Herman Kahn: The Dark Visionary of 'Unknown Unknowns'
One of the side-projects I'm working on at the moment is a critical re-evalution of the strategic thinker Herman Kahn, who is regarded as a realist thinker on scenario planning and strategic studies. Kahn is often derided today as a techno-military analyst of the paranoid Dr. Strangelove mould who in 'thinking about the unthinkable' was willing to contemplate megadeaths and nuclear holocausts. This stereotype is strong in some parts of the peace studies movement and is also held by several key people in critical futures studies (a view not necessarily shared by US pragmatic counterparts). I suspect the different experiences of Europe and the United States in World War II may have shaped how each responded to the 'social image' of looming brinkmanship and nuclear conflict.
It doesn't help that many defense intellectuals in the Cold War used lurid metaphors and cold blooded statistical studies to discuss issues that remain pretty emotive. For some, Kahn's scenarios and thought experiments were the slippery slope to Donald Rumsfeld's 'known unknowns' and 'unknown unknowns' (2002 briefing transcript).
I was prompted to re-evaluate Kahn after reading Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi's The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (2005), author site here. Ghamari-Tabrizi situates Kahn's simulations in their appropriate historical context: the post-World War II application of economics and mathematics (notably game theory) to large-scale problems; the rise of think-tanks such as the RAND and Hudson research institutes; and the Eisenhower Administration's New Look policy framework for nuclear deterrence.
The last point is vital and often overlooked or unmentioned by contemporary critics: Kahn's mammoth On Thermonuclear War (1960) was partly conceived in response to the Massive Retaliation doctrine. His later books Thinking About The Unthinkable (1962) and particularly On Escalation (1965) were strategic guidebooks on the implications of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations Flexible Response policy framework. Kahn's ladder of 44 crises in On Escalation has reaffirmed my feeling elsewhere that the 'total war' foundation of the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror could have been avoided with more careful language and anticipatory thinking about the strategic consequences.
So my early thinking is that despite the extreme imagery and grim black humour, Herman Kahn has a lot to teach contemporary strategic analysts. And the mint secondhand copy of On Thermonuclear War that arrived on my desk a week ago looks like an enigmatic Cold War grimoire.