Robert S. McNamara, a hero? Of arms control?
I kid you not.
No less a figure than Paul Warnke credited McNamara as being the person who “basically invented strategic nuclear arms control.” He was convinced by scientific expertise not beholden to the military-industrial complex that deploying nation-wide ballistic missile defenses was a terrible idea. He helped convince the Kremlin leadership that strategic defenses were dangerous, ineffective and counterproductive — no mean feat. He warned about the “mad momentum” of the nuclear competition and about the “action-reaction” syndrome, where one superpower felt obliged to respond to the other’s strategic modernization program.