Robert McNamara said little about Africa at the Hay festival (apart from briefly defending the World Bank's use of structural adjustment agreements during his presidency) but he was fascinating about the need for empathy and greater negotiations in American foreign policy.
"If I was Iran or North Korea, I would be developing nuclear weapons," he revealed. "I think we in the West must develop empathy for our opponents, meaning understanding. If you put yourself in the shoes of the North Koreans or the Iranians and you hear Bush saying 'axis of evil' and see regime change in Iraq, you would assume that regime change was on the agenda."
McNamara, who disastrously sent thousands of Americans troops to Vietnam when he was US defence secretary, said that the Bush administration should open bilateral negotiations with both members of the so-called axis of evil, with the objective of "eliminating their fears" of invasion by offering them a non-aggression guarantee.
Israel, similarly, should be persuaded to abandon its nuclear weapons by the promise of a security guarantee, with US troops ready to protect its borders against Arab invasion after a final settlement with the Palestinians.
McNamara agreed with suggestions that the Bush administration is unlikely to take on board his suggestions but quipped that sometime pigs do fly.
