Books in Brief: Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s

Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s, by Herman Kahn (Simon & Schuster, 250 pp., $16.95)

Herman Kahn’s 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable, a mass-market reworking of his influential 1960 treatise On Thermonuclear War, introduced a generation of horrified Americans to the intricacies of modern nuclear strategy: counterforce and countervalue, the escalation ladder, the gruesome hypothetical scenario. (“The Soviets destroy five capital cities in Western Europe—London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Bonn—just to show that they can get away with it.”) Mr. Kahn subsequently spent the next two decades thinking about such far more thinkable subjects as Kondratieff cycles and the Japanese economy, but nuclear war remained on his formidable mind; at length, provoked by simpleminded exercises in nuclear popularization like Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, he returned to Thinking about the Unthinkable and started to rewrite it for a new generation. Kahn’s sudden death in 1983 prevented him from finishing Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s, but his editor was able to put the almost-completed manuscript into a publishable state; the present volume, with its slightly untidy, loose-ended air, is the result. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kahn’s thesis remains unchanged: “While almost no one would take the position that thermonuclear weapons are ‘just another’ advance in the technology of warfare, it is important to realize that these weapons, like others, may be fired . . . wars can still be fought, terminated, and survived. Some countries will win a nuclear conflict and others will lose, and it is even possible that some nuclear wars may ultimately have positive results. Reconstruction will begin, life will continue, and most survivors will not envy the dead.” What has changed—Jonathan Schell & Co. notwithstanding—is the level of sophistication of people today who will read about nuclear strategy, so much so that many will find the new Thinking about the Unthinkable too simplistic to be stimulating. As a basic primer on the way in which conservative defense analysts look at the prospect of nuclear war, Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s definitely has its uses; as a contribution to the current policy debate, it is likely to seem a little bit thin.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s, by Herman Kahn (Simon & Schuster, 250 pp., $16.95)

Herman Kahn’s 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable, a mass-market reworking of his influential 1960 treatise On Thermonuclear War, introduced a generation of horrified Americans to the intricacies of modern nuclear strategy: counterforce and countervalue, the escalation ladder, the gruesome hypothetical scenario. (“The Soviets destroy five capital cities in Western Europe—London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Bonn—just to show that they can get away with it.”) Mr. Kahn subsequently spent the next two decades thinking about such far more thinkable subjects as Kondratieff cycles and the Japanese economy, but nuclear war remained on his formidable mind; at length, provoked by simpleminded exercises in nuclear popularization like Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, he returned to Thinking about the Unthinkable and started to rewrite it for a new generation. Kahn’s sudden death in 1983 prevented him from finishing Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s, but his editor was able to put the almost-completed manuscript into a publishable state; the present volume, with its slightly untidy, loose-ended air, is the result. Not surprisingly, Mr. Kahn’s thesis remains unchanged: “While almost no one would take the position that thermonuclear weapons are ‘just another’ advance in the technology of warfare, it is important to realize that these weapons, like others, may be fired . . . wars can still be fought, terminated, and survived. Some countries will win a nuclear conflict and others will lose, and it is even possible that some nuclear wars may ultimately have positive results. Reconstruction will begin, life will continue, and most survivors will not envy the dead.” What has changed—Jonathan Schell & Co. notwithstanding—is the level of sophistication of people today who will read about nuclear strategy, so much so that many will find the new Thinking about the Unthinkable too simplistic to be stimulating. As a basic primer on the way in which conservative defense analysts look at the prospect of nuclear war, Thinking about the Unthinkable in the 1980s definitely has its uses; as a contribution to the current policy debate, it is likely to seem a little bit thin.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.