Report from iron_mountain_on_the_possibility_and_desirability_of_peace-leonard_lewin-1967-135pgs-pol

O E LTA$2.45

REPORT FROMIRON

MOUNTAINON THE

POSSIBILITYAND

DESIRABILITYOF

PEACEWITH INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL BY

LEONARD C. LE WIN

"A BOOK THAT SHOOK THE WHITE HOUSE."-U. S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

f

REPORT FROMIRON MOUNTAIN

REPORT FROMIRON MOUNTAIN

ON THE

POSSIBILITYAND

DESIRABILITYOF

PEACE

WITH INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL BY

LEONARD C. LEWIN

A DELTA BOOK

A DELTA BOOK

Published byDELL PUBLISHING CO ., INC .

1 Dag Hammarskjold PlazaNew York, N .Y . 10017

Copyright © 1967 by Leonard LewinAll rights reserved . No part of this book

may be reproduced in any form or by any meanswithout the prior written permission of the

publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connectionwith reviews written specifically for inclusion

in a magazine or newspaper .Delta ® TM 755118, Dell Publishing Co ., Inc.

ISBN : 0-440-57366-1Reprinted by arrangement with The Dial Press, Inc ., New York

Printed in the United States of AmericaThirteenth Printing

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

vii

%V11

STATEMENT BY JOHN DOE xxxi

THE REPORT OF THE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP

Letter of TransmittalIntroduction

37

SECTION 1 . Scope of the Study 11

SECTION 2 .SECTION 3 .

Disarmament and the Economy 17Disarmament Scenarios 23

SECTION 4 . War and Peace as SocialSystems 27

SECTION 5 . The Functions of War 33

v

VA CONTENTS

SECTION 6. Substitutes for the Functionsof War 57

SECTION 7. Summary and Conclusions 79SECTION 8. Recommendations 95Notes 103

FOREWORD

"JoHN DoE," as I will call him in this book for reasonsthat will be made clear, is a professor at a large universityin the Middle West. His field is one of the social sciences,but I will not identify him beyond this . He telephonedme one evening last winter, quite unexpectedly; we hadnot been in touch for several years. He was in NewYork for a few days, he said, and there was somethingimportant he wanted to discuss with me . He wouldn'tsay what it was. We met for lunch the next day at amidtown restaurant .

He was obviously disturbed . He made small talk forhalf an hour, which was quite out of character, and Ididn't press him . Then, apropos of nothing, he mentioneda dispute between a writer and a prominent political

vu

Viii

FOREWORD

family that had been in the headlines. What, he wantedto know, were my views on "freedom of information"?How would I qualify them? And so on. My answers werenot memorable, but they seemed to satisfy him. Then,quite abruptly, he began to tell me the following story :

Early in August of 1963, he said, he found a messageon his desk that a "Mrs . Potts" had called him from Wash-ington. When he returned the call, a man answered im-mediately, and told Doe, among other things, that he hadbeen selected to serve on a commission "of the highestimportance ." Its objective was to determine, accuratelyand realistically, the nature o f the problems that wouldconfront the United States i f and when a condition of"permanent peace" should arrive, and to draft a programfor dealing with this contingency . The man describedthe unique procedures that were to govern the commis-sion's work and that were expected to extend its scopefar beyond that of any previous examination of theseproblems.

Considering that the caller did not precisely identifyeither himself or his agency, his persuasiveness musthave been of a truly remarkable order . Doe entertainedno serious doubts of the bona fides of the project, how-ever, chiefly because of his previous experience with theexcessive secrecy that often surrounds quasi-govern-mental activities. In addition, the man at the other endof the line demonstrated an impressively complete andsurprisingly detailed knowledge of Doe's work and per-sonal life . He also mentioned the names of others whowere to serve with the group ; most of them were known

FOREWORD

ixto Doe by reputation. Doe agreed to take the assignment-he felt he had no real choice in the matter-and to ap-pear the second Saturday following at Iron Mountain,New York. An airline ticket arrived in his mail the nextmorning .

The cloak-and-dagger tone of this convocation wasfurther enhanced by the meeting place itself . Iron Moun-tain, located near the town of Hudson, is like somethingout of Ian Fleming or E. Phillips Oppenheim . It is anunderground nuclear hideout for hundreds of large Amer-ican corporations . Most of them use it as an emergencystorage vault for important documents . But a number ofthem maintain substitute corporate headquarters as well,where essential personnel could presumably survive andcontinue to work after an attack . This latter group in-cludes such firms as Standard Oil of New Jersey, Manu-facturers Hanover Trust, and Shell .

I will leave most of the story of the operations ofthe Special Study Group, as the commission was form-ally called, for Doe to tell in his own words ("BackgroundInformation") . At this point it is necessary to say onlythat it met and worked regularly for over two and a halfyears, after which it produced a Report. It was this docu-ment, and what to do about it, that Doe wanted to talkto me about .

The Report, he said, had been suppressed-both bythe Special Study Group itself and by the governmentinteragency committee to which it had been submitted .After months of agonizing, Doe had decided that hewould no longer be party to keeping it secret . What he

X

FOREWORD

wanted from me was advice and assistance in having itpublished. He gave me his copy to read, with the expressunderstanding that if for any reason I were unwilling tobecome involved, I would say nothing about it to any-one else .

I read the Report that same night. I will pass over myown reactions to it, except to say that the unwillingnessof Doe's associates to publicize their findings becamereadily understandable . What had happened was thatthey had been so tenacious in their determination to dealcomprehensively with the many problems of transition topeace that the original questions asked of them werenever quite answered. Instead, this is what they con-cluded :

Lasting peace, while not theoretically impossible, isprobably unattainable ; even if it could be achieved itwould almost certainly not be in the best interests of astable society to achieve it .

That is the gist of what they say. Behind their quali-fied academic language runs this general argument: Warfills certain functions essential to the stability of our so-ciety; until other ways of filling them are developed, thewar system must be maintained-and improved in effec-tiveness .

It is not surprising that the Group, in its Letter ofTransmittal, did not choose to justify its work to "the layreader, unexposed to the exigencies of higher political ormilitary responsibility." Its Report was addressed, delib-erately, to unnamed government administrators of high

FOREWORD

rank; it assumed considerable political sophistication fromthis select audience. To the general reader, therefore, thesubstance of the document may be even more unsettlingthan its conclusions . He may not be prepared for someof its assumptions-for instance, that most medical ad-vances are viewed more as problems than as progress ;or that poverty is necessary and desirable, public posturesby politicians to the contrary notwithstanding ; or thatstanding armies are, among other things, social-welfareinstitutions in exactly the same sense as are old-people'shomes and mental hospitals. It may strike him as odd tofind the probable explanation of "flying saucer" incidentsdisposed of en passant in less than a sentence . He maybe less surprised to find that the space program and the"controversial" antimissile missile and fallout shelter pro-grams are understood to have the spending of vast sumsof money, not the advancement of science or nationaldefense, as their principal goals, and to learn that "mili-tary" draft policies are only remotely concerned withdefense.

He may be offended to find the organized repressionof minority groups, and even the reestablishment ofslavery, seriously (and on the whole favorably) discussedas possible aspects of a world at peace . He is not likelyto take kindly to the notion of the deliberate intensifica-tion of air and water pollution (as part of a programleading to peace), even when the reason for consideringit is made clear . That a world without war will have toturn sooner rather than later to universal test-tube pro-creation will be less disturbing, if no more appealing .

xll FOREWORD

But few readers will not be taken aback, at least, by a fewlines in the Report's conclusions, repeated in its formalrecommendations, that suggest that the long-range plan-ning-and "budgeting"-of the "optimum" number oflives to be destroyed annually in overt warfare is highon the Group's list of priorities for government action .

I cite these few examples primarily to warn the gen-eral reader what he can expect . The statesmen and strat-egists for whose eyes the Report was intended obviouslyneed no such protective admonition .

This book, of course, is evidence of my response toDoe's request. After carefully considering the problemsthat might confront the publisher of the Report, we tookit to The Dial Press. There, its significance was immedi-ately recognized, and, more important, we were givenfirm assurances that no outside pressures of any sortwould be permitted to interfere with its publication .

It should be made clear that Doe does not disagreewith the substance of the Report, which represents agenuine consensus in all important respects . He consti-tuted a minority of one-but only on the issue of dis-closing it to the general public. A look at how the Groupdealt with this question will be illuminating .

The . debate took place at the Group's last full meet-ing before the Report was written, late in March, 1966,and again at Iron Mountain . Two facts must be kept inmind, by way of background . The first is that the SpecialStudy Group had never been explicitly charged with orsworn to secrecy, either when it was convened or at any

FOREWORD

xilitime thereafter . The second is that the Group had never-theless operated as i f it had been. This was assumedfrom the circumstances of its inception and from thetone of its instructions. (The Group's acknowledgmentof help from "the many persons . . . who contributed sogreatly to our work" is somewhat equivocal; these personswere not told the nature of the project for which theirspecial resources of information were solicited .)

Those who argued the case for keeping the Reportsecret were admittedly motivated by fear of the explo-sive political effects that could be expected from pub-licity. For evidence, they pointed to the suppression ofthe far less controversial report of then-Senator HubertHumphrey's subcommittee on disarmament in 1962 .(Subcommittee members had reportedly feared that itmight be used by Communist propagandists, as SenatorStuart Symington put it, to "back up the Marxian theorythat war production was the reason for the success of capi-talism.") Similar political precautions had been takenwith the better-known Gaither Report in 1957, and evenwith the so-called Moynihan Report in 1965.

Furthermore, they insisted, a distinction must bemade between serious studies, which are normally classi-fied unless and until policy makers decide to releasethem, and conventional "showcase" projects, organizedto demonstrate a political leadership's concern about anissue and to deflect the energy of those pressing for actionon it. (The example used, because some of the Grouphad participated in it, was a "White House Conference"on international cooperation, disarmament, etc ., which

xiv FOREWORD

had been staged late in 1965 to offset complaints aboutescalation of the Vietnam war .)

Doe acknowledges this distinction, as well as thestrong possibility of public misunderstanding. But hefeels that if the sponsoring agency had wanted to mandatesecrecy it could have done so at the outset. It could alsohave assigned the project to one of the government'sestablished "think tanks," which normally work on aclassified basis. He scoffed at fear of public reaction,which could have no lasting effect on long-range mea-sures that might be taken to implement the Group's pro-posals, and derided the Group's abdication of responsi-bility for its opinions and conclusions . So far as he wasconcerned, there was such a thing as a public right toknow what was being done on its behalf ; the burden ofproof was on those who would abridge it .

If my account seems to give Doe the better of the ar-gument, despite his failure to convince his colleagues, sobe it. My participation in this book testifies that I am notneutral. In my opinion, the decision of the Special StudyGroup to censor its own findings was not merely timidbut presumptuous . But the refusal, as of this writing, ofthe agencies for which the Report was prepared to re-lease it themselves raises broader questions of publicpolicy. Such questions center on the continuing use ofself-serving definitions of "security" to avoid possible po-litical embarrassment. It is ironic how often this practicebackfires.

I should state, for the record, that I do not share the

FOREWORD

=V

attitudes toward war and peace, life and death, and sur-vival of the species manifested in the Report . Few readerswill. In human terms, it is an outrageous document. Butit does represent a serious and challenging effort to de-fine an enormous problem. And it explains, or certainlyappears to explain, aspects of American policy otherwiseincomprehensible by the ordinary standards of commonsense. What we may think of these explanations is some-thing else, but it seems to me that we are entitled toknow not only what they are but whose they are .

By "whose" I don't mean merely the names of theauthors of the Report . Much more important, we havea right to know to what extent their assumptions ofsocial necessity are shared by the decision-makers in ourgovernment. Which do they accept and which do theyreject? However disturbing the answers, only full andfrank discussion offers any conceivable hope of solvingthe problems raised by the Special Study Group in theirReport from Iron Mountain.

L.C.L .

New York, June 1967


[The following account of the workings of the SpecialStudy Group is taken verbatim from a series of tape-recorded interviews I had with "John Doe ." The tran-script has been edited to minimize the intrusion of myquestions and comments, as well as for length, and thesequence has been revised in the interest o f conti-nuity . L.C.L.]

How was the Group formed?. . . The general idea for it, for this kind of study,

dates back at least to 1961 . It started with some of thenew people who came in with the Kennedy administra-tion, mostly, I think, with McNamara, Bundy, and Rusk .They were impatient about many things . . . . One of them

xviii


was that no really serious work had been done aboutplanning for peace-a long-range peace, that is, withlong-range planning .

Everything that had been written on the subject[before 1961] was superficial. There was insufficient ap-preciation of the scope of the problem . The main reasonfor this, of course, was that the idea of a real peace in theworld, general disarmament and so on, was looked onas utopian . Or even crackpot. This is still true, and it'seasy enough to understand when you look at what's goingon in the world today . . . . It was reflected in the studiesthat had been made up to that time . They were notrealistic. . . .

The idea of the Special Study, the exact form itwould take, was worked out early in '63 . . . . The settle-ment of the Cuban missile affair had something to dowith it, but what helped most to get it moving were thebig changes in military spending that were beingplanned . . . . Plants being closed, relocations, and soforth. Most of it wasn't made public until much later . . . .

[I understand] it took a long time to select the peoplefor the Group. The calls didn't go out until the sum-mer . . . .

Who made the selection?That's something I can't tell you . I wasn't involved

with the preliminary planning . The first I knew of it waswhen I was called myself. But three of the people hadbeen in on it, and what the rest of us know we learnedfrom them, about what went on earlier. I do know that


XiX

it started very informally . I don't know what particulargovernment agency approved the project.

Would you care to make a guess?All right-I think it was an ad hoc committee, at the

cabinet level, or near it . It had to be. I suppose theygave the organizational job-making arrangements, pay-ing the bills, and so on-to somebody from State orDefense or the National Security Council. Only one of uswas in touch with Washington, and I wasn't the one . ButI can tell you that very, very few people knew aboutus. . . . For instance, there was the Ackley Committee .'It was set up after we were. If you read their report-the same old tune-economic reconversion, turning swordplants into plowshare factories-I think you'll wonderif even the President knew about our Group. The AckleyCommittee certainly didn't.

Is that possible, really? I mean that not even thePresident knew of your commission?

Well, I don't think there's anything odd about thegovernment attacking a problem at two different levels.Or even about two or three [government] agencies work-ing at cross-purposes. It happens all the time. Perhapsthe President did know. And I don't mean to denigratethe Ackley Committee, but it was exactly that narrowness

1 This was a "Committee on the Economic Impact of Defenseand Disarmament," headed by Gardner Ackley, of the Council ofEconomic Advisers. It was established by Presidential order inDecember, 1963, and issued a report in July, 1965 .

XX


of approach that we were supposed to get away from . . . .You have to remember-you've read the Report-

that what they wanted from us was a different kind ofthinking. It was a matter of approach. Herman Kahncalls it "Byzantine"-no agonizing over cultural and re-ligious values. No moral posturing. It's the kind of think-ing that Rand and the Hudson Institute and I.D.A . 2brought into war planning. . . . What they asked us todo, and I think we did it, was to give the same kind oftreatment to the hypothetical problems of peace as theygive to a hypothetical nuclear war. . . . We may havegone further than they expected, but once you establishyour premises and your logic you can't turn back . . . .

Kahn's books,' for example, are misunderstood, atleast by laymen. They shock people . But you see, what'simportant about them is not his conclusions, or hisopinions. It's the method. He has done more than anyoneelse I can think of to get the general public accustomedto the style of modem military thinking . . . . Today it'spossible for a columnist to write about "counterforcestrategy" and "minimum deterrence" and "credible first-strike capability" without having to explain every otherword. He can write about war and strategy withoutgetting bogged down in questions of morality . . . .

The other big difference about our work is breadth .The Report speaks for itself . I can't say that we took

2 The Institute for Defense Analysis .3 On Thermonuclear War, Thinking About the Unthinkable,

On Escalation .


Xxi

every relevant aspect of life and society into account,but I don't think we missed anything essential . . . .

Why was the project given to an outside commission?Why couldn't it have been handled directly by anappropriate government agency?

I think that's obvious, or should be . The kind ofthinking wanted from our Group just isn't to be hadin a formal government operation. Too many constraints .Too many inhibitions. This isn't a new problem . Whyelse would outfits like Rand and Hudson stay in business?Any assignment that's at all sophisticated is almost alwaysgiven to an outside group . This is true even in the StateDepartment, in the "gray" operations, those that are sup-posed to be unofficial, but are really as official as canbe. Also with the C.I.A . . . .

For our study, even the private research centers weretoo institutional . . . . A lot of thought went into makingsure that our thinking would be unrestricted . All kindsof little things. The way we were called into the Group,the places we met, all kinds of subtle devices to remindus. For instance, even our name, the Special Study Group .You know government names . Wouldn't you think we'dhave been called "Operation Olive Branch," or "ProjectPacifica," or something like that? Nothing like that forus-too allusive, too suggestive . And no minutes of ourmeetings-too inhibiting . . . . About who might be read-ing them. Of course, we took notes for our own use . Andamong ourselves, we usually called ourselves "The Iron

xidi


Mountain Boys," or "Our Thing," or whatever cameto mind . . . .

What can you tell me about the members of the Group?I'll have to stick to generalities . . . . There were fifteen

of us. The important thing was that we represented a verywide range of disciplines . And not all academic. Peoplefrom the natural sciences, the social sciences, even thehumanities. We had a lawyer and a businessman . Also, aprofessional war planner. Also, you should know thateveryone in the Group had done work of distinction inat least two different fields . The interdisciplinary ele-ment was built in. . . .

It's true that there were no women in the Group, butI don't think that was significant . . . . We were all Amer-ican citizens, of course. And all, I can say, in very goodhealth, at least when we began . . . . You see, the firstorder of business, at the first meeting, was the reading ofdossiers . They were very detailed, and not just profes-sional, but also personal. They included medical histories .I remember one very curious thing, for whatever it'sworth. Most of us, and that includes me, had a recordof abnormally high uric acid concentrations in the blood .. . . None of us had ever had this experience, of a publicinspection of credentials, or medical reports . It was verydisturbing . . . .

But it was deliberate . The reason for it was to em-phasize that we were supposed to make all our own de-cisions on procedure, without outside rules . This includedjudging each other's qualifications and making allow-


Xxiii

ances for possible bias. I don't think it affected our workdirectly, but it made the point it was supposed to make.. . . That we should ignore absolutely nothing that mightconceivably affect our objectivity .

[At this point I persuaded Doe that a brief occu-pational description of the individual members of theGroup would serve a useful purpose for readers of theReport. The list which follows was worked out onpaper. (It might be more accurate to say it was nego-tiated.) The problem was to give as much relevant in-formation as possible without violating Doe's commit-ment to protect his colleagues' anonymity . It turnedout to be very difficult, especially in the cases of thosemembers who are very well known . For this reason,secondary areas of achievement or reputation are usu-ally not shown.

The simple alphabetical "names" were assignedby Doe for convenient reference ; they bear no in-tended relation to actual names. "Able" was theGroup's Washington contact. It was he who broughtand read the dossiers, and who most often acted aschairman. He, "Baker," and "Cox" were the three whohad been involved in the preliminary planning. Thereis no other significance to the order of listing .

"Arthus Able" is an historian and political theorist,who has served in government .

"Bernard Baker" is a professor of internationallaw and a consultant on government operations .

"Charles Cox" is an economist, social critic, andbiographer.

"John Doe.""Edward Ellis" is a sociologist often involved in

public affairs .

XXIV


"Frank Fox" is a cultural anthropologist."George Green" is a psychologist, educator, and

developer of personnel testing systems."Harold Hill" is a psychiatrist, who has conducted

extensive studies of the relationship between indi-vidual and group behavior.

"John Jones" is a scholar and literary critic ."Martin Miller" is a physical chemist, whose work

has received international recognition at the highestlevel.

"Paul Peters" is a biochemist, who has made im-portant discoveries bearing on reproductive processes .

"Richard Roe" is a mathematician affiliated withan independent West Coast research institution .

"Samuel Smith" is an astronomer, physicist, andcommunications theorist .

"Thomas Taylor" is a systems analyst and warplanner, who has written extensively on war, peace,and international relations .

"William White" is an industrialist, who has under-taken many special government assignments .]

How did the Group operate? I mean, where and whendid you meet, and so forth?

We met on the average of once a month . Usually itwas on weekends, and usually for two days . We had afew longer sessions, and one that lasted only four hours .. . . We met all over the country, always at a differentplace, except for the first and last times, which were atIron Mountain. It was like a traveling seminar . . . . Some-times 'at hotels, sometimes at universities . Twice we metat summer camps, and once at a private estate, in Vir-ginia. We used a business place in Pittsburgh, and an-


XXV

other in Poughkeepsie [New York] . . . . We never met inWashington, or on government property anywhere . . . .Able would announce the times and places two meetingsahead. They were never changed . . . .

We didn't divide into subcommittees, or anything elsethat formal. But we all took individual assignments be-tween meetings . A lot of it involved getting informationfrom other people . . . . Among the fifteen of us, I don'tthink there was anybody in the academic or professionalworld we couldn't call on if we wanted to, and we tookadvantage of it . . . . We were paid a very modest perdiem. All of it was called "expenses" on the vouchers . Wewere told not to report it on our tax returns . . . . Thechecks were drawn on a special account of Able's at aNew York bank. He signed them . . . . I don't know whatthe study cost. So far as our time and travel were con-cerned, it couldn't have come to more than the low six-figure range. But the big item must have been com-puter time, and I have no idea how high this ran . . . .

You say that you don't think your work was, affected byprofessional bias. What about political and philosophicalbias? Is it possible to deal with questions of war andpeace without reflecting personal values?

Yes, it is. I can understand your skepticism . But ifyou had been at any of our meetings you'd have had avery hard time figuring out who were the liberals andwho were the conservatives, or who were hawks and whowere doves. There is such a thing as objectivity, and Ithink we had it. . . . I don't say no one had any emotional

XXV1


reaction to what we were doing. We all did, to someextent. As a matter of fact, two members had heartattacks after we were finished, and I'll be the first toadmit it probably wasn't a coincidence .

You said you made your own ground rules . What werethese ground rules?

The most important were informality and unanimity .By informality I mean that our discussions were open-ended. We went as far afield as any one of us thought wehad to. For instance, we spent a lot of time on the rela-tionship between military recruitment policies and indus-trial employment. Before we were finished with it, we'dgone through the history of western penal codes and anynumber of comparative psychiatric studies [of drafteesand volunteers]. We looked over the organization of theInca empire. We determined the effects of automationon underdeveloped societies. . . . It was all relevant . . . .

By unanimity, I don't mean that we kept taking votes,like a jury . I mean that we stayed with every issue untilwe had what the Quakers call a "sense of the meeting ." Itwas time-consuming . But in the long run it saved time .Eventually we all got on the same wavelength, so tospeak . . . .

Of course we had differences, and big ones, especiallyin the beginning . . . . For instance, in Section 1 you mightthink we were merely clarifying our instructions . Notso; it took a long time before we all agreed to a strictinterpretation . . . . Roe and Taylor deserve most of thecredit for this . . . . There are many things in the Report


XXVII

that look obvious now, but didn't seem so obvious then .For instance, on the relationship of war to social systems .The original premise was conventional, from Clausewitz .. . . That war was an "instrument" of broader politicalvalues. Able was the only one who challenged this, atfirst. Fox called his position "perverse ." Yet it was Foxwho furnished most of the data that led us all to agreewith Able eventually . I mention this because I think it'sa good example of the way we worked. A triumph ofmethod over cliche . . . . I certainly don't intend to gointo details about who took what side about what, andwhen. But I will say, to give credit where due, that onlyRoe, Able, Hill, and Taylor were able to see, at the be-ginning, where our method was taking us .

But you always reached agreement, eventually .Yes. It's a unanimous report . . . . I don't mean that

our sessions were always harmonious . Some of them wererough. The last six months there was a lot of quibblingabout small points . . . . We'd been under pressure for along time, we'd been working together too long . It wasnatural . . . that we got on each other's nerves . For awhile Able and Taylor weren't speaking to each other .Miller threatened to quit . But this all passed . There wereno important differences . . . .

How was the Report actually written? Whodid the writing?

We all had a hand in the first draft. Jones and Ableput it together, and then mailed it around for review

XXV111


before working out a final version . . . . The only problemswere the form it should take and whom we were writingit for. And, of course, the question of disclosure . . . .[Doe's comments on this point are summarized in theintroduction.]

You mentioned a "peace games" manual . What arepeace games?

I wanted to say something about that . The Reportbarely mentions it. "Peace games" is a method we de-veloped during the course of the study. It's a forecastingtechnique, an information system . -I'm very excitedabout it. Even if nothing is done about our recom-mendations-which is conceivable-this is somethingthat can't be ignored. It will revolutionize the study ofsocial problems. It's a by-product of the study . Weneeded a fast, dependable procedure to approximate theeffects of disparate social phenomena on other socialphenomena. We got it. It's in a primitive phase, but itworks.

How are peace games played? Are they likeRand's war games?

You don't "play" peace games, like chess or Monopoly,any more than you play war games with toy soldiers. Youuse computers . It's a programming system. A computer"language," like Fortran, or Algol, or jovial . . . . Itsadvantage is its superior capacity to interrelate data withno apparent common points of reference . . . . A simpleanalogy is likely to be misleading . But I can give you


Xxixsome examples. For instance, supposing I asked you tofigure out what effect a moon landing by U .S. astro-nauts would have on an election in, say, Sweden . Or whateffect a change in the draft law-a specific change-would have on the value of real estate in downtown Man-hattan? Or a certain change in college entrance require-ments in the United States on the British shipping in-dustry?

You would probably say, first, that there would be noeffect to speak of, and second, that there would be no wayof telling. But you'd be wrong on both counts . In eachcase there would be an effect, and the peace gamesmethod could tell you what it would be, quantitatively .I didn't take these examples out of the air . We used themin working out the method . . . . Essentially, it's an elabo-rate high-speed trial-and-error system for determiningworking algorithms. Like most sophisticated types ofcomputer problem-solving . . . .

A lot of the "games" of this kind you read about arejust glorified conversational exercises . They really aregames, and nothing more . I just saw one reported in theCanadian Computer Society Bulletin, called a "VietnamPeace Game." They use simulation techniques, but theprogramming hypotheses are speculative . . . .

The idea of a problem-solving system like this is notoriginal with us . ARPA' has been working on somethinglike it . So has General Electric, in California . There are

' The Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the Departmentof Defense .

xxx


others . . . . We were successful not because we knowmore than they do about programming, which we don't,but because we learned how to formulate the problemsaccurately. It goes back to the old saw . You can alwaysfind the answer if you know the right question . . . .

Supposing you hadn't developed this method. Would youhave come to the same conclusions in the Report?

Certainly. But it would have taken many timeslonger . . . . But please don't misunderstand my enthusiasm[about the peace games method]. With all due respectto the effects of computer technology on modem think-ing, basic judgments must still be made by humanbeings. The peace games technique isn't responsible forour Report. We are . . . .

STATEMENT BY "JOHN DOE"

Corm ny to the decision of the Special Study Group, ofwhich I was a member, I have arranged for the generalrelease of our Report . I am grateful to Mr . Leonard C.Lewin for his invaluable assistance in making this possi-ble, and to The Dial Press for accepting the challenge ofpublication. Responsibility for taking this step, however,is mine and mine alone .

I am well aware that my action may be taken as abreach of faith by some of my former colleagues . But inmy view my responsibility to the society of which Iam a part supersedes any self-assumed obligation on thepart of fifteen individual men. Since our Report can beconsidered on its merits, it is not necessary for me to dis-close their identity to accomplish my purpose . Yet I

30M1

STATEMENT BY "JOHN DOE"

would gladly abandon my own anonymity if it were pos-sible to do so without at the same time compromisingtheirs, to defend our work publicly if and when theyrelease me from this personal bond.

But this is secondary. What is needed now, and neededbadly, is widespread public discussion and debate aboutthe elements of war and the problems of peace. I hopethat publication of this Report will serve to initiate it .

THE REPORT OFTHE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

To THE CONVENER OF THIS GROUP :

Attached is the Report of the Special Study Groupestablished by you in August, 1963, 1) to consider theproblems involved in the contingency of a transition toa general condition of peace, and 2) to recommend pro-cedures for dealing with this contingency . For the con-venience of nontechnical readers we have elected to sub-mit our statistical supporting data, totaling 604 exhibits,separately, as well as a preliminary manual of the "peacegames" method devised during the course of our study .

We have completed our assignment to the best of ourability, subject to the limitations of time and resourcesavailable to us . Our conclusions of fact and our recom-

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4

THE REPORT

mendations are unanimous ; those of us who differ incertain secondary respects from the findings set forthherein do not consider these differences sufficient towarrant the filing of a minority report . It is our earnesthope that the fruits of our deliberations will be of valueto our government in its efforts to provide leadership tothe nation in solving the complex and far-reaching prob-lems we have examined, and that our recommendationsfor subsequent Presidential action in this area will beadopted .

Because of the unusual circumstances surroundingthe establishment of this Group, and in view of thenature of its findings, we do not recommend that thisReport be released for publication . It is our affirmativejudgment that such action would not be in the publicinterest. The uncertain advantages of public discussionof our conclusions and recommendations are, in ouropinion, greatly outweighed by the clear and predictabledanger of a crisis in public confidence which untimelypublication of this Report might be expected to provoke .The likelihood that a lay reader, unexposed to theexigencies of higher political or military responsibility,will misconstrue the purpose of this project, and theintent of its participants, seems obvious . We urge thatcirculation of this Report be closely restricted to thosewhose responsibilities require that they be apprised ofits contents .

We deeply regret that the necessity of anonymity, aprerequisite to our Group's unhindered pursuit of itsobjectives, precludes proper acknowledgment of our

gratitude to the many persons in and out of governmentwho contributed so greatly to our work .

For the Special Study Group[signature withheld for publication]

3o September, 1966

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 5

INTRODUCTION

THE REPORT which follows summarizes the results of atwo-and-a-half-year study of the broad problems to beanticipated in the event of a general transformation ofAmerican society to a condition lacking its most criticalcurrent characteristics : its capability and readiness tomake war when doing so is judged necessary or desir-able by its political leadership.

Our work has been predicated on the belief thatsome kind of general peace may soon be negotiable . Thede facto admission of Communist China into the UnitedNations now appears to be only a few years away atmost. It has become increasingly manifest that conflictsof American national interest with those of China andthe Soviet Union are susceptible of political solution,

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THE REPORT

despite the superficial contraindications of the currentVietnam war, of the threats of an attack on China, and ofthe necessarily hostile tenor of day-to-day foreign policystatements. It is also obvious that differences involvingother nations can be readily resolved by the three greatpowers whenever they arrive at a stable peace amongthemselves. It is not necessary, for the purposes of ourstudy, to assume that a general detente of this sort willcome about-and we make no such argument-but onlythat it may.

It is surely no exaggeration to say that a condition ofgeneral world peace would lead to changes in the socialstructures of the nations of the world of unparalleled andrevolutionary magnitude . The economic impact of gen-eral disarmament, to name only the most obvious con-sequence of peace, would revise the production and dis-tribution patterns of the globe to a degree that wouldmake the changes of the past fifty years seem insignifi-cant. Political, sociological, cultural, and ecologicalchanges would be equally far-reaching. What has moti-vated our study of these contingencies has been thegrowing sense of thoughtful men in and out of govern-ment that the world is totally unprepared to meet thedemands of such a situation .

We had originally planned, when our study wasinitiated, to address ourselves to these two broad ques-tions and their components : What can be expected ifpeace comes? What should we be prepared to do aboutit? But as our investigation proceeded it became ap-parent that certain other questions had to be faced .

INTRODUCTION

9What, for instance, are the real functions of war inmodem societies, beyond the ostensible ones of defend-ing and advancing the "national interests" of nations?In the absence of war, what other institutions exist ormight be devised to fulfill these functions? Granting thata "peaceful" settlement of disputes is within the rangeof current international relationships, is the abolition ofwar, in the broad sense, really possible? If so, is it neces-sarily desirable, in terms of social stability? If not, whatcan be done to improve the operation of our social sys-tem in respect to its war-readiness?

The word peace, as we have used it in the followingpages, describes a permanent, or quasi-permanent, condi-tion entirely free from the national exercise, or contem-plation, of any form of the organized social violence, orthreat of violence, generally known as war . It impliestotal and general disarmament . It is not used to describethe more familiar condition of "cold war," "armed peace,"or other mere respite, long or short, from armed conflict .Nor is it used simply as a synonym for the political settle-ment of international differences . The magnitude ofmodem means of mass destruction and the speed ofmodem communications require the unqualified work-ing definition given above ; only a generation ago such anabsolute description would have seemed utopian ratherthan pragmatic . Today, any modification of this definitionwould render it almost worthless for our purpose . By thesame standard, we have used the word war to applyinterchangeably to conventional ("hot") war, to the gen-eral condition of war preparation or war readiness, and

10

THE REPORT

to the general "war system ." The sense intended is madeclear in context.

The first section of our Report deals with its scopeand with the assumptions on which our study was based .The second considers the effects of disarmament on theeconomy, the subject of most peace research to date. Thethird takes up so-called "disarmament scenarios" whichhave been proposed. The fourth, fifth, and sixth examinethe nonmilitary functions of war and the problems theyraise for a viable transition to peace ; here will be foundsome indications of the true dimensions of the problem,not previously coordinated in any other study . In theseventh section we summarize our findings, and in theeighth we set forth our recommendations for what webelieve to be a practical and necessary course of action .

SECTION 1

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

WHEN THE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP was established inAugust, 1963, its members were instructed to governtheir deliberations in accordance with three principalcriteria . Briefly stated, they were these : 1) military-styleobjectivity; 2) avoidance of preconceived value assump-tions; 3) inclusion of all relevant areas of theory anddata .

These guideposts are by no means as obvious as theymay appear at first glance, and we believe it necessary toindicate clearly how they were to inform our work . Forthey express succinctly the limitations of previous "peacestudies," and imply the nature of both government andunofficial dissatisfaction with these earlier efforts . It isnot our intention here to minimize the significance of thework of our predecessors, or to belittle the quality of

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THE REPORT

their contributions . What we have tried to do, and believewe have done, is extend their scope . We hope that ourconclusions may serve in turn as a starting point for stillbroader and more detailed examinations of every aspectof the problems of transition to peace and of the ques-tions which must be answered before such a transitioncan be allowed to get under way .

It is a truism that objectivity is more often an inten-tion expressed than an attitude achieved, but the inten-tion-conscious, unambiguous, and constantly self-critical-is a precondition to its achievement . We believe it noaccident that we were charged to use a "military con-tingency" model for our study, and we owe a consider-able debt to the civilian war planning agencies for theirpioneering work in the objective examination of the con-tingencies of nuclear war. There is no such precedent inpeace studies. Much of the usefulness of even the mostelaborate and carefully reasoned programs for economicconversion to peace, for example, has been vitiated by awishful eagerness to demonstrate that peace is not onlypossible, but even cheap or easy. One official report isreplete with references to the critical role of "dynamicoptimism" on economic developments, and goes on tosubmit, as evidence, that it "would be hard to imaginethat the American people would not respond very posi-tively to an agreed and safeguarded program to substitutean international rule of law and order," etc .' Another lineof argument frequently taken is that disarmament wouldentail comparatively little disruption of the economy,since it need only be partial ; we will deal with this

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

13

approach later. Yet genuine objectivity in war studiesis often criticized as inhuman . As Herman Kahn, thewriter on strategic studies best known to the generalpublic, put it: "Critics frequently object to the icy ra-tionality of the Hudson Institute, the Rand Corporation,and other such organizations . I'm always tempted to askin reply, `Would you prefer a warm, human error? Do youfeel better with a nice emotional mistake?"' And, asSecretary of Defense Robert S . McNamara has pointedout, in reference to facing up to the possibility of nu-clear war, "Some people are afraid even to look over theedge. But in a thermonuclear war we cannot afford anypolitical acrophobia."' Surely it should be self-evidentthat this applies equally to the opposite prospect, but sofar no one has taken more than a timid glance over thebrink of peace.

An intention to avoid preconceived value judgments isif anything even more productive of self-delusion . Weclaim no immunity, as individuals, from this type of bias,but we have made a continuously self-conscious effortto deal with the problems of peace without, for example,considering that a condition of peace is per se "good" or"bad." This has not been easy, but it has been obligatory ;to our knowledge, it has not been done before . Previousstudies have taken the desirability of peace, the import-ance of human life, the superiority of democratic institu-tions, the greatest "good" for the greatest number, the"dignity" of the individual, the desirability of maximumhealth and longevity, and other such wishful premisesas axiomatic values necessary for the justification of a

14 THE REPORT

study of peace issues. We have not found them so . Wehave attempted to apply the standards of physical scienceto our thinking, the principal characteristic of which isnot quantification, as is popularly believed, but that, inWhitehead's words, ". . . it ignores all judgments ofvalue; for instance, all esthetic and moral judgments."!Yet it is obvious that any serious investigation of a prob-lem, however "pure," must be informed by some norma-tive standard. In this case it has been simply the survivalof human society in general, of American society in par-ticular, and, as a corollary to survival, the stability of thissociety .

It is interesting, we believe, to note that the most dis-passionate planners of nuclear strategy also recognizethat the stability of society is the one bedrock value thatcannot be avoided. Secretary McNamara has defendedthe need for American nuclear superiority on the groundsthat it "makes possible a strategy designed to preservethe fabric of our societies if war should occur . A formermember of the Department of State policy planning staffgoes further. "A more precise word for peace, in termsof the practical world, is stability . . . . Today the greatnuclear panoplies are essential elements in such stabilityas exists. Our present purpose must be to continue theprocess of learning how to live with them ." 6 We, of course,do not equate stability with peace, but we accept it asthe one common assumed objective of both peace andwar .

The third criterion-breadth-has taken us still far-ther afield from peace studies made to date . It is obvious

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

15

to any layman that the economic patterns of a warlessworld will be drastically different from those we livewith today, and it is equally obvious that the political re-lationships of nations will not be those we have learnedto take for granted, sometimes described as a globalversion of the adversary system of our common law . Butthe social implications of peace extend far beyond itsputative effects on national economies and internationalrelations. As we shall show, the relevance of peace andwar to the internal political organization of societies, tothe sociological relationships of their members, to psy-chological motivations, to ecological processes, and tocultural values is equally profound. More important, it isequally critical in assaying the consequences of a transi-tion to peace, and in determining the feasibility of anytransition at all .

It is not surprising that these less obvious factors havebeen generally ignored in peace research . They havenot lent themselves to systematic analysis. They havebeen difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure with anydegree of assurance that estimates of their effects couldbe depended on . They are "intangibles," but only in thesense that abstract concepts in mathematics are intangiblecompared to those which can be quantified . Economicfactors, on the other hand, can be measured, at leastsuperficially ; and international relationships can be ver-balized, like law, into logical sequences .

We do not claim that we have discovered an infallibleway of measuring these other factors, or of assigning themprecise weights in the equation of transition . But we be-

A

THE REPORT

lieve we have taken their relative importance into ac-count to this extent : we have removed them from thecategory of the "intangible," hence scientifically suspectand therefore somehow of secondary importance, andbrought them out into the realm of the objective . Theresult, we believe, provides a context of realism for thediscussion of the issues relating to the possible transitionto peace which up to now has been missing.

This is not to say that we presume to have found theanswers we were seeking. But we believe that our em-phasis on breadth of scope has made it at least possibleto begin to understand the questions .

SECTION 2

DISARMAMENT AND

THE ECONOMY

IN THIS SECTION we shall briefly examine some of thecommon features of the studies that have been publisheddealing with one or another aspect of the expected im-pact of disarmament on the American economy . Whetherdisarmament is considered as a by-product of peace oras its precondition, its effect on the national economy willin either case be the most immediately felt of its conse-quences. The quasi-mensurable quality of economic mani-festations has given rise to more detailed speculation inthis area than in any other.

General agreement prevails in respect to the moreimportant economic problems that general disarmamentwould raise. A short survey of these problems, ratherthan a detailed critique of their comparative significance,is sufficient for our purposes in this Report .

17

1H

THE REPORT

The first factor is that of size . The "world war indus-try," as one writer' has aptly called it, accounts for ap-proximately a tenth of the output of the world's totaleconomy. Although this figure is subject to fluctuation,the causes of which are themselves subject to regionalvariation, it tends to hold fairly steady . The United States,as the world's richest nation, not only accounts for thelargest single share of this expense, currently upward of$60 billion a year, but also ". . . has devoted a higherproportion [emphasis added] of its gross national productto its military establishment than any other major freeworld nation. This was true even before our increasedexpenditures in Southeast Asia."2 Plans for economic con-version that minimize the economic magnitude of theproblem do so only by rationalizing, however persua-sively, the maintenance of a substantial residual militarybudget under some euphemized classification .

Conversion of military expenditures to other purposesentails a number of difficulties . The most serious stemsfrom the degree of rigid specialization that characterizesmodern war production, best exemplified in nuclear andmissile technology. This constituted no fundamentalproblem after World War II, nor did the question offree-market consumer demand for "conventional" itemsof consumption-those goods and services consumershad already been conditioned to require . Today's situa-tion is qualitatively different in both respects .

This inflexibility is geographical and occupational, aswell as industrial, a fact which has led most analysts ofthe economic impact of disarmament to focus their at-

DISARMAMENT AND THE ECONOMY

19

tention on phased plans for the relocation of war indus-try personnel and capital installations as much as onproposals for developing new patterns of consumption .One serious flaw common to such plans is the kind calledin the natural sciences the "macroscopic error." An im-plicit presumption is made that a total national plan forconversion differs from a community program to copewith the shutting down of a "defense facility" only indegree. We find no reason to believe that this is thecase, nor that a general enlargement of such local pro-grams, however well thought out in terms of housing,occupational retraining, and the like, can be applied on anational scale. A national economy can absorb almostany number of subsidiary reorganizations within its totallimits, providing there is no basic change in its own struc-ture. General disarmament, which would require suchbasic changes, lends itself to no valid smaller-scaleanalogy .

Even more questionable are the models proposed forthe retraining of labor for nonarmaments occupations .Putting aside for the moment the unsolved questionsdealing with the nature of new distribution patterns-retraining for what?-the increasingly specialized jobskills associated with war industry production are furtherdepreciated by the accelerating inroads of the industrialtechniques loosely described as "automation ." It is nottoo much to say that general disarmament would requirethe scrapping of a critical proportion of the most highlydeveloped occupational specialties in the economy . Thepolitical difficulties inherent in such an "adjustment"

20

THE REPORT

would make the outcries resulting from the closing of afew obsolete military and naval installations in 1964sound like a whisper.

In general, discussions of the problems of conversionhave been characterized by an unwillingness to recognizeits special quality. This is best exemplified by the 1965report of the Ackley Committee .' One critic has tellinglypointed out that it blindly assumes that " . . . nothing inthe arms economy-neither its size, nor its geographicalconcentration, nor its highly specialized nature, nor thepeculiarities of its market, nor the special nature of muchof its labor force-endows it with any uniqueness whenthe necessary time of adjustment comes ."4

Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidencethat a viable program for conversion can be developed inthe framework of the existing economy, that the problemsnoted above can be solved. What proposals have beenoffered for utilizing the productive capabilities that dis-armament would presumably release?

The most commonly held theory is simply that generaleconomic reinvestment would absorb the greater part ofthese capabilities . Even though it is now largely takenfor granted (and even by today's equivalent of tradi-tional laissez-faire economists) that unprecedented gov-ernment assistance (and concomitant government con-trol) will be needed to solve the "structural" problemsof transition, a general attitude of confidence prevailsthat new consumption patterns will take up the slack .What is less clear is the nature of these patterns .

One school of economists has it that these patterns

DISARMAMENT AND THE ECONOMY

21

will develop on their own. It envisages the equivalent ofthe arms budget being returned, under careful control,to the consumer, in the form of tax cuts . Another, recog-nizing the undeniable need for increased "consumption"in what is generally considered the public sector of theeconomy, stresses vastly increased government spendingin such areas of national concern as health, education,mass transportation, low-cost housing, water supply, con-trol of the physical environment, and, stated generally,"poverty."

The mechanisms proposed for controlling the transi-tion to an arms-free economy are also traditional-changes in both sides of the federal budget, manipulationof interest rates, etc. We acknowledge the undeniablevalue of fiscal tools in a normal cyclical economy, wherethey provide leverage to accelerate or brake an existingtrend. Their more committed proponents, however, tendto lose sight of the fact that there is a limit to the powerof these devices to influence fundamental economicforces. They can provide new incentives in the economy,but they cannot in themselves transform the productionof a billion dollars' worth of missiles a year to the equiva-lent in food, clothing, prefabricated houses, or televisionsets. At bottom, they reflect the economy ; they do notmotivate it .

More sophisticated, and less sanguine, analysts con-template the diversion of the arms budget to a non-military system equally remote from the market economy .What the "pyramid-builders" frequently suggest is theexpansion of space-research programs to the dollar level

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THE REPORT

of current armaments expenditures . This approach hasthe superficial merit of reducing the size of the problemof transferability of resources, but introduces other diffi-culties, which we will take up in section 6 .

Without singling out any one of the several majorstudies of the expected impact of disarmament on theeconomy for special criticism, we can summarize ourobjections to them in general terms as follows :

1. No proposed program for economic conversion todisarmament sufficiently takes into account the uniquemagnitude of the required adjustments it would entail .

2. Proposals to transform arms production into abeneficent scheme of public works are more the productsof wishful thinking than of realistic understanding of thelimits of our existing economic system .

3. Fiscal and monetary measures are inadequate ascontrols for the process of transition to an arms-freeeconomy .

4. Insufficient attention has been paid to the politicalacceptability of the objectives of the proposed conver-sion models, as well as of the political means to be em-ployed in effectuating a transition .

5. No serious consideration has been given, in anyproposed conversion plan, to the fundamental nonmili-tary function of war and armaments in modern society,nor has any explicit attempt been made to devise a viablesubstitute for it . This criticism will be developed in sec-tions 5 and 6 .

SECTION 3

DISARMAMENT SCENARIOS

SCENARIOS, as they have come to be called, are hypo-thetical constructions of future events . Inevitably, theyare composed of varying proportions of established fact,reasonable inference, and more or less inspired guess-work. Those which have been suggested as model pro-cedures for effectuating international arms control andeventual disarmament are necessarily imaginative, al-though closely reasoned ; in this respect they resemblethe "war games" analyses of the Rand Corporation, withwhich they share a common conceptual origin.

All such scenarios that have been seriously put forthimply a dependence on bilateral or multilateral agree-ment between the great powers . In general, they call fora progressive phasing out of gross armaments, militaryforces, weapons, and weapons technology, coordinatedwith elaborate matching procedures of verification, in-

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THE REPORT

spection, and machinery for the settlement of interna-tional disputes . It should be noted that even proponentsof unilateral disarmament qualify their proposals with animplied requirement of reciprocity, very much in themanner of a scenario of graduated response in nuclearwar. The advantage of unilateral initiative lies in itspolitical value as an expression of good faith, as well asin its diplomatic function as a catalyst for formal dis-armament negotiations .

The READ model for disarmament (developed by theResearch Program on Economic Adjustments to Disarma-ment) is typical of these scenarios . It is a twelve-year-program, divided into three-year stages . Each stageincludes a separate phase of : reduction of armed forces;cutbacks of weapons production, inventories, and foreignmilitary bases; development of international inspectionprocedures and control conventions ; and the buildingup of a sovereign international disarmament organiza-tion. It anticipates a net matching decline in U .S . defenseexpenditures of only somewhat more than half the 1965level, but a necessary redeployment of some five-sixthsof the defense-dependent labor force.

The economic implications assigned by their authorsto various disarmament scenarios diverge widely. Themore conservative models, like that cited above, empha-size economic as well as military prudence in postulatingelaborate fail-safe disarmament agencies, which them-selves require expenditures substantially substituting forthose of the displaced war industries. Such programsstress the advantages of the smaller economic adjustment

DISARMAMENT SCENARIOS

25

entailed .' Others emphasize, on the contrary, the magni-tude (and the opposite advantages) of the savings to beachieved from disarmament. One widely read analysis'estimates the annual cost of the inspection function ofgeneral disarmament throughout the world as only be-tween two and three percent of current military expendi-tures. Both types of plan tend to deal with the anticipatedproblem of economic reinvestment only in the aggregate .We have seen no proposed disarmament sequence thatcorrelates the phasing out of specific kinds of militaryspending with specific new forms of substitute spending .

Without examining disarmament scenarios in greaterdetail, we may characterize them with these general com-ments :

1. Given genuine agreement of intent among thegreat powers, the scheduling of arms control and elimi-nation presents no inherently insurmountable proceduralproblems. Any of several proposed sequences might serveas the basis for multilateral agreement or for the firststep in unilateral arms reduction .

2. No major power can proceed with such a program,however, until it has developed an economic conversionplan fully integrated with each phase of disarmament.No such plan has yet been developed in the United States .

3. Furthermore, disarmament scenarios, like proposalsfor economic conversion, make no allowance for the non-military functions of war in modem societies, and offerno surrogate for these necessary functions . One partialexception is a proposal for the "unarmed forces of theUnited States," which we will consider in section 6 .

SECTION 4

WAR AND PEACEAS SOCIAL SYSTEMS

WE HAVE DEALT only sketchily with proposed disarma-ment scenarios and economic analyses, but the reasonfor our seemingly casual dismissal of so much seriousand sophisticated work lies in no disrespect for its com-petence. It is rather a question of relevance . To put itplainly, all these programs, however detailed and welldeveloped, are abstractions. The most carefully reasoneddisarmament sequence inevitably reads more like therules of a game or a classroom exercise in logic than likea prognosis of real events in the real world. This is astrue of today's complex proposals as it was of the Abbede St. Pierre's "Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe" 250years ago .

Some essential element has clearly been lacking in

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THE REPORT

all these schemes. One of our first tasks was to try to bringthis missing quality into definable focus, and we believewe have succeeded in doing so . We find that at theheart of every peace study we have examined-from themodest technological proposal (e .g ., to convert a poisongas plant to the production of "socially useful" equiva-lents) to the most elaborate scenario for universal peacein our time-lies one common fundamental misconcep-tion. It is the source of the miasma of unreality sur-rounding such plans . It is the incorrect assumption thatwar, as an institution, is subordinate to the social sys-tems it is believed to serve.

This misconception, although profound and far-reach-ing, is entirely comprehensible . Few social cliches areso unquestioningly accepted as the notion that war is anextension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit ofeconomic objectives) . If this were true, it would bewholly appropriate for economists and political theoriststo look on the problems of transition to peace as essen-tially mechanical or procedural-as indeed they do, treat-ing them as logistic corollaries of the settlement of na-tional conflicts of interest . If this were true, there wouldbe no real substance to the difficulties of transition . Forit is evident that even in today's world there exists noconceivable conflict of interest, real or imaginary, betweennations or between social forces within nations, that can-not be resolved without recourse to war-if such resolu-tion were assigned a priority of social value . And if thiswere true, the economic analyses and disarmament pro-posals we have referred to, plausible and well conceived

WAR AND PEACE AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS

29

as they may be, would not inspire, as they do, an ines-capable sense of indirection .

The point is that the cliche is not true, and the prob-lems of transition are indeed substantive rather thanmerely procedural. Although war is "used" as an instru-ment of national and social policy, the fact that a societyis organized for any degree of readiness for war super-sedes its political and economic structure. War itself isthe basic social system, within which other secondarymodes of social organization conflict or conspire . It is thesystem which has governed most human societies of rec-ord, as it is today .

Once this is correctly understood, the true magnitudeof the problems entailed in a transition to peace-itselfa social system, but without precedent except in a fewsimple preindustrial societies-becomes apparent. At thesame time, some of the puzzling superficial contradictionsof modern societies can then be readily rationalized. The"unnecessary" size and power of the world war industry ;the preeminence of the military establishment in everysociety, whether open or concealed ; the exemption ofmilitary or paramilitary institutions from the acceptedsocial and legal standards of behavior required elsewherein the society; the successful operation of the armed forcesand the armaments producers entirely outside the frame-work of each nation's economic ground rules : these andother ambiguities closely associated with the relationshipof war to society are easily clarified, once the priority ofwar-making potential as the principal structuring force insociety is accepted . Economic systems, political philoso-

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THE REPORT

phies, and corpora jures serve and extend the war sys-tem, not vice versa .

It must be emphasized that the precedence of a so-ciety's war-making potential over its other characteristicsis not the result of the "threat" presumed to exist at anyone time from other societies . This is the reverse of thebasic situation ; "threats" against the "national interest"are usually created or accelerated to meet the changingneeds of the war system . Only in comparatively recenttimes has it been considered politically expedient toeuphemize war budgets as "defense" requirements . Thenecessity for governments to distinguish between "aggres-sion" (bad) and "defense" (good) has been a by-productof rising literacy and rapid communication . The distinc-tion is tactical only, a concession to the growing inade-quacy of ancient war-organizing political rationales .

Wars are not "caused" by international conflicts ofinterest. Proper logical sequence would make it moreoften accurate to say that war-making societies require-and thus bring about-such conflicts. The capacity of anation to make war expresses the greatest social power itcan exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is amatter of life and death on the greatest scale subject tosocial control. It should therefore hardly be surprisingthat the military institutions in each society claim itshighest priorities .

We find further that most of the confusion surround-ing the myth that war-making is a tool of state policystems from a general misapprehension of the functions ofwar. In general, these are conceived as : to defend a

WAR AND PEACE AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS

31

nation from military attack by another, or to deter suchan attack; to defend or advance a "national interest"-economic, political, ideological; to maintain or increase anation's military power for its own sake . These are thevisible, or ostensible, functions of war . If there were noothers, the importance of the war establishment in eachsociety might in fact decline to the subordinate level it isbelieved to occupy. And the elimination of war wouldindeed be the procedural matter that the disarmamentscenarios suggest .

But there are other, broader, more profoundly feltfunctions of war in modern societies . It is these invisible,or implied, functions that maintain war-readiness as thedominant force in our societies. And it is the unwilling-ness or inability of the writers of disarmament scenariosand reconversion plans to take them into account thathas so reduced the usefulness of their work, and thathas made it seem unrelated to the world we know .

SECTION 5

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR

As WE HAVE INDICATED, the preeminence of the conceptof war as the principal organizing force in most societieshas been insufficiently appreciated . This is also true ofits extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitaryactivities of society. These effects are less apparent incomplex industrial societies like our own than in primi-tive cultures, the activities of which can be more easilyand fully comprehended .

We propose in this section to examine these nonmili-tary, implied, and usually invisible functions of war, tothe extent that they bear on the problems of transition topeace for our society . The military, or ostensible, functionof the war system requires no elaboration ; it serves simplyto defend or advance the "national interest" by means of

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THE REPORT

organized violence. It is often necessary for a nationalmilitary establishment to create a need for its uniquepowers-to maintain the franchise, so to speak. And ahealthy military apparatus requires regular "exercise," bywhatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent itsatrophy .

The nonmilitary functions of the war system are morebasic. They exist not merely to justify themselves but toserve broader social purposes . If and when war is elimi-nated, the military functions it has served will end withit. But its nonmilitary functions will not . It is essential,therefore, that we understand their significance before wecan reasonably expect to evaluate whatever institutionsmay be proposed to replace them .

EconomicThe production of weapons of mass destruction has,

always been associated with economic "waste ." The termis pejorative, since it implies a failure of function . But nohuman activity can properly be considered wasteful ifit achieves its contextual objective . The phrase "wastefulbut necessary," applied not only to war expenditures butto most of the "unproductive" commercial activities ofour society, is a contradiction in terms . " . . . The attacksthat have since the time of Samuel's criticism of King Saulbeen leveled against military expenditures as waste maywell have concealed or misunderstood the point that somekinds of waste may have a larger social utility."1

In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a largersocial utility. It derives from the fact that the "wasteful-

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 35ness" of war production is exercised entirely outside theframework of the economy of supply and demand. Assuch, it provides the only critically large segment of thetotal economy that is subject to complete and arbitrarycentral control. If modem industrial societies can be de-fined as those which have developed the capacity to pro-duce more than is required for their economic survival(regardless of the equities of distribution of goods withinthem), military spending can be said to furnish the onlybalance wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the ad-vance of their economies . The fact that war is "wasteful"is what enables it to serve this function . And the fasterthe economy advances, the heavier this balance wheelmust be.

This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a devicefor the control of surpluses . One writer on the subject putsit this way : "Why is war so wonderful? Because it createsartificial demand . . . the only kind of artificial demand,moreover, that does not raise any political issues : war,and only war, solves the problem of inventory ."2 Thereference here is to shooting war, but it applies equally,to the general war economy as well. "It is generallyagreed," concludes, more cautiously, the report of a panelset up by the U .S. Arms Control and DisarmamentAgency, "that the greatly expanded public sector sinceWorld War II, resulting from heavy defense expendi-tures, has provided additional protection against depres-sions, since this sector is not responsive to contraction inthe private sector and has provided a sort of buffer orbalance wheel in the economy." 3

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THE REPORT

The principal economic function of war, in our view,is that it provides just such a flywheel . It is not to beconfused in function with the various forms of fiscalcontrol, none of which directly engages vast numbers ofmen and units of production . It is not to be confused withmassive government expenditures in social welfare pro-grams; once initiated, such programs normally becomeintegral parts of the general economy and are no longersubject to arbitrary control .

But even in the context of the general civilian econ-omy war cannot be considered wholly "wasteful." With-out a long-established war economy, and without itsfrequent eruption into large-scale shooting war, most ofthe major industrial advances known to history, begin-ning with the development of iron, could never havetaken place. Weapons technology structures the economy .According to the writer cited above, "Nothing is moreironic or revealing about our society than the fact thathugely destructive war is a very progressive force in it .. . . War production is progressive because it is produc-tion that would not otherwise have taken place . (It isnot so widely appreciated, for example, that the civilianstandard of living rose during World War IL)" This isnot "ironic or revealing," but essentially a simple state-ment of fact .

It should also be noted that war production has adependably stimulating effect outside itself. Far fromconstituting a "wasteful" drain on the economy, warspending, considered pragmatically, has been a consis-tently positive factor in the rise of gross national product

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 37and of individual productivity . A former Secretary ofthe Army has carefully phrased it for public consumptionthus : "If there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relationbetween the stimulus of large defense spending and asubstantially increased rate of growth of gross nationalproduct, it quite simply follows that defense spendingper se might be countenanced on economic grounds alone[emphasis added] as a stimulator of the national meta-bolism."5 Actually, the fundamental nonmilitary utilityof war in the economy is far more widely acknowledgedthan the scarcity of such affirmations as that quoted abovewould suggest .

But negatively phrased public recognitions of the im-portance of war to the general economy abound . Themost familiar example is the effect of "peace threats" onthe stock market, e.g., "Wall Street was shaken yesterdayby news of an apparent peace feeler from North Vietnam,but swiftly recovered its composure after about an hourof sometimes indiscriminate selling ."' Savings banks solicitdeposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g ., "If peacebreaks out, will you be ready for it?" A more subtle casein point was the recent refusal of the Department ofDefense to permit the West German government to sub-stitute nonmilitary goods for unwanted armaments in itspurchase commitments from the United States ; the de-cisive consideration was that the German purchasesshould not affect the general (nonmilitary) economy .Other incidental examples are to be found in the pres-sures brought to bear on the Department when it an-nounces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a

38

THE REPORT

"wasteful" form of "waste"), and in the usual coordina-tion of stepped-up military activities (as in Vietnam in1965) with dangerously rising unemployment rates .

Although we do not imply that a substitute for warin the economy cannot be devised, no combination oftechniques for controlling employment, production, andconsumption has yet been tested that can remotely com-pare to it in effectiveness . It is, and has been, the essentialeconomic stabilizer of modem societies .

PoliticalThe political functions of war have been up to now

even more critical to social stability . It is not surprising,nevertheless, that discussions of economic conversion forpeace tend to fall silent on the matter of political im-plementation, and that disarmament scenarios, often so-phisticated in their weighing of international politicalfactors, tend to disregard the political functions of thewar system within individual societies .

These functions are essentially organizational . First ofall, the existence of a society as a political "nation" re-quires as part of its definition an attitude of relationshiptoward other "nations ." This is what we usually call aforeign policy. But a nation's foreign policy can have nosubstance if it lacks the means of enforcing its attitudetoward other nations . It can do this in a credible manneronly if it implies the threat of maximum political organ-ization for this purpose-which is to say that it is organ-ized to some degree for war. War, then, as we have de-fined it to include all national activities that recognize the

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 39possibility of armed conflict, is itself the defining elementof any nation's existence vis-a-vis any other nation. Sinceit is historically axiomatic that the existence of any formof weaponry insures its use, we have used the word"peace" as virtually synonymous with disarmament . Bythe same token, "war" is virtually synonymous with na-tionhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitableelimination of national sovereignty and the traditionalnation-state .

The war system not only has been essential to theexistence of nations as independent political entities, buthas been equally indispensable to their stable internalpolitical structure . Without it, no government has everbeen able to obtain acquiescence in its "legitimacy," orright to rule its society. The possibility of war providesthe sense of external necessity without which no govern-ment can long remain in power . The historical recordreveals one instance after another where the failure ofa regime to maintain the credibility of a war threat ledto its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, of re-actions to social injustice, or of other disintegrative ele-ments. The organization of a society for the possibilityof war is its principal political stabilizer . It is ironic thatthis primary function of war has been generally recog-nized by historians only where it has been expresslyacknowledged-in the pirate societies of the great con-querors .

The basic authority of a modern state over its peopleresides in its war powers . (There is, in fact, good reasonto believe that codified law had its origins in the rules of

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THE REPORT

conduct established by military victors for dealing withthe defeated enemy, which were later adapted to applyto all subject populations . 7 ) On a day-to-day basis, itis represented by the institution of police, armed organ-izations charged expressly with dealing with "internalenemies" in a military manner . Like the conventional "ex-ternal" military, the police are also substantially exemptfrom many civilian legal restraints on their social be-havior. In some countries, the artificial distinction betweenpolice and other military forces does not exist . On thelong-term basis, a government's emergency war powers-inherent in the structure of even the most libertarianof nations-define the most significant aspect of the re-lation between state and citizen .

In advanced modern democratic societies, the warsystem has provided political leaders with another polit-ical-economic function of increasing importance: it hasserved as the last great safeguard against the eliminationof necessary social classes . As economic productivity in-creases to a level further and further above that of mini-mum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult fora society to maintain distribution patterns insuring theexistence of "hewers of wood and drawers of water ." Thefurther progress of automation can be expected to dif-ferentiate still more sharply between "superior" workersand what Ricardo called "menials," while simultaneouslyaggravating the problem of maintaining an unskilledlabor supply .

The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of othermilitary activities make them ideally suited to control


41

these essential class relationships. Obviously, if the warsystem were to be discarded, new political machinerywould be needed at once to serve this vital subfunction .Until it is developed, the continuance of the war systemmust be assured, if for no other reason, among others,than to preserve whatever quality and degree of povertya society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintainthe stability of its internal organization of power .

SociologicalUnder this heading, we will examine a nexus of func-

tions served by the war system that affect human be-havior in society . In general, they are broader in applica-tion and less susceptible to direct observation than theeconomic and political factors previously considered.

The most obvious of these functions is the time-honored use of military institutions to provide antisocialelements with an acceptable role in the social structure.The disintegrative, unstable social movements looselydescribed as "fascist" have traditionally taken root insocieties that have lacked adequate military or paramili-tary outlets to meet the needs of these elements . Thisfunction has been critical in periods of rapid change . Thedanger signals are easy to recognize, even though thestigmata bear different names at different times . Thecurrent euphemistic cliches-`juvenile delinquency" and"alienation"-have had their counterparts in every age .In earlier days these conditions were dealt with directlyby the military without the complications of due process,usually through press gangs or outright enslavement . But

42

THE REPORT

it is not hard to visualize, for example, the degree ofsocial disruption that might have taken place in theUnited States during the last two decades if the prob-lem of the socially disaffected of the post-World War IIperiod had not been foreseen and effectively met . Theyounger, and more dangerous, of these hostile socialgroupings have been kept under control by the SelectiveService System .

This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish re-markably clear examples of disguised military utility .Informed persons in this country have never acceptedthe official rationale for a peacetime draft-military ne-cessity, preparedness, etc .-as worthy of serious consider-ation. But what has gained credence among thoughtfulmen is the rarely voiced, less easily refuted, propositionthat the institution of military service has a "patriotic"priority in our society that must be maintained for itsown sake . Ironically, the simplistic official justification forselective service comes closer to the mark, once the non-military functions of military institutions are understood .As a control device over the hostile, nihilistic, and po-tentially unsettling elements of a society in transition,the draft can again be defended, and quite convincingly,as a "military" necessity .

Nor can it be considered a coincidence that overtmilitary activity, and thus the level of draft calls, tend tofollow the major fluctuations in the unemployment ratein the lower age groups. This rate, in turn, is a time-tested herald of social discontent . It must be noted also


43that the armed forces in every civilization have providedthe principal state-supported haven for what we nowcall the "unemployable." The typical European stand-ing army (of fifty years ago) consisted of " . . . troopsunfit for employment in commerce, industry, or agricul-ture, led by officers unfit to practice any legitimate pro-fession or to conduct a business enterprise ."' This is stilllargely true, if less apparent. In a sense, this function ofthe military as the custodian of the economically orculturally deprived was the forerunner of most con-temporary civilian social-welfare programs, from theW.P.A. to various forms of "socialized" medicine andsocial security . It is interesting that liberal sociologistscurrently proposing to use the Selective Service Systemas a medium of cultural upgrading of the poor considerthis a novel application of military practice .

Although it cannot be said absolutely that such criticalmeasures of social control as the draft require a militaryrationale, no modem society has yet been willing to riskexperimentation with any other kind . Even during suchperiods of comparatively simple social crisis as the so-called Great Depression of the 1930s, it was deemedprudent by the government to invest minor make-workprojects, like the "Civilian" Conservation Corps, with amilitary character, and to place the more ambitious Na-tional Recovery Administration under the direction ofa professional army officer at its inception . Today, atleast one small Northern European country, plagued withuncontrollable unrest among its "alienated youth," is con-

44

THE REPORT

sidering the expansion of its armed forces, despite theproblem of making credible the expansion of a non-existent external threat.

Sporadic efforts have been made to promote generalrecognition of broad national values free of military con-notation, but they have been ineffective. For example, toenlist public support of even such modest programs ofsocial adjustment as "fighting inflation" or "maintainingphysical fitness" it has been necessary for the governmentto utilize a patriotic (i .e ., military) incentive . It sells "de-fense" bonds and it equates health with military prepared-ness. This is not surprising; since the concept of "nation-hood" implies readiness for war, a "national" programmust do likewise .

In general, the war system provides the basic motiva-tion for primary social organization . In so doing, itreflects on the societal level the incentives of individualhuman behavior. The most important of these, for socialpurposes, is the individual psychological rationale forallegiance to a society and its values . Allegiance requiresa cause; a cause requires an enemy . This much is ob-vious; the critical point is that the enemy that definesthe cause must seem genuinely formidable . Roughlyspeaking, the presumed power of the "enemy" sufficientto warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a societymust be proportionate to the size and complexity of thesociety. Today, of course, that power must be one of un-precedented magnitude and frightfulness .

It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that

TIRE FUNCITONS OF WAR 45the credibility of a social "enemy" demands similarly areadiness of response in proportion to its menace. In abroad social context, "an eye for an eye" still character-izes the only acceptable attitude toward a presumedthreat of aggression, despite contrary religious and moralprecepts governing personal conduct . The remoteness ofpersonal decision from social consequence in a modemsociety makes it easy for its members to maintain thisattitude without being aware of it . A recent example isthe war in Vietnam; a less recent one was the bombingof Hiroshima and Nagasaki .' In each case, the extent andgratuitousness of the slaughter were abstracted into polit-ical formulae by most Americans, once the propositionthat the victims were "enemies" was established . Thewar system makes such an abstracted response possiblein nonmilitary contexts as well . A conventional exampleof this mechanism is the inability of most people to con-nect, let us say, the starvation of millions in India withtheir own past conscious political decision-making. Yetthe sequential logic linking a decision to restrict grainproduction in America with an eventual famine in Asiais obvious, unambiguous, and unconcealed .

What gives the war system its preeminent role insocial organization, as elsewhere, is its unmatched au-thority over life and death. It must be emphasized againthat the war system is not a mere social extension of thepresumed need for individual human violence, but itselfin turn serves to rationalize most nonmilitary killing . Italso provides the precedent for the collective willingnessof members of a society to pay a blood price for institu-

46

THE REPORT

tions far less central to social organization than war . Totake a handy example, " . . . rather than accept speedlimits of twenty miles an hour we prefer to let auto-mobiles kill forty thousand people a year."1 0 A Randanalyst puts it in more general terms and less rhetorically :"I am sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level ofautomobile accidents-desirable, that is, from a broadpoint of view; in the sense that it is a necessary con-comitant of things of greater value to society ." 11 Thepoint may seem too obvious for iteration, but it is essen-tial to an understanding of the important motivationalfunction of war as a model for collective sacrifice .

A brief look at some defunct premodern societies isinstructive . One of the most noteworthy features commonto the larger, more complex, and more successful of an-cient civilizations was their widespread use of the bloodsacrifice . If one were to limit consideration to those cul-tures whose regional hegemony was so complete thatthe prospect of "war" had become virtually inconceivable-as was the case with several of the great pre-Columbiansocieties of the Western Hemisphere-it would be foundthat some form of ritual killing occupied a position ofparamount social importance in each. Invariably, theritual was invested with mythic or religious significance ;as with all religious and totemic practice, however, theritual masked a broader and more important social func-tion .

In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the pur-pose of maintaining a vestigial "earnest" of the society'scapability and willingness to make war-i .e., kill and be


47killed-in the event that some mystical-i .e., unforeseen-circumstance were to give rise to the possibility . Thatthe "earnest" was not an adequate substitute for genuinemilitary organization when the unthinkable enemy, suchas the Spanish conquistadores, actually appeared on thescene in no way negates the function of the ritual. Itwas primarily, if not exclusively, a symbolic reminderthat war had once been the central organizing force ofthe society, and that this condition might recur .

It does not follow that a transition to total peace inmodem societies would require the use of this model,even in less "barbaric" guise . But the historical analogyserves as a reminder that a viable substitute for war asa social system cannot be a mere symbolic charade . Itmust involve real risk of real personal destruction, andon a scale consistent with the size and complexity ofmodem social systems . Credibility is the key. Whetherthe substitute is ritual in nature or functionally substan-tive, unless it provides a believable life-and-death threatit will not serve the socially organizing function of war .

The existence of an accepted external menace, then,is essential to social cohesiveness as well as to the ac-ceptance of political authority . The menace must bebelievable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with thecomplexity of the society threatened, and it must appear,at least, to affect the entire society .

EcologicalMan, like all other animals, is subject to the continu-

ing process of adapting to the limitations of his environ-

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THE REPORT

ment. But the principal mechanism he has utilized forthis purpose is unique among living creatures . To fore-stall the inevitable historical cycles of inadequate foodsupply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus members ofhis own species by organized warfare.

Ethologists 12 have often observed that the organizedslaughter of members of their own species is virtuallyunknown among other animals . Man's special propensityto kill his own kind (shared to a limited degree with rats)may be attributed to his inability to adapt anachronisticpatterns of survival (like primitive hunting) to his de-velopment of "civilizations" in which these patterns can-not be effectively sublimated . It may be attributed toother causes that have been suggested, such as a mal-adapted "territorial instinct," etc . Nevertheless, it existsand its social expression in war constitutes a biologicalcontrol of his relationship to his natural environmentthat is peculiar to man alone .

War has served to help assure the survival of the hu-man species . But as an evolutionary device to improveit, war is almost unbelievably inefficient. With few ex-ceptions, the selective processes of other living creaturespromote both specific survival and genetic improvement .When a conventionally adaptive animal faces one of itsperiodic crises of insufficiency, it is the "inferior" mem-bers of the species that normally disappear . An animal'ssocial response to such a crisis may take the form of amass migration, during which the weak fall by thewayside. Or it may follow the dramatic and more efficientpattern of lemming societies, in which the weaker mem-


49bers voluntarily disperse, leaving available food suppliesfor the stronger. In either case, the strong survive andthe weak fall. In human societies, those who fight anddie in wars for survival are in general its biologicallystronger members. This is natural selection in reverse .

The regressive genetic effect of war has been oftennoted13 and equally often deplored, even when it con-fuses biological and cultural factors . 14 The disproportion-ate loss of the biologically stronger remains inherent intraditional warfare. It serves to underscore the fact thatsurvival of the species, rather than its improvement, isthe fundamental purpose of natural selection, if it canbe said to have a purpose, just as it is the basic premiseof this study.

But as the polemologist Gaston Bouthoul15 has pointedout, other institutions that were developed to serve thisecological function have proved even less satisfactory.(They include such established forms as these: infanti-cide, practiced chiefly in ancient and primitive societies ;sexual mutilation ; monasticism ; forced emigration; ex-tensive capital punishment, as in old China and eigh-teenth-century England; and other similar, usually local-ized, practices .)

Man's ability to increase his productivity of the es-sentials of physical life suggests that the need for pro-tection against cyclical famine may be nearly obsolete ."'It has thus tended to reduce the apparent importance ofthe basic ecological function of war, which is generallydisregarded by peace theorists. Two aspects of it remainespecially relevant, however. The first is obvious : cur-

50

THE REPORT

rent . rates of population growth, compounded by en-vironmental threat of chemical and other contaminants,may well bring about a new crisis of insufficiency . If so,it is likely to be one of unprecedented global magnitude,not merely regional or temporary . Conventional methodsof warfare would almost surely prove inadequate, inthis event, to reduce the consuming population to a levelconsistent with survival of the species .

The second relevant factor is the efficiency of modernmethods of mass destruction . Even if their use is not re-quired to meet a world population crisis, they offer, per-haps paradoxically, the first opportunity in the historyof man to halt the regressive genetic effects of naturalselection by war. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate .Their application would bring to an end the dispro-portionate destruction of the physically stronger membersof the species (the "warriors") in periods of war . Whetherthis prospect of genetic gain would offset the unfavor-able mutations anticipated from postnuclear radioactivitywe have not yet determined . What gives the questiona bearing on our study is the possibility that the deter-mination may yet have to be made .

Another secondary ecological trend bearing on pro-jected population growth is the regressive effect of cer-tain medical advances . Pestilence, for example, is nolonger an important factor in population control . Theproblem of increased life expectancy has been aggrav-ated. These advances also pose a potentially more sinisterproblem, in that undesirable genetic traits that wereformerly self-liquidating are now medically maintained .

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 51

Many diseases that were once fatal at preprocreationalages are now cured ; the effect of this development is toperpetuate undesirable susceptibilities and mutations . Itseems clear that a new quasi-eugenic function of war isnow in process of formation that will have to be takeninto account in any transition plan . For the time being,the Department of Defense appears to have recognizedsuch factors, as has been demonstrated by the planningunder way by the Rand Corporation to cope with thebreakdown in the ecological balance anticipated after athermonuclear war . The Department has also begun tostockpile birds, for example, against the expected pro-liferation of radiation-resistant insects, etc .

Cultural and ScientificThe declared order of values in modem societies gives

a high place to the so-called "creative" activities, and aneven higher one to those associated with the advance ofscientific knowledge. Widely held social values can betranslated into political equivalents, which in turn maybear on the nature of a transition to peace . The attitudesof those who hold these values must be taken into ac-count in the planning of the transition. The dependence,therefore, of cultural and scientific achievement on thewar system would be an important consideration in atransition plan even if such achievement had no inher-ently necessary social function .

Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholarsto account for the major differences in art styles andcycles, only one has been consistently unambiguous in

52 THE REPORT

its application to a variety of forms and cultures. How-ever it may be verbalized, the basic distinction is this :Is the work war-oriented or is it not? Among primitivepeoples, the war dance is the most important art form .Elsewhere, literature, music, painting, sculpture, andarchitecture that has won lasting acceptance has invari-ably dealt with a theme of war, expressly or implicitly,and has expressed the centricity of war to society . Thewar in question may be national conflict, as in Shake-speare plays, Beethoven's music, or Goya's paintings, orit may be reflected in the form of religious, social, ormoral struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, andBach. Art that cannot be classified as war-oriented isusually described as "sterile," "decadent," and so on . Ap-lication of the "war standard" to works of art may oftenleave room for debate in individual cases, but there is noquestion of its role as the fundamental determinant of cul-tural values . Aesthetic and moral standards have a com-mon anthropological origin, in the exaltation of bravery,the willingness to kill and risk death in tribal warfare .

It is also instructive to note that the character of asociety's culture has borne a close relationship to itswar-making potential, in the context of its times . It isno accident that the current "cultural explosion" in theUnited States is taking place during an era marked byan unusually rapid advance in weaponry . This relation-ship is more generally recognized than the literature onthe subject would suggest. For example, many artistsand writers are now beginning to express concern overthe limited creative options they envisage in the warlessworld they think, or hope, may be soon upon us . They

THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 53are currently preparing for this possibility by unprece-dented experimentation with meaningless forms ; their in-terest in recent years has been increasingly engaged bythe abstract pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the randomhappening, and the unrelated sequence .

The relationship of war to scientific research and dis-covery is more explicit. War is the principal motivationalforce for the development of science at every level, fromthe abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological.Modern society places a high value on "pure" science,but it is historically inescapable that all the significantdiscoveries that have been made about the natural worldhave been inspired by the real or imaginary militarynecessities of their epochs . The consequences of the dis-coveries have indeed gone far afield, but war has alwaysprovided the basic incentive .

Beginning with the development of iron and steel,and proceeding through the discoveries of the laws ofmotion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomicparticle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule,no important scientific advance has not been at least in-directly initiated by an implicit requirement of weaponry .More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (anoutgrowth of military communications requirements), theassembly line (from Civil War firearms needs), thesteel-frame building (from the steel battleship), thecanal lock, and so on . A typical adaptation can be seenin a device as modest as the common lawnmower; it de-veloped from the revolving scythe devised by Leonardoda Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemyranks .

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THE REPORT

The most direct relationship can be found in medicaltechnology . For example, a giant "walking machine," anamplifier of body motions invented for military use indifficult terrain, is now making it possible for many pre-viously confined to wheelchairs to walk. The Vietnamwar alone has led to spectacular improvements in ampu-tation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and surgi-cal logistics . It has stimulated new large-scale researchon malaria and other tropical parasite diseases ; it ishard to estimate how long this work would otherwisehave been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary im-portance to nearly half the world's population .

OtherWe have elected to omit from our discussion of the

nonmilitary functions of war those we do not considercritical to a transition program . This is not to say they areunimportant, however, but only that they appear topresent no special problems for the organization of apeace-oriented social system . They include the following :

War as a general social release . This is a psychosocialfunction, serving the same purpose for a society as do theholiday, the celebration, and the orgy for the individual-the release and redistribution of undifferentiated ten-sions. War provides for the periodic necessary readjust-ment of standards of social behavior (the "moral climate")and for the dissipation of general boredom, one of themost consistently undervalued and unrecognized of socialphenomena .

War as a generational stabilizer . This psychological


55function, served by other behavior patterns in other an-imals, enables the physically deteriorating older genera-tion to maintain its control of the younger, destroying itif necessary .

War as an ideological clari fier . The dualism that char-acterizes the traditional dialectic of all branches of phil-osophy and of stable political relationships stems fromwar as the prototype of conflict . Except for secondaryconsiderations, there cannot be, to put it as simply as pos-sible, more than two sides to a question because therecannot be more than two sides to a war .

War as the basis for inter-national understanding . Be-fore the development of modern communications, thestrategic requirements of war provided the only sub-stantial incentive for the enrichment of one national cul-ture with the achievements of another . Although thisis still the case in many inter-national relationships, thefunction is obsolescent .

We have also forgone extended characterization ofthose functions we assume to be widely and explicitlyrecognized . An obvious example is the role of war ascontroller of the quality and degree of unemployment .This is more than an economic and political subfunction ;its sociological, cultural, and ecological aspects are alsoimportant, although often teleonomic . But none affectthe general problem of substitution . The same is true ofcertain other functions ; those we have included are suf-ficient to define the scope of the problem .

SECTION 6

SUBSTITUTES FOR THEFUNCTIONS OF WAR

BY Now it should be clear that the most detailed andcomprehensive master plan for a transition to worldpeace will remain academic if it fails to deal forth-rightly with the problem of the critical nonmilitary func-tions of war . The social needs they serve are essential ; ifthe war system no longer exists to meet them, substituteinstitutions will have to be established for the purpose .These surrogates must be "realistic," which is to say ofa scope and nature that can be conceived and imple-mented in the context of present-day social capabilities .This is not the truism it may appear to be ; the require-ments of radical social change often reveal the distinc-tion between a most conservative projection and a wildlyutopian scheme to be fine indeed .

57

58

THE REPORT

In this section we will consider some possible sub-stitutes for these functions . Only in rare instances havethey been put forth for the purposes which concern ushere, but we see no reason to limit ourselves to proposalsthat address themselves explicitly to the problem as wehave outlined it. We will disregard the ostensible, ormilitary, functions of war; it is a premise of this studythat the transition to peace implies absolutely that theywill no longer exist in any relevant sense . We will alsodisregard the noncritical functions exemplified at theend of the preceding section .

EconomicEconomic surrogates for war must meet two principal

criteria. They must be "wasteful," in the common senseof the word, and they must operate outside the normalsupply-demand system . A corollary that should be ob-vious is that the magnitude of the waste must be sufficientto meet the needs of a particular society . An economy asadvanced and complex as our own requires the plannedaverage annual destruction of not less than 10 percentof gross national product' if it is effectively to fulfill itsstabilizing function . When the mass of a balance wheelis inadequate to the power it is intended to control, itseffect can be self-defeating, as with a runaway locomo-tive. The analogy, though crude,' is especially apt for theAmerican economy, as our record of cyclical depressionsshows . All have taken place during periods of grosslyinadequate military spending .

Those few economic conversion programs which by

SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR

59implication acknowledge the nonmilitary economic func-tion of war (at least to some extent) tend to assume thatso-called social-welfare expenditures will fill the vacuumcreated by the disappearance of military spending . Whenone considers the backlog of unfinished business-pro-posed but still unexecuted-in this field, the assumptionseems plausible . Let us examine briefly the following list,which is more or less typical of general social welfareprograms . 3

Health . Drastic expansion of medical research, edu-cation, and training facilities ; hospital and clinic con-struction; the general objective of complete government-guaranteed health care for all, at a level consistent withcurrent developments in medical technology .

Education. The equivalent of the foregoing inteacher training; schools and libraries ; the drastic up-grading of standards, with the general objective of mak-ing available for all an attainable educational goalequivalent to what is now considered a professional de-gree .

Housing. Clean, comfortable, safe, and spacious liv-ing space for all, at the level now enjoyed by about 15percent of the population in this country (less in mostothers) .

Transportation. The establishment of a system ofmass public transportation making it possible for all totravel to and from areas of work and recreation quickly,comfortably, and conveniently, and to travel privatelyfor pleasure rather than necessity .

Physical environment. The development and protec-

6o THE REPORT

tion of water supplies, forests, parks, and other naturalresources ; the elimination of chemical and bacterial con-taminants from air, water, and soil .

Poverty . The genuine elimination of poverty, de-fined by a standard consistent with current economic pro-ductivity, by means of a guaranteed annual income orwhatever system of distribution will best assure itsachievement .

This is only a sampler of the more obvious domesticsocial welfare items, and we have listed it in a deliber-ately broad, perhaps extravagant, manner . In the past,such a vague and ambitious-sounding "program" wouldhave been dismissed out of hand, without serious con-sideration ; it would clearly have been, prima facie, fartoo costly, quite apart from its political implications .'Our objection to it, on the other hand, could hardly bemore contradictory. As an economic substitute for war,it is inadequate because it would be far too cheap .

If this seems paradoxical, it must be rememberedthat up to now all proposed social-welfare expenditureshave had to be measured within the war economy, not asa replacement for it . The old slogan about a battleshipor an ICBM costing as much as x hospitals or y schoolsor z homes takes on a very different meaning if there areto be no more battleships or ICBM's .

Since the list is general, we have elected to forestallthe tangential controversy that surrounds arbitrary costprojections by offering no individual cost estimates . Butthe maximum program that could be physically effectedalong the lines indicated could approach the established


61level of military spending only for a limited time-inour opinion, subject to a detailed cost-and-feasibilityanalysis, less than ten years . In this short period, at thisrate, the major goals of the program would have beenachieved. Its capital-investment phase would have beencompleted, and it would have established a permanentcomparatively modest level of annual operating cost-within the framework of the general economy .

Here is the basic weakness of the social-welfare sur-rogate. On the short-term basis, a maximum program ofthis sort could replace a normal military spending pro-gram, provided it was designed, like the military model,to be subject to arbitrary control. Public housing starts,for example, or the development of modern medical cen-ters might be accelerated or halted from time to time, asthe requirements of a stable economy might dictate .But on the long-term basis, social-welfare spending, nomatter how often redefined, would necessarily become anintegral, accepted part of the economy, of no more valueas a stabilizer than the automobile industry or old ageand survivors' insurance. Apart from whatever merit so-cial-welfare programs are deemed to have for their ownsake, their function as a substitute for war in the econ-omy would thus be self-liquidating. They might serve,however, as expedients pending the development of moredurable substitute measures .

Another economic surrogate that has been proposedis a series of giant "space research" programs . These havealready demonstrated their utility in more modest scalewithin the military economy . What has been implied, al-

62 THE REPORT

though not yet expressly put forth, is the development ofa long-range sequence of space-research projects withlargely unattainable goals . This kind of program offersseveral advantages lacking in the social welfare model.First, it is unlikely to phase itself out, regardless of thepredictable "surprises" science has in store for us : theuniverse is too big . In the event some individual projectunexpectedly succeeds there would be no dearth of sub-stitute problems . For example, if colonization of themoon proceeds on schedule, it could then become "neces-sary" to establish a beachhead on Mars or Jupiter, and soon. Second, it need be no more dependent on the generalsupply-demand economy than its military prototype .Third, it lends itself extraordinarily well to arbitrarycontrol.

Space research can be viewed as the nearest modernequivalent yet devised to the pyramid-building, andsimilar ritualistic enterprises, of ancient societies . It istrue that the scientific value of the space program, evenof what has already been accomplished, is substantial onits own terms . But current programs are absurdly andobviously disproportionate, in the relationship of theknowledge sought to the expenditures committed . Allbut a small fraction of the space budget, measured bythe standards of comparable scientific objectives, mustbe charged de facto to the military economy . Futurespace research, projected as a war surrogate, wouldfurther reduce the "scientific" rationale of its budget toa minusci ie percentage indeed . As a purely economic


63substitute for war, therefore, extension of the space pro-gram warrants serious consideration .

In Section 3 we pointed out that certain disarmamentmodels, which we called conservative, postulated ex-tremely expensive and elaborate inspection systems .Would it be possible to extend and institutionalize suchsystems to the point where they might serve as economicsurrogates for war spending? The organization of fail-safe inspection machinery could well be ritualized in amanner similar to that of established military processes ."Inspection teams" might be very like armies, and theirtechnical equipment might be very like weapons . In-flating the inspection budget to military scale presentsno difficulty . The appeal of this kind of scheme lies inthe comparative ease of transition between two parallelsystems .

The "elaborate inspection" surrogate is fundamentallyfallacious, however. Although it might be economicallyuseful, as well as politically necessary, during the disarm-ament transition, it would fail as a substitute for theeconomic function of war for one simple reason . Peace-keeping inspection is part of a war system, not of apeace system . It implies the possibility of weapons main-tenance or manufacture, which could not exist in a worldat peace as here defined. Massive inspection also impliessanctions, and thus war-readiness .

The same fallacy is more obvious in plans to createa patently useless "defense conversion" apparatus . Thelong-discredited proposal to build "total" civil defense

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facilities is one example ; another is the plan to establisha giant antimissile missile complex (Nike-X, et al.) . Theseprograms, of course, are economic rather than strategic.Nevertheless, they are not substitutes for military spend-ing but merely different forms of it.

A more sophisticated variant is the proposal to estab-lish the "Unarmed Forces" of the United States .' Thiswould conveniently maintain the entire institutional mil-itary structure, redirecting it essentially toward social-welfare activities on a global scale. It would be, in effect,a giant military Peace Corps . There is nothing inherentlyunworkable about this plan, and using the existing mili-tary system to effectuate its own demise is both in-genious and convenient. But even on a greatly magnifiedworld basis, social-welfare expenditures must sooner orlater reenter the atmosphere of the normal economy . Thepractical transitional virtues of such a scheme wouldthus be eventually negated by its inadequacy as a perma-nent economic stabilizer .

PoliticalThe war system makes the stable government of so-

cieties possible. It does this essentially by providing anexternal necessity for a society to accept political rule .In so doing, it establishes the basis for nationhood andthe authority of government to control its constituents .What other institution or combination of programs mightserve these functions in its place?

We have already pointed out that the end of warmeans the end of national sovereignty, and thus the end

SUBSTITUTES FOR MM FUNCTIONS OF WAR

65of nationhood as we know it today. But this does notnecessarily mean the end of nations in the administra-tive sense, and internal political power will remain es-sential to a stable society . The emerging "nations" of thepeace epoch must continue to draw political authorityfrom some source.

A number of proposals have been made governingthe relations between nations after total disarmament ;all are basically juridical in nature. They contemplate in-stitutions more or less like a World Court, or a UnitedNations, but vested with real authority. They may ormay not serve their ostensible postmilitary purpose ofsettling international disputes, but we need not discussthat here. None would offer effective external pressureon a peace-world nation to organize itself politically .

It might be argued that a well-armed internationalpolice force, operating under the authority of such asupranational "court," could well serve the function ofexternal enemy. This, however, would constitute a mili-tary operation, like the inspection schemes mentioned,and, like them, would be inconsistent with the premiseof an end to the war system . It is possible that a variantof the "Unarmed Forces" idea might be developed insuch a way that its "constructive" (i.e ., social welfare)activities could be combined with an economic "threat"of sufficient size and credibility to warrant political or-ganization. Would this kind of threat also be contra-dictory to our basic premise?-that is, would it be in-evitably military? Not necessarily, in our view, but weare skeptical of its capacity to evoke credibility. Also, the

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THE REPORT

obvious destabilizing effect of any global social welfaresurrogate on politically necessary class relationshipswould create an entirely new set of transition problemsat least equal in magnitude .

Credibility, in fact, lies at the heart of the problemof developing a political substitute for war . This is wherethe space-race proposals, in many ways so well suited aseconomic substitutes for war, fall short . The most ambi-tious and unrealistic space project cannot of itself gen-erate a believable external menace . It has been hotlyargued' that such a menace would offer the "last, besthope of peace," etc., by uniting mankind against thedanger of destruction by "creatures" from other planetsor from outer space . Experiments have been proposed totest the credibility of an out-of-our-world invasion threat ;it is possible that a few of the more difficult-to-explain"flying saucer" incidents of recent years were in factearly experiments of this kind . If so, they could hardlyhave been judged encouraging. We anticipate no diffi-culties in making a "need" for a giant super space pro-gram credible for economic purposes, even were therenot ample precedent ; extending it, for political purposes,to include features unfortunately associated with sciencefiction would obviously be a more dubious undertaking .

Nevertheless, an effective political substitute for warwould require "alternate enemies," some of which mightseem equally farfetched in the context of the currentwar system. It may be, for instance, that gross pollutionof the environment can eventually replace the possibilityof mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principal


67apparent threat to the survival of the species . Poisoningof the air, and of the principal sources of food and watersupply, is already well advanced, and at first glancewould seem promising in this respect ; it constitutes athreat that can be dealt with only through social organ-ization and political power . But from present indicationsit will be a generation to a generation and a half beforeenvironmental pollution, however severe, will be suffi-ciently menacing, on a global scale, to offer a possiblebasis for a solution .

It is true that the rate of pollution could be increasedselectively for this purpose ; in fact, the mere modifyingof existing programs for the deterrence of pollution couldspeed up the process enough to make the threat crediblemuch sooner. But the pollution problem has been sowidely publicized in recent years that it seems highlyimprobable that a program of deliberate environmentalpoisoning could be implemented in a politically accept-able manner.

However unlikely some of the possible alternate en-emies we have mentioned may seem, we must emphasizethat one must be found, of credible quality and magni-tude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about with-out social disintegration . It is more probable, in ourjudgment, that such a threat will have to be invented,rather than developed from unknown conditions . Forthis reason, we believe further speculation about its puta-tive nature ill-advised in this context. Since there isconsiderable doubt, in our minds, that any viable poli-tical surrogate can be devised, we are reluctant to com-

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THE REPORT

promise, by premature discussion, any possible optionthat may eventually lie open to our government .

SociologicalOf the many functions of war we have found con-

venient to group together in this classification, two arecritical . In a world of peace, the continuing stability ofsociety will require : 1) an effective substitute for mili-tary institutions that can neutralize destabilizing socialelements and 2) a credible motivational surrogate for warthat can insure social cohesiveness . The first is an es-sential element of social control ; the second is the basicmechanism for adapting individual human drives to theneeds of society .

Most proposals that address themselves, explicitly orotherwise, to the postwar problem of controlling the so-cially alienated turn to some variant of the Peace Corpsor the so-called job Corps for a solution . The sociallydisaffected, the economically unprepared, the psycholog-ically unconformable, the hard-core "delinquents," theincorrigible "subversives," and the rest of the unemploy-able are seen as somehow transformed by the disciplinesof a service modeled on military precedent into more orless dedicated social service workers . This presumptionalso informs the otherwise hardheaded ratiocination ofthe "Unarmed Forces" plan .

The problem has been addressed, in the language ofpopular sociology, by Secretary McNamara . "Even in ourabundant societies, we have reason enough to worry

SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR 69over the tensions that coil and tighten among under-privileged young people, and finally flail out in delin-quency and crime. What are we to expect . . . wheremounting frustrations are likely to fester into eruptionsof violence and extremism?" In a seemingly unrelatedpassage, he continues : "It seems to me that we couldmove toward remedying that inequity [of the SelectiveService System] by asking every young person in theUnited States to give two years of service to his country-whether in one of the military services, in the PeaceCorps, or in some other volunteer developmental workat home or abroad . We could encourage other countriesto do the same ."' Here, as elsewhere throughout thissignificant speech, Mr. McNamara has focused, indirectlybut unmistakably, on one of the key issues bearing on apossible transition to peace, and has later indicated, alsoindirectly, a rough approach to its resolution, againphrased in the language of the current war system .

It seems clear that Mr . McNamara and other propo-nents of the peace-corps surrogate for this war functionlean heavily on the success of the paramilitary Depres-sion programs mentioned in the last section. We find theprecedent wholly inadequate in degree . Neither the lackof relevant precedent, however, nor the dubious social-welfare sentimentality characterizing this approach war-rant its rejection without careful study . It may be viable-provided, first, that the military origin of the Corps for-mat be effectively rendered out of its operational activity,and second, that the transition from paramilitary activities

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to "developmental work" can be effected without regardto the attitudes of the Corps personnel or to the "value"of the work it is expected to perform .

Another possible surrogate for the control of poten-tial enemies of society is the reintroduction, in some formconsistent with modem technology and political pro-cesses, of slavery. Up to now, this has been suggested onlyin fiction, notably in the works of Wells, Huxley, Orwell,and others engaged in the imaginative anticipation ofthe sociology of the future . But the fantasies projectedin Brave New World and 1984 have seemed less and lessimplausible over the years since their publication . Thetraditional association of slavery with ancient preindus-trial cultures should not blind us to its adaptability toadvanced forms of social organization, nor should itsequally traditional incompatibility with Western moraland economic values . It is entirely possible that thedevelopment of a sophisticated form of slavery may be anabsolute prerequisite for social control in a world atpeace. As a practical matter, conversion of the code ofmilitary discipline to a euphemized form of enslavementwould entail surprisingly little revision ; the logical firststep would be the adoption of some form of "universal"military service .

When it comes to postulating a credible substitutefor war capable of directing human behavior patterns inbehalf of social organization, few options suggest them-selves. Like its political function, the motivational func-tion of war requires the existence of a genuinely menac-ing social enemy. The principal difference is that for


71purposes of motivating basic allegiance, as distinct fromaccepting political authority, the "alternate enemy" mustimply a more immediate, tangible, and directly feltthreat of destruction . It must justify the need for takingand paying a "blood price" in wide areas of human con-cern.

In this respect, the possible substitute enemies notedearlier would be insufficient . One exception might bethe environmental-pollution model, if the danger to so-ciety it posed was genuinely imminent . The fictive modelswould have to carry the weight of extraordinary con-viction, underscored with a not inconsiderable actualsacrifice of life ; the construction of an up-to-date mytho-logical or religious structure for this purpose wouldpresent difficulties in our era, but must certainly be con-sidered .

Games theorists have suggested, in other contexts,the development of "blood games" for the effective con-trol of individual aggressive impulses . It is an ironiccommentary on the current state of war and peace studiesthat it was left not to scientists but to the makers of acommercial film" to develop a model for this notion, onthe implausible level of popular melodrama, as a ritual-ized manhunt. More realistically, such a ritual might besocialized, in the manner of the Spanish Inquisition andthe less formal witch trials of other periods, for pur-poses of "social purification," "state security," or otherrationale both acceptable and credible to postwar so-cieties. The feasibility of such an updated version of stillanother ancient institution, though doubtful, is consider-

72 THE REPORT

ably less fanciful than the wishful notion of many peaceplanners that a lasting condition of peace can be broughtabout without the most painstaking examination of everypossible surrogate for the essential functions of war . Whatis involved here, in a sense, is the quest for WilliamJames's "moral equivalent of war ."

It is also possible that the two functions consideredunder this heading may be jointly served, in the senseof establishing the antisocial, for whom a control in-stitution is needed, as the "alternate enemy" needed tohold society together. The relentless and irreversible ad-vance of unemployability at all levels of society, and thesimilar extension of generalized alienation from acceptedvalues9 may make some such program necessary even asan adjunct to the war system . As before, we will notspeculate on the specific forms this kind of programmight take, except to note that there is again ampleprecedent, in the treament meted out to disfavored, al-legedly menacing, ethnic groups in certain societies dur-ing certain historical periods .'0

EcologicalConsidering the shortcomings of war as a mechanism

of selective population control, it might appear that de-vising substitutes for this function should be compara-tively simple. Schematically this is so, but the problemof timing the transition to a new ecological balancingdevice makes the feasibility of substitution less certain .

It must be remembered that the limitation of war inthis function is entirely eugenic . War has not been


73genetically progressive . But as a system of gross popula-tion control to preserve the species it cannot fairly befaulted. And, as has been pointed out, the nature of waris itself in transition . Current trends in warfare-the in-creased strategic bombing of civilians and the greatermilitary importance now attached to the destruction ofsources of supply (as opposed to purely "military" basesand personnel) -strongly suggest that a truly qualitativeimprovement is in the making. Assuming the war systemis to continue, it is more than probable that the regres-sively selective quality of war will have been reversed,as its victims become more genetically representative oftheir societies .

There is no question but that a universal requirementthat procreation be limited to the products of artificialinsemination would provide a fully adequate substitutecontrol for population levels . Such a reproductive systemwould, of course, have the added advantage of beingsusceptible of direct eugenic management . Its predict-able further development-conception and embryonicgrowth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions-would extend these controls to their logical conclusion .The ecological function of war under these circumstanceswould not only be superseded but surpassed in effective-ness.

The indicated intermediate step-total control of con-ception with a variant of the ubiquitous "pill," via watersupplies or certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a con-trolled "antidote"-is already under development ." Therewould appear to be no foreseeable need to revert to any

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of the outmoded practices referred to in the previoussection (infanticide, etc .) as there might have been ifthe possibility of transition to peace had arisen two gen-erations ago .

The real question here, therefore, does not concernthe viability of this war substitute, but the political prob-lems involved in bringing it about . It cannot be estab-lished while the war system is still in effect . The reasonfor this is simple : excess population is war material. Aslong as any society must contemplate even a remote pos-sibility of war, it must maintain a maximum supportablepopulation, even when so doing critically aggravates aneconomic liability . This is paradoxical, in view of war'srole in reducing excess population, but it is readily under-stood. War controls the general population level, but theecological interest of any single society lies in maintain-ing its hegemony vis-a-vis other societies . The obviousanalogy can be seen in any free-enterprise economy .Practices damaging to the society as a whole-both com-petitive and monopolistic-are abetted by the conflictingeconomic motives of individual capital interests . Theobvious precedent can be found in the seemingly irra-tional political difficulties which have blocked universaladoption of simple birth-control methods . Nations des-perately in need of increasing unfavorable production-consumption ratios are nevertheless unwilling to gambletheir possible military requirements of twenty yearshence for this purpose . Unilateral population control, aspracticed in ancient Japan and in other isolated societies,is out of the question in today's world .


75Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until

the transition to the peace system takes place, why notwait? One must qualify the inclination to agree. As wenoted earlier, a real possibility of an unprecedentedglobal crisis of insufficiency exists today, which the warsystem may not be able to forestall . If this should cometo pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace werecompleted, the result might be irrevocably disastrous .There is clearly no solution to this dilemma ; it is a riskwhich must be taken. But it tends to support the viewthat if a decision is made to elminate the war system, itwere better done sooner than later .

Cultural and ScientificStrictly speaking, the function of war as the deter-

minant of cultural values and as the prime mover ofscientific progress may not be critical in a world withoutwar. Our criterion for the basic nonmilitary functions ofwar has been : Are they necessary to the survival andstability of society? The absolute need for substitutecultural value-determinants and for the continued ad-vance of scientific knowledge is not established . We be-lieve it important, however, in behalf of those for whomthese functions hold subjective significance, that it beknown what they can reasonably expect in culture andscience after a transition to peace .

So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is noreason to believe they would disappear, but only thatthey would change in character and relative social im-portance. The elimination of war would in due course

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deprive them of their principal conative force, but itwould necessarily take some time for the effect of thiswithdrawal to be felt . During the transition, and perhapsfor a generation thereafter, themes of sociomoral conflictinspired by the war system would be increasingly trans-ferred to the idiom of purely personal sensibility . At thesame time, a new aesthetic would have to develop . What-ever its name, form, or rationale, its function would beto express, in language appropriate to the new period,the once discredited philosophy that art exists for its ownsake. This aesthetic would reject unequivocally the clas-sic requirement of paramilitary conflict as the substan-tive content of great art . The eventual effect of thepeace-world philosophy of art would be democratizingin the extreme, in the sense that a generally acknowl-edged subjectivity of artistic standards would equalizetheir new, content-free "values ."

What may be expected to happen is that art wouldbe reassigned the role it once played in a few primitivepeace-oriented social systems . This was the function ofpure decoration, entertainment, or play, entirely freeof the burden of expressing the sociomoral values andconflicts of a war-oriented society. It is interesting thatthe groundwork for such a value-free aesthetic is alreadybeing laid today, in growing experimentation in art with-out content, perhaps in anticipation of a world withoutconflict. A cult has developed around a new kind ofcultural determinism,12 which proposes that the techno-logical form of a cultural expression determines its valuesrather than does its ostensibly meaningful content . Its


77clear implication is that there is no "good" or "bad" art,only that which is appropriate to its (technological)times and that which is not. Its cultural effect has beento promote circumstantial constructions and unplannedexpressions; it denies to art the relevance of sequentiallogio. Its significance in this context is that it provides aworking model of one kind of value-free culture wemight reasonably anticipate in a world at peace .

So far as science is concerned, it might appear atfirst glance that a giant space-research program, the mostpromising among the proposed economic surrogates forwar, might also serve as the basic stimulator of scientificresearch. The lack of fundamental organized social con-flict inherent in space work, however, would rule it outas an adequate motivational substitute for war when ap-plied to "pure" science . But it could no doubt sustainthe broad range of technological activity that a spacebudget of military dimensions would require . A similarlyscaled social-welfare program could provide a compar-able impetus to low-keyed technological advances, es-pecially in medicine, rationalized construction methods,educational psychology, etc. The eugenic substitute forthe ecological function of war would also require con-tinuing research in certain areas of the life sciences .

Apart from these partial substitutes for war, it mustbe kept in mind that the momentum given to scientificprogress by the great wars of the past century, and evenmore by the anticipation of World War III, is intellec-tually and materially enormous . It is our finding that if thewar system were to end tomorrow this momentum is so

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THE REPORT

great that the pursuit of scientific knowledge could rea-sonably be expected to go forward without noticeable di-minution for perhaps two decades ." It would then con-tinue, at a progressively decreasing tempo, for at leastanother two decades before the "bank account" of today'sunresolved problems would become exhausted. By thestandards of the questions we have learned to ask today,there would no longer be anything worth knowing stillunknown; we cannot conceive, by definition, of the scien-tific questions to ask once those we can now comprehendare answered .

This leads unavoidably to another matter : the intrin-sic value of the unlimited search for knowledge . We ofcourse offer no independent value judgments here, butit is germane to point out that a substantial minority ofscientific opinion feels that search to be circumscribed inany case. This opinion is itself a factor in considering theneed for a substitute for the scientific function of war .For the record, we must also take note of the precedentthat during long periods of human history, often coveringthousands of years, in which no intrinsic social valuewas assigned to scientific progress, stable societies didsurvive and flourish . Although this could not have beenpossible in the modern industrial world, we cannot becertain it may not again be true in a future world atpeace .

V

SECTION 7

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The Nature of War

WAR IS NOT, as is widely assumed, primarily an instru-ment of policy utilized by nations to extend or defendtheir expressed political values or their economic inter-ests. On the contrary, it is itself the principal basis oforganization on which all modem societies are con-structed. The common proximate cause of war is theapparent interference of one nation with the aspirationsof another. But at the root of all ostensible differences ofnational interest lie the dynamic requirements of the warsystem itself for periodic armed conflict. Readiness forwar characterizes contemporary social systems morebroadly than their economic and political structures,which it subsumes .

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THE REPORT

Economic analyses of the anticipated problems oftransition to peace have not recognized the broad pre-eminence of war in the definition of social systems . Thesame is true, with rare and only partial exceptions, ofmodel disarmament "scenarios ." For this reason, the valueof this previous work is limited to the mechanical aspectsof transition . Certain features of these models may per-haps be applicable to a real situation of conversion topeace; this will depend on their compatibility with asubstantive, rather than a procedural, peace plan . Sucha plan can be developed only from the premise of fullunderstanding of the nature of the war system it pro-poses to abolish, which in turn presupposes detailedcomprehension of the functions the war system performsfor society . It will require the construction of a detailedand feasible system of substitutes for those functions thatare necessary to the stability and survival of human so-cieties .

The Functions o f WarThe visible, military function of war requires no eluci-

dation; it is not only obvious but also irrelevant to atransition to the condition of peace, in which it will bydefinition be superfluous. It is also subsidiary in socialsignificance to the implied, nonmilitary functions of war ;those critical to transition can be summarized in fiveprincipal groupings .

1. Economic . War has provided both ancient andmodern societies with a dependable system for stabiliz-ing and controlling national economies . No alternate


Simethod of control has yet been tested in a complexmodem economy that has shown itself remotely com-parable in scope or effectiveness .

2. Political . The permanent possibility of war is thefoundation for stable government; it supplies the basisfor general acceptance of political authority . It has en-abled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions,and it has ensured the subordination of the citizen to thestate, by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in theconcept of nationhood . No modem political ruling grouphas successfully controlled its constituency after failingto sustain the continuing credibility of an external threatof war.

3. Sociological. War, through the medium of mili-tary institutions, has uniquely served societies, through-out the course of known history, as an indispensable con-troller of dangerous social dissidence and destructiveantisocial tendencies . As the most formidable of threatsto life itself, and as the only one susceptible to mitiga-tion by social organization alone, it has played anotherequally fundamental role: the war system has providedthe machinery through which the motivational forcesgoverning human behavior have been translated intobinding social allegiance . It has thus ensured the degreeof social cohesion necessary to the viability of nations .No other institution, or groups of institutions, in modemsocieties, has successfully served these functions .

4. Ecological. War has been the principal evolution-ary device for maintaining a satisfactory ecological bal-ance between gross human population and supplies

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available for its survival . It is unique to the humanspecies .

5. Cultural and Scientific . War-orientation has de-termined the basic standards of value in the creative arts,and has provided the fundamental motivational source ofscientific and technological progress . The concepts thatthe arts express values independent of their own formsand that the successful pursuit of knowledge has intrinsicsocial value have long been accepted in modem societies ;the development of the arts and sciences during thisperiod has been corollary to the parallel development ofweaponry.

Substitutes for the Functions o f War: CriteriaThe foregoing functions of war are essential to the

survival of the social systems we know today. With twopossible exceptions they are also essential to any kindof stable social organization that might survive in a war-less world. Discussion of the ways and means of transi-tion to such a world are meaningless unless a) substituteinstitutions can be devised to fill these functions, or b) itcan reasonably be hypothecated that the loss or partialloss of any one function need not destroy the viability offuture societies .

Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meetvarying criteria . In general, they must be technicallyfeasible, politically acceptable, and potentially credibleto the members of the societies that adopt them . Spe-cifically, they must be characterized as follows :

1 . Economic . An acceptable economic surrogate for


83the war system will require the expenditure of resourcesfor completely nonproductive purposes at a level com-parable to that of the military expenditures otherwise de-manded by the size and complexity of each society. Sucha substitute system of apparent "waste" must be of a na-ture that will permit it to remain independent of the nor-mal supply-demand economy ; it must be subject toarbitrary political control .

2. Political. A viable political substitute for warmust posit a generalized external menace to each societyof a nature and degree sufficient to require the organiza-tion and acceptance of political authority .

3. Sociological. First, in the permanent absence ofwar, new institutions must be developed that will effec-tively control the socially destructive segments of so-cieties. Second, for purposes of adapting the physicaland psychological dynamics of human behavior to theneeds of social organization, a credible substitute forwar must generate an omnipresent and readily under-stood fear of personal destruction . This fear must be of anature and degree sufficient to ensure adherence to so-cietal values to the full extent that they are acknowledgedto transcend the value of individual human life .

4. Ecological . A substitute for war in its function asthe uniquely human system of population control mustensure the survival, if not necessarily the improvement,of the species, in terms of its relation to environmentalsupply.

5. Cultural and Scientific . A surrogate for the func-tion of war as the determinant of cultural values must

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establish a basis of sociomoral conflict of equally com-pelling force and scope . A substitute motivational basisfor the quest for scientific knowledge must be similarlyinformed by a comparable sense of internal necessity .

Substitutes for the Functions o f War : ModelsThe following substitute institutions, among others,

have been proposed for consideration as replacementsfor the nonmilitary functions of war . That they may nothave been originally set forth for that purpose does notpreclude or invalidate their possible application here .

1 . Economic. a) A comprehensive social-welfareprogram, directed toward maximum improvement ofgeneral conditions of human life . b) A giant open-endspace research program, aimed at unreachable targets .c) A permanent, ritualized, ultra-elaborate disarmamentinspection system, and variants of such a system .

2. Political. a) An omnipresent, virtually omnipo-tent international police force. b) An established andrecognized extraterrestrial menace . c) Massive global en-vironmental pollution . d) Fictitious alternate enemies .

3. Sociological: Control function . a) Programs gen-erally derived from the Peace Corps model. b) A modern,sophisticated form of slavery . Motivational function . a)Intensified environmental pollution . b) New religions orother mythologies. c) Socially oriented blood games . d )Combination forms .

4. Ecological . A comprehensive program of appliedeugenics .


855. Cultural. No replacement institution offered . Sci-

entific. The secondary requirements of the space research,social welfare, and/or eugenics programs.

Substitutes for the Functions o f War: EvaluationThe models listed above reflect only the beginning of

the quest for substitute institutions for the functions ofwar, rather than a recapitulation of alternatives . It wouldbe both premature and inappropriate, therefore, to offerfinal judgments on their applicability to a transition topeace and after. Furthermore, since the necessary butcomplex project of correlating the compatibility of pro-posed surrogates for different functions could be treatedonly in exemplary fashion at this time, we have elected towithhold such hypothetical correlations as were testedas statistically inadequate.'

Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory commentson these proposed functional "solutions" will indicate thescope of the difficulties involved in this area of peaceplanning .

Economic. The social-welfare model cannot be ex-pected to remain outside the normal economy after theconclusion of its predominantly capital-investment phase ;its value in this function can therefore be only temporary .The space-research substitute appears to meet both majorcriteria, and should be examined in greater detail, espe-cially in respect to its probable effects on other war func-tions. "Elaborate inspection" schemes, although super-ficially attractive, are inconsistent with the basic premise

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TM REPORT

of 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, pro-posals for plenipotentiary international police are inher-ently incompatible with the ending of the war system .The "unarmed forces" variant, amended to include un-limited powers of economic sanction, might conceivablybe expanded to constitute a credible external menace .Development of an acceptable threat from "outer space,"presumably in conjunction with a space-research surro-gate for economic control, appears unpromising in termsof credibility. The environmental-pollution model doesnot seem sufficiently responsive to immediate social con-trol, except through arbitrary acceleration of current pol-lution trends; this in turn raises questions of political ac-ceptability. New, less regressive, approaches to the crea-tion of fictitious global "enemies" invite further investiga-tion .

Sociological : Control function. Although the varioussubstitutes proposed for this function that are modeledroughly on the Peace Corps appear grossly inadequate inpotential scope, they should not be ruled out withoutfurther study. Slavery, in a technologically modem andconceptually euphemized form, may prove a more effi-cient and flexible institution in this area . Motivationalfunction . Although none of the proposed substitutes forwar as the guarantor of social allegiance can be dismissedout of hand, each presents serious and special difficulties .Intensified environmental threats may raise ecological


87dangers; mythmaking dissociated from war may no longerbe politically feasible ; purposeful blood games andrituals can far more readily be devised than implemented .An institution combining this function with the precedingone, based on, but not necessarily imitative of, the prec-edent of organized ethnic repression, warrants carefulconsideration .

Ecological. The only apparent problem in the ap-plication of an adequate eugenic substitute for war isthat of timing; it cannot be effectuated until the transi-tion to peace has been completed, which involves a seri-ous temporary risk of ecological failure .

Cultural . No plausible substitute for this function ofwar has yet been proposed. It may be, however, that abasic cultural value-determinant is not necessary to thesurvival of a stable society . Scientific. The same might besaid for the function of war as the prime mover of thesearch for knowledge. However, adoption of either agiant space-research program, a comprehensive social-welfare program, or a master program of eugenic controlwould provide motivation for limited technologies .

General ConclusionsIt is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or

combination of programs yet proposed for a transition topeace has remotely approached meeting the comprehen-sive functional requirements of a world without war . Al-though one projected system for filling the economicfunction of war seems promising, similar optimism can-not be expressed in the equally essential political and

88

THE REPORT

sociological areas. The other major nonmilitary functionsof war-ecological, cultural, scientific-raise very differ-ent problems, but it is at least possible that detailed pro-gramming of substitutes in these areas is not prerequisiteto transition . More important, it is not enough to developadequate but separate surrogates for the major war func-tions; they must be fully compatible and in no degreeself-canceling.

Until such a unified program is developed, at leasthypothetically, it is impossible for this or any other groupto furnish meaningful answers to the questions originallypresented to us . When asked how best to prepare for theadvent of peace, we must first reply, as strongly as wecan, that the war system cannot responsibly be allowedto disappear until 1) we know exactly what it is we planto put in its place, and 2) we are certain, beyond reason-able doubt, that these substitute institutions will servetheir purposes in terms of the survival and stability ofsociety. It will then be time enough to develop methodsfor effectuating the transition ; procedural programmingmust follow, not precede, substantive solutions .

Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be ar-rived at without a revolutionary revision of the modes ofthought heretofore considered appropriate to peace re-search. That we have examined the fundamental ques-tions involved from a dispassionate, value-free point ofview should not imply that we do not appreciate theintellectual and emotional difficulties that must be over-come on all decision-making levels before these questionsare generally acknowledged by others for what they are.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 89They reflect, on an intellectual level, traditional emo-tional resistance to new (more lethal and thus more"shocking") forms of weaponry. The understated com-ment of then-Senator Hubert Humphrey on the publica-tion of On Thermonuclear War is still very much to thepoint : "New thoughts, particularly those which appear tocontradict current assumptions, are always painful for themind to contemplate."

Nor, simply because we have not discussed them,do we minimize the massive reconciliation of conflictinginterests which domestic as well as international agree-ment on proceeding toward genuine peace presupposes .This factor was excluded from the purview of our as-signment, but we would be remiss if we failed to take itinto account. Although no insuperable obstacle lies in thepath of reaching such general agreements, formidableshort-term private-group and general-class interest inmaintaining the war system is well established andwidely recognized. The resistance to peace stemmingfrom such interest is only tangential, in the long run, tothe basic functions of war, but it will not be easily over-come, in this country or elsewhere . Some observers, infact, believe that it cannot be overcome at all in ourtime, that the price of peace is, simply, too high . Thisbears on our overall conclusions to the extent that timingin the transference to substitute institutions may often bethe critical factor in their political feasibility .

It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will everbe possible . It is far more questionable, by the objectivestandard of continued social survival rather than that of

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THE REPORT

emotional pacifism, that it would be desirable even if itwere demonstrably attainable. The war system, for all itssubjective repugnance to important sections of "publicopinion," has demonstrated its effectiveness since the be-ginning of recorded history ; it has provided the basis forthe development of many impressively durable civi liza-tions, including that which is dominant today . It has con-sistently provided unambiguous social priorities . It is, onthe whole, a known quantity. A viable system of peace,assuming that the great and complex questions of substi-tute institutions raised in this Report are both solubleand solved, would still constitute a venture into the un-known, with the inevitable risks attendant on the unfore-seen, however small and however well hedged .

Government decision-makers tend to choose peaceover war whenever a real option exists, because it usuallyappears to be the "safer" choice . Under most immediatecircumstances they are likely to be right. But in termsof long-range social stability, the opposite is true . At ourpresent state of knowledge and reasonable inference, itis the war system that must be identified with stability,the peace system with social speculation, however justi-fiable the speculation may appear, in terms of subjectivemoral or emotional values. A nuclear physicist once re-marked, in respect to a possible disarmament agreement:"If we could change the world into a world in whichno weapons could be made, that would be stabilizing .But agreements we can expect with the Soviets would bedestabilizing ."2 The qualification and the bias are equallyirrelevant; any condition of genuine total peace, how-


91

ever achieved, would be destabilizing until proved other-wise .

If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocablyfor the retention or for the dissolution of the war system,common prudence would dictate the former course. Butit is not yet necessary, late as the hour appears . And morefactors must eventually enter the war-peace equationthan even the most determined search for alternative in-stitutions for the functions of war can be expected toreveal. One group of such factors has been given onlypassing mention in this Report ; it centers around thepossible obsolescence of the war system itself . We havenoted, for instance, the limitations of the war system infilling its ecological function and the declining impor-tance of this aspect of war . It by no means stretches theimagination to visualize comparable developments whichmay compromise the efficacy of war as, for example,an economic controller or as an organizer of social alle-giance. This kind of possibility, however remote, serves asa reminder that all calculations of contingency not onlyinvolve the weighing of one group of risks against an-other, but require a respectful allowance for error onboth sides of the scale .

A more expedient reason for pursuing the investiga-tion of alternate ways and means to serve the currentfunctions of war is narrowly political . It is possible thatone or more major sovereign nations may arrive, throughambiguous leadership, at a position in which a rulingadministrative class may lose control of basic public opin-ion or of its ability to rationalize a desired war. It is not

92 THE REPORT

hard to imagine, in such circumstance, a situation inwhich such governments may feel forced to initiate seri-ous full-scale disarmament proceedings (perhaps pro-voked by "accidental" nuclear explosions), and that suchnegotiations may lead to the actual disestablishment ofmilitary institutions . As our Report has made clear, thiscould be catastrophic. It seems evident that, in the eventan important part of the world is suddenly plunged with-out sufficient warning into an inadvertent peace, evenpartial and inadequate preparation for the possibility maybe better than none. The difference could even be critical .The models considered in the preceding chapter, boththose that seem promising and those that do not, have onepositive feature in common-an inherent flexibility ofphasing. And despite our strictures against knowinglyproceeding into peace-transition procedures without thor-ough substantive preparation, our government mustnevertheless be ready to move in this direction withwhatever limited resources of planning are on hand atthe time-if circumstances so require. An arbitrary all-or-nothing approach is no more realistic in the developmentof contingency peace programming than it is anywhereelse .

But the principal cause for concern over the continu-ing effectiveness of the war system, and the more impor-tant reason for hedging with peace planning, lies in thebackwardness of current war-system programming . Itscontrols have not kept pace with the technological ad-vances it has made possible . Despite its unarguable suc-cess to date, even in this era of unprecedented potential

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 93in mass destruction, it continues to operate largely on alaissez-faire basis . To the best of our knowledge, no seri-ous quantified studies have ever been conducted to de-termine, for example :

-optimum levels of armament production, for pur-poses of economic control, at any given series ofchronological points and under any given rela-tionship between civilian production and consump-tion patterns ;

-correlation factors between draft recruitment poli-cies and mensurable social dissidence ;

-minimum levels of population destruction necessaryto maintain war-threat credibility under varyingpolitical conditions ;

-optimum cyclical frequency of "shooting" wars un-der varying circumstances of historical relationship .

These and other war-function factors are fully sus-ceptible to analysis by today's computer-based systems,'but they have not been so treated; modem analyticaltechniques have up to now been relegated to such aspectsof the ostensible functions of war as procurement, per-sonnel deployment, weapons analysis, and the like . Wedo not disparage these types of application, but only de-plore their lack of utilization to greater capacity in at-tacking problems of broader scope . Our concern for effi-ciency in this context is not aesthetic, economic, orhumanistic . It stems from the axiom that no system canlong survive at either input or output levels that consis-tently or substantially deviate from an optimum range. Astheir data grow increasingly sophisticated, the war sys-

94 THE REPORT

tem and its functions are increasingly endangered bysuch deviations .

Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be neces-sary for our government to plan in depth for two generalcontingencies . The first, and lesser, is the possibility of aviable general peace ; the second is the successful con-tinuation of the war system . In our view, careful prepar-ation for the possibility of peace should be extended, notbecause we take the position that the end of war wouldnecessarily be desirable, if it is in fact possible, but be-cause it may be thrust upon us in some form whether weare ready for it or not. Planning for rationalizing andquantifying the war system, on the other hand, to ensurethe effectiveness of its major stabilizing functions, is notonly more promising in respect to anticipated results, butis essential; we can no longer take for granted that it willcontinue to serve our purposes well merely because italways has. The objective of government policy in regardto war and peace, in this period of uncertainty, must beto preserve maximum options. The recommendationswhich follow are directed to this end .

SECTION 8

RECOMMENDATIONS

(1) WE PROPOSE THE ESTABLISHMENT, under executiveorder of the President, of a permanent War/Peace Re-search Agency, empowered and mandated to executethe programs described in (2) and (3) below . Thisagency (a) will be provided with nonaccountable fundssufficient to implement its responsibilities and decisionsat its own discretion, and (b) will have authority to pre-empt and utilize, without restriction, any and all facili-ties of the executive branch of the government in pursuitof its objectives . It will be organized along the lines ofthe National Security Council, except that none of itsgoverning, executive, or operating personnel will holdother public office or governmental responsibility. Itsdirectorate will be drawn from the broadest practicable

95

96

THE REPORT

spectrum of scientific disciplines, humanistic studies, ap-plied creative arts, operating technologies, and otherwiseunclassified professional occupations . It will be respon-sible solely to the President, or to other officers of gov-ernment temporarily deputized by him . Its operationswill be governed entirely by its own rules of procedure .Its authority will expressly include the unlimited rightto withhold information on its activities and its decisions,from anyone except the President, whenever it deemssuch secrecy to be in the public interest .

(2) THE FIRST OF THE WAR/PEACE RESEARCH AGENCY 'Stwo principal responsibilities will be to determine allthat can be known, including what can reasonably beinferred in terms of relevant statistical probabilities, thatmay bear on an eventual transition to a general conditionof peace. The findings in this Report may be consideredto constitute the beginning of this study and to indicateits orientation ; detailed records of the investigations andfindings of the Special Study Group on which this Re-port is based, will be furnished the agency, along withwhatever clarifying data the agency deems necessary.This aspect of the agency's work will hereinafter bereferred to as "Peace Research ."

The Agency's Peace Research activities will necessarilyinclude, but not be limited to, the following :

(a) The creative development of possible substituteinstitutions for the principal nonmilitary functions of war .

(b) The careful matching of such institutions against

RECOMMENDATIONS 97the criteria summarized in this Report, as refined, re-vised, and extended by the agency .

(c) The testing and evaluation of substitute institu-tions, for acceptability, feasibility, and credibility, againsthypothecated transitional and postwar conditions ; thetesting and evaluation of the effects of the anticipatedatrophy of certain unsubstituted functions .

(d) The development and testing of the correlativityof multiple substitute institutions, with the eventual ob-jective of establishing a comprehensive program of com-patible war substitutes suitable for a planned transitionto peace, if and when this is found to be possible andsubsequently judged desirable by appropriate politicalauthorities.

(e) The preparation of a wide-ranging schedule ofpartial, uncorrelated, crash programs of adjustment suit-able for reducing the dangers of an unplanned transitionto peace effected by force mafeure .

Peace Research methods will include but not belimited to, the following :

(a) The comprehensive interdisciplinary applicationof historical, scientific, technological, and cultural data.

(b) The full utilization of modern methods of mathe-matical modeling, analogical analysis, and other, moresophisticated, quantitative techniques in process of de-velopment that are compatible with computer pro-gramming.

(c) The heuristic "peace games" procedures devel-oped during the course of its assignment by the Special

98

THE REPORT

Study Group, and further extensions of this basic ap-proach to the testing of institutional functions .

(3) THE WAR/PEACE REsEARca AcENcY's other prin-cipal responsibility will be "War Research." Its funda-mental objective will be to ensure the continuing via-bility of the war system to fulfill its essential nonmilitaryfunctions for as long as the war system is judged neces-sary to or desirable for the survival of society . To achievethis end, the War Research groups within the agency willengage in the following activities :

(a) Quantification of existing application o f the non-military functions of war. Specific determinations will in-clude, but not be limited to : 1) the gross amount andthe net proportion of nonproductive military expendi-tures since World War II assignable to the need for waras an economic stabilizer ; 2) the amount and proportionof military expenditures and destruction of life, property,and natural resources during this period assignable to theneed for war as an instrument for political control ; 3)similar figures, to the extent that they can be separatelyarrived at, assignable to the need for war to maintainsocial cohesiveness ; 4) levels of recruitment and expendi-tures on the draft and other forms of personnel deploy-ment attributable to the need for military institutions tocontrol social disaffection ; 5) the statistical relationshipof war casualties to world food supplies; 6) the correla-tion of military actions and expenditures with culturalactivities and scientific advances (including necessarily,the development of mensurable standards in these areas) .

RECOMMENDATIONS 99(b) Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the

execution of the nonmilitary functions of war. These willinclude, but not be limited to : 1) calculation of mini-mum and optimum ranges of military expenditure re-quired, under varying hypothetical conditions, to fulfillthese several functions, separately and collectively ; 2 )determination of minimum and optimum levels of de-struction of life, property, and natural resources prerequi-site to the credibility of external threat essential to thepolitical and motivational functions ; 3) development ofa negotiable formula governing the relationship betweenmilitary recruitment and training policies and the exigen-cies of social control .

(c) Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailingeconomic, political, sociological, and ecological limita-tions. The ultimate object of this phase of War Researchis to rationalize the heretofore informal operations of thewar system. It should provide practical working proce-dures through which responsible governmental authoritymay resolve the following war-function problems, amongothers, under any given circumstances : 1) how to deter-mine the optimum quantity, nature, and timing of mili-tary expenditures to ensure a desired degree of eco-nomic control; 2) how to organize the recruitment, de-ployment, and ostensible use of military personnel toensure a desired degree of acceptance of authorized so-cial values ; 3) how to compute on a short-term basis,the nature and extent of the loss of life and other re-sources which should be suffered and/or inflicted duringany single outbreak of hostilities to achieve a desired

100

THE REPORT

degree of internal political authority and social allegi-ance; 4) how to project, over extended periods, the na-ture and quality of overt warfare which must be plannedand budgeted to achieve a desired degree of contextualstability for the same purpose; factors to be determinedmust include frequency of occurrence, length of phase,intensity of physical destruction, extensiveness of geo-graphical involvement, and optimum mean loss of life ;5) how to extrapolate accurately from the foregoing, forecological purposes, the continuing effect of the warsystem, over such extended cycles, on population pres-sures, and to adjust the planning of casualty rates ac-cordingly.

War Research procedures will necessarily include,but not be limited to, the following :

(a) The collation of economic, military, and otherrelevant data into uniform terms, permitting the revers-ible translation of heretofore discrete categories of infor-mation .'

(b) The development and application of appropriateforms of cost-effectiveness analysis suitable for adaptingsuch new constructs to computer terminology, program-ming, and projection .'

(c) Extension of the "war games" methods of systemstesting to apply, as a quasi-adversary proceeding, to thenonmilitary functions of war .'

(4) SINCE BOTH PROGRAMS of the War/Peace ResearchAgency will share the same purpose-to maintain gov-ernmental freedom of choice in respect to war and peace

RECOMMENDATIONS

101

until the direction of social survival is no longer in doubt-it is of the essence of this proposal that the agency beconstituted without limitation of time . Its examinationof existing and proposed institutions will be self-liqui-dating when its own function shall have been super-seded by the historical developments it will have, atleast in part, initiated.

NOTES

SEC•rIoN 11. The Economic and Social Consequences of Disarma-

ment: U.S. Reply to the Inquiry o f the Secretary-Gen-eral o f the United Nations (Washington, D.C. : USGPO,June 1964), pp. 8-9 .

2. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (NewYork: Horizon, 1962), p. 35 .

3. Robert S. McNamara, in an address before the Ameri-can Society of Newspaper Editors, in Montreal, P.Q.,Canada, 18 May 1966.

4. Alfred North Whitehead, in "The Anatomy of SomeScientific 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 December1963) .

SECTION 21. Kenneth E. Boulding, "The World War Industry as an

Economic Problem," in Emile Benoit and Kenneth E .Boulding (eds . ), Disarmament and the Economy (NewYork: Harper & Row, 1963) .

2. McNamara, in ASNE Montreal address cited .3 . Report o f the Committee on the Economic Impact of

Defense and Disarmament (Washington : USGPO, July1965) .

4. Sumner M. Rosen, "Disarmament and the Economy,"War/Peace Report (March 1966) .

103

104

THE REPORT

SECTION 3

1. Vide William D. Grampp, "False Fears of Disarma-ment," Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1964) fora concise example of this reasoning .

2. Seymour Melman, "The Cost of Inspection for Disarma-ment," in Benoit and Boulding, op. cit .

SECTION 5

1. Arthur I. Waskow, Toward the Unarmed Forces o f theUnited States (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies,1966), p. 9. (This is the unabridged edition of the textof a report and proposal prepared for a seminar ofstrategists and Congressmen in 1965; it was later givenlimited distribution among other persons engaged inrelated projects.)

2. David T. Bazelon, "The Politics of the Paper Economy,"Commentary (November 1962), p. 409 .

3. The Economic Impact o f Disarmament (Washington :USGPO, January 1962) .

4. David T. Bazelon, "The Scarcity Makers," Commentary(October 1962), p . 298.

5. Frank Pace, Jr., in an address before the AmericanBankers' Association, September 1957 .

6. A random example, taken in this case from a story byDavid Deitch in the New York Herald Tribune (9 Feb-ruary 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 theprincipal combat problem of present-day infantry offi-

NOTES

105

cers : the unwillingness of otherwise "trained" troops tofire at an enemy close enough to be recognizable as anindividual 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 Aggression (Vienna : G. Borotha-Schoeler Verlag, 1964) .

13. Beginning with Herbert Spencer and his contemporaries,but largely ignored for nearly a century .

14. As in recent draft-law controversy, in which the issueof selective deferment of the culturally privileged isoften carelessly equated with the preservation of thebiologically "fittest."

15. G. Bouthoul, in La Guerre (Paris : Presses universitairesde France, 1953) and many other more detailed studies .The useful concept of "polemology," for the study ofwar as an independent discipline, is his, as is the notionof "demographic relaxation," the sudden temporarydecline in the rate of population increase after majorwars.

16. This seemingly premature statement is supported byone of our own test studies. But it hypothecates boththe stabilizing of world population growth and the in-stitution of fully adequate environmental controls .Under these two conditions, the probability of thepermanent elimination of involuntary global famine is68 percent by 1976 and 95 percent by 1981 .

SECTION 6i. This round figure is the median taken from our compu-

x06

THE REPORT

tations, which cover varying contingencies, but it issufficient for the purpose of general discussion .

2. But less misleading than the more elegant traditionalmetaphor, in which war expenditures are referred toas the "ballast" of the economy but which suggests in-correct quantitative relationships .

3. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric . We have notused any published program as a model; similarities areunavoidably coincidental rather than tendentious .

4. Vide the reception of a "Freedom Budget for all Ameri-cans," proposed by A. Philip Randolph et al; it is aten-year plan, estimated by its sponsors to cost $185billion.

5. Waskow, op. cit .6. By several current theorists, most extensively and effec-

tively by Robert R. Harris in The Real Enemy, an un-published doctoral dissertation made available to thisstudy.

7. In ASNE Montreal address cited .8. The Tenth Victim .9. For an examination of some of its social implications,

see Seymour Rubenfeld, Family o f Outcasts: A NewTheory of Delinquency (New York: Free Press, 1965) .

10. As in Nazi Germany; this type of "ideological" ethnicrepression, directed to specific sociological ends, shouldnot be confused with traditional economic exploitation,as of Negroes in the U.S ., South Africa, etc .

11. By teams of experimental biologists in Massachusetts,Michigan, and California, as well as in Mexico and theU.S.S.R. Preliminary test applications are scheduled inSoutheast Asia, in countries not yet announced .

12. Expressed in the writings of H . Marshall McLuhan, in

NOTES

107

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1964) and elsewhere .

13. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by plottinga three-dimensional distribution of three arbitrarilydefined variables; the macro-structural, relating to theextension of knowledge beyond the capacity of consciousexperience; the organic, dealing with the manifestationsof terrestrial life as inherently comprehensible ; and theinfra-particular, covering the subconceptual require-ments of natural phenomena . Values were assigned tothe known and unknown in each parameter, testedagainst data from earlier chronologies, and modifiedheuristically until predictable correlations reached auseful level of accuracy . "Two decades" means, in thiscase, 20.6 years, with a standard deviation of only 1 .8years. (An incidental finding, not pursued to the samedegree of accuracy, suggests a greatly accelerated res-olution of issues in the biological sciences after 1972 .)

SECTION 7

i. Since they represent an examination of too small a per-centage of the eventual options, in terms of "multiplemating," the subsystem we developed for this applica-tion. But an example will indicate how one of the mostfrequently recurring correlation problems-chronolog-ical phasing-was brought to light in this way . One ofthe first combinations tested showed remarkably highcoefficients of compatibility, on a post hoc static basis,but no variations of timing, using a thirty-year transi-tion module, permitted even marginal synchronization .The combination was thus disqualified . This would notrule out the possible adequacy of combinations usingmodifications of the same factors, however, since minorvariations in a proposed final condition may have dis-proportionate effects on phasing.

]LOS

THE REPORT

2. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (Decem-ber 1964) .

3 . E.g., the highly publicized "Delphi technique" and other,more sophisticated procedures . A new system, espe-cially suitable for institutional analysis, was developedduring the course of this study in order to hypothecatemensurable "peace games"; a manual of this system isbeing prepared and will be submitted for general distri-bution among appropriate agencies . For older, but stilluseful, techniques, see Norman C . Dalkey's Games andSimulations (Santa Monica, Calif . : Rand, 1964) .

SECTION 8

1. A primer-level example of the obvious and long over-due need for such translation is furnished by Kahn(in Thinking About the Unthinkable, p. 102) . Underthe heading "Some Awkward Choices" he compares fourhypothetical policies: a certain loss of $3,000 ; a .1 chanceof 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 govern-ment decision-maker would "very likely" choose in thatorder. But what if "lives are at stake rather than dollars"?Kahn suggests that the order of choice would be re-versed, although current experience does not supportthis opinion. Rational war research can and must makeit possible to express, without ambiguity, lives in termsof dollars and vice versa ; the choices need not be, andcannot be, "awkward ."

2. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application oftechniques up to now limited to such circumscribedpurposes as improving kill-ammunition ratios determin-ing local choice between precision and saturation bomb-ing, and other minor tactical, and occasionally strategic,ends. The slowness of Rand, I.D.A ., and other respon-sible analytic organizations to extend cost-effectiveness

NOTES

109

and related concepts beyond early-phase applicationshas already been widely remarked on and critizedelsewhere .

3. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-gametechniques has been given some rudimentary considera-tion in the Hudson Institute's Study for HypotheticalNarratives for Use in Command and Control SystemsPlanning (by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman ; Finalreport published 1963) . But here, as with other warand peace studies to date, what has blocked the logicalextension of new analytic techniques has been a generalfailure to understand and properly evaluate the non-military functions of war .

REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN unveils ahitherto top-secret report of a government commissionthat was requested to explore the consequences of lastingpeace on American society . The shocking results of thestudy, as revealed in this report, led the government toconceal the existence of the commission-they hadfound that, among other things, peace may never bepossible ; that even if it were, it would probably be un-desirable, that "defending the national interest" is notthe real purpose of war ; that war is necessary ; that wardeaths should be planned and budgeted. REPORTFROM IRON MOUNTAIN tells the story of howthe project was formed, how it operated, what hap-pened to it . It includes the complete, verbatim text ofthe commission's hitherto classified report .

" . . . so elaborate and ingenious and so substantively orig-inal, acute, interesting and horrifying, that it will re-ceive serious attention regardless of its origin ."

-The New York Times

"The first major result of the transformation of the wargame into the peace game ."

-Irving Louis Horowitz,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

"Should be the occasion for new public demand for apenetrating examination and evaluation of governmentreports on strategic planning for disarmament andpeace . "

-The Editors of Trans-action

Leonard C . Lewin is a critic and satirist whose workhas appeared in many newspapers and magazines hereand abroad . He is the editor of A TREASURY OFAMERICAN POLITICAL HUMOR .

DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC./PRINTED IN U .S .A .

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