Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn
Herman Kahnwas a founder of the Hudson Institute and one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems theorist while employed at the RAND Corporation. He became known for analyzing the likely consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability, making him one of three historical inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy film satire Dr. Strangelove...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth15 February 1922
CountryUnited States of America
I'm against fashionable thinking.
I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.
For some years I have spent my time on exactly these questions - both in thinking about ways to prevent war, and in thinking about how to fight, survive, and terminate a war, should it occur.
Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.
As for total disarmament, there are almost 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world today; even if they were banned, not all would be destroyed.
Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.
It is immoral from almost any point of view to refuse to defend yourself and others from very grave and terrible threats, even as there are limits to the means that can be used in such defense.
Many people believe that the current system must inevitably end in total annihilation. They reject, sometimes very emotionally, any attempts to analyze this notion.
Nevertheless, during the sixty years of the twentieth century many problems have come increasingly into the realm of acceptable public discussion.
My guess is that nuclear weapons will be used sometime in the next hundred years, but that their use is much more likely to be small and limited than widespread and unconstrained.
New developments in weapon systems during the 1950s and early 1960s created a situation that was most dangerous, and even conducive to accidental war.
Nuclear weapons are intrinsically neither moral nor immoral, though they are more prone to immoral use than most weapons.
The objective of nuclear-weapons policy should not be solely to decrease the number of weapons in the world, but to make the world safer - which is not necessarily the same thing.
The widespread diffusion of nuclear weapons would make many nations able, and in some cases also create the pressure, to aggravate an on-going crisis, or even touch off a war between two other powers for purposes of their own.