Trump, McNamara and the price of loyalty
The question how lawmakers, high officials and military leaders react when the President and Commander-in-Chief makes questionable, reckless and seemingly illegal decisions has been a continuous subtext during the first Trump presidency when some of the so-called “adults in the room” like National Security Advisor MacManus and Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned from their duties. 10 months into the second Trump-Administration it has become one of the central issues of US-politics in its accelerating authoritarian drift.
This is what the six Members of Congress tried to address in their 90-seconds video when they question the legality of Donald Trump sending US-soldiers into America’s inner-cities to help the Immigration Authorities with arresting and deporting migrants to countries like El Salvador and South Sudan; or bombing the boats of alleged “narco-terrorists” in Latin American waters ignoring Congress and the War Powers Act. These lawmakers are not “calling for an insurrection” as the White House will have it, but they are just restating the law that military and intelligence professionals “can and must refuse illegal orders.”
Yet only few government officials have hitherto questioned the legality of some of Donald Trump’s “borderline” orders. And apart from a senior judge advocate general (JAG) at the US-Southern Command in Miami, who asked if the 82 deaths from the strikes on Venezuelan and other boats might amount to extrajudicial killings, the higher echelons of power like its Chief of Staff Dan Caine have so far remained mum on the obvious transgressions by the self-declared “Minister of War” Pete Hegseth and the President himself.
For those high military and civilian officials, the new biography of Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, might be recommended reading. In their book “McNamara at War” (2025) the brothers Philip and William Taubman explain how McNamara kept defending and driving the war in Vietnam for LBJ although he knew early on that it was unwinnable. They describe in detail how “Bob” admitted privately that the messages of success churned out by the Pentagon and the White House throughout the mid-sixties where just deceptions whilst young American soldiers were still being sent into battle.
Robert McNamara had been one of the “whiz kids” from Harvard Business School who in the late 50ies had turned the troubled Ford Motor Company around. By 1960 he had risen to become its President. A few years later President Robert F. Kennedy asked him to run the Pentagon which he “reformed” as well in true technocratic style. McNamara was a number cruncher, meticulous and unforgiving. Today one would call him a “data guy”.
Yet he was also overbearing, as his biographers quote a former colleague: “Even when you knew he was wrong he’d plow you under.” And they describe how McNamara’s well-known unwillingness to admit mistakes lead to an unflinching loyalty to his president which in the end turned this cadre of the “best and brightest” into a tragic American figure. He went on to become the head of the World Bank where he could again practice his mastery at institutional reform, with mixed results.
When I met Robert McNamara in the early 90ies I was facing man who, I felt, was eager to make good for his past mistakes by publishing essays about the danger of nuclear war. Behind the mahogany table at this office near the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C. sat a broken man who was still eagerly asking for recognition, this time for having turned from a warmonger into an apostle of disarmament.
It was only in 1995, at the age of 78 when in the preface to his memoir “In Retrospect” Robert McNamara finally admitted that in fanning the fires of the Vietnam War he had been “wrong, terribly wrong”. That was more than most of his critics and aged anti-war activists had expected of him. But even in his expression of guilt, his biographers shared my earlier impression about his search for redemption, that it was self-centred. He was seeking “retrospective mastery over what had eluded him”, they write. But nobody tore into Robert McNamara after his confessional memoir like his fellow sponsor of war Henry Kissinger: “Boohoo, boohoo. He’s still beating his breast”.
Since the end of the Vietnam War America has fought two more wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And despite crimes against humanity, torture, scandals, enormous hybris and a criminal lack of knowledge about the countries invaded few members of the US-administration and high officials have admitted mistakes, acknowledged wrongdoing or shown any other form of regret. It is as if total abrogation of responsibility and lack of humility has become the prevalent mode of operation among the managers of America’s Empire.
The admission of wrong judgements or even the expression of guilt seems to be incompatible with the political system in the US and beyond. Just look at the self-serving biography of Kamala Harris (“107 Days) blaming everybody but herself for the election defeat. Not that leaders abroad like Angela Merkel have been any better at admitting past mistakes.
As a result, today’s Yes-Men (and some women) have few recent role models who might show them the price of misplaced loyalty or the rewards for critically examining the orders they had been given. What will the likes of General Dan Caine, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc Connell or Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio do when Donald Trump will give an illegal order to bomb Venezuela or make an ill-fated decision about Russia’s war on the Ukraine? How long will they keep their illusion that staying inside the system to prevent the worst might be more reasonable and preferable to open resistance and public resignation? And how long after having remained silent to the bitter end will it take them to admit their mistakes and come to terms with their own guilt?
How can smart people like the former Secretary of Defense lead their country into disaster is the question the biographers keep returning to without finding the ultimate answer. All we know from the biography and case study about Robert McNamara is that the price of blind loyalty is high. At least for your country.