The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (review)

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi examines the multiple contexts of Herman Kahn and his influential 1960 book, On Thermonuclear War. While fearful citizens scanned the skies for incoming Soviet bombers in the 1950s, Kahn and his fellow systems analysts at the air force's think tank, RAND, dreamed up plausible future wars. Kahn incorporated a combination of gallows humor and mathematical calculations with an ability to ignore the worst aspects of thermonuclear war into his studies and presentations. This incited the fury of critics, while his advocacy of a robust civil defense upset the air force leadership.

The Worlds of Herman Kahn does not judge the validity of Kahn's theories, nor is Kahn portrayed simply as a one-dimensional Dr. Strangelove. The diplomatic, military, and technological events of the cold war provide the stage on which Kahn moves from one world to the next. In exploring Khan's ideas and personality within the cultural worlds he traversed, Ghamari-Tabrizi draws interesting comparisons with the beat poets, the avant-garde art movement, the abstract expressionists, and even a Billy Graham revival crusade in New York City. Overall, hers is a layered text about a cold war personality who continues to fascinate and puzzle audiences.

This book should not be treated as a definitive biography, but rather as a nonlinear tale that takes the reader in unexpected directions. This unconventional approach permits Ghamari-Tabrizi to illustrate through anecdotes how Kahn and his colleagues constructed their visions of postapocalyptic futures based on the absolute certainty of their calculations along with a degree of artistic intuition. She chooses not to look analytically at the methods employed at RAND in generating future war scenarios; instead, she emphasizes the underlying aesthetics of the technical systems. Through Ghamari-Tabrizi's usage of cultural commentary, the reader discovers Kahn's personality, the other worlds in which he lived, and the reasons for the controversy surrounding his book.

Khan emerges as part standup comic and part visionary. He was an obese, fast-talking Southern Californian and a compelling performer who both amused and offended his audiences. He and other analysts at RAND applied skills in multiple disciplines such as computing, systems analysis, and economics to the issues associated with thermonuclear war. They advocated the employment of systems analysis over past practices that relied on traditional understandings of military strategy. Air force officers found themselves bemused, appalled, and frustrated by the insights Kahn offered during his performances. Ghamari-Tabrizi further claims that Kahn and his cohort exhibited more concern about the processes they utilized in war-game scenarios than the actual outcomes achieved in these activities.

While Kahn spun his dystopian tales for stunned audiences, the nation underwent a transition. According to Ghamari-Tabrizi, the fear and denial characteristics of the 1950s gave way to the cultural turmoil of the 1960s. One consequence was the emergence of new types of humor in popular culture which provided antidotes to nuclear anxieties. Ghamari-Tabrizi labels this the comedy of the unspeakable, a comic philosophy she claims Kahn exemplified both in his presentations and in his studies. This comic outlook fostered an optimistic perspective about the future and a desire to search for positives even in such horrific scenarios as a nuclear holocaust. Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that this oddly skewed optimism allowed Kahn to explore a variety of disastrous alternative futures in his book with apparent ease.

The circular examination that Ghamari-Tabrizi employs to study Kahn's worlds might confuse her readers. Her first-person asides and tangents into cultural phenomena of the period, such as comic books, could lead to reader frustration as well. Nevertheless, The Worlds of Herman Kahn offers new insights into the planning and strategic thinking that shaped the cold war during its first two decades. Ghamari-Tabrizi also demonstrates how the unthinkable could, at least in the minds of some, become reality.