John McNaughton (government official)

John Theodore McNaughton (November 21, 1921 – July 19, 1967) born in Pekin, Illinois was United States Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs and Robert S. McNamara's closest advisor. He died in a plane crash at age 45, less than two weeks before he would have become Secretary of the Navy.

Tall, taut, fast-talking John McNaughton had graduated in 1948 from DePauw University. He began his career as an academic, with some confidence in his intellectual powers. Maj. Gen. Charles J. Timmes reports that when he visited McNaughton and his wife in 1964, as his wife was attempting to describe the complexity of the political and social situation in Vietnam, McNaughton had replied that one could find the solution to any problem "by simply dissecting it into all its elements and then piecing together the resultant formula".

He had been friends with strategic theorist, and now Nobel prize winner in economics, Thomas Schelling since they administered the Marshall Plan in Paris. In 1964, Schelling received a call to come and work at the Department of Defense as both were teaching at Harvard. He sent McNaughton, promising to advise him on weapons and strategy and McNaughton was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

Together, they outlined a bombing strategy to intimidate North Vietnam in the spring of 1964, leading to the first phase of Operation Rolling Thunder (March 2, 1965 - October 31, 1968) which took place between March 2 and 24, 1965.

The conditions for a bombing halt, outlined in a confidential memorandum by John McNaughton to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were that

The North Vietnamese did not regard the operation as expressing a real will to win and it did not achieve its objectives. Political reality had proved more complex than the abstract models of game theory. Militarily, the bombing operation couldn't prevent North Vietnam from continuing its war against the South because until March 1972, that was a guerrilla war which was not vulnerable to air attack and required few external supplies, thus negating efforts at air interdiction. Once again demonstrating that leaving target selections to politicians rather than field commanders gives poor results.

...
Wikipedia