Mr. KAHN. I find it incredibly easy to read. [Laughter.] What he did in the review was interesting; he took out sections from the book which with some exceptions, he quoted accurately. However, he did not take any position himself on these points. For example, he would say something like: Herman Kahn believes that 50 million dead Americans are better than 100 million dead Americans. This was supposed to illustrate that I was callous. However, he did not take the other position and say that 100 million would be better than 50 million. That would be a kind of startling statement. Or he said: Herman Kahn believes that our preparations for fighting a thermonuclear war should be up to the minute as if I enjoyed preparing for thermonuclear war. The only comment I could make is, yes, I do believe our preparations should be up to the minute rather than inappropriate or inadequate. In fact in about 90 percent of the implied charges that he seems to make my only answer would be, "Yes, don't you also think this way?" I had some correspondence with Dennis Flanagan, editor of the Scientific American on this review and I would like to discuss it for a minute, if this would be all right with the committee? This correspondence illustrates as well as anything I know the attitude which a reputedly intelligent, cultured, and, according to many of his friends, extremely reasonable individual can take on this kind of problem. Mr. ROBACK. What was the purpose of the correspondence, to present some kind of rebuttal? Mr. KAHN. Yes. I wanted to write an answer to the review. Actually I wanted to write an article called "Thinking About the Unthinkable." This article would discuss the methodological, moral, and psychological problems involved in facing up to the possibility of thermonuclear war. They were totally uninterested in the article. I then suggested that I might write a letter of fixed size; in other words, I did not want them to take a letter and cut it to pieces. In some sense I do not trust them. Mr. ROBACK. What was the upshot of the whole thing? Mr. KAHN. They haven't answered my last letter. Mr. KAHN. No, they have had no letters at all on the entire subject and that, in itself, is curious. The Scientific American is supposed to be an objective magazine. Generally, when they print a piece which is even mildly controversial, there are letters which follow the piece. On this particular subject I am told it is their policy not to print any letters at all, just none at all. As far as they are concerned, the review stands by itself; no dissenting voices are to be heard from. I myself make a habit of not answering reviews; I just cannot take the time. This is almost the only review which I thought required an answer. In many of the other cases in which I was criticized, the editor solicited answers. They asked me if I wanted to give the other side. The Scientific American's refusal to discuss the controversy, to put it mildly, stunned me. While this refusal is probably less an example of general bias in the Scientific American than a sign of the intensity of feeling which people have on this subject it still seems to me an abuse of their editorial prerogatives. The Scientific American is not even protecting itself at this point. It is clear to them I am hostile to them. If they do not let me have my say I will tell people about it, just as I am telling this committee. In other words, I will be angry, and they should, at least for pro forma reasons, protect themselves by giving me a little section and then say something like "The guy is crazy," in their answer to my answer. But on this particular issue they feel so strongly that they don't even feel it necessary to live up to the normal standards of objective controversy. That is how strongly they feel. They feel they know which side is right, they know which is wrong and that they are above criticism, since they are so clearly on the right side. I bring this up only partly as a charge against the Scientific American by itself, but more as an illustration of how perfectly reasonable people can feel about this subject. I would like to repeat that I am assured by mutual friends that they are perfectly reasonable on almost any other subject. I have my doubts, but that is another question. However, I know from personal experience that Millis is reasonable on many issues. In fact I am a friend of his. I talk to him. However, on this issue, I think, he is just stark staring mad, but we are all entitled to some idiosyncrasies. PREPARATIONS FOR UNPLEASANT FACTS OF LIFE Let me continue this discussion about thinking about the unthinkable about why people set up psychological blocks. Partly this is because such blocks are one way of preserving sanity. It would be morbid for any man in this room to dwell on his oncoming death. We are all going to die. We all know this, but we do not spend much time thinking about it because we cannot do anything about it. We make the preparations that have to be made and then we ignore the problem. We even deny the phenomenon. It can be a perfectly healthy reaction. In the case of thermonuclear war, if the necessary preparations had been made, then the denial of the possibility of thermonuclear war would also be a healthy reaction. I do not want my children or my wife or friends thinking every day about thermonuclear warfare. But we have not made the necessary preparations, and until they are made it is necessary to bring the subject up. We must make people think about it. OVERSIMPLIFICATION There is another reason why people do not want to worry about surviving a thermonuclear war. The belief in automatic, mutual annihilation simplifies the argument and most people like simple arguments. The next chart illustrates this point. (See fig. K-4.) FIGURE K-4.-THE SUBTLE VIEW OF DETERRENCE "Don't bother me with facts. The enemy would never take the risk. Both he and I have made up our minds." Even professional strategists sometimes do not want to concern themselves with the details of the balance of terror-the obvious possibilities for miscalculation, unauthorized behavior, accident, or even war by calculation. They do not want to consider these possibilities seriously, in the sense of letting them affect programs. The automatic balance of terror is not only a simple view of the world, it is in some ways a comforting view. An example of why it can be comforting is given by Nixon's remark when he visited Rusia. He was quoted as saying to Khrushchev, "We must live together or die together." Now, that is a comforting remark. The reason why it is comforting can be illustrated by considering another remark Nixon could have made. He could have said, "We must live together or one of us will die." This last is a very frightening remark. It has a rather threatening sound. Both remarks, of course, are inaccurate, but If I had to choose, I would say that the second one is probably more accurate than the first. If you want to give an accurate remark you must start off by saying that we must live together or one of us will be hurt to some great degree and the other to a somewhat lesser extent depending on the details of how the war starts, how it is fought and how it is terminated, and if you want some detailed discussion of the possibilities, why, here is a 651-page book to read. Considering the real range of possibilities estimating the probable outcome of a particular thermonuclear war is a very complicated thing and most people do not like complexity. Let me give another example of the desire for simplicity which I find rather startling. This one is also from a distinguished man, one who has contributed much to both science and letters. I would like to discuss a speech made by C. P. Snow before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Some of his remarks are quoted on this next chart. (See fig. K-5.) FIGURE K-5.-EXCERPT FROM SPEECH BY C. P. SNOW The "or" is not a risk but a certainty. * ** Within, at the most, 10 years, some of those bombs are going off. * ** C. P. SNOW, December 27, 1960. The sense of his speech was that either we are going to have arms control or we are going to have an end of history; one or the other. Now, in some sense, I happen to believe this proposition, but, as I will explain, I believe in both a more complicated and a more moderate way. C. P. Snow continues: The "or" is not a risk but a certainty. This last proposition is presumably wrong. Unless C. P. Snow has some information that is denied to the rest of us, he simply does not know. He continues: Speaking in the most responsible way that I can, within, at the most, 10 years, some of these bombs are going off. Again he simply cannot say that. They may go off. The probability of their going off is certainly high enough, so that no reason able man would ignore the possibility, but no one can say that this probability is a certainty. Then he continues: Between a risk and a certainty, a sane man does not hesitate. Let me summarize the basis of C. P. Snow's argument. If one believes that unless a particular arms control measure is adopted the world will automatically go into thermonuclear war, and that this thermonuclear war will result in an end of history, then one does not have to bother thinking any more. He can say it is quite clear that this arms control measure is better than the present policy, because it cannot be worse; therefore, it must be better. However, one can also have the view that just because one is in serious trouble with the current policies, it does not mean that any other policy is a better one. Let me again, with the permission of the committee, tell another story I often use to illustrate this point. This is a fairly ancient joke today, and I would guess many here have heard it, but it illustrates the point better than any other anecdote I know. The story concerns a mouse that goes to work for Aerospace Corp. For the benefit of the other interests of this committee, I should mention that it is a very low-salaried mouse. The mouse is describing his new line of work to his country cousin. It is an experimental mouse. It is shot out into outer space; it goes through the ionosphere and the Van Allen Belt. It is cosmic-rayed; it is weightless; it falls back into the earth's atmosphere; it falls into the water; they fish him out and take him back to the laboratory where they pull out his kidneys and look at them; pull out his entrails and look at them and put them back in and sew him up and start the whole process over again. In every way it is a miserable job. Well, this mouse is describing to his country cousin his new line of work. His country cousin is totally appalled and says, "Why don't you go back to your previous line of research?" And the mouse says, "Back to cancer research?" [Laughter.] Well, this is a major point. If you can convince people that the current system is cancer research then it is clear that any other line of work is better. I happen to think the current system is bad, but I think it is more like the Aerospace "job" than cancer research, and some of the suggestions that are made are more like cancer research than Aerospace. I am not, in other words, an apologist for the current system. I do not think the current system is sensible. I do not think it will work indefinitely, but I do believe that it is useful to fix it up, to repair it, to make it safer and to hedge in various ways against its breakdown while we are looking for a better system or while a better system evolves on its own. This policy may not work, but I do not know of a better one. I am very conscious that there are some systems which are suggested which seem to me, to put it mildly, decidedly worse than the current system. Even a system that evolved as a result of a war or very intense crisis might be better than some of these alternatives. One of the major reasons that some people refuse to believe in the posibility of survival is that they want to convince themselves that nothing can be worse than the current situation and they can then stop thinking. POSSIBLE ENEMY ATTACKS I would like to close my testimony this morning with a discussion of the different kinds of wars that can occur. I believe that unless one understands there is a range of possible wars, a range of possible situations, one cannot fully appreciate the potential effectiveness of the different kinds of civil defense programs which might be recommended. This very crucial point has been ignored in most discussions. Let me start with the targeting objectives that an attacker might have. This next chart gives five alternative target systems that the attacker might aim for. (See fig. K-6.) 1 Countervalue. FIGURE K-6.-FIVE POSSIBLE ATTACKS 2 Counterforce+countervalue. 4 Counterforce+bonus. 5 Counterforce+avoidance. The first system is the so-called countervalue system. The attacker is mad at the defender and wants to destroy that which the defender values most, irrespective of whether it helps the attacker to achieve his positive objectives. Now, it is easy for most people to believe an attacker would want to do this. They visualize themselves as a defender and think of an attacker as being angry at them, and therefore, he is going to try to hurt them. We value most, people and property, in that order. Therefore, if we believe that the attacker is out to hurt us we may study countervalue attacks and indeed such attacks could occur. We wish to study this kind of attack because it may happen. The next kind of attack that could be studied might be called the counterforce plus the countervalue. In this attack the attacker distributes his attack between the things which might hurt him, the defender's strategic forces, and the things which the defender values, his cities, his people, and his property. The next kind of attack might be called the modern attack. The attacker says to himself, "This other man's cities can't really hurt me. He is not going to manufacture anything in them that is important, he is not going to draft any soldiers, there is no morale problem especially since there are not going to be any elections between the time this war starts and the time it ends. Adding up all of this, why should I bother hitting cities?" So the attacker then goes for the other side's strategic force. If he goes for them in a straightforward way, ignoring the cities completely we could call it a counterforce attack. This is a reasonable pattern of attack which might well occur. The next attack might be called counterforce plus bonus. It is basically motivated by the same considerations as the counterforce attack, except that the attacker says to himself, "I would still like to destroy as much of the other side's people and property as possible. I will, therefore, change or compromise my target system. I will change my designated ground zeros, I will use somewhat different yields, I will ground-burst instead of air-burst, even though it may be militarily most effective to air-burst. I will do all this in order to increase the bonus damage." Such an attack would result in quite different casualties than the straightforward counterforce attack even though the primary objectives are much the same. |