to history in ways not ordinary for American government officials. If the happy outcome was due even in part to those choices by Kennedy and his ExComm, then un usual uses of history perhaps deserve part of the credit.

Kennedy and his ExComm departed from standard practice first of all in subjecting analogies to serious analysis. The President early invited into ExComm former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, at that time a lawyer in private practice. Acheson favored a quick air strike. Hearing the Pearl Harbor analogy, he judged it, as he was to write later, “silly” and “thoroughly false and pejorative.” He told the President that there were no points of similarity and many points of difference, to wit:

[A]t Pearl Harbor the Japanese without provocation or warning attacked our fleet thousands of miles from their shores. In the present situation the Soviet Union had installed missiles ninety miles from our coast—while denying they were doing so—offensive weapons that were capable of lethal injury to the United States. This they were doing a hundred and forty years after the warning given in [the Monroe Doctrine]. How much warning was necessary to avoid the stigma of “Pearl Harbor in reverse.”6

For ExComm and perhaps for the President, the effect of Acheson’s analysis was the reverse of that intended. By stripping away all the dissimilarities, Acheson exposed the analogy’s relevant point. Robert Kennedy responded to Acheson by saying, “For 175 years we had not been that kind of country. A sneak attack was not in our traditions.” Then—not earlier—Secretary of the Treasury Dillon was won over. “I felt that I was at a real turning point in history,” he recalled later, “I knew then that we should not undertake a strike without warning.”7

All in all, the proceedings of ExComm are distinguished by the extent—unusual—to which analogies were invoked sparingly and, when invoked, were subjected to scrutiny. “Suez” did not last. A State Department lawyer referred to FDR’s “Quarantine Address” of 1937 when suggesting that “quarantine” be substituted for “blockade,” but no one represented the situations as analogous. Though Sorensen recalls talk of the Berlin blockade of 1948–49 and of the Bay of Pigs affair of 1961, possible points of comparison do not seemed to have gripped anyone’s imagination.8 When Kennedy went on television he referred to the “clear lesson” of the 1930s as one reason for demanding that the Russians back off. But that was rhetoric. The available records of ExComm debates are innocent of any allusion to “lessons” of the 1930s.

ExComm’s second noteworthy departure from usual practice took the form of attention to the issue’s history—to its sources and its context.

Kennedy himself had much to do with this, in part just by the choices he made in forming ExComm. He put a high premium on secrecy. “Maybe a lot of people know about what’s there,” he said at the initial meeting, “but what we’re going to do about it ought to be, you know, the tightest of all, because otherwise we bitch it up.” Nevertheless, he included in ExComm men who did not have to be there. Dillon is one example. The Treasury Department had no title to representation. Of ...