Footnote Section
1. The Economic and Social Consequences
of Disarmament: U.S. Reply to the Inquiry of the Secretary-General
of the United Nations (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, June 1964), pp. 8-9.
2. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon,
1962), p. 35.
3. Robert S. McNamara, in an address before the American Society of
Newspaper Editors, Montreal, P.Q., Canada, 18 May 1966.
4. Alfred North Whitehead, in "The Anatomy of Some Scientific
Ideas," included in The Aims of Education (New York: Macmillan,
1929).
5. At Ann Arbor, Michigan, 16 June 1962.
6. Louis J. Halle, "Peace in Our Time? Nuclear Weapons as a
Stabilizer," The New Republic (28 December 1963).
7. Kenneth E. Boulding, "The World War Industry as an Economic
Problem," in Emile Benoit and Kenneth E. Boulding (eds.),
Disarmament and the Economy New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
8. McNamara, in ASNE Montreal address cited.
9. Report of the Committee on the Economic Impact of Defense and
Disarmament (Washington: USGPO, July 1965).
10. Sumner M. Rosen, "Disarmament and the Economy," War/Peace Report
(March 1966).
11. Vide William D. Grampp, "False Fears of Disarmament," Harvard
Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1964) for a concise example of this
reasoning.
12. Seymour Melman, "The Cost of Inspection for Disarmament," in
Benoit and Boulding, op. cit.
13. Arthur I. Waskow, Toward the Unarmed Forces of the United States
(Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1966), p. 9. (This is the
unabridged edition of the text of a report and proposal prepared for
a seminar of strategists and Congressmen in 1965; it was later given
limited distribution among other persons engaged in related
projects.)
14. David T. Bazelon, "The Politics of the Paper Economy,"
Commentary (November 1962), p. 409.
15. The Economic Impact of Disarmament (Washington: USGPO, January
1962).
16. David T. Bazelon, "The Scarcity Makers," Commentary (October
1962), p. 298.
17. Frank Pace, Jr., in an address before the American Bankers’
Association, September 1957.
18. A random example, taken in this case from a story by David Deitch in the New York Herald Tribune (9 February 1966).
19. Vide L. Gumplowicz, in Geschichte der Staatstheorien (Innsbruck:
Wagner, 1905) and earlier writings.
20. K. Fischer, Das Militaer (Zurich: Steinmetz Verlag, 1932), pp.
42-43.
21. The obverse of this phenomenon is responsible for the principal
combat problem of present-day infantry officers: the unwillingness
of otherwise "trained" troops to fire at an enemy close enough to be
recognizable as an individual rather than simply as a target.
22. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1960), p. 42.
23. John D. Williams, "The Nonsense about Safe Driving," Fortune
(September 1958).
24. Vide most recently K. Lorenz, in Das Sogenannte Boese: zur
Naturgeschichte der Aggression (Vienna: G. Borotha-Schoeler Verlag,
1964).
25. Beginning with Herbert Spencer and his contemporaries, but
largely ignored for nearly a century.
26. As in recent draft-law controversy, in which the issue of
selective deferment of the culturally privileged is often carelessly
equated with the preservation of the biologically "fittest."
27. G. Bouthoul, in La Guerre (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1953) and many other more detailed studies. The useful
concept of "polemology," for the study of war as an independent
discipline, is his, as is the notion of "demographic relaxation,"
the sudden temporary decline in the rate of population increase
after major wars.
28. This seemingly premature statement is supported by one of our
own test studies. But it hypothecates both the stabilizing of world
population growth and the institution of fully adequate
environmental controls. Under these two conditions, the probability
of the permanent elimination of involuntary global famine is 68
percent by 1976 and 95 percent by 1981.
29. This round figure is the median taken from our computations,
which cover varying contingencies, but it is sufficient for the
purpose of general discussion.
30. But less misleading than the more elegant traditional metaphor,
in which war expenditures are referred to as the "ballast" of the
economy but which suggests incorrect quantitative relationships.
31. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric. We have not used any
published program as a model; similarities are unavoidably
coincidental rather than tendentious.
32. Vide the reception of a "Freedom Budget for all Americans,"
proposed by A. Philip Randolph et al; it is a ten-year plan,
estimated by its sponsors to cost $185 billion.
33. Waskow, op. cit.
34. By several current theorists, most extensively and effectively
by Robert R. Harris in The Real Enemy, an unpublished doctoral
dissertation made available to this study.
35. In ASNE Montreal address cited.
36. The Tenth Victim.
37. For an examination of some of its social implications, see
Seymour Rubenfeld, Family of Outcasts: A New Theory of Delinquency
(New York: Free Press, 1965).
38. As in Nazi Germany; this type of "ideological" ethnic
repression, directed to specific sociological ends, should not be
confused with traditional economic exploitation, as of Negroes in
the U.S., South Africa, etc.
39. By teams of experimental biologists in Massachusetts, Michigan,
and California, as well as in Mexico and the U.S.S.R. Preliminary
test applications are scheduled in Southeast Asia, in countries not
yet announced.
40. Expressed in the writings of H. Marshall McLuhan, in
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1964) and elsewhere.
41. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by plotting a
three-dimensional distribution of three arbitrarily defined
variables; the macro-structural, relating to the extension of
knowledge beyond the capacity of conscious experience; the organic,
dealing with the manifestations of terrestrial life as inherently
comprehensible; and the infra-particular, covering the subconceptual
requirements of natural phenomena. Values were assigned to the known
and unknown in each parameter, tested against data from earlier
chronologies, and modified heuristically until predictable
correlations reached a useful level of accuracy. "Two decades"
means, in this case, 20.6 years, with a standard deviation of only
1.8 years. (An incidental finding, not pursued to the same degree of
accuracy, suggests a greatly accelerated resolution of issues in the
biological sciences after 1972.)
42. Since they represent an examination of too small a percentage of
the eventual options, in terms of "multiple mating," the subsystem
we developed for this application. But an example will indicate how
one of the most frequently recurring correlation problems -
chronological phasing - was brought to light in this way. One of the
first combinations tested showed remarkably high coefficients of
compatibility, on a post hoc static basis, but no variations of
timing, using a thirty-year transition module, permitted even
marginal synchronization. The combination was thus disqualified.
This would not rule out the possible adequacy of combinations using
modifications of the same factors, however, since minor variations
in a proposed final condition may have disproportionate effects on
phasing.
43. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (December 1964).
44. E.g., the highly publicized "Delphi technique" and other, more
sophisticated procedures. A new system, especially suitable for
institutional analysis, was developed during the course of this
study in order to hypothecate mensurable "peace games"; a manual of
this system is being prepared and will be submitted for general
distribution among appropriate agencies. For older, but still
useful, techniques, see Norman C. Dalkey’s Games and Simulations
(Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1964).
45. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need for
such translation is furnished by Kahn (in Thinking About the
Unthinkable, p. 102). Under the heading "Some Awkward Choices" he
compares four hypothetical policies: a certain loss of $3,000; a .1
chance of loss of $300,000; a .01 chance of loss of $30,000,000; and
a .001 chance of loss of $3,000,000,000. A government decision-maker
would "very likely" choose in that order. But what if "lives are at
stake rather than dollars"? Kahn suggests that the order of choice
would be reversed, although current experience does not support this
opinion. Rational war research can and must make it possible to
express, without ambiguity, lives in terms of dollars and vice
versa; the choices need not be, and cannot be, "awkward."
46. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of
techniques up to now limited to such circumscribed purposes as
improving kill-ammunition ratios determining local choice between
precision and saturation bombing, and other minor tactical, and
occasionally strategic, ends. The slowness of Rand,
I.D.A., and
other responsible analytic organizations to extend
cost-effectiveness and related concepts beyond early-phase
applications has already been widely remarked on and criticized
elsewhere.
47. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques
has been given some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson
Institute’s Study for Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command and
Control Systems Planning (by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman;
Final report published 1963). But here, as with other war and peace
studies to date, what has blocked the logical extension of new
analytic techniques has been a general failure to understand and
properly evaluate the nonmilitary functions of war.
"Report From Iron Mountain"
'The Guest Word'
by Leonard Lewin
New York Times Book Review
March 19, 1972
The book came out in November, 1967, and generated controversy as
soon as it appeared.
It purported to be the secret report of an
anonymous "Special Study Group," set up, presumably at a very high
level of government, to determine the consequences to American
society of a "permanent" peace, and to draft a program to deal with
them.
Its conclusions seemed shocking.
This commission found:
-
that even in the unlikely event that a
lasting peace should prove "attainable," it would almost surely
be
undesirable
-
that the "war system"
is essential to the functioning
of a stable society
-
that until adequate replacement for it might be
developed, wars and an "optimum"
annual number of war deaths must be
methodically planned and budgeted
And much more.
Most of the Report
deals with the "basic" functions of war (economic, political,
sociological, ecological, etc.) and with possible substitutes to
serve them, which were examined and found wanting.
The text is
preceded by my foreword, along with other background furnished by
the "John Doe" who made the Report available.
The first question raised, of course, was that of its authenticity.
But government spokesmen were oddly cautious in phrasing their
denials, and for a short time, at least in Washington, more
speculation was addressed to the Group’s members and of their
sponsorship than to whether the Report was an actual quasi-official
document. (The editors of Trans-action magazine, which ran an
extensive round-up of opinion on the book, noted that government
officials, as a class, were those most likely to accept it as the
real thing.)
Eventually, however, in the absence of definitive confirmation
either way, commentators tended to agree that it must be a political
satire. In that case, who could have written it? Among the dozens of
names mentioned, those of J. K. Galbraith and myself appeared most
often, along with a mix of academics, politicians, think-tank
drop-outs, and writers.
Most reviewers, relatively uncontaminated by overexposure to real-politik,
were generous to what they saw as the author’s intentions:
to expose
a kind of thinking in high places that was all too authentic,
influential, and dangerous, and to stimulate more public discussion
of some of the harder questions of war and peace.
But those who felt
their own oxen gored-who could identify themselves in some way with
the government, the military, "systems analysis", the established
order of power-were not.
They attacked, variously, the substance of the Report; the competence of those who praised its effectiveness;
and the motives of whomever they assigned the obloquy of authorship,
often charging him with an disingenuous sympathy for the Report’s
point of view.
The more important think-tankers, not unreasonably
seeing the book as an indictment of their own collective moral
sensibilities and intellectual pretensions, proffered literary as
well as political judgments: very bad satire, declared Herman Kahn;
lacking in bite, wrote Henry Rowen, of Rand. Whoever wrote it is an
idiot, said Henry Kissinger. A handful of far-right zealots and
eccentrics predictably applauded the Report’s conclusions.
That’s as much background as I have room for, before destroying
whatever residuum of suspense may still persist about the book’s
authorship. I wrote the "Report," all of it. (How it came about and
who was privy to the plot I’ll have to discuss elsewhere.) But why
as a hoax?
What I intended was simply to pose the issues of war and peace in a
provocative way. To deal with the essential absurdity of the fact
that the war system, however much deplored, is nevertheless accepted
as part of the necessary order of things. To caricature the
bankruptcy of the think-tank mentality by pursuing its style of
scientistic thinking to its logical ends. And perhaps, with luck, to
extend the scope of public discussion of "peace planning" beyond its
usual, stodgy limits.
Several sympathetic critics of the book felt that the guessing-games
it set off tended to deflect attention from those objectives, and
thus to dilute its effects. To be sure. Yet if the "argument" of the
Report had not been hyped up by its ambiguous authenticity-is it
just possibly for real?-its serious implications wouldn’t have been
discussed either. At all.
This may be a brutal commentary on what it
sometimes takes to get conspicuous exposure in the supermarket of
political ideas, or it may only exemplify how an oblique approach
may work when directed engagement fails. At any rate, the who-done-it aspect of the book was eventually superseded by sober
critiques.
At this point it became clear that whatever surviving utility the
Report might have, if any, would be as a point-of-departure book-for
the questions it raises, not for the specious "answers" it purports
to offer. And it seemed to me that unless a minimum of uncertainty
about its origins could be sustained-i.e., so long as I didn’t
explicitly acknowledge writing it-its value as a model for this kind
of "policy analysis" might soon be dissipated.
So I continued to
play the no-comment game.
Until now. The charade is over, whatever is left of it. For the
satirical conceit of Iron Mountain, like so many others, has been
overtaken by the political phenomena it attacked. I’m referring to
those other documents-real ones, and verifiable-that have appeared
in print. The Pentagon papers were not written by someone like me.
Neither was the Defense Department’s Pax Americana study (how to
take over Latin America). Nor was the script of Mr. Kissinger’s
"Special Action Group," reported by Jack Anderson (how to help
Pakistan against India while pretending to be neutral).
So far as I know, no one has challenged the authenticity of these
examples of high-level strategic thinking. I believe a disinterested
reader would agree that sections of them are as outrageous, morally,
and intellectually, as any of the Iron Mountain inventions.
No, the
revelations lay rather in the style of the reasoning-the profound
cynicism, the contempt for public opinion. Some of the documents
read like parodies of Iron Mountain, rather than the reverse.
These new developments may have helped fuel the debates the book
continues to ignite, but they raised a new problem for me.
It was
that the balance of uncertainty about the book’s authorship could
"tilt," as Kissinger might say, the other way. (Was that Defense
order for 5,000-odd paperbacks, someone might ask, really for
routine distribution to overseas libraries-or was it for another,
more sinister, purpose?)
I’m glad my own Special Defense Contingency
Plan included planting two nonexistent references in the book’s
footnotes to help me prove, if I ever have to, that the work is
fictitious.
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