A War of Maneuver

If we were living a hundred years earlier, Herman Kahn would be running a Bible school or he would be a famed Wunderrabbi in Kolomea. Fifty years ago he might have been a socialist sage in a Vienna café where he might have played chess with Trotsky—and probably would have won. Since he is incarnate today, his books are published in New York, Washington and London, and the publisher introduces him as “mathematician, physicist, master strategist.”

Kahn himself senses the incongruity. In the preface to this book he avers that the expert audiences to whom he habitually lectures “generally” are “much sounder on most questions of military policy than many Liberal intellectuals.” Yet on “the wider issues” Kahn’s “own views are often much more in accord with generally recognized Liberal positions than with the opinions of many in [my] audiences.” In the vast “community” of operational researchers who are advising the U.S. Government on national security, Kahn is among the best and most realistic. Since he is representative of his profession, it may be hoped that the whole group ultimately will succeed in shedding its blinders.

SP

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Stefan T. Possony

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If we were living a hundred years earlier, Herman Kahn would be running a Bible school or he would be a famed Wunderrabbi in Kolomea. Fifty years ago he might have been a socialist sage in a Vienna café where he might have played chess with Trotsky—and probably would have won. Since he is incarnate today, his books are published in New York, Washington and London, and the publisher introduces him as “mathematician, physicist, master strategist.”

Kahn himself senses the incongruity. In the preface to this book he avers that the expert audiences to whom he habitually lectures “generally” are “much sounder on most questions of military policy than many Liberal intellectuals.” Yet on “the wider issues” Kahn’s “own views are often much more in accord with generally recognized Liberal positions than with the opinions of many in [my] audiences.” In the vast “community” of operational researchers who are advising the U.S. Government on national security, Kahn is among the best and most realistic. Since he is representative of his profession, it may be hoped that the whole group ultimately will succeed in shedding its blinders.