SECTION 7
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
THE NATURE OF WAR:
War is not, as is widely assumed, primarily an instrument
of policy utilized by nations to extend or defend their expressed political
values or their economic interests. On the contrary, it is itself the
principal basis of organization on which all modern societies are
constructed. The common proximate cause of war is the apparent interference
of one nation with the aspirations of another. But at the root of all
ostensible differences of national interest lie the dynamic requirements of
the war system itself for periodic armed conflict. Readiness for war
characterizes contemporary social systems more broadly than their economic
and political structures, which it subsumes.
Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of
transition to peace have not recognized the broad preeminence of war in the
definition of social systems. The same is true, with rare and only partial
exceptions, of model disarmament "scenarios." For this reason, the value of
this previous work is limited to the mechanical aspects of transition.
Certain features of these models may perhaps be applicable to a real
situation of conversion to peace; this till depend on their compatibility
with a substantive, rather than a procedural, peace plan. Such a plan can be
developed only from the premise of full under- standing of the nature of the
war system it proposes to abolish, which in turn presupposes detailed
comprehension of the functions the war system performs for society. It will
require the construction of a detailed and feasible system of substitutes
for those functions that are necessary to the stability and survival of
human societies.
THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR:
The visible, military function of war requires no
elucidation; it is not only obvious but also irrelevant to a transition to
the condition of peace, in which it will by definition be superfluous. It is
also subsidiary in social significance to the implied, nonmilitary functions
of war; those critical to transition can be summarized in five principal
groupings.
1. ECONOMIC: War has provided both ancient and modern
societies with a dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national
economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex
modern economy that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or
effectiveness.
2. POLITICAL: The permanent possibility of war is the
foundation for stable government; it supplies the basis for general
acceptance of political author- ity. It has enabled societies to maintain
necessary class distinctions, and it has ensured the subordination of the
citizen to the state, by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the
concept of nationhood. No modern political ruling group has successfully
controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing
credibility of an external threat of war.
3. SOCIOLOGICAL: War, through the medium of military
institutions, has uniquely served societies, through-out the course of known
history, as an indispensable controller of dangerous social dissidence and
destructive antisocial tendencies. As the most formidable of threats to life
itself, and as the only one susceptible to mitigation by social organization
alone, it has played another equally fundamental role: the war system has
provided the machinery through which the motivational forces governing human
behavior have been translated into binding social allegiance.
It has thus ensured the degree of social cohesion necessary to the viability
of nations. No other institution, or groups of institutions, in modern
societies, has successfully served these functions.
4. ECOLOGICAL: War has been the principal evolutionary
device for maintaining a satisfactory ecological balance between gross human
population and supplies available for its survival. It is unique to the
human species.
5. CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC: War-orientation has determined
the basic standards of value in the creative arts, and has provided the
fundamental motivational source of scientific and technological progress.
The concepts that the arts express values independent of their own forms and
that the successful pursuit of knowledge has intrinsic social value have
long been accepted in modern societies; the development of the arts and
sciences during this period has been corollary to the parallel development
of weaponry.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: CRITERIA:
The foregoing functions of war are essential to the
survival of the social systems we know today. With two possible exceptions
they are also essential to any kind of stable social organization that might
survive in a warless world. Discussion of the ways and means of transition
to such a world are meaningless unless a) substitute institutions can be
devised to fill these functions, or b) it can reasonably be hypothecated
that the loss or partial loss of any one function need not destroy the
viability of future societies.
Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet
varying criteria. In general, they must be technically feasible, politically
acceptable, and potentially credible to the members of the societies that
adopt them. Specifically, they must be characterized as follows:
1. ECONOMIC: An acceptable economic surrogate for the war
system will require the expenditure of resources for completely
nonproductive purposes at a level comparable to that of the military
expenditures otherwise demanded by the size and complexity of each society.
Such a substitute system of apparent "waste" must be of a nature that will
permit it to remain independent of the normal supply-demand economy; it must
be subject to arbitrary political control.
2. POLITICAL: A viable political substitute fir war must
posit a generalized external menace to each society of a nature and degree
sufficient to require the organization and acceptance of political
authority.
3. SOCIOLOGICAL: First, in the permanent absence of war,
new institutions must be developed that will effectively control the
socially destructive segments of societies. Second, for purposes of adapting
the physical and psychological dynamics of human behavior to the needs of
social organization, a credible substitute for war must generate an
omnipresent and readily understood fear of personal destruction. This fear
must be of a nature and degree suffi- cient ot ensure adherence to societal
values to the full extent that they are acknowledged to transcend the value
of individual human life.
4. ECOLOGICAL: A substitute for war in its function as the
uniquely human system of population control must ensure the survival, if not
necessarily the improvement, of the species, in terms of its relations to
environmental supply.
5. CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC: A surrogate for the function
of war as the deter- minant of cultural values must establish a basis of
socio-moral conflict of equally compelling force and scope.
A substitute motivational basis for the quest for scientific knowledge must
be similarly informed by a comparable sense of internal necessity.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: MODELS:
The following substitute institutions, among others, have
been proposed for consideration as replacements for the nonmilitary
functions of war. That they may not have been originally set forth for that
purpose does not preclude or invalidate their possible application here.
1. ECONOMIC: a) A comprehensive social-welfare program,
directed toward maximum improvement of general conditions of human life.
b) A giant open-end space research program, aimed at unreachable targets. c)
A permanent, ritua- lized, ultra-elaborate disarmament inspection system,
and variants of such a system.
2. POLITICAL: a) An omnipresent, virtually omnipotent
international police force.
b) An established and recognized extraterrestrial menace.
c) Massive global environmental pollution. d) Fictitious alternate enemies.
3. SOCIOLOGICAL: CONTROL FUNCTION: a) Programs generally
derived from the Peace Corps model. b) A modern, sophisticated form of
slavery. MOTIVATIONAL FUNCTION: a) Intensified environmental pollution. b)
New religions or other mythologies. c) Socially oriented blood games. d)
Combination forms.
4. ECOLOGICAL: A comprehensive program of applied
eugenics.
5. CULTURAL: No replacement institution offered.
SCIENTIFIC: The secondary requirements of the space research, social
welfare, and / or eugenics programs.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: EVALUATION:
The models listed above reflect only the beginning of the
quest for substitute institutions for the functions of war, rather than a
recapitulation of alternatives. It would be both premature and
inappropriate, therefore, to offer final judgments on their applicability to
a transition to peace and after. Furthermore, since the necessary but
complex project of correlating the com- patibility of proposed surrogates
for different functions could be treated only in exemplary fashion at this
time, we have elected to withhold such hypothetical correlations as were
tested as statistically inadequate.
Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory comments on these
proposed functional "solutions" will indicate the scope of the difficulties
involved in this area of peace planning.
ECONOMIC: The social-welfare model cannot be expected to
remain outside the normal economy after the conclusion of its predominantly
capital-investment phase; its value in this function can therefore be only
temporary. The space- research substitute appears to meet both major
criteria, and should be examined in greater detail, especially in respect to
its probable effects on other war functions. "Elaborate inspection" schemes,
although superficially attractive, are inconsistent with the basic premise
of a transition to peace.
The "unarmed forces" variant, logistically similar, is subject to the same
functional criti- cism as the general social-welfare model.
POLITICAL: Like the inspection-scheme surrogates,
proposals for plenipotentiary international police are inherently
incompatible with the ending of the war system. The "unarmed forces"
variant, amended to include unlimited powers of economic sanction, might
conceivably be expanded to constitute a credible external menace.
Development of an acceptable threat from "outer space," presumably in
conjunction with a space-research surrogate for economic control, appears
unpromising in terms of credibility. The environmental-pollution model does
not seem sufficiently responsive to immediate social control, except through
arbitrary acceleration of current pollution trends; this in turn raises
questions of political acceptability. New, less regressive, approaches to
the creation of fictitious global "enemies" invite further investigation.
SOCIOLOGICAL: CONTROL FUNCTION: Although the various
substitutes proposed for this function that are modeled roughly on the Peace
Corps appear grossly in- adequate in potential scope, they should not be
ruled out without further study. Slavery, in a technologically modern and
conceptually euphemized form, may prove a more efficient and flexible
institution in this area. MOTIVATIONAL FUNCTION: Although none of the
proposed substitutes for war as the guarantor of social allegiance can be
dismissed out of hand, each presents serious and special difficulties.
Intensified environmental threats may raise ecological dangers; mythmaking
dissociated from tar may no longer be politically feasible; purposeful blood
games and rituals can far more readily be devised than implemented. An
institution combining this function with the preceding one, based on, but
not necessarily imitative of, the precedent of organized ethnic repression,
warrants careful consideration.
ECOLOGICAL: The only apparent problem in the application
of an adequate eugenic substitute for war is that of timing; it cannot be
effectuated until the transition to peace has been completed, which involved
a serious temporary risk of ecological failure.
CULTURAL: No plausible substitute for this function of war
has yet been proposed. It may be, however, that a basic cultural
value-determinant is not necessary to the survival of a stable society.
SCIENTIFIC: The same might be said for the function of war as the prime
mover of the search for knowledge.
However, adoption of either a giant space-research program, a comprehensive
social-welfare program, or a master program of eugenic control would provide
motivation for limited technologies.
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS:
It is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or
combination of programs yet proposed for a transition to peace has remotely
approached meeting the comprehensive functional requirements of a world
without war. Although one projected system for filling the economic function
of war seems promising, similar optimism cannot be expressed in the equally
essential political and sociological areas. The other major nonmilitary
functions of war---ecological, cultural, scientific---raise very different
problems, but it is least possible that detailed programming of substitutes
in these areas is not prerequisite to transition. More important, it is not
enough to develop adequate but separate surrogates for the major war
functions; they must be fully compatible and in no degree self-canceling.
Until such a unified program is developed, at least
hypothetically, it is impossible for this or any other group to furnish
meaningful answers to the questions originally presented to us. When asked
how best to prepare for the advent of peace, we must first reply, as
strongly as we can, that the war system cannot responsibly be allowed to
disappear until 1) we know exactly what it is we plan to put in its place,
and 2) we are certain, beyond reasonable doubt, that these substitute
institutions will serve their purposes in terms of the survival and
stability of society. It will then be time enough to develop methods for
effectuating the transition; procedural programming must follow, not
precede, substantive solutions.
Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be arrived
at without a revolutionary revision of the modes of thought heretofore
considered appropriate to peace research. That we have examined the
fundamental questions involved from a dispassionate, value-free point of
view should not imply that we do not appreciate the intellectual and
emotional difficulties that must be overcome on all decision-making levels
before these questions are generally acknowledged by others for what they
are.
They reflect, on an intellectual level, tradition- al emotional resistance
to new (more lethal and thus more "shocking") forms of weaponry. The
understated comment of then-Senator Hubert Humphrey on the publication of ON
THERMONUCLEAR WAR is still very much to the point: "New Thoughts,
particularly those which appear to contradict current assumptions, are
always painful for the mind to contemplate."
Nor, simple because we have not discussed them, do we
minimize the massive reconciliation of conflicting interests with domestic
as well as international agreement on proceeding toward genuine peace
presupposes. This factor was excluded from the purview of our assignment,
but we would be remiss if we failed to take it into account. Although no
insuperable obstacle lies in the path of reaching such general agreements,
formidable short-term private-group and general-class interest in
maintaining the war system is well established and widely recognized. The
resistance to peace stemming from such interest is only tangential, in the
long run, to the basic functions of war, but it will not be easily overcome,
in this country or elsewhere.
Some observers, in fact, believe that it cannot be overcome at all in our
time, that the price of peace is, simply, too high. This bears on our
overall conclusions to the extent that timing in the transference to
substitute institutions may often be the critical factor in their political
feasibility.
It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be
possible.
It is far more questionable, by the objective standard of continued social
survival rather than that of emotional pacifism, that it would be desirable
even if it were demonstrably attainable.
The war system, for all its subjective repugnance to important sections of
"public opinion" has demonstrated its effectiveness since the beginning of
recorded history; it has provided the basis for the development of many
impressively durable civilizations, including that which is dominant today.
It has consistently provided unambiguous social priorities. It is, on the
whole, a known quantity. A viable system of peace, assuming that the great
and complex questions of substitute institutions raised in this Report are
both soluble and solved, would still constitute a venture into the unknown,
with the inevitable risks attendant on the unforeseen, however small and
however well hedged.
Government decision-makers tend to choose peace over war
whenever a real option exists, because it usually appears to be the "safer"
choice.
Under most immediate circumstances they are likely to be right. But in terms
of long-range social stability, the opposite is true.
At our present state of knowledge and reasonable inference, it is the war
system that must be identified with stability, the peace system that must be
identified with social speculation, however justifiable the speculation may
appear, in terms of subjective moral or emotional values. A nuclear
physicist once remarked, in respect to a possible disarmament agreement: "If
we could change the world into a world in which no weapons could be made,
that would be stabilizing. But agreements we can expect with the Soviets
would be destabilizing." The qualification and the bias are equally
irrelevant; any condition of genuine total peace, however achieved, would be
destabilizing until proved otherwise.
If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocably for
the retention or for the dissolution of the war system, common prudence
would dictate the former course.
But it is not yet necessary, late as the hour appears. And more factors must
eventually enter the war-peace equation than even the most determined search
for alternative institutions for the functions of war can be expected to
reveal. One group of such factors has been given only passing mention in
this Report; it centers around the possible obsolescence of the war system
itself. We have noted, for instance, the limitations of the war system in
filling its ecological function and the declining importance of this aspect
of war. It by no means stretches the imagination to visualize comparable
developments which may compromise the efficacy of war as, for example, an
economic controller or as an organizer of social allegiance.
This kind of possibility, however remote, serves as a reminder that all
calculations of contingency not only involve the weighing of one group of
risks against another, but require a respectful allowance for error on both
sides of the scale.
More expedient reason for pursuing the investigation of
alternate ways and means to serve the current functions of war is narrowly
political. It is possible that one or more major sovereign nations may
arrive, through ambiguous leadership, at a position in which a ruling
administrative class may lose control of basic public opinion or of its
ability to rationalize a desired war. It is not hard to imagine, in such
circumstances, a situation in which such governments may feel forced to
initiate serious full-scale disarmament proceedings (perhaps provoked by
"accidental" nuclear explosions), and that such negotiations may lead to the
actual disestablishment of military institutions. As our Report has made
clear, this could be catastrophic. It seems evident that, in the event an
important part of the world is suddenly plunged without sufficient warning
into an inadvertent peace, even partial and inadequate preparation for the
possibility may be better than none.
The difference could even be critical. The models considered in the
preceding chapter, both those that seem promising and those that do not,
have one positive feature in common--an inherent flexibility of phasing. And
despite our strictures against knowingly proceeding into peace-transition
procedures without thorough substantive preparation, our government must
nevertheless be ready to move in this direction with whatever limited
resources of planning are on hand at the time---if circum- stances so
require.
An arbitrary all-or-nothing approach is no more realistic in the development
of contingency peace programming than it is anywhere else.
But the principal cause for concern over the continuing
effectiveness of the war system, and the more important reason for hedging
with peace planning, lies in the backwardness of current war-system
programming. Its controls have not kept pace with the technological advances
it has made possible.
Despite its unarguable success to date, even in this era of unprecedented
potential in mass destruction, it continues to operate largely on a
laissez-faire basis. To the best of our knowledge, no serious quantified
studies have even been conducted to determine, for example:
---optimum levels of armament production, for purposes of
economic control, at any given relationship between civilian production and
consumption patterns:
---correlation factors between draft recruitment policies
and mensurable social dissidence;
---minimum levels of population destruction necessary to
maintain war-threat credibility under varying political conditions;
---optimum cyclical frequency of "shooting" wars under
varying circumstances of historical relationship.
These and other war-function factors are fully susceptible
to analysis by today's computer-based systems, but they have not been so
treated; modern analytical techniques have up to now been relegated to such
aspects of the ostensible functions of war as procurement, personnel
deployment, weapons analysis, and the like.
We do not disparage these types of application, but only deplore their lack
of utilization to greater capacity in attacking problems of broader scope.
Our concern for efficiency in this context is not aesthetic, economic, or
humanistic. It stems from the axiom that no system can long survive at
either input or output levels that consistently or substantially deviate
from an optimum range.
As their data grow increasingly sophisticated, the war system and its
functions are increasingly endangered by such deviations.
Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be
necessary for our government to plan in depth for two general contingencies.
The first, and lesser, is the possibility of a viable general peace; the
second is the successful continuation of the war system. In our view,
careful preparation for the possibility of peace should be extended, not
because we take the position that the end of war would necessarily be
desirable, if it is in fact possible, but because it may be thrust upon us
in some form whether we are ready for it or not. Planning for rationalizing
and quantifying the war system, on the other hand, to ensure the
effectiveness of its major stabilizing functions, is not only more promising
in respect to anticipated results, but is essential; we can no longer take
for granted that it will continue to serve our purposes well merely because
it always has. The objective of government policy in regard to war and
peace, in this period of uncertainty, must be to preserve maximum options.
The recommendations which follow are directed to this end.
SECTION 8
RECOMMENDATIONS
(1) We propose the establishment, under executive order of
the President, of a permanent WAR/PEACE Research Agency, empowered and
mandated to execute the programs described in (2) and (3) below. This agency
(a) will be provided with non-accountable funds sufficient to implement its
responsibilities and decisions at its own discretion, and (b) will have
authority to preempt and utilize, without restriction, any and all
facilities of the executive branch of the government in pursuit of its
objectives. It will be organized along the lines of the National Security
Council, except that none of its governing, executive, or operating
personnel will hold other public office or governmental responsibility. Its
directorate will be drawn from the broadest practicable spectrum of
scientific disciplines, humanistic studies, applied creative arts, operating
technologies, and otherwise unclassified professional occupations. It will
be responsible solely to the President, or to other officers of government
temporarily deputized by him. Its operations will be governed entirely by
its own rules of procedure.
Its authority will expressly include the unlimited right to withhold
information on its activities and its decisions, from anyone ex- cept the
President, whenever it deems such secrecy to be in the public inter- est.
(2) The first of the War/Peace Research Agency's two
principal responsibilities will be to determine all that can be known,
including what can reasonably be inferred in terms of relevant statistical
probabilities, that may bear on an eventual transition to a general
condition of peace.
The findings in this Report may be considered to constitute the beginning of
this study and to indicate its orientation; detailed records of the
investigations and findings of the Special Study Group on which this Report
is based, will be furnished the agency, along with whatever clarifying data
the agency deems necessary. This aspect of the agency's work will
hereinafter be referred to as "Peace Research."
The Agency's Peace Research activities will necessarily
include, but not be limited to, the following:
(a) The creative development of possible substitute
institutions for the principal nonmilitary functions of war.
(b) The careful matching of such institutions against the
criteria summarized in this Report, as refined, revised, and extended by the
agency.
© The testing and evaluation of substitute institutions,
for acceptability, feasibility, and credibility, against hypothecated
transitional and postwar conditions; the testing and evaluation of the
effects of the anticipated atrophy of certain unsubstantiated functions.
(d) The development and testing of the correlativity of
multiple substitute institutions, with the eventual objective of
establishing a comprehensive pro- gram of compatible war substitutes
suitable for a planned transition to peace, if and when this is found to be
possible and subsequently judged desirable by appropriate political
authorities.
(e) The preparation of a wide-ranging schedule of partial,
uncorrelated, crash programs of adjustment suitable for reducing the dangers
of unplanned transition to peace effected by force majeure.
Peace Research methods will include but not be limited to,
the following:
(a) The comprehensive interdisciplinary application of
historical, scientific, technological, and cultural data.
(b) The full utilization of modern methods of mathematical
modeling, analogical analysis, and other, more sophisticated, quantitative
techniques in process of development that are compatible with computer
programming.
© The heuristic "peace games" procedures developed during
the course of its assignment by the Special Study Group, and further
extensions of this basic approach to the testing of institutional functions.
(3) The WAR/PEACE Research Agency's other principal
responsibility will be "War Research." Its fundamental objective will be to
ensure the continuing viability of the war system to fulfill its essential
nonmilitary functions for as long as the war system is judged necessary to
or desirable for the survival of society. To achieve this end, the War
Research groups within the agency will engage in the following activities:
(a) Quantification of existing application of the
non-military functions of war. Specific determinations will include, but not
be limited to: 1) the gross amount and the net proportion of nonproductive
military expenditures since World War II assignable to the need for war as
an economic stabilizer; 2) the amount and proportion of military
expenditures and destruction of life, prop- erty, and natural resources
during this period assignable to the need for war as an instrument for
political control; 3) similar figures, to the extent that they can be
separately arrived at, assignable to the need for war to maintain social
cohesiveness; 4) levels of recruitment and expenditures on the draft and
other forms of personnel deployment attributable to the need for military
institutions to control social disaffection; 5) the statistical relationship
of war casualties to world food supplies; 6) the correlation of military
actions and expenditures with cultural activities and scientific advances
(including necessarily the development of measurable standards in these
areas).
(b) Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the
execution of the non- military functions of war. These will include, but not
be limited to: 1) calculation of minimum and optimum ranges of military
expenditure required, under varying hypothetical conditions, to fulfill
these several functions, separately and collectively; 2) determination of
minimum and optimum levels of destruction of LIFE, PROPERTY, and NATURAL
RESOURCES prerequisite to the credibility of external threat essential to
the political and motivational functions; 3) deve- lopment of a negotiable
formula governing the relationship between military recruitment and training
policies and the exigencies of social control.
© Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailing
economic, political, sociological, and ecological limitations. The ultimate
object of this phase of War Research is to rationalize the heretofore
informal operations of the war system. It should provide practical working
procedures through which responsible governmental authority may resolve the
following war-function problems, among others, under any given
circumstances: 1) how to determine the optimum quantity, nature, and timing
of military expenditures to ensure a desired degree of economic control; 2)
how to organize the recruitment, deployment, and ostensible use of military
personnel to ensure a desired degree of acceptance of authorized social
values; 3) how to compute on a short-term basis, the nature and extent of
the LOSS OF LIFE and other resources which SHOULD BE SUFFERED and/or
INFLICTED DURING any single outbreako of hostilities to achieve a des- ired
degree of internal political authority and social allegiance; 4) how to
project, over extended periods, the nature and quality of overt warfare
which must be planned and budgeted to achieve a desired degree of contextual
stability for the same purpose; factors to be determined must include
frequency of occurrence, length of phase, INTENSITY OF PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION,
extensiveness of geographical involvement, and OPTIMUM MEAN LOSS OF LIFE; 5)
how to extrapolate accurately from the foregoing, for ecological purposes,
the continuing effect of the war system, over such extended cycles, on
population pressures, and to adjust the planning of casualty rates
accordingly.
War Research procedures will necessarily include, but not
be limited to, the following:
(a) The collation of economic, military, and other
relevant date into uniform terms, permitting the reversible translation of
heretofore discrete categories of information.
(b) The development and application of appropriate forms
of cost-effective- ness analysis suitable for adapting such new constructs
to computer terminology, programming, and projection.
© Extension of the "war games" methods of systems testing
to apply, as a quasi-adversary proceeding, to the nonmilitary functions of
war.
(4) Since Both Programs of the WAR/PEACE RESEARCH Agency
will share the same purpose---to maintain governmental freedom of choice in
respect to war and peace until the direction of social survival is no longer
in doubt -- it is of the essence of this proposal that the agency be
constituted without limitation of time.
Its examination of existing and proposed institutions will be self-
liquidating when its own function shall have been superseded by the
historical developments it will have, at least in part, initiated.
------------------------
NOTES.........
SECTION 1
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 News- paper Editors, in 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).
SECTION 2
1. 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 & Row, 1963).
2. McNamara, in ASNE Montreal address cited.
3. Report of the Committee on the Economic Impact of
Defense and Disarmament (Washington: USGPO, July 1965).
4. Sumner M. Rosen, "Disarmament and the Economy,"
War/Peace Report (March 1966).
SECTION 3
1. Vide William D. Grampp, "False Fears of Disarmament,"
Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb.1964) for a concise example of this
reasoning.
2. Seymour Melman, "The Cost of Inspection for
Disarmament," in Benoit and Boulding, op. cit.
SECTION 5
1. Arthur I. Waskow, Toward the Unarmed Forces of the
United States (Wash- ington: 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 strate- gists and Congressman in 1965; it was later given
limited distribution among other persons engaged in related projects.)
2. David T. Bazelon, "The Politics of the Paper Economy,"
Commentary (Nov- ember 1962), p.409.
3. The Economic Impact of Disarmament (Washington: USGPO,
January 1962), p.409.
4. David T. Bazelon, "The Scarcity Makers," Commentary
(October 1962), p. 298.
5. Frank Pace, Jr., in an address before the American
Banker's Association, September 1957.
6. A random example, taken in this case from a story by
David Deitch in the New York Herald Tribune (9 February 1966).
7. Vide L. Gumplowicz, in Geschichte der Staatstheorien
(Innsbruck: Wagner, 1905) and earlier writings.
8. K.Fischer, Das Militar (Zurich: Steinmetz Verlag,
1932), pp.42-43.
9. 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.
10. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J.,
Princeton University Press, 1960), p.42. 11. John D. Williams, "The Nonsense
about Safe Driving," Fortune (September 1958).
12. Vide most recently K.Lorenz, in Das Sogenannte Bose:
zur Naturgeschichte der Agression (Vienna: G. Borotha-Schoeler Verlag,
1964).
13. Beginning with Herbert Spencer and his contemporaries,
but largely ignor- ed for nearly a century.
14. 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."
15. G.Bouthol, in La Guerre (Paris: Presses
universitairies 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.
16. 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.
SECTION 6
1. This round figure is the median taken from our
comuptations, which cover varying contingencies, but it is sufficient for
the purpose of general discussion.
2. 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.
3. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric. We have not
used any published program as a model; similarities are unavoidably
coincidental rather than tendentious.
4. 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.
5. Waskow, op.cit.
6. By several current theorists, most extensively and
effectively by Robert R. Harris in "The Real Enemy," an unpublished doctoral
dissertation made avail- able to this study.
7. In ASNE, Montreal address cited.
8. The Tenth Victim.
9. For an examination of some of its social implications,
see Seymour Ruben- feld, Family of Outcasts: A New Theory of Delinquency
(New York: Free Press, 1965).
10. 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
Africe, etc.
11. 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.
12. Expressed in the writings of H. Marshall McLuban, in
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) and
elsewhere.
13. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by
plotting a three-dimensional distribution of three arbitratily 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 subconcep- tual 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.)
SECTION 7
1. 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.
2. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (December
1964).
3. 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).
SECTION 8
1. 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."
2. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application
of techniques up to now limited 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 re- marked on and
criticized elsewhere.
3. 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 in 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 non-military
functions of war.
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