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Responsible Statecraft
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
Top photo credit: Robert MacNamra (The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum/public domain)
Unlike Cheney, at least McNamara tried to atone for his crimes
December 01, 2025
“I know of no one in America better qualified to take over the post of Defense Secretary than Bob McNamara,” wrote Ford chief executive Henry Ford II in late 1960.
It had been only fifty-one days since the former Harvard Business School whiz had become the automaker’s president, but now he was off to Washington to join President-elect John F. Kennedy’s brain trust. At 44, about a year older than JFK, Robert S. McNamara had forged a reputation as a brilliant, if arrogant, manager and problem-solver with a computer-like mastery of facts and statistics. He seemed unstoppable.
Yet, despite sterling qualifications to run the Pentagon, McNamara would encounter a problem his managerial acumen could not solve — at least not in the way the Cold War consensus may have demanded. Under two presidents, he sank the country into an unwinnable war in Vietnam. He misled the American people, drove decisions that brought about the deaths of 58,000 U.S. service members and millions of Vietnamese, and lived out his last decades a tormented man, wracked by guilt and regret but never formally apologizing for the epic disaster he helped create in Southeast Asia, as his personal correspondence and his public memoirs attest.
In all his charts and graphs and body count stats, McNamara failed to measure what mattered most: the unrelenting determination of the Vietnamese people to liberate their country from foreign occupation.
This is, of course, a familiar story told many times before. McNamara’s memoirs were published in 1995, two years after Deborah Shapley’s biography. An anguished McNamara, then in his late eighties, appeared in Errol Morris’ documentary Fog of War in 2003. Library shelves are groaning under the weight of Vietnam studies.
Thus, breaking new ground here may seem rather difficult. Yet the brothers Philip and William Taubman have written “a new history,” to borrow the subtitle of their portrait of the reviled defense secretary, that “benefited from access to materials previously unavailable to McNamara biographers,” including a trove of personal letters exchanged between McNamara and his mother, wife, and Jackie Kennedy.
There is never a bad time to cast a fresh pair of eyes — or, in this case, two pairs of eyes — on such an important story, and the authors succeed in revealing the obscure sides of McNamara’s complicated persona in their humane, yet unsparing, “McNamara at War.” We are in reliable hands: Philip Taubman covered U.S. foreign policy at The New York Times for three decades and authored three books on the Cold War. Older brother William, a career academic, has written biographies of Gorbachev and Khrushchev. The latter earned a Pulitzer Prize.
This book lands as an overdue debate roils Washington concerning the United States’ global role. Questions straight from the Vietnam Era demand our attention. What are the core national interests? Which ones are peripheral? What are the limits of American military power? Thus, the rise and fall of Robert McNamara as told by the Taubmans is as relevant as ever. Their “new” political-psychological portrait poses questions McNamara spent his post-Pentagon years struggling to answer. Namely, why did the government’s sharpest minds around Presidents Kennedy and Johnson screw up so badly?
The Robert McNamara who appears in these pages was no strident ideologue as he prepared to escalate the war in 1964-65, although he neither questioned the validity of the Domino Theory nor doubted the importance of upholding U.S. Cold War credibility.
Perhaps more importantly, McNamara — and he was hardly alone in this — conflated loyalty to the president with loyalty to the Constitution. The authors also compel us to consider the negative influence of his personality, which was not unlike that of the volatile, insecure Lyndon B. Johnson. Driven by ego and fear of failure, McNamara simply could not quit a problem. Yet, as is frustratingly clear in the contemporaneous phone conversations, official memos, and private letters that fill hundreds of the Taubmans’ pages, McNamara from a relatively early stage — autumn 1965 — already harbored serious doubts the war could be won.
Still, he never directly counseled Johnson to withdraw while repeatedly misleading the public about imaginary progress on the battlefield. He chose the path of least resistance, a middle ground between capitulation and an all-out war that might provoke either China or the Soviets to join. The authors’ use of McNamara’s personal highs and lows, related in letters to his tormented family and JFK’s widow, provides a fuller picture of the man, but doesn’t altogether enhance our understanding of what led the Johnson administration to wage war in Vietnam.
McNamara knew almost nothing about Vietnamese culture or history, similar to the ignorance that led the George W. Bush administration to leap headlong into Iraq in 2003. However, he had a chance to at least understand war’s horrors, if at a distance, from his service under General Curtis LeMay during the strategic bombing campaign against Japan in 1945. “His time at Guam deserves greater attention,” the Taubmans contend, referring to McNamara's statistical analysis of aerial bombardment of Japanese cities, “brutal tactics that McNamara favored at the time.”
The March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo killed approximately 100,000 people and left a million homeless. “At least one historian, having noted that McNamara helped ‘kill hundreds of thousands of civilians,’ described him as seemingly ‘impervious to the human cost of his work,’” the authors say. This mechanical, data-driven approach informed McNamara’s war planning 20 years later. It remains astonishing, even after the passage of 60 years, that President Johnson and his chief advisers convinced themselves they were undertaking a “limited” bombing campaign as the Vietnamese shook under the force of B-52 raids. Our leaders lied to the public and themselves.
Even now, the unlearned lessons here are many, which may be why the Taubman’s dedicate their last 100 pages to Robert McNamara’s strained efforts to publicly atone for his crimes after exiting the Pentagon in 1968. It took him decades to do so, a lapse for which his critics never forgave him. Still, the managerial genius brought low by Vietnam hoped his 1995 memoirs would be read widely by policymakers to avoid past mistakes. If read, the lessons weren’t heeded. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq – shall we count the repetitions?
No one should pity the life of Robert McNamara, but his story reinforces the notion that powerful structural forces, such as Cold War ideology or Vietnamese nationalism, can overwhelm or tame an individual’s will to reverse course. Still, McNamara eventually attempted to make amends by admitting what were avoidable mistakes and advocating for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Readers of “McNamara at War” may compare his self-flagellation with the utter lack of remorse exhibited by two other major figures who recently died. Despite living very long lives, neither Henry Kissinger nor Dick Cheney ever atoned for their crimes. Philip and William Taubman aptly conclude, “More than any other political leader we can think of, Robert McNamara admitted his grave mistakes in the hope of helping others to do better than he did. But the final ironies of his life are that many who continued to pursue peace among peoples and nations… have been no more successful than he was.”
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Top photo credit: Destruction in Zaporizhzhia in the Donbas after Russian missile strikes on Ukraine in the morning of 22 March 2024. ( National Police of Ukraine/Creative Commons)
Stop making the Donbas territory a zero-sum confrontation
December 01, 2025
Among the 28 clauses contained in the initial American peace proposal, point 21 — obliging Ukraine to cede as-yet unoccupied territory in the Donbas to de facto Russian control, where it would be a “neutral demilitarised buffer zone” — has generated the most resistance and indignation.
The hastily composed European counter-proposal insists on freezing the frontline instead. This was likely intended as a poison pill that would sabotage a settlement and keep the war going; soon after, Brussels celebrated its “diplomatic success” of “thwarting a US bid to force Ukraine” into a peace deal. At subsequent talks in Geneva, U.S. and Ukrainian delegations refined the original proposal to 19 points, but kicked the can of the territorial question down the road, to a future decision by presidents Zelenskyy and Putin.
Before the two sides have even sat at the same table, the fate of the Donbas territories has emerged as the issue on which the sides are so far apart, and so unlikely to give in to the other, that it may doom peace talks before they even open.
Ukraine considers conceding territory bitter, humiliating, and painful. Understandably so: giving up even more, after the country has lost so much and so many in defending itself, is intolerable. Russia seems grimly determined to gain the territory, if need be militarily, its recent progress on the battlefield making this threat all too credible.
In this conundrum, the inhabitants of this sliver of the Donbas are offered only two futures, both of them devastating. One, they will be handed to Russian occupation, with no say in the matter. If they don’t like it, they can leave behind their property, livelihood, the graves of their loved ones and become refugees. Two, their home will be pulverized as it turns into the next urban battleground and if they are lucky enough to survive, they will still come under Russian occupation.
Is this really the best peace-making we can muster? In any peace process and this one, too, territory need not be a zero-sum issue. Land, and the communities and infrastructure on it, lend themselves to a wide range of solutions that transcend “one side gets to have it, precisely so the other side can’t” and deliver a sturdier peace. As it happens, point 21 already contains language indicating a more promising direction: the “withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone.” Therein lies the beginnings of a way out of this impasse.
We’re told that this is ultimately about military-technical considerations, that this densely urbanized area contains the last line of built-up fortifications before — well, much of the rest — of Ukraine. To the west of the administrative border of the Donetsk oblast, settlements indeed become fewer and farther in between, and the terrain flattens out to offer no more natural barriers until the Dnipro river and the city by the same name.
Despite Russia’s full-throated assertion of having annexed the entire Donetsk oblast by popular referendum (minus, mind you, the vote of the people living in the territories Russia now also demands) and coming to “liberate” residents, these fortifications may well be the main reason it wants control over the entire Donbas.
Normally, I would hesitate to offer detailed recommendations on this or any other issue in a peace process. Prudent conflict mediators avoid pushing overly specific plans on the parties of a conflict, because as outsiders they tend to miss critical dynamics, making their suggestions feel clunky, irrelevant and overbearing.
Conversely, once the actual parties to a conflict come to the table, even after long wars have left little mutual trust, they often arrive at constructive breakthroughs to previously intractable deadlocks. In constellations thought to be zero-sum, where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss, they manage to find original, transformative solutions. They have skin in the game and are accountable for the outcome to their fellow citizens, and that spurs their collaborative imagination.
But since the current impasse is so pronounced that it may cause the entire peace effort to falter before it properly begins, I feel compelled to offer a reminder: We have been here before. In many previous peace processes — those resulting in the Bruno- de Gasperi Agreement on South Tyrol, the Bonn-Copenhagen Declarations settling the Schleswig-Holstein question, the Aaland Islands Convention, and more recently Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement and last year’s China-India border agreement. These seemingly hard binaries concerning control of territory were blurred, softened, and reimagined so that peace became possible.
These precedents show that tailor-made arrangements to break down the zero-sum logic of the current stand-off are possible. The resulting solutions might not satisfy maximalist demands of either Russia or Ukraine, but they would meet their core security needs, allow both sides to hold their head up high at the signing ceremony, and go some way to ensure the safety, dignity and well-being of the people who live on this land.
If the Russians’ main objective is preventing Ukrainian use of the fortifications, this could be accommodated through means that fall short of granting Russia exclusive civilian control and de facto recognition thereof. Why not build on that demilitarized zone in point 21 and defuse additional aspects of territorial control, by giving Ukraine a continued role in civilian governance?
Plenty of civilian affairs will need regulating: Will the region’s residents be free to come and go in both directions, without undue hindrance? Will they be able to carry goods? Which citizenship will they hold? Both, or one they choose freely? Will school diplomas be recognized on both sides, and since we’re talking about schools, which curriculum will be taught, and in which language? What about property deeds and vital records? And might we need joint procedures or standing bilateral commissions for all this coordination?
If the two parties cannot compromise along all these lines, they might agree on a temporary freeze on certain points, subject to re-opening at a designated date in the future or when certain conditions arise. If they cannot bring themselves to agree at all, but insist that the other side can’t have this land, there is, as a last resort, a Solomonic solution: neither of them can have it, and its administration will be assigned to a multilateral mission. Admittedly a remote and difficult outcome, but if this is what it takes to end the war, it will be worth the trouble.
It will be hard for Ukraine to abandon a line of fortifications that took a decade and great resources to build, but there is room in the framework of the current proposal for additional military provisions that would cushion the blow. Ukraine’s Western allies could step up and cover the cost of building new fortifications further west, possibly integrated with the formidable natural barrier of the Dnipro river. Russia could be persuaded to pull its forces further back than the newly demilitarized zone.
Such technical details are best sorted out in the haggling, bartering and pinning down of reciprocal measures that happen at the negotiating table.
It helps to remind ourselves what this is all about. These Donbas communities are not just blotches on a dismal OSINT map, with names routinely butchered by foreign reporters who do not know that they translate to “City of Peace,” “Paradise Field,” or “Holy Mountain.”
Before the war, the population of this region was several hundred thousands. Those hulking ruins of bombed-out high-rises used to contain homes, lovingly remodeled room by room. These are cities with unique identities forged by equally unique histories and proud, if faded, industrial legacies. Communities that survived the deprivations of the post-Soviet collapse and the encroaching war by dedicating themselves to their schools, colleges, hospitals and cultural institutions. Cities surrounded by dacha plots whose owners plant every square inch of soil with vegetables to pickle for the winter.
The OSINT maps don’t reveal the natural beauty of the Donbas, the tall pine forests on sandy dunes, or deep river valleys beneath wooded cliffs, where locals fish, have picnics and go mushroom hunting.
To overcome the deadlock of the territorial question, preempt attempts at spoiling the peace process or practice people-centered peace-making, we will need more creative, pragmatic diplomacy.
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Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez listens as Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig gives closing arguments during his trial on U.S. drug trafficking charges in federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., March 6, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
In pardon of narco trafficker, Trump destroys his own case for war
November 29, 2025
The Trump administration has literally killed more than 80 suspected drug smugglers by blowing their small boats out of the water since September, but this week the president has reportedly decided to pardon one of the biggest cocaine traffickers of them all.
If that doesn't make any sense to you, then join the club.
The news that Trump is going to pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison just last year came as a shocker. The White House has said repeatedly that drug traffickers are narcoterrorists who are waging war on America, justifying their killing the boats every time. Yet Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to import 500,000 kilos of cocaine into the United States and stuff it "right up the noses of the gringos" and Trump says "CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON."
While president, Hernández received millions of dollars from trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and from notorious drug lords like Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. El Chapo, who was the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and is responsible for the murder of some 34,000 people. In return, according to prosecutors, President Hernández allowed vast amounts of cocaine to pass through Honduras on its way to the United States.
Prosecutor Jacob H. Gutwillig told jurors during the trial that Hernández had accepted “cocaine-fueled bribes” from cartels and “protected their drugs with the full power and strength of the state — military, police and justice system.” Hernández ran the country from 2014-2022; his National Party had been in power since 2009.
Sounds like the very type of menace — or terrorist — that the Trump administration is trying to use as a justification for military action in Latin America today.
"Former president Hernández was found guilty of taking bribes from El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel to allow 400 tons of cocaine to flow through Honduras into the United States, essentially running Honduras like a narcostate," noted Quincy Institute research associate Lee Schlenker.
"Trump accuses Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro of conspiring to flood the United States with deadly drugs through the dubious 'Cartel of the Suns,' but far from pardoning Maduro or praising his acolytes, like (he promises) with Hernández, Trump has brought us closer to a U.S.-led military intervention in Latin America than we've been in over 35 years by threatening air strikes against Venezuelan territory," he added.
We assume the difference here is politics. And ideology. Maduro is a socialist and doesn't want to do business with Washington. Hernandez was tolerated if not preferred by previous U.S. administrations from Obama through the first Trump White House, because he and his National Party were business friendly, anti-communist, and supported by the neoconservatives now gunning against Maduro.
While he was useful, Hernandez played the game and Washington turned a blind eye to his crimes which not only included the drugs but human rights abuses against his people via the military and police, election fraud, embezzling from the nation's social security system and World Bank Funds, and even bragging at one point that he was siphoning off international funds through phony NGOs.
Hernández left office in 2021 and wasn't indicted until 2022 (by the Biden DOJ), though he and his family were already being investigated during the first Trump tenure. His brother Tony, a former Honduran congressman, was convicted of drug trafficking in 2019 and given a life sentence. DOJ prosecutors say he "was involved in all stages of the trafficking through Honduras of multi-ton loads of cocaine destined for the U.S."
In the same day he announced his would pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, Trump said he was endorsing the National Party candidate for president, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who is running against what he calls the "narco-communism" represented by center-left candidate Rixi Moncada of the incumbent LIBRE party. This is laughable, says Schlenker, because current president Xiomara Castro has done everything to curry favor with Trump, including "tough-on-crime policies not too dissimilar from those seen in neighboring El Salvador under Trump ally Nayib Bukele."
But Asfura and Hernandez have paid lobbyists in Washington and if you think that doesn't make a difference then we have a block of empty office space on K Street to sell you. According to Schlenker, Hernández paid D.C. lobbying group BGR Group, which was a leading donor to now Secretary of State Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign, over $600,000 in 2019 to win allies in Washington as he was under investigation.
"Hernandez has strong supporters in Trump world, including convicted (and later pardoned) Trump advisor Roger Stone, who has been urging Trump to pardon Hernández for months. Rubio, for his part, has long sung Hernández's praises, thanking him for his work targeting drug trafficking, as has Rubio ally, lobbyist, and former Trump administration official Carlos Trujillo, who represents several Honduran clients who would likely stand to benefit from a return to National Party rule," added Schlenker.
Trujilo was just on Capitol Hill talking down LIBRE before he was called out by Rep. Joaquín Castro for his obvious conflict of interest.
The New York Times said Sunday's elections were already beset by fears of "fraud, mass protests and even the threat of a military crackdown," and Trump and other Washington neoconservatives weighing in is adding another layer of volatility.
For those of us picking up on news this weekend that Trump is boasting about "closing the airspace" around Venezuela only reinforces the suspicion that this is not about "narcoterrorism" at all. If Trump wanted to rid the hemisphere of drug traffickers, he wouldn't be letting them out of prison, period.
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