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Herman Kahn

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Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He analyzed the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommended ways to improve survivability during the Cold War. Kahn posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War, for which he was one of the historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove.<ref name=Boyer1996>Paul Boyer, 'Dr. Strangelove' in Mark C. Carnes (ed.), Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies, New York, 1996.</ref> In his commentary for Fail Safe, director Sidney Lumet remarked that the Professor Groeteschele character is also based on Herman Kahn.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> Kahn's theories contributed to the development of the nuclear strategy of the United States.

Early life and educationEdit

Kahn was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, as one of three sons to Yetta (née Koslowsky) and Abraham Kahn, a tailor.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> His parents were Jewish immigrants from Poland.<ref name=":1" /> He was raised in the Bronx, then in Los Angeles following his parents' divorce in 1932.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Raised Jewish, he later identified as an atheist.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Kahn graduated from Fairfax High School in 1940 and enlisted in the United States Army in May 1943, serving during the Burma campaign in World War II in a non-combat capacity as a telephone lineman.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He received a Bachelor of Science at UCLA and briefly attended Caltech to pursue a doctorate before dropping out with a Master of Science due to financial constraints.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He joined the RAND Corporation as a mathematician after being recruited by fellow physicist Samuel Cohen.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Cold War theoriesEdit

Kahn's major contributions were the several strategies he developed during the Cold War to contemplate "the unthinkable"Template:Spaced ndashnamely, nuclear warfareTemplate:Spaced ndashby using applications of game theory. Kahn is often cited (with Pierre Wack) as a father of scenario planning.<ref>Schwartz, Peter, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1991, p. 7</ref> Kahn argued for deterrence and believed that if the Soviet Union believed that the United States had a second strike capability then it would offer greater deterrence, which he wrote in his paper titled "The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Along most of the other intellectuals who served at the Rand Corporation, Kahn was in the words of the American Alex Abella "a showman" whose charisma, charm, sense of humor and colorful speaking style made his lectures well attended.Template:Sfn Kahn's style was to confront head-on the costs of a nuclear war as he declared in one of his lectures: "If 180 million dead is too high a price of punishing the Soviets for their aggression, what price would we be willing to pay?"Template:Sfn However, Kahn's lectures sometimes had the opposite effect from that intended as he spoke frankly about how a nuclear war would kill hundreds of millions of people.Template:Sfn

The bases of his work were systems theory and game theory as applied to economics and military strategy. Kahn argued that for deterrence to succeed, the Soviet Union had to be convinced that the United States had second-strike capability in order to leave the Politburo in no doubt that even a perfectly coordinated massive attack would guarantee a measure of retaliation that would leave them devastated as well:

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In 1962, Kahn published a 16-step escalation ladder. By 1965 he had developed this into a 44-step ladder.<ref>Concepts and Models of Escalation, The Rand Corporation 1984</ref>

  1. Ostensible Crisis
  2. Political, Economic and Diplomatic Gestures
  3. Solemn and Formal Declarations
  4. Hardening of Positions – Confrontation of Wills
  5. Show of Force
  6. Significant Mobilization
  7. "Legal" Harassment – Retortions
  8. Harassing Acts of Violence
  9. Dramatic Military Confrontations
  10. Provocative Breaking off of Diplomatic Relations
  11. Super-Ready Status
  12. Large Conventional War (or Actions)
  13. Large Compound Escalation
  14. Declaration of Limited Conventional War
  15. Barely Nuclear War
  16. Nuclear "Ultimatums"
  17. Limited Evacuations (20%)
  18. Spectacular Show or Demonstration of Force
  19. "Justifiable" Counterforce Attack
  20. "Peaceful" World-Wide Embargo or Blockade
  21. Local Nuclear War – Exemplary
  22. Declaration of Limited Nuclear War
  23. Local Nuclear War – Military
  24. Unusual, Provocative and Significant Countermeasures
  25. Evacuation (70%)
  26. Demonstration Attack on Zone of Interior
  27. Exemplary Attack on Military
  28. Exemplary Attacks Against Property
  29. Exemplary Attacks on Population
  30. Complete Evacuation (95%)
  31. Reciprocal Reprisals
  32. Formal Declaration of "General" War
  33. Slow-Motion Counter-"Property" War
  34. Slow-Motion Counterforce War
  35. Constrained Force-Reduction Salvo
  36. Constrained Disarming Attack
  37. Counterforce-with-Avoidance Attack
  38. Unmodified Counterforce Attack
  39. Slow-Motion Countercity war
  40. Countervalue Salvo
  41. Augmented Disarming Attack
  42. Civilian Devastation Attack
  43. Controlled General War
  44. Spasm/Insensate War

Hudson InstituteEdit

In 1961, Kahn, Max Singer and Oscar Ruebhausen founded the Hudson Institute,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> a think tank initially located in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where Kahn was living at the time. He recruited sociologist Daniel Bell, political philosopher Raymond Aron and novelist Ralph Ellison (author of the 1952 classic Invisible Man).

The Year 2000Edit

In 1967, Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener published The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years, which included contributions from staff members of the Hudson Institute and an introduction by Daniel Bell. Table XVIII in the document<ref>"The Year 2000", Herman Kahn, Anthony J. Wiener, Macmillan, 1961, pp. 51–55.</ref> contains a list called "One Hundred Technical Innovations Very Likely in the Last Third of the Twentieth Century". The first ten predictions were:

  1. Multiple applications of lasers
  2. Extreme high-strength structural materials
  3. New or improved superperformance fabrics
  4. New or improved materials for equipment and appliances
  5. New airborne vehicles (ground-effect vehicles, giant or supersonic jets, VTOL, STOL)
  6. Extensive commercial applications of shaped-charge explosives
  7. More reliable and longer-range weather forecasting
  8. Extensive and/or intensive expansion of tropical agriculture and forestry
  9. New sources of power for fixed installations
  10. New sources of power for ground transportation

Later yearsEdit

In Kahn's view, capitalism and technology held nearly boundless potential for progress, while the colonization of space lay in the near, not the distant, future.<ref>"The Next 200 Years", Herman Kahn, Morrow, 1976.</ref> Kahn's 1976 book The Next 200 Years, written with William Brown and Leon Martel, presented an optimistic scenario of economic conditions in the year 2176. He also wrote a number of books extrapolating the future of the American, Japanese and Australian economies and several works on systems theory, including the well-received 1957 monograph Techniques of System Analysis.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1968, Kahn published a book Can We Win In Vietnam? that gave an affirmative answer to the question posed in the title.Template:Sfn

Kahn started to promote ideas that many regarded as outlandish such as a "flying think-tank" over the Portuguese colony of Angola as he deemed airborne brain-storming in order to develop ideas for making Portuguese colonialism more popular in Angola at a time when the Portuguese were having much difficulty in hanging onto Angola in a face of a guerilla war for independence.Template:Sfn In September 1969, Kahn took part in his "flying think-tank" as he and a group of American scholars visited Angola to gather ideas to help the Portuguese win the war.Template:Sfn Kahn visited Angola as a guest of the Portuguese government and afterwards spoke at a conference in Estoril about finding the best ways for Portugal to win the war.Template:Sfn In Angola, the Portuguese fought from 1961 to 1975 three rival guerrilla movements, namely the UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola-National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola-National Front for the Liberation of Angola), and the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola-People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola), which somewhat limited the effectiveness of the guerrillas. At the end of his visit to Angola, Kahn predicated the Portuguese would win the war as he argued that the Angolans would ultimately see that was in their own best interest to remain a colony rather be ruled by one of the "small cliques" that dominated the three guerrilla movements.Template:Sfn Kahn suggested that the Portuguese state should purchase computers to create a database containing the names, addresses and political views of every single Angolan as a way to eliminate support for the guerrillas.Template:Sfn In a paper he wrote after his visit, Kahn stated that his plans for a computer with a national identity register had turned down by the United States government as "too authoritarian", but it was quite practical for the dictatorial Estado Novo regime that ruled Portugal.Template:Sfn Kahn argued that his suggestion for a computerized identity register was "the best police instrument" available in Angola as it created the possibility of arresting all the supporters of FNLA, UNITA and the MPLA.Template:Sfn Kahn also suggested that the best way of persuading the Angolans to abandon their dreams of independence was economic development, which he divided into three categories, which were "business as usual", "cut and run" and "go for broke".Template:Sfn Kahn defined "business as usual" as continuing with the the present economic course; "cut and run" as development of industries that unskilled African labor would be unable to operate; and "go for broke" as the rapid development of large-scale industries.Template:Sfn Kahn favored the last option, arguing that Portuguese should start building a series of dams along the Congo river to provide hydroelectricity for Angola, which he stated would be "the first bridge between an African state and an European province" (i.e Angola).Template:Sfn Kahn also recommended that the Portuguese concentrate more on developing the oil industry in Angola along with greater cattle ranching as way to provide more better jobs for the Angolans.Template:Sfn Kahn's suggestions were not acted upon as his proposals were beyond the financial capacity of the Portuguese state.Template:Sfn Despite Kahn's efforts, the Portuguese granted independence to all their African colonies in 1975. The Estado Novo regime was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 as the Portuguese people had grown tired of the seeming endless wars to hang to their colonies of Angola, Portuguese Guinea (modern Guinea-Bissau) and Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique), and the new government promptly promised to end the wars by granting independence, which was done the next year.

Kahn also tried starting in 1968 to interest the Brazilian military government into a scheme to dam and develop the entire Amazon river basin into the "Great Lakes of South America", which would provided waterways to link up all of South America.Template:Sfn Kahn argued turning the Amazon into a series of huge artificial lakes would stimulate trade in South America by lowering transportation costs as the envisioned system of artificial lakes would make it possible to ship goods via ships.Template:Sfn To create his Great Lakes, Kahn called for building a series of dams along the Amazon river, which would also provide Brazil with cheap hydroelectricity.Template:Sfn In particular, Kahn argued that his "Great Lakes" project would link up the more industrial and developed cites in South America, namely Buenos Aires in Argentina, São Paulo in Brazil, and Montevideo in Uruguay with the resource-rich, but poor nations of Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.Template:Sfn He also predicated that the Great Lakes project would spur logging, oil development, and agriculture in all of the nearby areas.Template:Sfn Finally, he argued developed the previously inaccessible areas of Amazonia would lead to the development of new cities and towns as he predicated that the vast jungles of Amazonia would be turned into equally vast urban areas.Template:Sfn In a 1968 paper, Kahn called his Great Lakes plan "the catalyzing agent of the economic and social development of South America".Template:Sfn Kahn also tried to promote a scheme for the government of Columbia to built a system of canals, artificial lakes, and dredging up rivers as part of his "Great Lakes of South America" project.Template:Sfn Kahn's plans met with strong opposition from the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs-known in Brazil as the Itamarty-who saw his Great Lakes plans as a scheme for American neo-colonial domination of Amazonia.Template:Sfn In 1968, one Itamarty diplomat in opposition to Kahn's plans quoted the remark by Otto von Bismarck that "natural resources in the hands of nations that do not want or cannot exploit them, cease to constitute assets and become threats to those that possess them".Template:Sfn Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, which limited the scope for protest, but despite these limitations, Kahn's proposed plans for Amazonia led to the founding of the environmentalist group CNNDA (Companha Nacional para Defesa e o Desenvolvimento de Amazônia-National Campaign for the Defense and Development of the Amazon), one of the first eniromentalist groups in Brazil.Template:Sfn The CNNDA brought together environmentalists, scientists, and crucially a number of retired officers who had served in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force that fought in Italy in World War Two, which gave the CNNDA a degree of protection.Template:Sfn The president of the CNNDA was the conservative historian Arthur Cesar Ferreira Reis, who served as the governor of the Amazonas state from 1964 to 1967.Template:Sfn In 1969, a book by Reis, A Amazônia Brasileira e a Cobiça Internacional (The Brazilan Amazon and International Greed), was published.Template:Sfn In A Amazônia Brasileira e a Cobiça Internacional, Reis attacked Kahn's plans for Amazonia as a disguised way to take away Amazonia from Brazil.Template:Sfn

In 1970, Kahn published the book The Emerging Japanese Superstate in which he claimed that Japan would play a large role in the world equal to the Soviet Union and the United States.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref> In the book, he claimed that Japan would pursue obtaining nuclear weapons and that it would pass the United States in per-capita income by 1990, and likely equal it in gross national product by 2000.<ref name=":0" /> During the mid-1970s, when South Korea's GDP per capita was one of the lowest in the world, Kahn predicted that the country would become one of the top 10 most powerful countries in the world by the year 2000.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> When the Arab "oil shock" of 1973-1974 threw the global economy into the steepest recession since the Great Depression, Kahn argued that North America needed "energy independence" from the turbulent Middle East and in November 1973 presented a scheme to the Canadian cabinet for developing the Athabasca oil sands.Template:Sfn Kahn's plan called for Canada to turn over the Athabasca oil sands to a consortium of American, European and Japanese companies who be allowed to develop and exploit oil sands on a "wartime" basis with the workforce to consist of South Korean temporary workers.Template:Sfn Kahn that it would cost $20 billion US to develop the Athabasca oil sands to the point of providing enough oil to give North America "energy independence".Template:Sfn Kahn greatly impressed Jean-Pierre Goyer, the minister of supply in Pierre Trudeau's government, who forcefully advocated acceptance of his scheme, but the rest of the cabinet was indifferent to Kahn's plans.Template:Sfn

In his last year, 1983, Kahn wrote approvingly of Ronald Reagan's political agenda in The Coming Boom: Economic, Political, and Social and bluntly derided Jonathan Schell's claims about the long-term effects of nuclear war. On July 7 that year, he died of a stroke, aged 61.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

His wife was Rosalie "Jane" Kahn. He and Jane had two children, David and Debbie.

Cultural influenceEdit

Along with John von Neumann, Edward Teller and Wernher von Braun, Kahn was an inspiration for the character "Dr. Strangelove" in the eponymous film by Stanley Kubrick released in 1964.<ref name=Boyer1996 />Template:Failed verification<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> After Kubrick read Kahn's book On Thermonuclear War, he began a correspondence with him which led to face-to-face discussions between Kubrick and Kahn.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the film, Dr. Strangelove refers to a report on the Doomsday Machine by the "BLAND Corporation", a parody of the RAND Corporation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Kahn gave Kubrick the idea for the "Doomsday Machine", a device which would immediately cause the destruction of the entire planet in the event of a nuclear attack. Both the name and the concept of the weapon are drawn from the text of On Thermonuclear War.<ref name="newyorker.com">"Fat Man – Herman Kahn and the Nuclear Age", Louis Menand, The New Yorker, June 27, 2005</ref> Louis Menand observes, "In Kahn's book, the Doomsday Machine is an example of the sort of deterrent that appeals to the military mind but that is dangerously destabilizing. Since nations are not suicidal, its only use is to threaten."<ref name="newyorker.com"/>

Kahn also inspired the character of Professor Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) in the 1964 film Fail Safe.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

PublicationsEdit

Outside physics and statistics, works written by Kahn include:

  • 1960. On Thermonuclear War. Princeton University Press. Template:ISBN
  • 1962. Thinking about the Unthinkable. Horizon Press.
  • 1965. On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. Praeger. Template:ISBN
  • 1967. The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years. MacMillan. Template:ISBN. With Anthony Wiener.
  • 1968. Can We Win in Viet Nam? Praeger. Kahn with four other authors: Gastil, Raymond D.; Pfaff, William; Stillman, Edmund; Armbruster, Frank E.
  • 1970. The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response. Prentice Hall. Template:ISBN
  • 1971. The Japanese Challenge: The Success and Failure of Economic Success. Morrow; Andre Deutsch. Template:ISBN
  • 1972. Things to Come: Thinking about the Seventies and Eighties. MacMillan. Template:ISBN. With B. Bruce-Briggs.
  • 1973. Herman Kahnsciousness: the Megaton Ideas of the One-Man Think Tank. New American Library. Selected and edited by Jerome Agel.
  • 1974. The Future of the Corporation. Mason & Lipscomb. Template:ISBN
  • 1976. The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World. Morrow. Template:ISBN
  • 1979. World Economic Development: 1979 and Beyond. William Morrow; Croom Helm. Template:ISBN. With Hollender, Jeffrey, and Hollender, John A.
  • 1981. Will She Be Right? The Future of Australia. University of Queensland Press. Template:ISBN. With Thomas Pepper.
  • 1983. The Coming Boom: Economic, Political, and Social. Simon & Schuster; Hutchinson. Template:ISBN
  • 1984. Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s. New York: Simon and Schuster. Template:ISBN
  • The Nature and Feasibility of War, Deterrence, and Arms Control (Central nuclear war monograph series), (Hudson Institute)
  • A Slightly Optimistic World Context for 1975–2000 (Hudson Institute)
  • Social Limits to Growth: "Creeping Stagnation" vs. "Natural and Inevitable" (HPS paper)
  • A New Kind of Class Struggle in the United States? (Corporate Environment Program. Research memorandum)

Works published by the RAND Corporation involving Kahn:

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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