War is Good

POSSIBILITY AND DESIRABILITY
OF PEACE? NO!
REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN:

With introductory material by Leonard C. Lewin
The Dial Press, Inc. 1967, New York
Library of Congress Catalog card Number 67-27553 Printed in the U.S.

CONTENTS:
Foreword 3
Background Information 8
Statement by “John Doe” 16
The Report of the Special Study Group 18
Letter of Transmittal 18
Introduction 19
Section 1. Scope of the Study 21
Section 2. Disarmament and the Economy 24
Section 3. Disarmament Scenarios 28
Section 4. War & Peace as Social Systems 30
Section 5. The Functions of War 33
Section 6. Substitutes for the Functions of War 46
Section 7. Summary and Conclusions 59
Section 8. Recommendations 69
NOTES 74
3

FOREWORD
“John Doe,” as I will call him in this book for reasons that will be made clear, is
a professor at a large university in the Middle West. His field is one of the
social sciences, but I will not identify him beyond this. He telephoned me one
evening last winter, quite unexpectedly; we had not been in touch for several
years. He was in New York for a few days, he said, and there was something
important he wanted to discuss with me. He wouldn’t say what it was. We met
for lunch the next day at a midtown restaurant.
He was obviously disturbed. He made small talk for half an hour, which was
quite out of character, and I didn’t press him. Then, apropos of nothing, he
mentioned a dispute between a writer and a prominent political family that had
been in the headlines. What, he wanted to know, were my views on “freedom of
information”? How would I qualify them? And so on. My answers were not
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 message on his desk that a “Mrs.
Potts” had called him from Washington. When he returned the call, a MAN
answered immediately, and told Doe, among other things, that he had been
selected to serve on a commission “of the highest importance.” Its objective was
to determine, accurately and realistically, the nature of the problems that would
confront the United States if and when a condition of “permanent peace” should
arrive, and to draft a program for dealing with this contingency. The man
described the unique procedures that were to govern the commission’s work and
that were expected to extend its scope far beyond that of any previous
examination of these problems.
Considering that the caller did not precisely identify either himself or his
agency, his persuasiveness must have been a truly remarkable order. Doe
entertained no serious doubts of the bona fides of the project, however, chiefly
because of his previous experience with the excessive secrecy that often
surrounds quasi-governmental activities. In addition, the man at the other end of
the line demonstrated an impressively complete and surprisingly detailed
knowledge of Doe’s work and personal life. He also mentioned the names of
others who were to serve with the group; most of them were known to Doe by
reputation. Doe agreed to take the assignment — he felt he had no real choice in
the matter — and to appear the second Saturday following at Iron Mountain,
New York. An airline ticket arrived in his mail the next morning.
4
The cloak-and-dagger tone of this convocation was further enhanced by the
meeting place itself. Iron Mountain, located near the town of Hudson, is like
something out of Ian Fleming or E. Phillips Oppenheim. It is an underground
nuclear hideout for hundreds of large American corporations. Most of them use
it as an emergency storage vault for important documents. But a number of
them maintain substitute corporate headquarters as well, where essential
personnel could presumably survive and continue to work after an attack. This
latter group includes such firms as Standard Oil of New Jersey, Manufacturers
Hanover Trust, and Shell.
I will leave most of the story of the operations of the Special Study Group, as
the commission was formally called, for Doe to tell in his own words
(“Background Information”). At this point it is necessary to say only that it met
and worked regularly for over two and a half years, after which it produced a
Report. It was this document, and what to do about it, that Doe wanted to talk to
me about.
The Report, he said, had been suppressed — both by the Special Study Group
itself and by the government INTERAGENCY committee to which it had been
submitted. After months of agonizing, Doe had decided that he would no longer
be party to keeping it secret. What he wanted from me was advice and
assistance in having it published. He gave me his copy to read, with the express
understanding that if for any reason I were unwilling to become involved, I
would say nothing about it to anyone else.
I read the Report that same night. I will pass over my own reactions to it, except
to say that the unwillingness of Doe’s associates to publicize their findings
became readily understandable. What had happened was that they had been so
tenacious in their determination to deal comprehensively with the many
problems of transition to peace that the original questions asked of them were
never quite answered. Instead, this is what they concluded:
Lasting peace, while no theoretically impossible, is probably unattainable; even
if it could be achieved it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of a
stable society to achieve it.
That is the gist of what they say. Behind their qualified academic language runs
this general argument: War fills certain functions essential to the stability of our
society; until other ways of filling them are developed, the war system must be
maintained — and improved in effectiveness.
5
It is not surprising that the Group, in its Letter of Transmittal, did not choose to
justify its work to “the lay reader, unexposed to the exigencies of higher
political or military responsibility.” Its Report was addressed, deliberately, to
unnamed government administrators of high rank; it assumed – considerable
political sophistication from this select audience. To the general reader,
therefore, the substance of the document may be even more unsettling than its
conclusions. He may not be prepared for some of its assumptions — for instance,
that most medical advances are viewed more as problems than as progress; or
that poverty is necessary and desirable, public postures by politicians to the
contrary notwithstanding; or that standing armies are, among other things
social-welfare institutions in exactly the same sense as are old-people’s homes
and mental hospitals. It may strike him as odd to find the probably explanation
of “flying saucer” incidents disposed of en passant in less than a sentence. He
may be less surprised to find that the space program and the “controversial
antimissile missile and fallout shelter programs are understood to have the
spending of vast sums of money, not the advancement of science or national
defense, as their principal goals, and to learn that “military” draft policies are
only remotely concerned with defense.
He may be offended to find the organized repression of minority groups, and
even the reestablishment of slavery, seriously (and on the whole favorably
discussed as possible aspects of a world at peace. He is not likely to take kindly
to the notion of the deliberate intensification of air and water pollution (as part
of a program leading to peace), even when the reason for considering it is made
clear. That a world without war will have to turn sooner rather than later to
universal test-tube procreation will be less disturbing, if no more appealing. But
few readers will not be taken aback, at least, by a few lines in the Report’s
conclusions, repeated in its formal recommendations, that suggest that the longrange planning–and “budgeting” — of the “optimum” number of lives to be
destroyed annually in overt warfare is high on the Group’s list of priorities for
government action.
I cite these few examples primarily to warn the general reader what he can
expect. The statesmen and strategists for whose eyes the Report was intended
obviously need no such protective admonition.
This book, of course, is evidence of my response to Doe’s request. After
carefully considering the problems that might confront the publisher of the
Report, we took it to The Dial Press. There, its significance was immediately
recognized, and, more important, we were given firm assurances that no outside
pressures of any sort would be permitted to interfere with its publication.
6
It should be made clear that Doe does not disagree with the substance of the
Report, which represents as genuine consensus in all important respects. He
constituted a minority of one — but only on the issue of disclosing it to the
general public. A look at how the Group dealt with this question will be
illuminating
The debate took place at the Group’s last full meeting before the Report was
written, late in March, 1966, and again at Iron Mountain. Two facts must be
kept in mind, by way of background. The first is that the Special Study Group
had never been explicitly charged with or sworn to secrecy, either when it was
convened or at any time thereafter. The second is that the Group had
nevertheless operated as if it had been. This was assumed from the
circumstances of its inception and from the tone of its instructions. (The Group’s
acknowledgment of help from “the many persons….who contributed so greatly
to our work” is somewhat equivocal; these persons were not told the nature of
the project for which their special resources of information were solicited.)
Those who argued the case for keeping the Report secret were admittedly
motivated by fear of the explosive political effects that could be expected from
publicity. For evidence, they pointed to the suppression of the far less
controversial report of then-Senator Hubert Humphrey’s subcommittee on
disarmament in 1962. (Subcommittee members had reportedly feared that it
might be used by Communist propagandists, as Senator Stuart Symington put it,
to “back up the Marxian theory that was production was the reason for the
success of capitalism.”) Similar political precautions had been taken with the
better-known Gaither Report in 1957, and even with the so-called Moynihan
Report in 1965.
Furthermore, they insisted, a distinction must be made between serious studies,
which are normally classified unless and until policy makers decide to release
them, and conventional “showcase” projects, organized to demonstrate a
political leadership’s concerns about an issue and to deflect the energy of those
pressing for action on it. (The example used, because some of the Group had
participated in it, was a “While House Conference” on intended cooperation,
disarmament, etc., which had been staged late in 1965 to offset complaints
about escalation of Vietnam War.)
Doe acknowledges this distinction, as well as the strong possibility of public
misunderstanding. But he feels that if the sponsoring agency had wanted to
mandate secrecy it could have done so at the outset. It could also have assigned
the project to one of the government’s established “think tanks,” which normally
work on a classified basis. He scoffed at fear of public reaction, which could
7
have no lasting effect on long-range measures that might be taken to implement
the Group’s proposals, and derided the Group’s abdication of responsibility for
its opinions and conclusions. So far as he was concerned, there was such a thing
as a public right to know what was being done on its behalf; the burden of proof
was on those who would abridge it.
If my account seems to give Doe the better of the argument, despite his failure
to convince his colleagues, so be it. My participation in this book testifies that I
am not neutral. In my opinion, the decision of the Special Study Group to
censor its own findings was not merely timid but presumptuous. But the refusal,
as of this writing, of the agencies for which the Report was prepared to release
it themselves raises broader questions of public policy. Such questions center on
the continuing use of self-serve definitions of “security” to avoid possible
political embarrassment. It is ironic how often this practice backfires.
I should state, for the record, that I do not share the attitudes toward war and
peace, life and death, and survival of the species manifested in the Report. Few
readers will. In human terms, it is an outrageous document. But it does
represent a serious and challenging effort to define an enormous problem. And
it explains, or certainly appears to explain, aspects of American policy
otherwise incomprehensible by the ordinary standards of common sense. What
we may think of these explanations is something else, but it seems to me that
we are entitled to know not only what they are but whose they are.
By “whose” I don’t mean merely the names of the authors of the Report. Much
more important, we have a right to know to what extent their assumptions of
social necessity are shared by the decision-makers in our government. Which do
they accept and which do they reject? However disturbing the answers, only full
and frank discussion offers any conceivable hope of solving the problems raised
by the Special Study Group in their Report from Iron Mountain.
L.C.L. New York June 1967
8

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
[The following account of the workings of the Special Study Group is taken
verbatim from a series of tape recorded interviews I had with “John Doe.” The
transcript has been edited to minimize the intrusion of my questions and
comments, as well as for length, and the sequence has been revised in the
interest of continuity. 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 the new people who came in with the Kennedy
administration, mostly, I think, with McNamara, Bundy, and Rusk. They were
impatient about many things….One of them was that no really serious work had
been done about planning for peace—a long-range peace, that is, with longrang planning.
Everything that had been written on the subject [before 1961] was superficial.
There was insufficient appreciation of the scope of the problem. The main
reason for this, of course, was that the idea of a real peace in the world, general
disarmament and so on, was looked on as utopian. Or even crack- pot. This is
still true, and it’s easy enough to understand when you look at what’s going on
in the world today….It was reflected in the studies that had been made up to that
time. They were not realistic…
The idea of the Special Study, the exact form it would take, was worked out
early in ’63…The settlement of the Cuban missile affair had something to do
with it, but what helped most to get it moving were the big changes in military
spending that were being planned…..Plants being closed, relocations, and so
forth. Most of it wasn’t made public until much later….
[I understand] it took a long time to select the people for the Group. The calls
didn’t go out until the summer……
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 was when I was called myself. But three of the
people had been in on it, and what the rest of us know we learned from them,
about what went on earlier. I do know that it started very informally. I don’t
know what particular government agency approved the project.
9
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 they gave the organizational job–making arrangements,
paying the bills, and so on—to somebody from the State or Defense of the
National Security Council. Only one of us was in touch with Washington, and I
wasn’t the one. But I can tell you that very, very few people knew about
us….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
sword plants into plowshare factories…I think you’ll wonder if even the
President knew about our Group. The Ackley Committee certainly didn’t.
IS THAT POSSIBLE, REALLY? I MEAN THAT NOT EVEN THE
PRESIDENT KNEW OF YOUR COMMISSION?
Well, I don’t think there’s anything odd about the government attacking a
problem at two different levels. Or even about two or three [government]
agencies working at cross-purposes. It happens all the time. Perhaps the
President did know. And I don’t mean to denigrate the Ackley Committee, but it
was exactly that narrowness 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 of thinking. It was a matter of approach. Herman Kahn
calls is “Byzantine”–no agonizing over cultural and religious values. No moral
posturing. It’s the kind of thinking that Rand and the Hudson Institute and
I.D.A. (Institute for Defense Analysis.) brought into war planning…What they
asked up to do, and I think we did it, was to give the same kind of treatment to
the hypothetical nuclear war…We may have gone further than they expected,
but once you establish your premises and your logic you can’t turn back….
Kahn’s books, for example, are misunderstood, at least by laymen. They shock
people. But you see, what’s important about them is not his conclusions, or his
opinions. It’s the method. He has done more than anyone else I can think of to
get the general public accustomed to the style of modern military
thinking…..Today it’s possible for a columnist to write about “counterforce
strategy” and “minimum deterrence” and “credible first strike capability” without having to explain every other word. He can write about war and strategy
without getting bogged down in questions or morality…….
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The other big difference about or work is breadth. The Report speaks for itself. I
can’t say that we took 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 BY AN APPROPRIATE
GOVERNMENT AGENCY?
I think that’s obvious, or should be. The kind of thinking wanted from our
Group just isn’t to be had in a formal government operation. Too many
constraints. Too many inhibitions. This isn’t a new problem. Why else would
outfits like Rand and Hudson stay in business? Any assignment that’s at all
sophisticated is almost always given to an outside group. This is true even in the
State Department, in the “gray” operations, those that are supposed to be
unofficial, but are really as official as can be. Also with the C.I.A….
For our study, even the private research centers were too institutional… A lot of
thought went into making sure that our thinking would be unrestricted. All
kinds of little things. The way we were called into the Group, the places we
met, all kinds of subtle devices to remind us. For instance, even our name, the
Special Study Group. You know government names. Wouldn’t you think we’d
have been called “Operation Olive Branch,” or “Project Pacifica,” or something
like that? Nothing like that for us—too allusive, too suggestive. And no minutes
of our meetings—too inhibiting…. About who might be reading them. Of
course, we took notes for our own use. And among ourselves, we usually called
ourselves “The Iron Mountain Boys,” or “Our Thing,” or whatever came to
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 very wide range of disciplines. And not all academic.
People from the natural sciences, the social sciences, even the humanities. We
had a lawyer and a businessman. Also, a professional war planner. Also, you
should know that everyone in the Group had done work of distinction in at least
two different fields. The interdisciplinary element was built in…..
It’s true that there were no women in the Group, but I don’t think that was
significant…..We were all American citizens, of course. And all, I can say, in
very good health, at least when we began…. You see, the first order of business,
at the first meeting, was the reading of dossiers. They were very detailed, and
11
not just professional, but also personal. They included medical histories. I
remember one very curious thing, for whatever it’s worth. Most of us, and that
includes me, had a record of abnormally high uric acid concentrations in the
blood…… None of us had ever had this experience, of a public inspection of
credentials, or medical reports. It was very disturbing…
But it was deliberate. The reason for it was to emphasize that we were supposed
to make ALL our own decisions on procedure, without outside rules. This
included judging each other’s qualifications and making allowances for possible
bias. I don’t think it affected our work directly, but it made the point it was
supposed to make…… That we should ignore absolutely nothing that might
conceivably affect our objectivity.
[At this point I persuaded Doe that a brief occupational description of the
individual members of the Group would serve a useful purpose for readers of
the Report. The list which follows was worked out on paper. (It might be more
accurate to say it was negotiated)/. The problem was to give as much relevant
information as possible without violating Doe’s commitment to protect his
colleagues’ anonymity. It turned out to be very difficult, especially in the cases
of those members who are very well known. For this reason, secondary areas of
achievement or reputations are usually not shown.
The simple alphabetical “names” were assigned by Doe for convenient
reference; they bear no intended relation to actual names. “Able” was the
Group’s Washington contact. It was he who brought and read the dossiers, and
who most often acted as chairman. He, “Baker,” and “Cox” were the three who
had been involved in the preliminary planning. There is no other significance to
the order of listing.
“Arthur Able” is an historian and political theorist, who has served in
government.
“Bernard Baker: is a professor of international law and a consultant on
government operations.
“Charles Cox” is an economist, social critic, and biographer.
“John Doe.”
“Edward Ellis” is a sociologist often involved in public affairs.
12
“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 individual and group behavior.
“John Jones” is a scholar and literary critic.
“Martin Miller” is a physical chemist, whose work has received inter- national
recognition at the highest level.
“Paul Peters” is a biochemist, who has made important discoveries bearing on
reproductive processes.
“Richard Roe” is a mathematician affiliated with an independent West Coast
research institution.
“Samuel Smith” is an astronomer, physicist, and communications theorist.
“Thomas Taylor” is a systems analyst and war planner, who has written
extensively on war, peace, and international relations.
“William White” is an industrialist, who has undertaken many special
government assignments.]
HOW DID THE GROUP OPERATE? I MEAN, WHERE AND WHEN
DID YOU MEET, AND SO FORTH?
We met on the average of once a month. Usually it was on weekends, and
usually for two days. We had a few longer sessions, and one that lasted only
four hours. …. We met all over the country, always at a different place, except
for the first and last times, which were at Iron Mountain. It was like a traveling
seminar….Sometimes at hotels, sometimes at universities. Twice we met at
summer camps, and once at a private estate, in Virginia. We used a business
place in Pittsburgh, and another in Poughkeepsie, [New York]….We never met
in Washington, or on government property anywhere….Able would announce
the times and places two meetings ahead. They were never changed…..
We didn’t divide into subcommittees, or anything else that formal. But we all
took individual assignments between meetings. A lot of it involved getting
13
information from other people…. Among the fifteen of us, I don’t thing there
was anybody in the academic or professional world we couldn’t call on if we
wanted to, and we took advantage of it….. We were paid a very modest per
diem. All of it was called “expenses” on the vouchers. We were told not to
report it on our tax returns…. The checks were drawn on a special account of
Able’s at a New York bank. He signed them….I don’t know what the study cost.
So far as our time and travel were concerned, it couldn’t have come to more
than the low six-figure range. But the big item must have been computer time,
and I have no idea how high this ran……
YOU SAY THAT YOU DON’T THINK YOUR WORK WAS AFFECTED
BY PROFESSIONAL BIAS. WHAT ABOUT POLITICAL AND
PHILOSOPHICAL BIAS? IS IT POSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH
QUESTIONS OF WAR AND PEACE WITHOUT REFLECTING
PERSONAL VALUES?
Yes, it is. I can understand your skepticism. But if you had been at any of our
meetings you’d have had a very hard time figuring out who were the liberals and
who were the conservatives, or who were hawks and who were doves. There IS
such a thing as objectivity, and I think we had it… I don’t say no one had any
emotional reaction to what we were doing. We all did, to some extent. As a
matter of fact, two members had heart attacks after we were finished, and I’ll be
the first to admit it probably wasn’t a coincidence.
YOU SAID YOU MADE UP YOUR OWN GROUND RULES. WHAT
WERE THESE 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 we had to. For instance, we spent a lot of time on the relationship
between military recruitment policies and industrial employment. Before we
were finished with it, we’d gone through the history of western penal codes and
any number of comparative psychiatric studies [of draftees and volunteers]. We
looked over the organization of the Inca empire. We determined the effects of
automation on 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 until we had what the Quakers call a “sense of the
meeting.” It was time-consuming. But in the long run it saved time. Eventually
we all got on the same wavelength, so to speak…..
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Of course we had differences, and big ones, especially in the beginning… For
instance, in Section I you might think we were merely clarifying our
instructions. Not so; it took a long time before we all agreed to a strict
interpretation…. Roe and Taylor deserve most of the credit for this… There are
many things in the Report 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 political values. Able was the only one who challenged this, at first.
Fox called his position “perverse.” Yet it was Fox who furnished most of the
data that led us all to agree with Able eventually. I mention this be- cause I
think it’s a good example of the way we worked. A triumph of method over
cliché…… I certainly don’t intend to go into details about who took what side
about what, and when. But I will say, to give credit where due, that only Roe,
Able, Hill and Taylor were able to see, at the beginning, 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 were rough. The last six months there was a lot of
quibbling about small points… We’d been under pressure for a long time, we’d
been working together too long. It was natural…..that we got on each other’s
nerves. For a while Able and Taylor weren’t speaking to each other. Miller
threatened to quit. But this all passed. There were no important differences…
HOW WAS THE REPORT ACTUALLY WRITTEN? WHO DID THE
WRITING?
We all had a hand in the first draft. Jones and Able put it together, and then
mailed it around for review before working out a final version… The only
problems were the form it should take and whom we were writing it for. And, of
course, the question of disclosure…. [Doe’s comments on this point are
summarized in the introduction.]
YOU MENTIONED A “PEACE GAMES” MANUAL. WHAT ARE
PEACE GAMES?
I wanted to say something about that. The Report barely mentions it. “Peace
games” is a method we developed during the course of the study. It’s a
forecasting technique, an information system. I’m very excited about it. Even if
nothing is done about our recommendations–which is conceivable–this is
something that can’t be ignored. It will revolutionize the study of social
15
problems. It’s a by-product of the study. We needed a fast, dependable
procedure to approximate the effects of disparate social phenomena on other
social phenomena. We got it. It’s in a primitive phase, but it works.
HOW ARE PEACE GAMES PLAYED? ARE THEY LIKE RAND’S WAR
GAMES?
You don’t “play” peace games, like chess or Monopoly, any more than you play
war games with toy soldiers. You use computers. It’s a programming system. A
computer “language,” like Fortran, or Algol, or Jovial…. Its advantage is its
superior capacity to interrelate data with no apparent common points of
reference…. A simple analogy is likely to be misleading. But I can give you
some examples. For instance, supposing I asked you to figure out what effect a
moon landing by U.S. astronauts would have on an election in, say, Sweden. Or
what effect a change in the draft law–a specific change–would have on the
value of real estate in downtown Manhattan? Or a certain change in college
entrance requirements in the United States on the British shipping industry?
You would probably say, first, that there would be no effect to speak of, and
second, that there would be no way of telling. But you’d be wrong on both
counts. In each case there would be an effect, and the peace games method
could tell you what it would be, quantitatively. I didn’t take these examples out
of the air. We used them in working out the method….Essentially, it’s an
elaborate high-speed trial-and-error system for determining working algorithms.
Like most sophisticated types of computer problem-solving…
A lot of the “games” of this kind you read about are just glorified and
conversational exercises. They really are games, and nothing more. I just saw
one reported in the Canadian Computer Society Bulletin, called a “Vietnam
Peace Game.” They use simulation techniques, but the programming hypotheses
are speculative….
The idea of a problem-solving system like this is not original with us. ARPA
(the Advanced Research Projects Agency, of the Department of Defense DoD.)
has been working on something like it. So has General Electric, in California.
There are others….. We were successful not because we know more than they
do about programming, which we don’t, but because we leaned how to
formulate the problems accurately. It goes back to the old saw. You can always
find the answer if you know the right question…..
SUPPOSING YOU HADN’T DEVELOPED THIS METHOD. WOULD
YOU HAVE COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSIONS IN THE REPORT?
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Certainly. But it would have taken many times longer. But please don’t
misunderstand my enthusiasm [about the peace games method]. With all due
respect to the effects of computer technology on modern thinking, basic
judgments must still be made by human beings. The peace games technique isn’t
responsible for our Report. We are.
17

STATEMENT BY “JOHN DOE”
Contrary to the decision of the Special Study Group, of which I was a member,
I have arranged for the general release of our Report. I am grateful to Mr.
Leonard C. Lewin for his invaluable assistance in making this possible, and to
The Dial Press for accepting the challenge of publication. Responsibility for
taking this step, however, is mine and mine alone.
I am well aware that my action may be taken as a breach of faith by some of my
former colleagues. But in my view my responsibility to the society for which I
am a part supersedes any self-assumed obligation on the part of fifteen
individual men. Since our Report can be considered on its merits, it is not
necessary for me to disclose their identity to accomplish my purpose. Yet I
gladly abandon my own anonymity it is were possible to do so without at the
same time comprising theirs, to defend our work publicly if and when they
release me from this personal bond.
But this is secondary. What is needed now, and needed badly, is widespread
public discussion and debate about the elements of war and the problems of
peace. I hope that publication of this Report will serve to initiate it.
18

THE REPORT OF THE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
To the convener of this Group:
Attached is the Report of the Special Study Group established by you in
August, 1963, 1) to consider the problems involved in the contingency of a
transition to a general condition of peace, and 2) to recommend procedures for
dealing with this contingency. For the convenience of nontechnical readers we
have elected to submit our statistical supporting data, totaling 604 exhibits,
separately, as well as a preliminary manual of the “peace games” method
devised during the course of our study.
We have completed our assignment to the best of our ability, subject to the
limitations of time and resources available to us. Our conclusions of fact and
our recommendations are unanimous; those of use who differ in certain
secondary respects from the findings set forth herein do not consider these
differences sufficient to warrant the filing of a minority report. It is our earnest
hope that the fruits of our deliberations will be of value to our government in its
efforts to provide leadership to the nation in solving the complex and farreaching problems we have examined, and that our recommendations for
subsequent Presidential action in this area will be adopted.
Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the establishment of this
Group, and in view of the nature of its findings, we do not recommend that this
Report be released for publication. It is our affirmative judgment that such
action would not be in the public interest. The uncertain advantages of public
discussion of our conclusions and recommendations are, in our opinion, greatly
outweighed by the clear and predictable danger of a crisis in public confidence
which untimely publication of this Report might be expected to provoke. The
likelihood that a lay reader, unexposed to the exigencies of higher political or
military responsibility, will misconstrue the purpose of this project, and the
intent of its participants, seems obvious. We urge that circulation of this Report
be closely restricted to those whose responsibilities require that they be apprised
of its contents.
We deeply regret that the necessity of anonymity, a prerequisite to our Group’s
unhindered pursuit of its objectives, precludes proper acknowledgment of our
gratitude to the many persons in and out of government who contributed so
greatly to our work.
19
FOR THE SPECIAL STUDY GROUP
[signature withheld for publication]
30 SEPTEMBER, 1966
INTRODUCTION
The Report which follows summarizes the results of a two-and-a-half-year
study of the broad problems to be anticipated in the event of general transformation of American society to a condition lacking its most critical current
characteristics: its capability and readiness to make war when doing so is
judged necessary or desirable by its political leadership.
Our work has been predicated on the belief that some kind of general peace may
soon be negotiable. The de facto admission of Communist China into the United
Nations now appears to be only a few years away at most. It has become
increasingly manifest that conflicts of American national interest with those of
China and the Soviet Union are susceptible of political solution, despite the
superficial contraindications of the current Vietnam war, of the threats of an
attack on China, and of the necessarily hostile tenor of day-to-day foreign
policy statements. It is also obvious that differences involving other nations can
be readily resolved by the three great powers whenever they arrive at a stable
peace among themselves. It is not necessary, for the purposes of our study, to
assume that a general detente of this sort will come about—and we make no
such argument–but only that it may.
It is surely no exaggeration to say that a condition of general world peace would
lead to changes in the social structures of the nations of the world of
unparalleled and revolutionary magnitude. The economic impact of general
disarmament, to name only the most obvious consequence of peace, would
revise the production and distribution patterns of the globe to a degree that
would make changes of the past fifty years seem insignificant. Political,
sociological, cultural, and ecological changes would be equally far-reaching.
What has motivated our study of these contingencies has been the growing
sense of thoughtful men in and out of government that the world is totally
unprepared to meet the demands of such a situation.
We had originally planned, when our study was initiated, to address ourselves
to these two broad questions and their components: What can be expected if
peace comes? What should we be prepared to do about it? But as our
investigation proceeded, it became apparent that certain other questions had to
20
be faced. What, for instance, are the real functions of war in modern societies,
beyond the ostensible ones of defending and advancing the “national interests”
of nations? In the absence of war, what other institutions exist or might be
devised to fulfill these functions? Granting that a “peaceful” settlement of
disputes is within the range of current international relationships, is the
abolition of war, in the broad sense, really possible? If so, is it necessarily
desirable, in terms of social stability? If not, what can be done to improve the
operation of our social system in respect to its war-readiness?
The word peace, as we have used it in the following pages, describes a
permanent, or quasi-permanent, condition entirely free from the national
exercise, or contemplation, of any form of the organized social violence, or
threat of violence, generally known as war. It implies total and general
disarmament. It is not used to describe the 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 settlement of international
differences. The magnitude of modern means of mass destruction and the speed
of modern communications require the unqualified working definition given
above; only a generation ago such an absolute description would have seemed
utopian rather than pragmatic. Today, any modification of this definition would
render it almost worthless for our purpose. By the same standard, we have used
the work war to apply interchangeably to conventional (“hot”) war, to the
general condition of war preparation or war readiness, and to the general “war
system.” The sense intended is made clear in context.
The first section of our Report deals with its scope and with the assumptions on
which our study was based. The second considers the effects of disarmament on
the economy, the subject of most peace research to date. The third takes up socalled “disarmament scenarios” which have been proposed. The fourth, fifth,
and sixth examine the nonmilitary functions of war and the problems they raise
for a viable transition to peace; here will be found some indications of the true
dimensions of the problem, not previously coordinated in any other study. In the
seventh section we summarize our findings, and in the eight we set forth our
recommendations for what we believe to be a practical and necessary course of
action.
21

SECTION 1 – SCOPE OF THE STUDY
When The Special Study Group was established in August, 1963, its members
were instructed to govern their deliberations in accordance with three principal
criteria. Briefly stated, they were these: 1) military-style objectivity; 2)
avoidance of preconceived value assumptions; 3) inclusion of all relevant areas
of theory and data.
These guideposts are by no means as obvious as they may appear at first glance,
and we believe it necessary to indicate clearly how they were to inform our
work. For they express succinctly the limitations of previous “peace studies,”
and imply the nature of both government and unofficial dissatisfaction with
these earlier efforts. It is not our intention here to minimize the significance of
the work of our predecessors, or to belittle the quality of their contributions.
What we have tried to do, and believe we have done, is extend their scope. We
hope that our conclusions may serve in turn as a starting point for still broader
and more detailed examinations of every aspect of the problems of transition to
peace and of the questions which must be answer- ed before such a transition
can be allowed to get under way.
It is a truism that objectivity is more often an intention expressed than an
attitude achieved, but the intention—conscious, unambiguous, and constantly
self-critical — is a precondition to its achievement. We believe it no accident
that we were charged to use a “military contingency” model for our study, and
we owe a considerable debt to the civilian war planning agencies for their
pioneering work in the objective examination of the contingencies of nuclear
war. There is no such precedent in the peace studies. Much of the usefulness of
even the most elaborate and carefully reasoned programs for economic
conversion to peace, for example, has been vitiated by a wishful eagerness to
demonstrate that peace is not only possible, but even cheap or easy. One official
report is replete with references to the critical role of “dynamic optimism” on
economic developments, and goes on to submit, as evidence, that it “would be
hard to imagine that the American people would not respond very positively to
an agreed and safeguarded program to substitute an international rule of law and
order,” etc. Another line of argument frequently taken is that disarmament
would entail comparatively little disruption of the economy, since it need only
be partial; we will deal with this approach later. Yet genuine objectivity in war
studies is often critized as inhuman. As Herman Kahn, the writer on strategic
studies best known to the general public, put it: “Critics frequently object to the
icy rationality of the Hudson Institute, the Rand Corporation, and other such
organizations. I’m always tempted to ask in reply, `Would you prefer a warm,
human error? Do you feel better with a nice emotional mistake.'” And, as
22
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara has pointed out, in reference to
facing up to the possibility of nuclear war, “Some people are afraid even to look
over the edge. But in a thermonuclear war we cannot afford any political
acrophobia.” Surely it would be self-evident that this applies equally to the
opposite prospect, but so far no one has taken more than a timid glance over the
brink of peace.
An intention to avoid preconceived value judgments is if anything even more
productive of self-delusion. We claim no immunity, as individuals, from this
type of bias, but we have made a continuously self-conscious effort to 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. Previous studies have
taken the desirability of peace, the importance of human life, the superiority of
democratic institutions, the greatest “good” for the greatest number, the
“dignity” of the individual, the desirability of maximum health and longevity,
and other such wishful premises as axiomatic values necessary for the
justification of a study of peace issues. We have not found them so. We have
attempted to apply the standards of physical science to our thinking, the
principal characteristic of which is not quantification, as is popularly believed,
but that, in Whitehead’s words, “…it ignores all judgments of value; for instance,
all aesthetic and moral judgments.” Yet it is obvious that any serious
investigation of a problem, however “pure,” must be informed by some
normative standard. In this case it has been simply the survival of human
society in general, of American society in particular, and, as a corollary to
survival, the stability of this society.
It is interesting, we believe, to note that the most dispassionate planners of
nuclear strategy also recognize that the stability of society is the one bedrock
value that cannot be avoided. Secretary McNamara has defended the need for
American nuclear superiority on the grounds that it “makes possible a strategy
designed to preserve the fabric of our societies if war should occur.” A former
member of the Department of State policy planning staff goes further. “A more
precise word for peace, in terms of the practical world, is stability. … Today the
great nuclear panoplies are essential elements in such stability as exists. Our
present purpose must be to continue the process of learning how to live with
them.” We, of course, do not equate stability with peace, but we accept it as the
one common assumed objective of both peace and war.
The third criterion-breadth-has taken us still farther afield from peace studies
made to date. It is obvious to any layman that the economic patterns of a
warless world will be drastically different from those we live with today, and it
23
is equally obvious that the political relationships of nations will not be those we
have learned to take for granted, sometimes described as a global version of the
adversary system of our common law. But the social implications of peace
extend far beyond its putative effects on national economics and international
relations. As we shall show, the relevance of peace and war to the internal
political organization of societies, to the sociological relationships of their
members, to psychological motivations, to ecological processes, and to cultural
values is equally profound. More important, it is equally critical in assaying the
consequences of a transition to peace, and in deter- mining the feasibility of any
transition at all.
It is not surprising that these less obvious factors have been generally ignored in
peace research. They have not lent themselves to systematic analysis. They have
been difficult, perhaps impossible, to measure with any degree of assurance that
estimates of their effects could be depended on. They are “intangibles,” but only
in the sense that abstract concepts in mathematics are intangible compared to
those which can be quantified. Economic factors, on the other hand, can be
measured, at least superficially; and international relationships can be
verbalized, like law, into logical sequences.
We do not claim that we have discovered an infallible way of measuring these
other factors, or of assigning them precise weights in the equation of transition.
But we believe we have taken their relative importance into account to this
extent: we have removed them from the category of the “intangible,” hence
scientifically suspect and therefore somehow of secondary importance, and
brought them out into the realm of the objective. The result, we believe,
provides a context of realism for the discussion of the issues relating to the
possible transition to peace which up to now has been missing.
This is not to say that we presume to have found the answers we were seeking.
But we believe that our emphasis on breadth of scope has made it at least
possible to begin to understand the questions.
24

SECTION 2 – DISARMAMENT AND THE ECONOMY
In this section we shall briefly examine some of the common features of the
studies that have been published dealing with one or another aspect of the
expected impact of disarmament on the American economy. Whether
disarmament is considered as a by-product of peace or as its precondition, its
effect on the national economy will in either case be the most immediately felt
of its consequences. The quasi-mensurable quality of economic manifestations
has given rise to more detailed speculation in this area than in any other.
General agreement prevails in respect to the more important economic problems
that general disarmament would raise. A short survey of these problems, rather
than a detailed critique of their comparative significance, is sufficient for our
purposes in this Report.
The first factor is that of size. The “world war industry,” as one writer has aptly
called it, accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of the world’s total
economy. Although this figure is subject to fluctuation, the causes of which are
themselves subject to regional variation, it tends to hold fairly steady. The
United States, as the world’s richest nation, not only accounts for the largest
single share of this expense, currently upward of $60 billion a year, but also
“…has devoted a higher proportion [emphasis added] of its gross national
product to its military establishment than any other major free world nation.
This was true even before our increased expenditures in Southeast Asia.” Plans
for economic conversion that minimize the economic magnitude of the problem
do so only by rationalizing, however persuasively, the maintenance of a
substantial residual military budget under some euphemized classification.
Conversion of military expenditures to other purposes entails a number of
difficulties. The most serious stems from the degree of rigid specialization that
characterizes modern war production, best exemplified in nuclear and missile
technology. This constituted no fundamental problem after World War II, nor
did the question of free-market consumer demand for “conventional” items of
consumption—those good and services consumers had already been
conditioned to require. Today’s situation is qualitatively different in both
respects.
This inflexibility is geographical and occupational, as well as industrial, a fact
which has led most analysts of the economic impact of disarmament to focus
their attention on phased plans for the relocation of war industry personnel and
capital installations as much as on proposals for developing new patterns of
consumption. One serious flaw common to such plans is the kind called in the
25
natural sciences the “macroscopic error.” An implicit presumption is made that
a total national plan for conversion differs from a community program to cope
with the shutting down of a “defense facility” only in degree. We find no reason
to believe that this is the case, nor that a general enlargement of such local
programs, however well thought out in terms of housing, occupational
retraining, and the like, can be applied on a national scale. A national economy
can absorb almost any number of subsidiary reorganizations within its total
limits, providing there is no basic change in its own structure. General
disarmament, which would require such basic changes, lends itself to no valid
smaller-scale analogy.
Even more questionable are the models proposed for the retaining labor for
nonarmaments occupations. Putting aside for the moment the unsolved
questions dealing with the nature of new distribution patterns—retraining for
what?– the increasingly specialized job skills associated with war industry
production are further depreciated by the accelerating inroads of the industrial
techniques loosely described as “automation.” It is not too much to say that
general disarmament would require the scrapping of a critical proportion of the
most highly developed occupational specialties in the economy. The political
difficulties inherent in such an “adjustment” would make the outcries resulting
from the closing of a few obsolete military and naval installations in 1964 sound
like a whisper.
In general, discussions of the problem of conversion have been characterized by
an unwillingness to recognize its special quality. This is best exemplified by the
1965 report of the Ackley Committee. One critic has tellingly pointed out that it
blindly assumes that “…nothing in the arms economy–neither its size, nor its
geographical concentration, nor its highly specialized nature, nor the
peculiarities of its market, nor the special nature of much of its labor force—
endows it with any uniqueness when the necessary time of adjustment comes.”
Let us assume, however, despite the lack of evidence that a viable program for
conversion can be developed in the framework of the existing economy, that the
problems noted above can be solved. What proposals have been offered for
utilizing the productive capabilities that disarmament would presumably
release?
The most common held theory is simply that general economic reinvestment
would absorb the greater part of these capabilities. Even though it is now
largely taken for granted (and even by today’s equivalent of traditional laissezfaire economists) that unprecedented government assistance (and concomitant
government control) will be needed to solve the “structural” problems of
26
transition, a general attitude of confidence prevails that 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 will develop on their own. It
envisages the equivalent of the arms budget being returned, under careful
control, to the consumer, in the form of tax cuts. Another, recognizing the
undeniable need for increased “consumption” in what is generally considered
the public sector of the economy, stresses vastly increased government spending
in such areas of national concern as health, education, mass transportation, lowcost housing, water supply, control of the physical environment, and, stated
generally, “poverty.”
The mechanisms proposed for controlling the transition to an arms-free
economy are also traditional–changes in both sides of the federal budget,
manipulation of interest rates, etc. We acknowledge the undeniable value of
fiscal tools in a normal cyclical economy, where they provide leverage to
accelerate or brake an existing trend. Their more committed proponents,
however, tend to lose sight of the fact that there is a limit to the power of these
devices to influence fundamental economic forces. They can provide new
incentives in the economy, but they cannot in themselves transform the
production of a billion dollars’ worth of missiles a year to the equivalent in food,
clothing, prefabricated houses, or television sets. At bottom, they reflect the
economy; they do not motivate it.
More sophisticated, and less sanguine, analysts contemplate the diversion of the
arms budget to a non-military system equally remote from the market economy.
What the “pyramid-builders” frequently suggest is the expansion of spaceresearch programs to the dollar level of current expenditures. This approach has
the superficial merit of reducing the size of the problem of transferability of
resources, but introduces other difficulties, which we will take up in section 6.
Without singling out any one of the several major studies of the expected
impact of disarmament on the economy for special criticism, we can summarize
our objections to them in general terms as follows:
No proposed program for economic conversion to disarmament sufficiently
takes into account the unique magnitude of the required adjustments it would
entail.
27
Proposals to transform arms production into a beneficent scheme of public
works are more the products of wishful thinking than of realistic understanding
of the limits of our existing economic system.
Fiscal and monetary measures are inadequate as controls for the process of
transition to an arms-free economy.
Insufficient attention has been paid to the political acceptability of the
objectives of the proposed conversion models, as well as of the political means
to be employed in effectuating a transition.
No serious consideration has been given, in any proposed conversion plan, to
the fundamental nonmilitary function of war and armaments in modern society,
nor has any explicit attempt been made to devise a viable substitute for it. This
criticism will be developed in sections 5 and 6.
28

SECTION 3 – DISARMAMENT SCENARIOS
SCENARIOS, as they have come to be called, are hypothetical constructions of
future events. Inevitably, they are composed of varying proportions of
established fact, reasonable inference, and more or less inspired guesswork.
Those which have been suggested as model procedures for effectuating
international arms control and eventual disarmament are necessarily
imaginative, although closely reasoned; in this respect they resemble the “war
games” analyses of the Rand Corporation, with which they share a common
conceptual origin.
All such scenarios that have been seriously put forth imply a dependence on
bilateral or multilateral agreement between the great powers. In general, they
call for a progressive phasing out of gross armaments, military forces, weapons,
and weapons technology, coordinated with elaborate matching procedures of
verification, inspection, and machinery for the settlement of international
disputes. It should be noted that even proponents of unilateral disarmament
qualify their proposals with an implied requirement of reciprocity, very much in
the manner of a scenario of graduated response in nuclear war. The advantage
of unilateral initiative lies in its political value as an expression of good faith, as
well as in its diplomatic function as a catalyst for formal disarmament
negotiations.
The READ model for disarmament (developed by the Research Program on
Economic Adjustments to Disarmament) is typical of these scenarios. It is a
twelve-year program, divided into three-year stages. Each stage includes a
separate phase of: reduction of armed forces; cutbacks of weapons production,
inventories, and foreign military bases; development of international inspection
procedures and control conventions; and the building up of a sovereign
international disarmament organization. It anticipates a net matching decline in
U.S. defense expenditures of only somewhat more than half the 1965 level, but
a necessary redeployment of some five-sixths of the defense-dependent labor
force.
The economic implications assigned by their authors to various disarmament
scenarios diverge widely. The more conservative models, like that cited above,
emphasize economic as well as military prudence in postulating elaborate failsafe disarmament agencies, which themselves require expenditures substantially
substituting for those of the displaced war industries. Such programs stress the
advantages of the smaller economic adjustment entailed. Others emphasize, on
the contrary, the magnitude (and the opposite advantages) of the savings to be
achieved from disarmament. One widely read analysis estimates the annual cost
29
of the inspection function of general disarmament throughout the world as only
between two and three percent of current military expenditures. Both types of
plan tend to deal with the anticipated problem of economic reinvestment only in
the aggregate. We have seen no proposed disarmament sequence that correlates
the phasing out of specific kinds of military spending with specific new forms
of substitute spending.
Without examining disarmament scenarios in greater detail, we may
characterize them with these general comments:
Given genuine agreement of intent among the great powers, the scheduling of
arms control and elimination presents no inherently insurmountable procedural
problems. Any of several proposed sequences might serve as the basis for
multilateral agreement or for the first step in unilateral arms reduction.
No major power can proceed with such a program, however, until it has
developed an economic conversion plan fully integrated with each phase of
disarmament. No such plan has yet been developed in the United States.
Furthermore, disarmament scenarios, like proposals for economic conversion,
make no allowance for the non-military functions of war in modern societies,
and offer no surrogate for these necessary functions. One partial exception is a
proposal for the “unarmed forces of the United States,” which we will consider
in section 6.
30

SECTION 4 – WAR AND PEACE AS SOCIAL SYSTEMS
We have dealt only sketchily with proposed disarmament scenarios and
economic analyses, but the reason for our seemingly casual dismissal of so
much serious and sophisticated work lies in no disrespect for its competence. It
is rather a question of relevance. To put it plainly, all these programs, however
detailed and well developed, are abstractions. The most carefully reasoned
disarmament sequence inevitably reads more like the rules of a game or a
classroom exercise in logic than like a prognosis of real events in the real world.
This is as true of today’s complex proposals as it was of the Abbé de St. Pierre’s
“Plan for Perpetual Peace in Europe” 250 years ago.
Some essential element has clearly been lacking in all these schemes. One of
our first tasks was to try to bring this missing quality into definable focus, and
we believe we have succeeded in doing so. We find that at the heart of every
peace study we have examined–from the modest technological proposal (e.g.,
to convert a poison gas plant to the production of “socially useful” equivalents)
to the most elaborate scenario for universal peace in out time–lies one common
fundamental misconception. It is the source of the miasma of unreality
surrounding such plans. It is the incorrect assumption that war, as an institution,
is subordinate to the social systems it is believed to serve.
This misconception, although profound and far-reaching, is entirely
comprehensible. Few social clichés are so unquestioningly accepted as the
notion that war is an extension of diplomacy (or of politics, or of the pursuit of
economic objectives). If this were true, it would be wholly appropriate for
economists and political theorists to look on the problems of transition to peace
as essentially mechanical or procedural—as indeed they do, treating them as
logistic corollaries of the settlement of national conflicts of interest. If this were
true, there would be no real substance to the difficulties of transition. For it is
evident that even in today’s world there exist no conceivable conflict of interest,
real or imaginary, between nations or between social forces within nations, that
cannot be resolved without recourse to war–if such resolution were assigned a
priority of social value. And if this were true, the economic analyses and
disarmament proposals we have referred to, plausible and well conceived as
they may be, would not inspire, as they do, an inescapable sense of indirection.
The point is that the cliché is not true, and the problems of transition are indeed
substantive rather than merely procedural. Although was is “used” as an
instrument of national and social policy, the fact that a society is organized for
any degree of readiness for war supersedes its political and economic structure.
War itself is the basic social system, within which other secondary modes of
31
social organization conflict or conspire. It is the system which has governed
most human societies of record, as it is today.
Once this is correctly understood, the true magnitude of the problems entailed in
a transition to peace—itself a social system, but without precedent except in a
few simple preindustrial societies—becomes apparent. At the same time, some
of the puzzling superficial contradictions of modern societies can then be
readily rationalized. The “unnecessary” size and power of the world war
industry; the preeminence of the military establishment in every society,
whether open or concealed; the exemption of military or paramilitary
institutions from the accepted social and legal standards of behavior required
elsewhere in the society; the successful operation of the armed forces and the
armaments producers entirely outside the framework of each nation’s economic
ground rules: these and other ambiguities closely associated with the
relationship of war to society are easily clarified, once the priority of warmaking potential as the principal structuring force in society is accepted.
Economic systems, political philosophies, and corpora jures serve and extend
the war system, not vice versa.
It must be emphasized that the precedence of a society’s war-making potential
over its other characteristics is not the result of the “threat” presumed to exist at
any one time from other societies. This is the reverse of the basic situation;
“threats” against the “national interest” are usually created or accelerated to
meet the changing needs of the war system. Only in comparatively recent times
has it been considered politically expedient to euphemize war budgets as
“defense” requirements. The necessity for governments to distinguish between
“aggression” (bad) and “defense” (good) has been a by-product of rising literacy
and rapid communication. The distinction is tactical only, a concession to the
growing inadequacy of ancient war-organizing political rationales.
Wars are not “caused” by international conflicts of interest. Proper logical
sequence would make it more often accurate to say that war-making societies
require—and thus bring about—such conflicts. The capacity of a nation to make
war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or
contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social
control. It should therefore hardly be surprising that the military institutions in
each society claim its highest priorities.
We find further that most of the confusion surrounding the myth that warmaking is a tool of state policy stems from a general misapprehension of the
functions of war. In general, these are conceived as: to defend a nation from
military attack by another, or to deter such an attack; to defend or advance a
32
“national interest”–economic, political, ideological; to maintain or in- crease a
nation’s military power for its own sake. These are the visible, or ostensible,
functions of war. If there were no others, the importance of the war
establishment in each society might in fact decline to the subordinate level it is
believed to occupy. And the elimination of war would indeed be the procedural
matter that the disarmament scenarios suggest.
But there are other, broader, more profoundly felt functions of war in modern
societies. It is these invisible, or implied, functions that maintain war-readiness
as the dominant force in our societies. And it is the unwillingness or inability of
the writers of disarmament scenarios and reconversion plans to take them into
account that has so reduced the usefulness of their work, and that has made it
seem unrelated to the world we know.
33

SECTION 5 – THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR
As we have indicated, the preeminence of the concept of war as the principal
organizing force in most societies has been insufficiently appreciated. This is
also true of its extensive effects throughout the many nonmilitary activities of
society. These effects are less apparent in complex industrial societies like our
own than in primitive cultures, the activities of which can be more easily and
fully comprehended.
We propose in this section to examine these nonmilitary, implied, and usually
invisible functions of war, to the extent that they bear on the problems of
transition to peace for our society. The military, or ostensible, function of the
war system requires no elaboration; it serves simply to defend or advance the
“national interest” by means of organized violence. It is often necessary for a
national military establishment to create a need for its unique powers–to
maintain the franchise, so to speak. And a healthy military apparatus requires
“exercise,” by whatever rationale seems expedient, to prevent its atrophy.
The nonmilitary functions of the war system are more basic. They exist not
merely to justify themselves but to serve broader social purposes. If and when
war is eliminated, the military functions it has served will end with it. But its
nonmilitary functions will not. It is essential, therefore, that we understand their
significance before we can reasonably expect to evaluate whatever institutions
may be proposed to replace them.
ECONOMIC
The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with
economic “waste.” The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function.
But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its
contextual objective. The phrase “wasteful but necessary,” applied not only to
war expenditures but to most of the “unproductive” commercial activities of our
society, is a contradiction in terms. “…The attacks that have since the time of
Samuel’s criticism of King Saul been leveled against military expenditures as
waste may well have concealed or misunderstood the point that some kinds of
waste may have a larger social utility.”
In the case of military “waste,” there is indeed a larger social utility. It derives
from the fact that the “wastefulness” of war production is exercised entirely
outside the framework of the economy of supply and demand. As such, it
provides the only critically large segment of the total economy that is subject to
complete and arbitrary central control. If modern industrial societies can be
34
defined as those which have developed the capacity to produce more than is
required for their economic survival (regardless of the equities of distribution of
goods within them), military spending can be said to furnish the only balance
wheel with sufficient inertia to stabilize the advance of their economies. The
fact that war is “wasteful” is what enables it to serve this function. And the
faster the economy advances, the heavier this balance wheel must be.
This function is often viewed, oversimply, as a device for the control of
surpluses. One writer on the subject puts it this way: “Why is war so wonderful?
Because it creates artificial demand…the only kind of artificial demand,
moreover, that does not raise any political issues: war, and only war, solves the
problem of inventory.” The reference here is to shooting war, but it applies
equally to the general war economy as well. “It is generally agreed,” concludes,
more cautiously, the report of a panel set up by the U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency, “that the greatly expanded public sector since World War
II, resulting from heavy defense expenditures, has provided additional
protection against depressions, since this sector is not responsive to contraction in the private sector and has provided a sort of buffer or balance wheel
in the economy.”
The principal economic function of war, in our view, is that it provides just such
a flywheel. It is not to be confused in function with the various forms of fiscal
control, none of which directly engages vast numbers of control, none of which
directly engages vast numbers of men and units of production. It is not to be
confused with massive government expenditures in social welfare programs;
once initiated, such programs normally become integral parts of the general
economy and are no longer subject to arbitrary control.
But even in the context of the general civilian economy war cannot be
considered wholly “wasteful.” Without a long-established war economy, and
without its frequent eruption into large-scale shooting war, most of the major
industrial advances known to history, beginning with the development of iron,
could never have taken place. Weapons technology structures the economy.
According to the writer cited above, “Nothing is more ironic or revealing about
our society than the fact that hugely destructive war is a very progressive force
in it. … War production is progressive because it is production that would not
otherwise have taken place. (It is not so widely appreciated, for example, that
the civilian standard of living rose during World War II.)” This is not “ironic or
revealing,” but essentially a simple statement of fact.
It should also be noted that the war production has a dependably stimulating
effect outside itself. Far from constituting a “wasteful” drain on the economy,
35
war spending, considered pragmatically, has been a consistently positive factor
in the rise of gross national product and of individual productivity. A former
Secretary of the Army has carefully phrased it for public consumption thus: “If
there is, as I suspect there is, a direct relation between the stimulus of large
defense spending and a substantially increased rate of growth of gross national
product, it quite simply follows that defense spending per se might be
countenanced on economic grounds alone [emphasis added] as a stimulator of
the national metabolism.” Actually, the fundamental nonmilitary utility of war
in the economy is far more widely acknowledged than the scarcity of such
affirmations as that quoted above would suggest.
But negatively phrased public recognitions of the importance of war to the
general economy abound. The most familiar example is the effect of “peace
threats” on the stock market, e.g., “Wall Street was shaken yesterday by news of
an apparent peace feeler from North Vietnam, but swiftly recovered its
composure after about an hour of sometimes indiscriminate selling.” Savings
banks solicit deposits with similar cautionary slogans, e.g., “If peace breaks out,
will you be ready for it?” A more subtle case in point was the recent refusal of
the Department of Defense to permit the West German government to substitute
nonmilitary goods for unwanted armaments in its purchase commitments from
the United States; the decisive consideration was that the German purchases
should not affect the general (nonmilitary) economy. Other incidental examples
are to be found in the pressures brought to bear on the Department when it
announces plans to close down an obsolete facility (as a “wasteful” form of
“waste”). and in the usual coordination of stepped-up military activities (as in
Vietnam in 1965) with dangerously rising unemployment rates.
Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy cannot be
devised, no combination of techniques for controlling employment, production,
and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare to it in
effectiveness. It is, and has been, the essential economic stabilizer of modern
societies.
POLITICAL
The 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 for peace tend to fall silent on the matter of political
implementation, and that disarmament scenarios, often sophisticated in their
weighing of international political factors, tend to disregard the political
functions of the war system within individual societies.
36
These functions are essentially organizational. First of all, the existence of a
society as a political “nation” requires as part of its definition an attitude of
relationship toward other “nations.” This is what we usually call a foreign
policy. But a nation’s foreign policy can have no substance if it lacks the means
of enforcing its attitude toward other nations. It can do this in a credible manner
only if it implies the threat of maximum political organization for this purpose–
which is to say that it is organized to some degree for war. War, then, as we
have defined it to include all national activities that recognize the possibility of
armed conflict, is itself the defining element of any nation’s existence vis-a-vis
any other nation. Since it is historically axiomatic that the existence of any form
of weaponry insures its use, we have used the work “peace” as virtually
synonymous with disarmament. By the same token, “war” is virtually
synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable
elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.
The war system not only has been essential to the existence of nations as
independent political entities, but has been equally indispensable to their stable
internal political structure. Without it, no government has ever been able to
obtain acquiescence in its “legitimacy,” or right to rule its society. The
possibility of war provides the sense of external necessity without which nor
government can long remain in power. The historical record reveals one
instance after another where the failure of a regime to maintain the credibility of
a war threat led to its dissolution, by the forces of private interest, or reactions
to social injustice, or of other disintegrative elements. The organization of a
society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer. It is ironic
that this primary function of war has been generally recognized by historians
only where it has been expressly acknowledged–in the pirate societies of the
great conquerors.
The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers.
(There is, in fact, good reason to believe that codified law had its origins in the
rules of conduct established by military victors for dealing with the defeated
enemy, which were later adapted to apply to all subject populations.) On a dayto-day basis, it is represented by the institution of police, armed organizations
charged expressly with dealing with “internal enemies” in a military manner.
Like the conventional “external” military, the police are also substantially
exempt from many civilian legal restraints on their social behavior. In some
countries, the artificial distinction between police and other military forces does
not exist. On the long-term basis, a government’s emergency war powers —
inherent in the structure of even the most libertarian of nations — define the
most significant aspect of the relation between state and citizen.
37
In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system has provided political
leaders with another political-economic function of increasing importance: it
has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social
classes. As economic productivity increases to a level further and further above
that of minimum subsistence, it becomes more and more difficult for a society
to maintain distribution patterns insuring the existence of “hewers of wood and
drawers of water”. The further progress of automation can be expected to
differentiate still more sharply between “superior” workers and what Ricardo
called “menials,” while simultaneously aggravating the problem of maintaining
an unskilled labor supply.
The arbitrary nature of war expenditures and of other military activities make
them ideally suited to control these essential class relationships. Obviously, if
the war system were to be discarded, new political machinery would be needed
at once to serve this vital subfunction. Until it is developed, the continuance of
the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among others, than to
preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an
incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization of
power.
SOCIOLOGICAL
Under this heading, we will examine a nexus of functions served by the war
system that affect human behavior in society. In general, they are broader in
application and less susceptible to direct observation than the economic and
political factors previously considered.
The most obvious of these functions is the time-honored use of military
institutions to provide antisocial elements with an acceptable role in the social
structure. The disintegrative, unstable social movements loosely described as
“fascist” have traditionally taken root in societies that have lacked adequate
military or paramilitary outlets to meet the needs of these elements. This
function has been critical in periods of rapid change. The danger signals are
easy to recognize, even though the stigmata bear different names at different
times. The current euphemistic clichés–“juvenile delinquency” and “alienation”
— have had their counterparts in every age. In earlier days these conditions were
dealt with directly by the military without the complications of due process,
usually through press gangs or outright enslavement. But it is not hard to
visualize, for example, the degree of social disruption that might have taken
place in the United States during the last two decades if the problem of the
socially disaffected of the post-World War II period had been foreseen and
38
effectively met. The younger, and more dangerous, of these hostile social
groupings have been kept under control by the Selective Service System.
This system and its analogues elsewhere furnish remarkably clear examples of
disguised military utility. Informed persons in this country have never accepted
the official rationale for a peacetime draft–military necessity, preparedness, etc.
–as worthy of serious consideration. But what has gained credence among
thoughtful men is the rarely voiced, less easily refuted, proposition that the
institution of military service has a “patriotic” priority in our society that must
be maintained for its own sake. Ironically, the simplistic official justification for
selective 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 potentially 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 overt military activity, and thus the
level of draft calls, tend to follow the major fluctuations in the unemployment
rate in the lower age groups. This rate, in turn, is a timetested herald of social
discontent. It must be noted also that the armed forces in every civilization have
provided the principal state-supported haven for what we now call the
“unemployable.” The typical European standing army (of fifty years ago)
consisted of “…troops unfit for employment in commerce, industry, or
agriculture, led by officers unfit to practice any legitimate profession or to
conduct a business enterprise.” This is still largely true, if less apparent. In a
sense, this function of the military as the custodian of the economically or
culturally deprived was the forerunner of most contemporary civilian socialwelfare programs, from the W.P.A. to various forms of “socialized” medicine
and social security. It is interesting that liberal sociologists currently proposing
to use the Selective Service System as a medium of cultural upgrading of the
poor consider this a novel application of military practice.
Although it cannot be said absolutely that such critical measures of social
control as the draft require a military rationale, no modern society has yet been
willing to risk experimentation with any other kind. Even during such periods of
comparatively simple social crisis as the so-called Great Depression of the
1930s, it was deemed prudent by the government to invest minor make-work
projects, like the “Civilian” Conservation Corps, with a military character, and
to place the more ambitious National Recovery Administration under the
direction of a professional army officer at its inception. Today, at least one
small Northern European country, plagued with uncontrollable unrest among its
“alienated youth,” is considering the expansion of its armed forces, despite the
problem of making credible the expansion of a non-existent external threat.
39
Sporadic efforts have been made to promote general recognition of broad
national values free of military connotation, but they have been ineffective. For
example, to enlist public support of even such modest programs of social
adjustment as “fighting inflation” or “maintaining physical fitness” it has been
necessary for the government to utilize a patriotic (i.e. military) incentive. It
sells “defense” bonds and it equates health with military preparedness. This is
not surprising; since the concept of “nationhood” implies readiness for war, a
“national” program must do likewise.
In general, the war system provides the basic motivation for primary social
organization. In so doing, it reflects on the societal level the incentives of
individual human behavior. The most important of these, for social purposes, is
the individual psychological rationale for allegiance to a society and its values.
Allegiance requires a cause; a cause requires an enemy. This much is obvious;
the critical point is that the enemy that defines the cause must seem genuinely
formidable. Roughly speaking, the presumed power of the “enemy” sufficient to
warrant an individual sense of allegiance to a society must be proportionate to
the size and complexity of the society. Today, of course, that power must be one
of unprecedented magnitude and frightfulness.
It follows, from the patterns of human behavior, that the credibility of a social
“enemy” demands similarly a readiness of response in proportion to its menace.
In a broad social context, “an eye for an eye” still characterizes the only
acceptable attitude toward a presumed threat of aggression, despite contrary
religious and moral precepts governing personal conduct. The remoteness of
personal decision from social consequence in a modern society makes it easy
for its members to maintain this attitude without being aware of it. A recent
example is the war in Vietnam; a less recent one was the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. In each case, the extent and gratuitousness of the slaughter were
abstracted into political formulae by most Americans, once the proposition that
the victims were “enemies” was established. The war system makes such an
abstracted response possible in nonmilitary contexts as well. A conventional
example of this mechanism is the inability of most people to connect, let us say,
the starvation of millions in India with their own past conscious political
decision-making. Yet the sequential logic linking a decision to restrict grain
production in America with an eventual famine in Asia is obvious,
unambiguous, and unconcealed.
What gives the war system its preeminent role in social organization, as
elsewhere, is its unmatched authority over life and death. It must be emphasized
again that the war system is not a mere social extension of the presumed need
40
for individual human violence, but itself in turn serves to rationalize most
nonmilitary killing. It also provides the precedent for the collective willingness
of members of a society to pay a blood price for institutions far less central to
social organization that war. To take a handy example…”rather than accept
speed limits of twenty miles an hour we prefer to let automobiles kill forty
thousand people a year.” A Rand analyst puts it in more general terms and less
rhetorically: “I am sure that there is, in effect, a desirable level of automobile
accidents—desirable, that is, from a broad point of view; in the sense that it is a
necessary concomitant of things of greater value to society.” The point may
seem too obvious for iteration, but it is essential to an understanding of the
important motivational function of war as a model for collective sacrifice.
A brief look at some defunct premodern societies is instructive. One of the most
noteworthy features common to the larger, more complex, and more successful
of ancient civilizations was their widespread use of the blood sacrifice. If one
were to limit consideration to those cultures whose regional hegemony was so
complete that the prospect of “war” had become virtually inconceivable —as
was the case with several of the great pre-Columbian societies of the Western
Hemisphere—it would be found that some form of ritual killing occupied a
position of paramount social importance in each. Invariably, the ritual was
invested with mythic or religious significance; as will all religious and totemic
practice, however, the ritual masked a broader and more important social
function.
In these societies, the blood sacrifice served the purpose of maintaining a
vestigial “earnest” of the society’s capability and willingness to make war– i.e.,
kill and be killed—in the event that some mystical–i.e., unforeseen —
circumstance were to give rise to the possibility. That the “earnest” was not an
adequate substitute for genuine military organization when the unthinkable
enemy, such as the Spanish conquistadores, actually appeared on the scene in
no way negates the function of the ritual. It was primarily, if not exclusively, a
symbolic reminder that war had once been the central organizing force of the
society, and that this condition might recur.
It does not follow that a transition to total peace in modern societies would
require the use of this model, even in less “barbaric” guise. But the historical
analogy serves as a reminder that a viable substitute for war as a social system
cannot be a mere symbolic charade. It must involve risk of real personal
destruction, and on a scale consistent with the size and complexity of modern
social systems. Credibility is the key. Whether the substitute is ritual in nature
or functionally substantive, unless it provides a believable life- and-death threat
it will not serve the socially organizing function of war.
41
The existence of an accepted external menace, then, is essential to social
cohesiveness as well as to the acceptance of political authority. The menace
must be believable, it must be of a magnitude consistent with the complexity of
the society threatened, and it must appear, at least, to affect the entire society.
ECOLOGICAL
Men, like all other animals, is subject to the continuing process of adapting to
the limitations of his environment. But the principal mechanism he has utilized
for this purpose is unique among living creatures. To forestall the inevitable
historical cycles of inadequate food supply, post-Neolithic man destroys surplus
members of his own species by organized warfare.
Ethologists have often observed that the organized slaughter of members of
their own species is virtually unknown among other animals. Man’s special
propensity to kill his own kind (shared to a limited degree with rats) may be
attributed to his inability to adapt anachronistic patterns of survival (like
primitive hunting) to his development of “civilizations” in which these patterns
cannot be effectively sublimated. It may be attributed to other causes that have
been suggested, such as a maladapted “territorial instinct,” etc. Nevertheless, it
exists and its social expression in war constitutes a biological control of his
relationship to his natural environment that is peculiar to man alone.
War has served to help assure the survival of the human species. But as an
evolutionary device to improve it, war is almost unbelievably inefficient. With
few exceptions, the selective processes of other living creatures promote both
specific survival and genetic improvement. When a conventionally adaptive
animal faces one of its periodic crises of insufficiency, it is the “inferior”
members of the species that normally disappear. An animal’s social response to
such a crisis may take the form of a mass migration, during which the weak fall
by the wayside. Or it may follow the dramatic and more efficient pattern of
lemming societies, in which the weaker members voluntarily disperse, leaving
available food supplies for the stronger. In either case, the strong survive and
the weak fall. In human societies, those who fight and die in wars for survival
are in general its biologically stronger members. This is natural selection in
reverse.
The regressive genetic effort of war has been often noted and equally often
deplored, even when it confuses biological and cultural factors. The
disproportionate loss of the biologically stronger remains inherent in traditional
warfare. It serves to underscore the fact that survival of the species, rather than
42
its improvement, is the fundamental purpose of natural selection, if it can be
said to have a purpose, just as it is the basic premise of this study.
But as the polemologist Gaston Bouthoul has pointed out, other institutions that
were developed to serve this ecological function have proved even less
satisfactory. (They include such established forms as these: infanticide,
practiced chiefly in ancient and primitive societies; sexual mutilation;
monasticism; forced emigration; extensive capital punishment, as in old China
and eighteenth-century England; and other similar, usually localized, practices.)
Man’s ability to increase his productivity of the essentials of physical life
suggests that the need for protection against cyclical famine may be nearly
obsolete. It has thus tended to reduce the apparent importance of the basic
ecological function of war, which is generally disregarded by peace theorists.
Two aspects of its remain especially relevant, however. The first is obvious:
current rates of population growth, compounded by environmental threat to
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 methods of warfare would almost
surely prove inadequate, in this event, to reduce the consuming population to a
level consistent with survival of the species.
The second relevant factor is the efficiency of modern methods of mass
destruction. Even if their use is not required to meet a world population crisis,
they offer, perhaps paradoxically, the first opportunity in the history of man to
halt the regressive genetic effects of natural selection by war. Nuclear weapons
are indiscriminate. Their application would bring to an end the disproportionate
destruction of the physically stronger members of the species (the “warriors”) in
periods of war. Whether this prospect of genetic gain would offset the
unfavorable mutations anticipated from postnuclear radioactivity we have not
yet determined. What gives the question a bearing on our study is the possibility
that the determination may yet have to be made.
Another secondary ecological trend bearing on projected population growth is
the regressive effect of certain medical advances. Pestilence, for example, is no
longer an important factor in population control. The problem of increased life
expectancy has been aggravated. These advances also pose a potentially more
sinister problem, in that undesirable genetic traits that were formerly selfliquidating are now medically maintained. Many diseases that were once fatal at
preprocreational ages are now cured; the effect of this development is to
perpetuate undesirable susceptibilities and mutations. It seems clear that a new
quasi-eugenic function of war is now in process of formation that will have to
43
be taken into account in any transition plan. For the time being, the Department
of Defense appears to have recognized such factors, as has been demonstrated
by the planning under way by the Rand Corporation to cope with the breakdown
in the ecological balance anticipated after a thermonuclear war. The Department
has also begun to stockpile birds, for example, against the expected proliferation
of radiation-resistant insects, etc.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC
The declared order of values in modern societies gives a high place to the socalled “creative” activities, and an even higher one to those associated with the
advance of scientific knowledge. Widely held social values can be translated
into political equivalents, which in turn may bear on the nature of a transition to
peace. The attitudes of those who hold these values must be taken into account
in the planning of the transition. The dependence, therefore, of cultural and
scientific achievement on the war system would be an important consideration
in a transition plan even is such achievement had no inherently necessary social
function.
Of all the countless dichotomies invented by scholars to account for the major
differences in art styles and cycles, only one has been consistently unambiguous
in its application to a variety of forms and cultures. However it may be
verbalized, the basic distinction is this: Is the work war-oriented or is it not?
Among primitive peoples, the war dance is the most important art form.
Elsewhere, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture that has won
lasting acceptance has invariably dealt with a theme of war, expressly or
implicitly, and has expressed the centricity of war to society. The war in
question may be national conflict, as in Shakespeare plays, Beethoven’s music,
or Goya’s paintings, or it may be reflected in the form of religious, social, or
moral struggle, as in the work of Dante, Rembrandt, and Bach. Art that cannot
be classified as war-oriented is usually described as “sterile,” “decadent,” and so
on. Application of the “war standard” to works of art may often leave room for
debate in individual cases, but there is no question of its role as the fundamental
determinant of cultural values. Aesthetic and moral standards have a common
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 a society’s culture has borne a
close relationship to its war-making potential, in the context of its times. It is no
accident that the current “cultural explosion” in the United States is taking place
during an era marked by an unusually rapid advance in weaponry. This
relationship is more generally recognized than the literature on the subject
44
would suggest. For example, many artists and writers are now beginning to
express concern over the limited creative options they envisage in the warless
world they think, or hope, may be soon upon us. They are currently preparing
for this possibility by unprecedented experimentation with meaningless forms;
their interest in recent years has been increasingly engaged by the abstract
pattern, the gratuitous emotion, the random happening, and the unrelated
sequence.
The relationship of war to scientific research and discovery is more explicit.
War is the principal motivational force for the development of science at every
level, from the abstractly conceptual to the narrowly technological. Modern
society places a high value on “pure” science, but it is historically inescapable
that all the significant discoveries that have been made about the natural world
have been inspired by the real or imaginary military necessities of their epochs.
The consequences of the discoveries have indeed gone far afield, but war has
always provided the basic incentive.
Beginning with the development of iron and steel, and proceeding through the
discoveries of the laws of motion and thermodynamics to the age of the atomic
particle, the synthetic polymer, and the space capsule, no important scientific
advance has not been at least indirectly initiated by an implicit requirement of
weaponry. More prosaic examples include the transistor radio (an outgrowth of
military communications requirements), the assembly line (from Civil War
firearms needs), the steel-frame building (from the steel battleship), the canal
lock, and so on. A typical adaptation can be seen in a device as modest as the
common lawnmower; it developed from the revolving scythe devised by
Leonardo da Vinci to precede a horse-powered vehicle into enemy ranks.
The most direct relationship can be found in medical technology. For example,
a giant “walking machine,” and amplifier of body motions invented for military
use in difficult terrain, is now making it possible for many previously con- fined
to wheelchairs to walk. The Vietnam war alone has led to spectacular
improvements in amputation procedures, blood-handling techniques, and
surgical logistics. It has stimulated new large-scale research on malaria and
other typical parasite diseases; it is hard to estimate how long this t? Amoould
otherwise have been delayed, despite its enormous nonmilitary importance to
nearly half the world’s population.
OTHER
We have elected to omit from our discussion of the nonmilitary functions of war
those we do not consider critical to a transition program. This is not to say they
45
are unimportant, however, but only that they appear to present no special
problems for the organization of a peace-oriented social system. They include
the following:
War as a general social release. This is a psychosocial function, serving the
same purpose for a society as do the holiday, the celebration, and the orgy for
the individual—the release and redistribution of undifferentiated tensions. War
provides for the periodic necessary readjustment of standards of social behavior
(the “moral climate”) and for the dissipation of general boredom, one of the
most consistently undervalued and unrecognized of social phenomena.
War as a generational stabilizer. This psychological function, served by other
behavior patterns in other animals, enables the physically deteriorating older
generation to maintain its control of the younger, destroying it if necessary.
War as an ideological clarifier. The dualism that characterized the traditional
dialectic of all branches of philosophy and of stable political relationships stems
from war as the prototype of conflict. Except for secondary considerations,
there cannot be, to put it as simply as possible, more than two sides to a
question because there cannot be more than two sides to a war.
War as the basis for the international understanding. Before the development
of modern communications, the strategic requirements of war provided the only
substantial incentive for the enrichment of one national culture with the
achievements of another. Although this is still the case in many international
relationships, the function is obsolescent.
We have also forgone extended characterization of those functions we assume
to be widely and explicitly recognized. An obvious example is the role of war as
controller of the quality and degree of unemployment. This is more than an
economic and political subfunction; its sociological, cultural, and ecological
aspects are also important, although often teleonomic. But none affect the
general problem of substitution. The same is true of certain other functions;
those we have included are sufficient to define the scope of the problem.
46

SECTION 6 – SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR
By now it should be clear that the most detailed and comprehensive master plan
for a transition to world peace will remain academic if it fails to deal
forthrightly with the problem of the critical nonmilitary functions of war. The
social needs they serve are essential; if the war system no longer exists to meet
them, substitute institutions will have to be established for the purpose. These
surrogates must be “realistic,” which is to say of a scope and nature that can be
conceived and implemented in the context of present-day social capabilities.
This is not the truism it may appear to be; the requirements of radical social
change often reveal the distinction between a most conservative projection and
a wildly utopian scheme to be fine indeed.
In this section we will consider some possible substitutes for these functions.
Only in rare instances have they been put forth for the purposes which concern
us here, but we see no reason to limit ourselves to proposals that address
themselves explicitly to the problem as we have outlined it. We will disregard
the ostensible, or military, functions of war; it is a premise of this study that the
transition to peace implies absolutely that they will no longer exist in any
relevant sense. We will also disregard the noncritical functions exemplified at
the end of the preceding section.
ECONOMIC
Economic surrogates for war must meet two principal criteria. They must be
“wasteful,” in the common sense of the word, and they must operate outside the
normal supply-demand system. A corollary that should be obvious is that the
magnitude of the waste must be sufficient to meet the needs of a particular
society. An economy as advanced and complex as our own requires the planned
average annual destruction of not less than 10 percent of gross national product
if it is effectively to fulfill its stabilizing function. When the mass of a balance
wheel is inadequate to the power it is intended to control, its effect can be selfdefeating, as with a runaway locomotive. The analogy, though crude, is
especially apt for the American economy, as our record of cyclical depressions
shows. All have taken place during periods of grossly inadequate military
spending.
Those few economic conversion programs which by implication acknowledge
the nonmilitary economic function of war (at least to some extent) tend to
assume that so-called social-welfare expenditures will fill the vacuum created
by the disappearance of military spending. When one considers the backlog of
un- finished business—proposed but still unexecuted—in this field, the
47
assumption seems plausible. Let us examine briefly the following list, which is
more or less typical of general social welfare programs.
HEALTH. Drastic expansion of medical research, education, and training
facilities; hospital and clinic construction; the general objective of complete
government-guaranteed health care for all, at a level consistent with current
developments in medical technology.
EDUCATION. The equivalent of the foregoing in teacher training; schools and
libraries; the drastic upgrading of standards, with the general objective of
making available for all an attainable educational goal equivalent to what is
now considered a professional degree.
HOUSING. Clean, comfortable, safe, and spacious living space for all, at the
level now enjoyed by about 15 percent of the population in this country (less in
most others).
TRANSPORTATION. The establishment of a system of mass public
transportation making it possible for all to travel to and from areas of work and
recreation quickly, comfortably, and conveniently, and to travel privately for
pleasure rather than necessity.
PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. The development and protection of water
supplies, forests, parks, and other natural resources; the elimination of chemical
and bacterial contaminants from air, water, and soil.
POVERTY. The genuine elimination of poverty, defined by a standard
consistent with current economic productivity, by means of a guaranteed annual
income or whatever system of distribution will best assure its achievement.
This is only a sampler of the more obvious domestic social welfare items, and
we have listed it in a deliberately broad, perhaps extravagant, manner. In the
past, such a vague and ambitious-sounding “program” would have been
dismissed out of hand, without serious consideration; it would clearly have
been, prima facie, far too costly, quite apart from its political implications. Our
objective to it, on the other hand, could hardly be more contradictory. As an
economic substitute for war, it is inadequate because it would be far too cheap.
If this seems paradoxical, it must be remembered that up to now all proposed
social-welfare expenditures have had to be measured within the war economy,
not as a replacement for it. The old slogan about a battleship or an ICBM
48
costing as much as x hospitals or y schools or z homes takes on a very different
meaning if there are to be more battleships or ICBM’s.
Since the list is general, we have elected to forestall the tangential controversy
that surrounds arbitrary cost projections by offering no individual cost
estimates. But the maximum program that could be physically effected along
the lines indicated could approach the established level of military spending
only for a limited time–in our opinion, subject to a detailed cost-and-feasibility
analysis, less than ten years. In this short period, at this rate, the major goals of
the program would have been achieved. Its capital-investment phase would
have been completed, and it would have established a permanent comparatively
modest level of annual operating cost–within the framework of the general
economy.
Here is the basic weakness of the social-welfare surrogate. On the short-term
basis, a maximum program of this sort could replace a normal military spending
program, 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 centers might be accelerated or halted from time to time, as the
requirements of a stable economy might dictate. But on the long-term basis,
social-welfare spending, no matter how often redefined, would necessarily
become an integral, accepted part of the economy, of no more value as a
stabilizer than the automobile industry or old age and survivors’ insurance.
Apart from whatever merit social-welfare programs are deemed to have for their
own sake, their function as a substitute for war in the economy would thus be
self-liquidating. They might serve, however, as expedients pending the
development of more durable substitute measures.
Another economic surrogate that has been proposed is a series of giant “space
research” programs. These have already demonstrated their utility in more
modest scale within the military economy. What has been implied, although not
yet expressly put forth, is the development of a long-range sequence of spaceresearch projects with largely unattainable goals. This kind of program offers
several advantages lacking in the social welfare model. First, it is unlikely to
phase itself out, regardless of the predictable “surprises” science has in store for
us: the universe is too big. In the event some individual project unexpectedly
succeeds there would be no dearth of substitute problems. For example, if
colonization of the moon proceeds on schedule, it could then become
“necessary” to establish a beachhead on Mars or Jupiter, and so on. Second, it
need be no more dependent on the general supply-demand economy than its
military prototype. Third, it lends itself extraordinarily well to arbitrary control.
49
Space research can be viewed as the nearest modern equivalent yet devised to
the pyramid-building, and similar ritualistic enterprises, of ancient societies. It
is true that the scientific value of the space program, even of what has already
been accomplished, is substantial on its own terms. But current programs are
absurdly obviously disproportionate, in the relationship of the knowledge
sought to the expenditures committed. All but a small fraction of the space
budget, measured by the standards of comparable scientific objectives, must be
charged de facto to the military economy. Future space research, projected as a
war surrogate, would further research, projected as a war surrogate, would
further reduce the “scientific” rationale of its budget to a minuscule percentage
indeed. As a purely economic substitute for war, therefore, extension of the
space program warrants serious consideration.
In Section 3 we pointed out that certain disarmament models, which we called
conservative, postulated extremely expensive and elaborate inspection systems.
Would it be possible to extend and institutionalize such systems to the point
where they might serve as economic surrogates for war spending? The
organization of failsafe inspection machinery could well be ritualized in a
manner similar to that of established military processes. “Inspection teams”
might be very like weapons. Inflating the inspection budget to military scale
presents no difficulty. The appeal of this kind of scheme lies in the comparative
ease of transition between two parallel systems.
The “elaborate inspection” surrogate is fundamentally fallacious, however.
Although it might be economically useful, as well as politically necessary,
during the disarmament transition, it would fail as a substitute for the economic
function of war for one simple reason. Peace-keeping inspection is part of a war
system, not of a peace system. It implies the possibility of weapons
maintenance or manufacture, which could not exist in a world at peace as here
defined. Massive inspection also implies sanctions, and thus war-readiness.
The same fallacy is more obvious in plans to create a patently useless “defense
conversion” apparatus. The long-discredited proposal to build “total” civil
defense facilities is one example; another is the plan to establish a giant
antimissile missile complex (Nike-X, et al.). These programs, of course, are
economic rather than strategic. Nevertheless, they are not substitutes for
military spending but merely different forms of it.
A more sophisticated variant is the proposal to establish the “Unarmed Forces”
of the United States. This would conveniently maintain the entire institutional
military structure, redirecting it essentially toward social-welfare activities on a
global scale. It would be, in effect, a giant military Peace Corps. There is
50
nothing inherently unworkable about this plan, and using the existing military
system to effectuate its own demise is both ingenious and convenient. But even
on a greatly magnified world basis, social-welfare expenditures must sooner or
later reenter the atmosphere of the normal economy. The practical transitional
virtues of such a scheme would thus be eventually negated by its inadequacy as
a permanent economic stabilizer.
POLITICAL
The war system makes the stable government of societies possible. It does this
essentially by providing an external necessity for a society to accept political
rule. In so doing, it establishes the basis for nationhood and the authority of
government to control its constituents. What other institution or combination of
programs might serve these functions in its place?
We have already pointed out that the end of the war means the end of national
sovereignty, and thus the end of nationhood as we know it today. But this does
not necessarily mean the end of nations in the administrative sense, and internal
political power will remain essential to a stable society. The emerging “nations”
of the peace epoch must continue to draw political authority from some source.
A number of proposals have been made governing the relations between nations
after total disarmament; all are basically juridical in nature. They contemplate
institutions more or less like a World Court, or a United Nations, but vested
with real authority. They may or may not serve their ostensible post-military
purpose of settling international disputes, but we need not discuss that here.
None would offer effective external pressure on a peace-world nation to
organize itself politically.
It might be argued that a well-armed international police force, operating under
the authority of such a supranational “court,” could well serve the function of
external enemy. This, however, would constitute a military operation, like the
inspection schemes mentioned, and, like them, would be inconsistent with the
premise of an end to the war system. It is possible that a variant of the
“Unarmed Forces” idea might be developed in such 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 organization. Would this kind
of threat also be contradictory to our basic premise?–that is, would it be
inevitably military? Not necessarily, in our view, but we are skeptical of its
capacity to evoke credibility. Also, the obvious destabilizing effect of any
global social welfare surrogate on politically necessary class relationships
51
would create an entirely new set of transition problems at least equal in
magnitude.
Credibility, in fact, lies at the heart of the problem of developing a political
substitute for war. This is where the space-race proposals, in many ways so well
suited as economic substitutes for war, fall short. The most ambitious and
unrealistic space project cannot of itself generate a believable external menace.
It has been hotly argued that such a menace would offer the “last, best hope of
peace,” etc., by uniting mankind against the danger of destruction by “creatures”
from other planets or from outer space. Experiments have been proposed to test
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
fact early experiments of this kind. If so, they could hardly have been judged
encouraging. We anticipate no difficulties in making a “need” for a giant super
space program credible for economic purposes, even were there not ample
precedent; extending it, for political purposes, to include features unfortunately
associated with science fiction would obviously be a more dubious undertaking.
Nevertheless, an effective political substitute for war would require “alternate
enemies,” some of which might seem equally farfetched in the context of the
current war system. It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the
environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by
nuclear weapons as the principal apparent threat to the survival of the species.
Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is
already well advanced, and at first glance would seem promising in this respect;
it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and
political power. But from present indications it will be a generation to a
generation and a half before environmental pollution, however severe, will be
sufficiently menacing, on a global scale, to offer a possible basis for a solution.
It is true that the rate of pollution could be increased selectively for this
purpose; in fact, the mere modifying of existing programs for the deterrence of
pollution could speed up the process enough to make the threat credible much
sooner. But the pollution problem has been so widely publicized in recent years
that it seems highly improbably that a program of deliberate environ- mental
poisoning could be implemented in a politically acceptable manner.
However unlikely some of the possible alternate enemies we have mentioned
may seem, we must emphasize that one must be found, of credible quality and
magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social
disintegration. It is more probably, in our judgement, that such a threat will
have to be invented, rather than developed from unknown conditions. For this
52
reason, we believe further speculation about its putative nature ill-advised in
this context. Since there is considerable doubt, in our minds, that any viable
political surrogate can be devised, we are reluctant to compromise, by
premature discussion, any possible option that may eventually lie open to our
government.
SOCIOLOGICAL
Of the many functions of war we have found convenient to group together in
this classification, two are critical. In a world of peace, the continuing stability
of society will require: 1) an effective substitute for military institutions that can
neutralize destabilizing social elements and 2) a credible motivational surrogate
for war that can insure social cohesiveness. The first is an essential element of
social control; the second is the basic mechanism for adapting individual human
drives to the needs of society.
Most proposals that address themselves, explicitly or otherwise, to the postwar
problem of controlling the socially alienated turn to some variant of the Peace
Corps or the so-called Job Corps for a solution. The socially disaffected, the
economically unprepared, the psychologically unconformable, the hard-core
“delinquents,” the incorrigible “subversives,” and the rest of the unemployable
are seen as somehow transformed by the disciplines of a service modeled on
military precedent into more or less dedicated social service workers. This
presumption also informs the otherwise hardheaded ratiocination of the
“Unarmed Forces” plan.
The problem has been addressed, in the language of popular sociology, by
Secretary McNamara. “Even in our abundant societies, we have reason enough
to worry over the tensions that coil and tighten among underprivileged young
people, and finally flail out in delinquency and crime. What are we to expect..
where mounting frustrations are likely to fester into eruptions of violence and
extremism?” In a seemingly unrelated passage, he continues: “It seems to me
that we could move toward remedying that inequity [of the Selective Service
System] by asking every young person in the United States to give two years of
service to his country–whether in one of the military services, in the Peace
Corps, or in some other volunteer developmental w? Am at home or abroad. We
could encourage other countries to do the same.” Here, as elsewhere throughout
this significant speech, Mr. McNamara has focused, indirectly but
unmistakably, on one of the key issues bearing on a possible transition to peace,
and has later indicated, also indirectly, a rough approach to its resolution, again
phrased in the language of the current war system.
53
It seems clear that Mr. McNamara and other proponents of the peace-corps
surrogate for this tar function lean heavily on the success of the paramilitary
Depression programs mentioned in the last section. We find the precedent
wholly inadequate in degree. Neither the lack of relevant precedent, however,
nor the dubious social welfare sentimentality characterizing this approach
warrant its rejection without careful study. It may be viable — provided, first,
that the military origin of the Corps format be effectively rendered out of its
operational activity, and second, that the transition from paramilitary activities
to “developmental w? A” can be effected without regard to 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 potential enemies of society is the
reintroduction, in some form consistent with modern technology and political
processes, of slavery. Up to now, this has been suggested only in fiction,
notably in the works of Wells, Huxley, Orwell, and others engaged in the
imaginative anticipation of the sociology of the future. But the fantasies
projected in Brave New World and 1984 have seemed less and less implausible
over the years since their publication. The traditional association of slavery with
ancient preindustrial cultures should not blind us to its adaptability to advanced
forms of social organization, nor should its equally traditional incompatibility
with Western moral and economic values. It is entirely possible that the
development of a sophisticated form of slavery may be an absolute prerequisite
for social control in a world at peace. As a practical matter, conversion of the
code of military discipline to a euphemized form of enslavement would entail
surprisingly little revision; the logical first step would be the adoption of some
form of “universal” military service.
When it comes to postulating a credible substitute for war capable of directing
human behavior patterns in behalf of social organization, few options suggest
themselves. Like its political function, the motivational function of war requires
the existence of a genuinely menacing social enemy. The principal difference is
that for purposes of motivating basic allegiance, as distinct from accepting
political authority, the “alternate enemy” must imply a more immediate,
tangible, and directly felt threat of destruction. It must justify the need for
taking and paying a “blood price” in wide areas of human concern.
In this respect, the possible enemies noted earlier would be insufficient. One
exception might be the environmental-pollution model, if the danger to society
it posed was genuinely imminent. The fictive models would have to carry the
weight of extraordinary conviction, underscored with a not inconsiderable
actual sacrifice of life; the construction of an up-to-date mythological or
54
religious structure for this purpose would present difficulties in our era, but
must certainly be considered.
Games theorists have suggested, in other contexts, the development of “blood
games” for the effective control of individual aggressive impulses. It is an ironic
commentary on the current state of war and peace studies that it was left not to
scientists but to the makers of a commercial film to develop a model for this
notion, on the implausible level of popular melodrama, as a ritualized manhunt.
More realistically, such a ritual might be socialized, in the manner of the
Spanish Inquisition and the less formal witch trials of other periods, for
purposes of “social purification,” “state security,” or other rationale both
acceptable and credible to postwar societies. The feasibility of such an updated
version of still another ancient institution, though doubtful, is considerably less
fanciful than the wishful notion of many peace planners that a lasting condition
of peace can be brought about without the most painstaking examination of
every possible surrogate for the essential functions of war. What is involved
here, in a sense, is the quest for William James’ “moral equivalent of war.”
It is also possible that the two functions considered under this heading may be
jointly served, in the sense of establishing the antisocial, for whom a control
institution is needed, as the “alternate enemy” needed to hold society together.
The relentless and irreversible advance of unemployability at all levels of
society, and the similar extension of generalized alienation from accepted
values may make some such program necessary even as an adjunct to the war
system. As before, we will not speculate on the specific forms this kind of
program might take, except to note that there is again ample precedent, in the
treatment meted out to disfavored, allegedly menacing, ethnic groups in certain
societies during certain historical periods.
ECOLOGICAL
Considering the shortcomings of war as a mechanism of selective population
control, it might appear that devising substitutes for this function should be
comparatively simple. Schematically this is so, but the problem of timing the
transition to a new ecological balancing device makes the feasibility of
substitution less certain.
It must be remembered that the limitation of war in this function is entirely
eugenic. War has not been genetically progressive. But as a system of gross
population control to preserve the species it cannot fairly be faulted. And, as has
been pointed out, the nature of war is itself in transition. Current trends in
warfare–the increased strategic bombing of civilians and the greater military
55
importance now attached to the destruction of sources of supply (as opposed to
purely “military” bases and personnel)—strongly suggest that a truly qualitative
improvement is in the making. Assuming the war system is to continue, it is
more than probably that the regressively selective quality of war will have been
reversed, as its victims become more genetically representative of their
societies.
There is no question but that a universal requirement that procreation be limited
to the products of artificial insemination would provide a fully adequate
substitute control for population levels. Such a reproductive system would, of
course, have the added advantage of being susceptible of direct eugenic
management. Its predictable further development—conception and embryonic
growth taking place wholly under laboratory conditions–would extend these
controls to their logical conclusion. The ecological function of war under these
circumstances would not only be superseded but surpassed in effectiveness.
The indicated intermediate step–total control of conception with a variant of the
ubiquitous “pill,” via water supplies or certain essential foodstuffs, offset by a
controlled “antidote”—is already under development. There would appear to be
no foreseeable need to revert to any of the outmoded practices referred to in the
previous section (infanticide, etc.) as there might have been if the possibility of
transition to peace had arisen two generations ago.
The real question here, therefore, does not concern the viability of this war
substitute, but the political problems involved in bringing it about. It cannot be
established while the war system is still in effect. The reason for this is simple:
excess population is tar material. As long as any society must contemplate even
a remote possibility of war, it must maintain a maximum supportable
population, even when so doing critically aggravates an economic liability. This
is paradoxical, in view of war’s role in reducing excess population, but it is
readily understood. War controls the general population level, but the ecological
interest of any single society lies in maintaining its hegemony vis-a-vis other
societies. The obvious analogy can be seen in any free-enterprise economy.
Practices damaging to the society as a whole–both competitive and
monopolistic–are abetted by the conflicting economic motives of individual
capital interests. The obvious precedent can be found in the seemingly irrational
political difficulties which have blacked universal adoption of simple birthcontrol methods. Nations desperately in need of increasing unfavorable
production-consumption ratios are nevertheless unwilling to gamble their
possible military requirements of twenty years hence for this purpose. Unilateral
population control, as practiced in ancient Japan and in other isolated societies,
is out of the question in today’s world.
56
Since the eugenic solution cannot be achieved until the transition to the peace
system takes place, why not wait? One must qualify the inclination to agree. As
we noted earlier, a real possibility of an unprecedented global crisis of
insufficiency exists today, which the war system may not be able to forestall. If
this should come to pass before an agreed-upon transition to peace were
completed, the result might be irrevocably disastrous. There is clearly no
solution to this dilemma; it is a risk which must be taken. But it tends to support
the view that if a decision is made to eliminate the war system, it were better
done sooner than later.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC
Strictly speaking, the function of war as the determinant of cultural values and
as the prime mover of scientific progress may not be critical in a world without
war. Our criterion for the basic nonmilitary functions of war has been: Are they
necessary to the survival and stability of society? The absolute need for
substitute cultural value-determinants and for the continued advance of
scientific knowledge is not established. We believe it important, however, in
behalf of those for whom these functions hold subjective significance, that it be
known what they can reasonably expect in culture and science after a transition
to peace.
So far as the creative arts are concerned, there is no reason to believe they
would disappear, but only that they would change in character and relative
social importance. The elimination of war would in due course deprive them of
their principal conative force, but it would necessarily take some time for the
transition, and perhaps for a generation thereafter, themes of sociomoral conflict
inspired by the war system would be increasingly transferred to the idiom of
purely personal sensibility. At the same time, a new aesthetic would have to
develop. Whatever its name, form, or rationale, its function would be to express,
in language appropriate to the new period, the once discredited philosophy that
art exists for its own sake. This aesthetic would reject unequivocally the classic
requirement of paramilitary conflict as the substantive content of great art. The
eventual effect of the peace-world philosophy of art would be democratizing in
the extreme, in the sense that a generally acknowledged subjectivity of artistic
standards would equalize their new, content-free “values.”
What may be expected to happen is that art would be reassigned the role it once
played in a few primitive peace-oriented social systems. This was the function
of pure decoration, entertainment, or play, entirely free of the burden of
expressing the sociomoral values and conflicts of a war-oriented society. It is
57
interesting that the groundwork for such a value-free aesthetic is already being
laid today, in growing experimentation in art without content, perhaps in
anticipation of a world without conflict. A cult has developed around a new
kind of cultural determinism, which proposes that the technological form of a
cultural expression determines its values rather than does its ostensibly
meaningful content. Its clear 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 been to promote circumstantial constructions and
unplanned expressions; it denies to art the relevance of sequential logic. Its
significance in this context is that it provides a working model of one kind of
value-free culture we might reasonably anticipate in a world at peace.
So far as science is concerned, it might appear at first glance that a giant spaceresearch program, the most promising among the proposed economic surrogates
for war, might also serve as the basic stimulator of scientific research. The lack
of fundamental organized social conflict inherent in space work, however,
would rule it out as an adequate motivational substitute for war when applied to
“pure” science. But it could no doubt sustain the broad range of technological
activity that a space budget of military dimensions would require. A similarly
scaled social-welfare program could provide a comparable impetus to lowkeyed technological advances, especially in medicine, rationalized construction
methods, educational psychology, etc. The eugenic substitute for the ecological
function of war would also require continuing research in certain areas of the
life sciences.
Apart from these partial substitutes for war, it must be kept in mind that the
momentum given to scientific progress by the great wars of the past century,
and even more by the anticipation of World War III, is intellectually and
materially enormous. It is our finding that if the war system were to end
tomorrow this momentum is so great that the pursuit of scientific knowledge
could reasonably be expected to go forward without noticeable diminution for
perhaps two decades. It would then continue, at a progressively decreasing
tempo, for at least another two decades before the “bank account” of today’s
unresolved problems would become exhausted. By the standards of the
questions we have learned to ask today, there would no longer be anything
worth knowing still unknown; we cannot conceive, by definition, of the
scientific questions to ask once those we can now comprehend are answered.
This leads unavoidably to another matter: the intrinsic value of the unlimited
search for knowledge. We of course offer no independent value judgments here,
but it is germane to point out that a substantial minority of scientific opinion
feels that search to be circumscribed in any case. This opinion is itself a factor
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in considering the need for a substitute for the scientific function of war. For the
record, we must also take note of the precedent that during long periods of
human history, often covering thousands of years, in which no intrinsic social
value was assigned to scientific progress, stable societies did survive and
flourish. Although this could not have been possible in the modern industrial
world, we cannot be certain it may not again be true in a future world at peace.
59

SECTION 7 – SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
THE NATURE OF WAR
War is not, as is widely assumed, primarily an instrument of policy utilized by
nations to extend or defend their expressed political values or their economic
interests. On the contrary, it is itself the principal basis of organization on which
all modern societies are constructed. The common proximate cause of war is the
apparent interference of one nation with the aspirations of another. But at the
root of all ostensible differences of national interest lie the dynamic
requirements of the war system itself for periodic armed conflict. Readiness for
war characterizes contemporary social systems more broadly than their
economic and political structures, which it subsumes.
Economic analyses of the anticipated problems of transition to peace have not
recognized the broad preeminence of war in the definition of social systems.
The same is true, with rare and only partial exceptions, of model disarmament
“scenarios.” For this reason, the value of this previous work is limited to the
mechanical aspects of transition. Certain features of these models may perhaps
be applicable to a real situation of conversion to peace; this till depend on their
compatibility with a substantive, rather than a procedural, peace plan. Such a
plan can be developed only from the premise of full understanding of the nature
of the war system it proposes to abolish, which in turn presupposes detailed
comprehension of the functions the war system performs for society. It will
require the construction of a detailed and feasible system of substitutes for those
functions that are necessary to the stability and survival of human societies.
THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR
The visible, military function of war requires no elucidation; it is not only
obvious but also irrelevant to a transition to the condition of peace, in which it
will by definition be superfluous. It is also subsidiary in social significance to
the implied, nonmilitary functions of war; those critical to transition can be
summarized in five principal groupings.
ECONOMIC. War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a
dependable system for stabilizing and controlling national economies. No
alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex modern economy
that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness.
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POLITICAL. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable
government; it supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority. It
has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has ensured
the subordination of the citizen to the state, by virtue of the residual war powers
inherent in the concept of nationhood. No modern political ruling group has
successfully controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing
credibility of an external threat of war.
SOCIOLOGICAL. War, through the medium of military institutions, has
uniquely served societies, throughout the course of known history, as an
indispensable controller of dangerous social dissidence and destructive
antisocial tendencies. As the most formidable of threats to life itself, and as the
only one susceptible to mitigation by social organization alone, it has played
another equally fundamental role: the war system has provided the machinery
through which the motivational forces governing human behavior have been
translated into binding social allegiance. It has thus ensured the degree of social
cohesion necessary to the viability of nations. No other institution, or groups of
institutions, in modern societies, has successfully served these functions.
ECOLOGICAL. War has been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining
a satisfactory ecological balance between gross human population and supplies
available for its survival. It is unique to the human species.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC. War-orientation has determined the basic
standards of value in the creative arts, and has provided the fundamental
motivational source of scientific and technological progress. The concepts that
the arts express values independent of their own forms and that the successful
pursuit of knowledge has intrinsic social value have long been accepted in
modern societies; the development of the arts and sciences during this period
has been corollary to the parallel development of weaponry.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: CRITERIA
The foregoing functions of war are essential to the survival of the social systems
we know today. With two possible exceptions they are also essential to any kind
of stable social organization that might survive in a warless world. Discussion
of the ways and means of transition to such a world are meaningless unless
a)substitute institutions can be devised to fill these functions, or b) it can
reasonably be hypothecated that the loss or partial loss of any one function need
not destroy the viability of future societies.
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Such substitute institutions and hypotheses must meet varying criteria. In
general, they must be technically feasible, politically acceptable, and potentially
credible to the members of the societies that adopt them. Specifically, they must
be characterized as follows:
ECONOMIC. An acceptable economic surrogate for the war system will require
the expenditure of resources for completely nonproductive purposes at a level
comparable to that of the military expenditures otherwise demanded by the size
and complexity of each society. Such a substitute system of apparent “waste”
must be of a nature that will permit it to remain independent of the normal
supply-demand economy; it must be subject to arbitrary political control.
POLITICAL. A viable political substitute fir war must posit a generalized
external menace to each society of a nature and degree sufficient to require the
organization and acceptance of political authority.
SOCIOLOGICAL. First, in the permanent absence of war, new institutions must
be developed that will effectively control the socially destructive segments of
societies. Second, for purposes of adapting the physical and psychological
dynamics of human behavior to the needs of social organization, a credible
substitute for war must generate an omnipresent and readily understood fear of
personal destruction. This fear must be of a nature and degree sufficient to
ensure adherence to societal values to the full extent that they are acknowledged
to transcend the value of individual human life.
ECOLOGICAL. A substitute for war in its function as the uniquely human
system of population control must ensure the survival, if not necessarily the
improvement, of the species, in terms of its relations to environmental supply.
CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC. A surrogate for the function of war as the
determinant of cultural values must establish a basis of sociomoral conflict of
equally compelling force and scope. A substitute motivational basis for the
quest for scientific knowledge must be similarly informed by a comparable
sense of internal necessity.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: MODELS
The following substitute institutions, among others, have been proposed for
consideration as replacements for the nonmilitary functions of war. That they
may not have been originally set forth for that purpose does not preclude or
invalidate their possible application here.
62
ECONOMIC. a) A comprehensive social-welfare program, directed toward
maximum improvement of general conditions of human life. b) A giant openend space research program, aimed at unreachable targets. c) A permanent,
ritualized, ultra-elaborate disarmament inspection system, and variants of such a
system.
POLITICAL a) An omnipresent, virtually omnipotent international police force.
b) An established and recognized extraterrestrial menace. c) Massive global
environmental pollution. d) Fictitious alternate enemies.
SOCIOLOGICAL: CONTROL FUNCTION. a) Programs generally derived from
the Peace Corps model. b) A modern, sophisticated form of slavery.
MOTIVATIONAL FUNCTION. a) Intensified environmental pollution. b) New
religions or other mythologies. c) Socially oriented blood games. d)
Combination forms.
ECOLOGICAL. A comprehensive program of applied eugenics.
CULTURAL. No replacement institution offered. SCIENTIFIC. The secondary
requirements of the space research, social welfare, and / or eugenics programs.
SUBSTITUTES FOR THE FUNCTIONS OF WAR: EVALUATION
The models listed above reflect only the beginning of the quest for substitute
institutions for the functions of war, rather than a recapitulation of alternatives.
It would be both premature and inappropriate, therefore, to offer final
judgments on their applicability to a transition to peace and after. Furthermore,
since the necessary but complex project of correlating the compatibility of
proposed surrogates for different functions could be treated only in exemplary
fashion at this time, we have elected to withhold such hypothetical correlations
as were tested as statistically inadequate.
Nevertheless, some tentative and cursory comments on these proposed functional “solutions” will indicate the scope of the difficulties involved in this area of
peace planning.
ECONOMIC. The social-welfare model cannot be expected to remain outside
the normal economy after the conclusion of its predominantly capitalinvestment phase; its value in this function can therefore be only temporary.
63
The space-research substitute appears to meet both major criteria, and should be
examined in greater detail, especially in respect to its probable effects on other
war functions. “Elaborate inspection” schemes, although superficially attractive,
are inconsistent with the basic premise of a transition to peace. The “unarmed
forces” variant, logistically similar, is subject to the same functional criticism as
the general social-welfare model.
POLITICAL. Like the inspection-scheme surrogates, proposals for
plenipotentiary international police are inherently incompatible with the ending
of the war system. The “unarmed forces” variant, amended to include unlimited
powers of economic sanction, might conceivably be expanded to constitute a
credible external menace. Development of an acceptable threat from “outer
space,” presumably in conjunction with a space-research surrogate for economic
control, appears unpromising in terms of credibility. The environmentalpollution model does not seem sufficiently responsive to immediate social
control, except through arbitrary acceleration of current pollution trends; this in
turn raises questions of political acceptability. New, less regressive, approaches
to the creation of fictitious global “enemies” invite further investigation.
SOCIOLOGICAL: CONTROL FUNCTION. Although the various substitutes
proposed for this function that are modeled roughly on the Peace Corps appear
grossly inadequate in potential scope, they should not be ruled out without
further study. Slavery, in a technologically modern and conceptually
euphemized form, may prove a more efficient and flexible institution in this
area. MOTIVATIONAL FUNCTION. Although none of the proposed substitutes
for war as the guarantor of social allegiance can be dismissed out of hand, each
presents serious and special difficulties. Intensified environmental threats may
raise ecological dangers; mythmaking dissociated from tar may no longer be
politically feasible; purposeful blood games and rituals can far more readily be
devised than implemented. An institution combining this function with the
preceding one, based on, but not necessarily imitative of, the precedent of
organized ethnic repression, warrants careful consideration.
ECOLOGICAL. The only apparent problem in the application of an adequate
eugenic substitute for war is that of timing; it cannot be effectuated until the
transition to peace has been completed, which involved a serious temporary risk
of ecological failure.
CULTURAL. No plausible substitute for this function of war has yet been
proposed. It may be, however, that a basic cultural value-determinant is not
necessary to the survival of a stable society. SCIENTIFIC. The same might be
said for the function of war as the prime mover of the search for knowledge.
64
However, adoption of either a giant space-research program, a comprehensive
social-welfare program, or a master program of eugenic control would provide
motivation for limited technologies.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
It is apparent, from the foregoing, that no program or combination of programs
yet proposed for a transition to peace has remotely approached meeting the
comprehensive functional requirements of a world without war. Although one
projected system for filling the economic function of war seems promising,
similar optimism cannot be expressed in the equally essential political and
sociological areas. The other major nonmilitary functions of war—ecological,
cultural, scientific—raise very different problems, but it is least possible that
detailed programming of substitutes in these areas is not prerequisite to
transition. More important, it is not enough to develop adequate but separate
surrogates for the major war functions; they must be fully compatible and in no
degree self-canceling.
Until such a unified program is developed, at least hypothetically, it is
impossible for this or any other group to furnish meaningful answers to the
questions originally presented to us. When asked how best to prepare for the
advent of peace, we must first reply, as strongly as we can, that the war system
cannot responsibly be allowed to disappear until

1) we know exactly what it is we plan to put in its place, and

2) we are certain, beyond reasonable doubt, that these substitute institutions will serve their purposes in terms of the survival and stability of society.

It will then be time enough to develop methods for
effectuating the transition; procedural programming must follow, not precede,
substantive solutions.
Such solutions, if indeed they exist, will not be arrived at without a
revolutionary revision of the modes of thought heretofore considered
appropriate to peace research. That we have examined the fundamental
questions involved from a dispassionate, value-free point of view should not
imply that we do not appreciate the intellectual and emotional difficulties that
must be overcome on all decision-making levels before these questions are
generally acknowledged by others for what they are. They reflect, on an
intellectual level, traditional emotional resistance to new (more lethal and thus
more “shocking”) forms of weaponry. The understated comment of then Senator Hubert Humphrey on the publication of ON THERMONUCLEAR WAR
is still very much to the point: “New Thoughts, particularly those which appear
to contradict current assumptions, are always painful for the mind to
contemplate.”
65
Nor, simple because we have not discussed them, do we minimize the massive
reconciliation of conflicting interests with domestic as well as international
agreement on proceeding toward genuine peace presupposes. This factor was
excluded from the purview of our assignment, but we would be remiss if we
failed to take it into account. Although no insuperable obstacle lies in the path
of reaching such general agreements, formidable short-term private-group and
general-class interest in maintaining the war system is well established and
widely recognized. The resistance to peace stemming from such interest is only
tangential, in the long run, to the basic functions of war, but it will not be easily
overcome, in this country or elsewhere. Some observers, in fact, believe that it
cannot be overcome at all in our time, that the price of peace is, simply, too
high. This bears on our overall conclusions to the extent that timing in the
transference to substitute institutions may often be the critical factor in their
political feasibility.

It is uncertain, at this time, whether peace will ever be possible. It is far more
questionable, by the objective standard of continued social survival rather than
that of emotional pacifism, that it would be desirable even if it were
demonstrably attainable. The war system, for all its subjective repugnance to
important sections of “public opinion” has demonstrated its effectiveness since
the beginning of recorded history; it has provided the basis for the development
of many impressively durable civilizations, including that which is dominant
today. It has consistently provided unambiguous social priorities. It is, on the
whole, a known quantity. A viable system of peace, assuming that the great and
complex questions of substitute institutions raised in this Report are both
soluble and solved, would still constitute a venture into the unknown, with the
inevitable risks attendant on the unforeseen, however small and however well
hedged.

Government decision-makers tend to choose peace over war whenever a real
option exists, because it usually appears to be the “safer” choice. Under most
immediate circumstances they are likely to be right. But in terms of long-range
social stability, the opposite is true. At our present state of knowledge and
reasonable inference, it is the war system that must be identified with stability,
the peace system that must be identified with social speculation, however
justifiable the speculation may appear, in terms of subjective moral or
emotional values. A nuclear physicist once remarked, in respect to a possible
disarmament agreement: “If we could change the world into a world in which
no weapons could be made, that would be stabilizing. But agreements we can
expect with the Soviets would be destabilizing.” The qualification and the bias
66
are equally irrelevant; any condition of genuine total peace, however achieved,
would be destabilizing until proved otherwise.

If it were necessary at this moment to opt irrevocably for the retention or for the
dissolution of the war system, common prudence would dictate the former
course. But it is not yet necessary, late as the hour appears. And more factors
must eventually enter the war-peace equation than even the most determined
search for alternative institutions for the functions of war can be expected to
reveal. One group of such factors has been given only passing mention in this
Report; it centers around the possible obsolescence of the war system itself. We
have noted, for instance, the limitations of the war system in filling its
ecological function and the declining importance of this aspect of war. It by no
means stretches the imagination to visualize comparable developments which
may compromise the efficacy of war as, for example, an economic controller or
as an organizer of social allegiance. This kind of possibility, however remote,
serves as a reminder that all calculations of contingency not only involve the
weighing of one group of risks against another, but require a respectful
allowance for error on both sides of the scale.
More expedient reason for pursuing the investigation of alternate ways and
means to serve the current functions of war is narrowly political. It is possible
that one or more major sovereign nations may arrive, through ambiguous
leadership, at a position in which a ruling administrative class may lose control
of basic public opinion or of its ability to rationalize a desired war. It is not hard
to imagine, in such circumstances, a situation in which such governments may
feel forced to initiate serious full-scale disarmament proceedings (perhaps
provoked by “accidental” nuclear explosions), and that such negotiations may
lead to the actual disestablishment of military institutions. As our Report has
made clear, this could be catastrophic. It seems evident that, in the event an
important part of the world is suddenly plunged without sufficient warning into
an inadvertent peace, even partial and inadequate preparation for the possibility
may be better than none. The difference could even be critical. The models
considered in the preceding chapter, both those that seem promising and those
that do not, have one positive feature in common–an inherent flexibility of
phasing. And despite our strictures against knowingly proceeding into peacetransition procedures without thorough substantive preparation, our government
must nevertheless be ready to move in this direction with whatever limited
resources of planning are on hand at the time—if circumstances so require>. An
arbitrary all-or-nothing approach is no more realistic in the development of
contingency peace programming than it is anywhere else.
67
But the principal cause for concern over the continuing effectiveness of the war
system, and the more important reason for hedging with peace planning, lies in
the backwardness of current war-system programming. Its controls have not
kept pace with the technological advances it has made possible. Despite its
unarguable success to date, even in this era of unprecedented potential in mass
destruction, it continues to operate largely on a laissez-faire basis. To the best of
our knowledge, no serious quantified studies have even been conducted to
determine, for example:
—optimum levels of armament production, for purposes of economic control, at
any given relationship between civilian production and consumption patterns:
—correlation factors between draft recruitment policies and mensurable social
dissidence;
—minimum levels of population destruction necessary to maintain war-threat
credibility under varying political conditions;
—optimum cyclical frequency of “shooting” wars under varying circumstances
of historical relationship.
These and other war-function factors are fully susceptible to analysis by today’s
computer-based systems, but they have not been so treated; modern analytical
techniques have up to now been relegated to such aspects of the ostensible
functions of war as procurement, personnel deployment, weapons analysis, and
the like. We do not disparage these types of application, but only deplore their
lack of utilization to greater capacity in attacking problems of broader scope.
Our concern for efficiency in this context is not aesthetic, economic, or
humanistic. It stems from the axiom that no system can long survive at either
input or output levels that consistently or substantially deviate from an optimum
range. As their data grow increasingly sophisticated, the war system and its
functions are increasingly endangered by such deviations.
Our final conclusion, therefore, is that it will be necessary for our government
to plan in depth for two general contingencies. The first, and lesser, is the
possibility of a viable general peace; the second is the successful continuation
of the war system. In our view, careful preparation for the possibility of peace
should be extended, not because we take the position that the end of war would
necessarily be desirable, if it is in fact possible, but because it may be thrust
upon us in some form whether we are ready for it or not. Planning for
rationalizing and quantifying the war system, on the other hand, to ensure the
68
effectiveness of its major stabilizing functions, is not only more promising in
respect to anticipated results, but is essential; we can no longer take for granted
that it will continue to serve our purposes well merely because it always has.
The objective of government policy in regard to war and peace, in this period of
uncertainty, must be to preserve maximum options. The recommendations
which follow are directed to this end.
69

SECTION 8
RECOMMENDATIONS
We propose the establishment, under executive order of the President, of a
permanent WAR/PEACE Research Agency, empowered and mandated to
execute the programs described in (2) and (3) below. This agency (a) will be
provided with nonaccountable funds sufficient to implement its responsibilities
and decisions at its own discretion, and (b) will have authority to preempt and
utilize, without restriction, any and all facilities of the executive branch of the
government in pursuit of its objectives. It will be organized along the lines of
the National Security Council, except that none of its governing, executive, or
operating personnel will hold other public office or governmental responsibility.
Its directorate will be drawn from the broadest practicable spectrum of scientific
disciplines, humanistic studies, applied creative arts, operating technologies,
and otherwise unclassified professional occupations. It will be responsible
solely to the President, or to other officers of government temporarily deputized
by him. Its operations will be governed entirely by its own rules of procedure.
Its authority will expressly include the unlimited right to withhold information
on its activities and its decisions, from anyone except the President, whenever it
deems such secrecy to be in the public interest.
The first of the War/Peace Research Agency’s two principal responsibilities will
be to determine all that can be known, including what can reasonably be
inferred in terms of relevant statistical probabilities, that may bear on an
eventual transition to a general condition of peace. The findings in this Report
may be considered to constitute the beginning of this study and to indicate its
orientation; detailed records of the investigations and findings of the Special
Study Group on which this Report is based, will be furnished the agency, along
with whatever clarifying data the agency deems necessary. This aspect of the
agency’s work will hereinafter be referred to as “Peace Research.”
The Agency’s Peace Research activities will necessarily include, but not be
limited to, the following:
(a) The creative development of possible substitute institutions for the principal
nonmilitary functions of war.
(b) The careful matching of such institutions against the criteria summarized in
this Report, as refined, revised, and extended by the agency.
70
(c) The testing and evaluation of substitute institutions, for acceptability,
feasibility, and credibility, against hypothecated transitional and postwar
conditions; the testing and evaluation of the effects of the anticipated atrophy of
certain unsubstantiated functions.
(d) The development and testing of the corelativity of multiple substitute
institutions, with the eventual objective of establishing a comprehensive
program of compatible war substitutes suitable for a planned transition to peace,
if and when this is found to be possible and subsequently judged desirable by
appropriate political authorities.
(e) The preparation of a wide-ranging schedule of partial, uncorrelated, crash
programs of adjustment suitable for reducing the dangers of unplanned
transition to peace effected by force majeure.
Peace Research methods will include but not be limited to, the following:
(a) The comprehensive interdisciplinary application of historical, scientific,
technological, and cultural data.
(b) The full utilization of modern methods of mathematical modeling,
analogical analysis, and other, more sophisticated, quantitative techniques in
process of development that are compatible with computer programming.
(c) The heuristic “peace games” procedures developed during the course of its
assignment by the Special Study Group, and further extensions of this basic
approach to the testing of institutional functions.
The WAR/PEACE Research Agency’s other principal responsibility will be
“War Research.” Its fundamental objective will be to ensure the continuing
viability of the war system to fulfill its essential nonmilitary functions for as
long as the war system is judged necessary to or desirable for the survival of
society. To achieve this end, the War Research groups within the agency will
engage in the following activities:
(a) Quantification of existing application of the non-military functions of war.
Specific determinations will include, but not be limited to:
the gross amount and the net proportion of nonproductive military expenditures
since World War II assignable to the need for war as an economic stabilizer;
71
the amount and proportion of military expenditures and destruction of life,
property, and natural resources during this period assignable to the need for war
as an instrument for political control;
similar figures, to the extent that they can be separately arrived at, assignable to
the need for war to maintain social cohesiveness;
levels of recruitment and expenditures on the draft and other forms of personnel
deployment attributable to the need for military institutions to control social
disaffection;
the statistical relationship of war casualties to world food supplies;
the correlation of military actions and expenditures with cultural activities and
scientific advances (including necessarily the development of mensurable
standards in these areas).
(b) Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the execution of the nonmilitary functions of war. These will include, but not be limited to:
calculation of minimum and optimum ranges of military expenditure required,
under varying hypothetical conditions, to fulfill these several functions,
separately and collectively;
determination of minimum and optimum levels of destruction of LIFE,
PROPERTY, and NATURAL RESOURCES prerequisite to the credibility of
external threat essential to the political and motivational functions;
development of a negotiable formula governing the relationship between
military recruitment and training policies and the exigencies of social control.
(c) Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailing economic, political,
sociological, and ecological limitations. The ultimate object of this phase of
War Research is to rationalize the heretofore informal operations of the war
system. It should provide practical working procedures through which
responsible governmental authority may resolve the following war-function
problems, among others, under any given circumstances:
72
how to determine the optimum quantity, nature, and timing of military
expenditures to ensure a desired degree of economic control;
how to organize the recruitment, deployment, and ostensible use of military
personnel to ensure a desired degree of acceptance of authorized social values;
how to compute on a short-term basis, the nature and extent of the LOSS OF
LIFE and other resources which SHOULD BE SUFFERED and/or INFLICTED
DURING any single outbreak of hostilities to achieve a desired degree of
internal political authority and social allegiance;
how to project, over extended periods, the nature and quality of overt warfare
which must be planned and budgeted to achieve a desired degree of contextual
stability for the same purpose; factors to be determined must include frequency
of occurrence, length of phase, INTENSITY OF PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION,
extensiveness of geographical involvement, and OPTIMUM MEAN LOSS OF
LIFE;
how to extrapolate accurately from the foregoing, for ecological purposes, the
continuing effect of the war system, over such extended cycles, on population
pressures, and to adjust the planning of casualty rates accordingly.
War Research procedures will necessarily include, but not be limited to, the
following:
(a) The collation of economic, military, and other relevant date into uniform
terms, permitting the reversible translation of heretofore discrete categories of
information.
(b) The development and application of appropriate forms of cost-effectiveness
analysis suitable for adapting such new constructs to computer terminology,
programming, and projection.
(c) Extension of the “war games” methods of systems testing to apply, as a
quasi-adversary proceeding, to the nonmilitary functions of war.
Since Both Programs of the WAR/PEACE RESEARCH Agency will share the
same purpose—to maintain governmental freedom of choice in respect to war
and peace until the direction of social survival is no longer in doubt — it is of the
essence of this proposal that the agency be constituted without limitation of
73
time. Its examination of existing and proposed institutions will be selfliquidating when its own function shall have been superseded by the historical
developments it will have, at least in part, initiated.
74

NOTES
SECTION 1

1. The Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament: U.S. Reply to the
   Inquiry of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Washington, D.C.:
   USGPO, June 1964), pp. 8-9.
2. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon, 1962),
   p.35.
3. Robert S. McNamara, in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in Montreal, P.Q., Canada, 18 May 1966.
4. Alfred North Whitehead, in “The Anatomy of Some Scientific Ideas,”
   included in The Aims of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1929).
5. At Ann Arbor, Michigan, 16 June 1962.
6. Louis J. Halle, “Peace in Our Time? Nuclear Weapons as a Stabilizer,” The
   New Republic (28 December 1963).

SECTION 2

1. Kenneth E. Boulding, “The World War Industry as an Economic Problem,” in
   Emile Benoit and Kenneth E. Boulding (eds.), Disarmament and the Economy
   (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
2. McNamara, in ASNE Montreal address cited.
3. Report of the Committee on the Economic Impact of Defense and
   Disarmament (Washington: USGPO, July 1965).
4. Sumner M. Rosen, “Disarmament and the Economy,” War/Peace Report
   (March 1966).

SECTION 3

1. Vide William D. Grampp, “False Fears of Disarmament,” Harvard Business
   Review (Jan.-Feb.1964) for a concise example of this reasoning.
   75
2. Seymour Melman, “The Cost of Inspection for Disarmament,” in Benoit and
   Boulding, op. cit.

SECTION 5

1. Arthur I. Waskow, Toward the Unarmed Forces of the United States
   (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1966), p.9. (This is the unabridged
   edition of the text of a report and proposal prepared for a seminar of strategists
   and Congressman in 1965; it was later given limited distribution among other
   persons engaged in related projects.)
2. David T. Bazelon, “The Politics of the Paper Economy,” Commentary
   (November 1962), p.409.
3. The Economic Impact of Disarmament (Washington: USGPO, January
   1962), p.409.
4. David T. Bazelon, “The Scarcity Makers,” Commentary (October 1962), p.
   298.
5. Frank Pace, Jr., in an address before the American Banker’s Association,
   September 1957.
6. A random example, taken in this case from a story by David Deitch in the
   New York Herald Tribune (9 February 1966).
7. Vide L. Gumplowicz, in Geschichte der Staatstheorien (Innsbruck: Wagner,
   1905) and earlier writings.
8. K. Fischer, Das Militar (Zurich: Steinmetz Verlag, 1932), pp.42-43.
9. The obverse of this phenomenon is responsible for the principal combat
   problem of present-day infantry officers: the unwillingness of otherwise
   “trained” troops to fire at an enemy close enough to be recognizable as an
   individual rather than simply as a target.
10. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, N.J., Princeton
    University Press, 1960), p.42. 11. John D. Williams, “The Nonsense about Safe
    Driving,” Fortune (September 1958).
11. Vide most recently K. Lorenz, in Das Sogenannte Bose: zur
    Naturgeschichte der Aggression (Vienna: G. Borotha-Schoeler Verlag, 1964).
    76
12. Beginning with Herbert Spencer and his contemporaries, but largely ignored
    for nearly a century.
13. As in recent draft-law controversy, in which the issue of selective deferment
    of the culturally privileged is often carelessly equated with the preservation of
    the biologically “fittest.”
14. G. Bouthol, in La Guerre (Paris: Presses universitairies de France, 1953)
    and many other more detailed studies. The useful concept of “polemology,” for
    the study of war as an independent discipline, is his, as is the notion of
    “demographic relaxation,” the sudden temporary decline in the rate of
    population increase after major wars.
15. This seemingly premature statement is supported by one of our own test
    studies. But it hypothecates both the stabilizing of world population growth and
    the institution of fully adequate environmental controls. Under these two
    conditions, the probability of the permanent elimination of involuntary global
    famine is 68 percent by 1976 and 95 percent by 1981.

SECTION 6

1. This round figure is the median taken from our computations, which cover
   varying contingencies, but it is sufficient for the purpose of general discussion.
2. But less misleading than the more elegant traditional metaphor, in which war
   expenditures are referred to as the “ballast” of the economy but which suggests
   incorrect quantitative relationships.
3. Typical in generality, scope, and rhetoric. We have not used any published
   program as a model; similarities are unavoidably coincidental rather than
   tendentious.
4. Vide the reception of a “Freedom Budget for all Americans,” proposed by A.
   Philip Randolph et al; it is a ten-year plan, estimated by its sponsors to cost
   $185 billion.
5. Waskow, op. cit.
6. By several current theorists, most extensively and effectively by Robert R.
   Harris in “The Real Enemy,” an unpublished doctoral dissertation made available to this study.
   77
7. In ASNE, Montreal address cited.
8. The Tenth Victim.
9. For an examination of some of its social implications, see Seymour
   Rubenfeld, Family of Outcasts: A New Theory of Delinquency (New York:
   Free Press, 1965).
10. As in Nazi Germany; this type of “ideological” ethnic repression, directed to
    specific sociological ends, should not be confused with traditional economic
    exploitation, as of Negroes in the U.S., South Africa, etc.
11. By teams of experimental biologists in Massachusetts, Michigan, and
    California, as well as in Mexico and the U.S.S.R. Preliminary test applications
    are scheduled in Southeast Asia, in countries not yet announced.
12. Expressed in the writings of H. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding
    Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964) and
    elsewhere.
13. This rather optimistic estimate was derived by plotting a three-dimensional
    distribution of three arbitrarily defined variables; the macro-structural, relating
    to the extension of knowledge beyond the capacity of conscious experience; the
    organic, dealing with the manifestations of terrestrial life as inherently
    comprehensible; and the infra-particular, covering the subconceptual
    requirements of natural phenomena. Values were assigned to the known and
    unknown in each parameter, tested against data from earlier chronologies, and
    modified heuristically until predictable correlations reached a useful level of
    accuracy. “Two decades” means, in this case, 20.6 years, with a standard
    deviation of only 1.8 years. (An incidental finding, not pursued to the same
    degree of accuracy, suggests a greatly accelerated resolution of issues in the
    biological sciences after 1972.)

SECTION 7

1. Since they represent an examination of too small a percentage of the eventual
   options, in terms of “multiple mating,” the subsystem we developed for this
   application. But an example will indicate how one of the most frequently
   recurring correlation problems–chronological phasing–was brought to light in
   this way. One of the first combinations tested showed remarkably high
   coefficients of compatibility, on a post hoc static basis, but no variations of
   78
   timing, using a thirty-year transition module, permitted even marginal
   synchronization. The combination was thus disqualified. This would not rule
   out the possible adequacy of combinations using modifications of the same
   factors, however, since minor variations in a proposed final condition may have
   disproportionate effects on phasing.
2. Edward Teller, quoted in War/Peace Report (December 1964).
3. E.g., the highly publicized “Delphi Technique” and other, more sophisticated
   procedures. A new system, especially suitable for institutional analysis, was
   developed during the course of this study in order to hypothecate mensurable
   “peace games”; a manual of this system is being prepared and will be submitted
   for general distribution among appropriate agencies. For older, but still useful,
   techniques, see Norman C. Dalkey’s Games and Simulations (Santa Monica,
   Calif.:Rand, 1964).

SECTION 8

1. A primer-level example of the obvious and long overdue need for such
   translation is furnished by Kahn (in Thinking About the Unthinkable,p.102).
   Under the heading “Some Awkward Choices” he compares four hypothetical
   policies: a certain loss of $3,000; a .1 chance of loss of $300,000; a.01 chance
   of loss of $30,000,000; and a .001 chance of loss of $3,000,000,000. A
   government decision-maker would “very likely” choose in that order. But what
   if “lives are at stake rather than dollars?” Kahn suggests that the order of choice
   would be reversed, although current experience does not support this opinion.
   Rational war research can and must make it possible to express, without
   ambiguity, lives in terms of dollars and vice versa; the choices need not be, and
   cannot be, “awkward.”
2. Again, an overdue extension of an obvious application of techniques up to
   now limited such circumscribed purposes as improving kill-ammunition ratios
   determining local choice between precision and saturation bombing, and other
   minor tactical, and occasionally strategic, ends. The slowness of Rand, I.D.A.,
   and other responsible analytic organizations to extend cost-effectiveness and
   related concepts beyond early-phase applications has already been widely remarked on and critized elsewhere.
3. The inclusion of institutional factors in war-game techniques has been given
   some rudimentary consideration in the Hudson Institute’s Study for
   Hypothetical Narratives for Use in Command and Control Systems Planning
   (by William Pfaff and Edmund Stillman; Final report published in 1963). But
   79
   here, as with other war and peace studies to date, what has blocked the logical
   extension of new analytic techniques has been a general failure to understand
   and properly evaluate the non-military functions of war.

• End –