Mr. KAHN. This is correct.

I am glad you mentioned it because I did want to emphasize that point. The background of myself and the other witnesses is being given only for identification purposes.

In particular, my testimony has not been reviewed by any organization. The only outside restraint is that it be an unclassified talk. I am limited to that extent. I will not discuss classified data, but I will be giving you what benefit I have had from all the work that I have seen over the last 10 years, that is within the unclassified area.

PROS AND CONS OF CIVIL DEFENSE

I would like to discuss today the many different reasons people have for objecting to civil defense and also some of the reasons people have for being in favor.

I think it is worth doing this in order both to expose and to clarify the controversy.

In civil defense one is entering a field which is, in some sense, new; in which there is no one with adequate experience; nobody has fought and survived a thermonuclear war. One must therefore substitute for experience. We must think about the problem, using both paper and pencil. In most paper studies it is somehow crucially important, at least I found it so in the studies I have done for the military services, to be clear on why and what.

1

I would like to speak from here at this chart, if this will be all right. (See fig. K-1.)

Mr. HOLIFIELD. All right.

FIGURE K-1.-SOME COMMON REACTIONS TO CIVIL DEFENSE

Completely ineffective.

2 Too effective will touch off a United States-Soviet Union arms race or even a United States or Soviet Union strike.

I have on this chart the three major reasons why people object to civil defense and one reason for being for it. Each of these first three positions is argued with great intensity and force, and often rather persuasively by their respective adherents.

EFFECTIVENESS OF CIVIL DEFENSE

The first position is that civil defense is completely ineffective, that it is not worth buying, that money, energy, or thought spent on such preparations is wasted.

This position is held by many different kinds of people.

For example, some relatively conservative people (misusing the word "conservative" a little bit) argue against civil defense because it is defensive. They argue that one cannot win a war by digging holes in the ground, that civil defense is like the maginot line, that history has shown that defense is a mistake.

I believe that much of this antagonism to defense is a result of the kind of training we have in our Western military academies. It turns out that in this training we emphasize the so-called offensive spirit. We try to train people to be daring, to be courageous, to be al

most reckless. We do this because we know that in an actual operation in the field, where a man may have to send his comrades, himself, or his friends to their death, it is likely to be disastrous to his morale if he worries too much about what the enemy can do to him. There are many historical examples of military disasters being caused by commanders being too cautious or afraid and, by and large, we emphasize these kinds of situations.

I have found from our own studies, however, that it simply is misleading to argue by the solgan "offense versus defense," that whether one wants to be on the offensive or the defensive side cannot be determined solely by such slogans or even by the question of the morale of the participants.

It is probably correct that as far as an individual is concerned, he feels better when he is on the offensive. He feels as if he is doing something to the other side.

When he is on the defensive, he may not feel as good. The other side is doing something to him. For this very simple reason it is, from the morale point of view, much better to be on the offense than on the defense. The offense also usually has the advantages of the initiative. However, these advantages of the offense may not dominate; they may not determine whether you win or lose the war; whether you survive or die. By and large, in our studies we do not worry about the charge of being defensive. The charge is simply irrelevant, if we have done our study properly.

There is a much more serious reason why some people worry about civil defense being ineffective. This is that it will not do the thing it is supposed to do, that civil defense will not actually defend or otherwise perform as promised.

DEFENSE OF WAR MOBILIZATION BASE

Some of the early work in this field tried to evaluate civil defense by its ability to contribute to the postattack war mobilization base. That is, if one goes back to World War II, he finds this the classical reason for civil defense. Civilians represented a second line of defense. They supplied men, materials, and morale to the fighting forces. It is historically true that the United States found its ability to mobilize men and materials after the war had started crucial to its success in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Postattack mobilization has also been the main purpose of civil defense in Euopean countries.

However, today almost all strategists believe there are some exceptions, so I should emphasize that I said almost all-that it is not possible to defend a war mobilization base against a determined attack by an enemy who is trying to prevent war mobilization, even by heroic efforts in the civil defense area.

I am not saying that one could not support a very small military effort after a thermonuclear war has started. I am saying that the size of the military effort that could be supported by a postattack mobilization is so small compared to the effort that has been carried out by the forces that were in being before the war started, that in most situations it is not very inaccurate to ignore the military resources that can be mobilized postattack.

If you believe this remark, then the classical reason for civil defense-to aid the war effort directly has disappeared. This opinion is certainly documented, correctly or incorrectly, in the studies I have done. When I ask myself, for example, what is it about the Soviets that frightens me, I do not ask about their war production capabilities after the war has started. When we study campaigns, or at least when I study campaigns, against the Soviets, I myself do not think of their cities, as being legitimate military targets.

I feel that, if we bomb their cities, then, with a few possible exceptions, we will be bombing them because we are trying to punish the Soviets; we will be bombing them for malevolent or reprisal reasons and not because they are military targets. It is also my belief that to some extent the Soviet planners either now think the same way or soon will think this way. However, the Soviets, I believe, would put greater stress on, say, lengthy wars of attrition than we would in this country.

In the RAND Corp. I was known as a long-war man because I studied wars that lasted 2 to 30 days. That was long as compared with the wars which last 30 minutes or 2 hours or 8 hours. However, even my long wars are not long enough for the operation of a postattack mobilization base.

Nonetheless, I would not be at all surprised to learn that some top Soviet planners study wars lasting 1, 2, or 3 years. I would also believe it to be a reasonable conjecture that either now or in the immediate future, Soviet planners would also think of thermonuclear wars as being short and, therefore, they would not be impressed by civil defense preparations as deterring them from direct attack on the United States.

The fact that we can give some protection to a factory worker or a machine tool or a mine or even a city would not, by and large, make them fear the United States any more than if we could not protect these particular things.

If you believe this, and I do, then one must say that civil defense does not contribute much to deterring a Soviet attack on United States. I will have more to say about this subject in a few minutes. However, I would like to make clear that from this point of view, I agree with those who believe civil defense is ineffective.

CIVIL DEFENSE TO INSURE SURVIVAL

However, it is not the purpose of civilians to protect the military. People are ends not means. We protect people because we are people. Without people there are no values and, therefore, one can ask a different question: Can we go into civil defense or should we go into civil defense not because it helps us fight a war more effectively but simply because war can happen and it is better to have a country after the war is over than not.

It is better to have more people than less people; it is better to have more property than less property; it is better to recuperate rapidly than slowly.

In other words, we may want civil defense simply as insurance. In fact, insurance is a very good analogy here. If one buys fire insurance on his house, this does not mean that he is reckless with matches. He does not buy insurance because he plans to risk a fire, but simply

because a fire can occur. If one buys a safety belt for his car, he generally does not drive more recklessly. The buyer may simply feel that an accident can happen, and that the safety belt will give him some added and worthwhile but still insufficient protection.

Therefore the next question which comes up is, Can civil defense be used to protect lives, protect property, or to facilitate recuperation after a war is over?

Rather surprisingly, I think most people have the impression that the answer to this question is also "No." Let me show you a chart that indicates some reasons for this point of view. (See fig. K–2.)

FIGURE K-2.-TRAGIC BUT DISTINGUISHABLE POSTWAR STATES

This chart, which I took from a book I recently published, is entitled "Tragic But Distinguishable Postwar States." I mean by this title that it should be possible for any person to distinguish between wars which result, say, in 20 million dead Americans and wars which result in 40 million dead Americans. I mean further that if this American has to choose between a war with 20 million dead Americans and one which results in 40 million dead Americans, other things being equal, he prefers a war in which there would be 20 million dead Americans.

It is practically impossible for people to make such a remark, to actually say, "I prefer a war which results in 20 million dead rather than one which results in 40 million dead." They want to say, "Why should I have a war at all?" They want to know, "Why do you tell me to choose between a war in which there will be 20 million dead Americans and a war in which there will be 40 million dead Americans? I do not want to choose." Because they do not want to choose, they choose by default. They ignore the problem.

I have actually been severely criticized by colleagues and others for emphasizing this notion that 20 million dead is better than 40 million dead.

Almost everybody is willing to make the remark, that 40 million dead is worse than 20 million dead. That appears to be a reasonable remark.

The reason why I turn it around is that I am trying to get certain programs started. When one is trying to get a program done, it can only be done by giving people a reasonable goal.

We spend in this country or were spending about $5 billion a year for air defense. It is no particular secret that this system has serious inadequacies. Historically, if you trace down why these inadequacies occurred, many of them occurred because some of the air defense enthusiasts were trying to do too much. They were trying to get a system which would work close to 100 percent, and in the

attempt failed to get a system which would work well at much lower levels.

I am not criticizing air defense. There are many complicated reasons why what was done was done. In any case, it is a valuable system. However, I am pointing out that even if there are billions of dollars authorized for a system, the designers, by aiming too high, can get too little. One must aim for realistic goals.

REALISTIC GOALS FOR CIVIL DEFENSE

The above remark applies with particular force to civil defense programs. I think we are going into civil defense in a very realistic fashion. One reason I believe it is realistic is because we are explicitly saying that we are not trying to save everybody in every circumstance. Instead we are saying, "Let us save those that can be saved.”

This does not mean that we do not care about those who cannot be saved. It simply means that, if deterrence fails, we cannot do anything about those we cannot save.

If you believe this, if you believe that it is better to have only 40 million dead as opposed to 80 million, or better to have 80 million than 160 million, then I think you can show that civil defense is effective.

It can almost without question, under many plausible circumstances, move the results of a war from the bottom part of this chart to somewhere near the top.

Whether or not you think this is worth doing seems to be mainly correlated with how willing you are to face the fact that war may occur, that our programs to avoid war may fail.

Let me add one comment to indicate why I think it is important explicitly to have limited goals. Let us assume that we have a system such that if a war occurred we would expect to have 60 million Americans killed, and that by dint of great efforts, by working very hard, by being very clever, very intelligent, and very dedicated, we developed a system such that if a war occurred 20 million were killed, instead of 60 million. Assume also that we then had a war and 20 million people were in fact killed and not 60 million. That is, the system worked perfectly.

Can you imagine the designers, builders, and operators then saying, "We had a success. The system has indeed worked well." And then going around congratulating themselves? They could not do it. There would be 20 million dead Americans, men, women, and children, and few would claim that the result was even a qualified sucMost would say it was a failure.

cess.

Actually, I would claim it was a success, in some very relevant sense. Unless we recognize that it is a success, we cannot expect people to build such systems. Few if any people will work hard for goals which are defined as being failures right from the beginning. I believe this is the main reason why people actually think of civil defense as ineffective. They think it is ineffective because even a success is not very successful in their eyes. It still looks like a failIt is only a success in comparison with what could have happened. Unless you keep your sights clearly on that fact, you simply won't be able to say the system is effective.

ure.