On War and Violence, Real and Abstract

Thinking about nuclear war is like looking straight into the sun: it is beyond worldly experience, and it hurts your eyes. You need the mental equivalent of smoked glass. Herman Kahn's latest book, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, offers some of this equipment: metaphors, fables, models, and analogies to look at the possible extremes of war and their implications for what used to be "peaceful" aspects of international affairs.

The central idea of On Escalation is that all international encounters take place in an atmosphere of possible violence, ranging from small "conventional" probes to all-out nuclear holocaust. Strategies of victory may be based on either the concrete elements of the crisis or on manipulation of levels of violence. The nuclear "balance of terror," however, discourages the actual use of force and makes threats a major means of international coercion. For the nuclear age, Clausewitz is amended to read: "The manipulation of the risks of war is the continuation of state policy by other means."

To illustrate a strategy of pure force, Kahn presents the metaphor of "the escalation ladder," an abstract model which considers the various levels of violence at which nations can negotiate, threaten, and make war. The ladder begins at the level of an "ostensible crisis," in which neither side takes its opponent's demands seriously, and works its way up through forty-four rungs and six thresholds to "spasm war," in which a nation fires its total arsenal against the enemy with the goal of maximum destruction.

At this point, or when reading about "stark" deterrence, which involves the capacity to completely destroy the enemy ten times over, the reader may reach an ostensible crisis of his own and refuse to take Kahn seriously. Such a reaction has two faults: it neglects Kahn's real insights into the nature and use of force, and it obscures the real weaknesses of his approach. Kahn is not "advocating" or "justifying" mass murder. He wishes to avoid nuclear war while pursuing some version of the national interest. To this end he asks the important question: under what circumstances is a nuclear war most likely to begin?

Massive Irrelevance

For years, Kahn tells us, American strategic planning was woefully unrealistic regarding the likely genesis of a nuclear war. During the 1950's, about ninety per cent of our attention was devoted to deterring a calculated Soviet strike "out of the blue," that is, in an otherwise "normal" international situation. The other ten per cent of our planning was devoted to preventing an accidental war, again arising out of a normal situation. Kahn sees both of these possibilities as improbable, and argues that a nuclear war will most likely begin during a very tense crisis. The likely causes of the outbreak, in order of probability, are: 1. accident 2. a strike by the United States 3. a strike by the Soviet Union.

The chief purpose of the escalation ladder metaphor is to clarify our options for action at the "middle rungs," when we are using large conventional forces and threatening nuclear war to coerce our enemies. Only if we know how to move up and down the ladder skillfully, will we be able to pursue the national interest and at the same time avoid a possible escalation to all-out nuclear war.

Until recently, American strategic machinery was ill-prepared to act in Kahn's terms. First, bureaucrats rejected as "unrealistic" theories which implied that the government needed extensive re-education. Second, there was a strong American bias toward giving authority to "the man in the field," undercutting attempts to create a highly-centralized strategy. Finally, America had traditionally regarded the aggressive use of force as criminal or insane, to be countered with a "crusade" to destroy the out-law and imprison the sick.

Kahn argues that in order to survive we must jettison our indifference and our traditional biases. He sees the present as a period of transition to a more stable international order, in which escalation will be "the midwife of history." If we wish to influence the course of this transition and avoid nuclear war, we must learn to use carefully controlled violence--or threats of escalation--as a rational means of achieving our ends.

Theoretic Anemia

Having passed the first barrier of disbelief, many readers may still feel that On Escalation is the outline of a horror story. There seems to be someing wrong with a theorist who constructs models of men dueling to the death in warehouses full of dynamite, and then worries about whether the lights will be on. People who criticize Kahn for being "cold-blooded" are on the right track, but they do not carry their reasoning far enough.

Kahn approaches war through abstract models of the dynamics of force. These models are useful for a special type of international crisis. By ignoring the particular questions of who is fighting whom, where, and why, Kahn removes himself from conflict as it usually exists. Kahn has noticed the problem of permanent force, but he refuses to look at it. The major weakness of On Escalation is that Herman Kahn, who has thought a great deal about war, does not understand violence.

Kahn's abstract analysis fits only those international crises which are similarly "abstract;" the direct confrontations between nuclear superpowers which revolve around relatively non-ideological issues such as Berlin or missiles in Cuba. The danger, which we see unfolding in Vietnam, is that Kahn's approach will be used in situations where to ignore concrete reality is to play with disaster.

In Vietnam we have been, consciously or unconsciously, playing Kahn's game. (The government repeatedly uses the word "escalation.") We have carefully defined our thresholds, such as not bombing North Vietnamese population centers, and we have shown considerable virtuosity in raising the level of violence by subtle degrees. Our goal--what Kahn calls a "desired aftermath," --has been to coerce the North Vietnamese into negotiations under terms acceptable to the United States. But according to the New York Times reports of last week, our careful steps up the escalation ladder seem to have had negative effects.

A Doll's House

The weaknesses of Kahn's models in relation to crises such as Vietnam or Santo Domingo come out inadvertantly in his own work. He suggests what to do to the "principal opponent"; but one of the major problems in recent crises has been determining who the opponent is. Similarly, Kahn admits that the development and outcome of a war depends to a great extent "on how and why the war began." Yet our Vietnam policy seems to have been formulated with Kahn-type "abstract" categories rather than with these concrete elements in mind. Thus James Reston criticized the government's apparent assumption that a simple increase in violence, without confronting political and economic problems, can force the Communists to accept an inherently intolerable solution. The Times also reported that American officers were puzzled at the Communist refusal to yield ground in the battle on the Chuprong Massif. Apparently the Vietcong are not using a similar conceptual scheme.

Kahn's idea of the "rational" use of force shows the inadequacy of his approach. For Kahn, the criterion of "rationality" is not morality, justice, or even a judgment on the ends for which force is employed. "Rationality" is merely a degree of "reasonable control," as assurance that violence will always be consistent with its goals. In an age when an accidental of miscalculated war can bring universal disaster, such emphasis is admittedly important. But the vagueness of American ideas on what is wanted after the violence--and to his credit, Kahn deplores this vagueness--casts doubt on our use of force in international relations.

"War itself has been lecturing," wrote Clausewitz of the Napoleonic period. Kahn would like to take this as his own motto. Kahn's studies, however, have yielded valuable insights only about the special forms, effects, and implications of the hypothetical horror of nuclear war. Such work is extremely valuable within its limits. But to understand the war which America is fighting, we should listen to the macabre lectures now being delivered in the highlands of Vietnam