"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"
About this Quote
Herman Kahn speaks from the crucible of the early Cold War, where nuclear arms races and brinkmanship made catastrophe imaginable. A RAND analyst who later founded the Hudson Institute, he became notorious for insisting that policymakers confront the unthinkable with rigor rather than moral panic. Books like On Thermonuclear War and On Escalation mapped scenarios, costs, and choices with a clinical thoroughness that unsettled contemporaries yet aimed at preventing disaster.
The sentence balances two imperatives that many prefer to keep apart. One is the aspiration to prevent war through deterrence, diplomacy, and arms control. The other is the sober acceptance that wars can still happen, which demands planning for how to fight, survive, and end them. Kahn argued that credible deterrence depends on more than threats of mutual annihilation; it requires realistic options, survivable forces, civil defense, and a clear path to war termination. Without those, adversaries might miscalculate, escalation might race to extremes, and leaders could find themselves with only catastrophic choices.
He became a lightning rod because such analysis looks like normalization of horror. Critics saw a technocrat tallying megadeaths; Kahn replied that refusing to think through consequences was the greater moral failure. He tried to show how escalation could be controlled, with signaling, limited aims, and an explicit ladder of rungs to avoid spirals. War termination sat at the center of his thinking: if conflict erupts, the goal is to halt it on the least destructive terms and preserve the possibility of recovery.
The remark captures the paradox of deterrence strategy: planning to fight is part of planning not to fight. By articulating survivability and termination, Kahn sought to make threats credible, reduce incentives for preemption, and give diplomacy leverage. The discomfort his work provoked is integral to its purpose, forcing leaders to replace wishful thinking with structured choices in the shadow of irretrievable loss.
The sentence balances two imperatives that many prefer to keep apart. One is the aspiration to prevent war through deterrence, diplomacy, and arms control. The other is the sober acceptance that wars can still happen, which demands planning for how to fight, survive, and end them. Kahn argued that credible deterrence depends on more than threats of mutual annihilation; it requires realistic options, survivable forces, civil defense, and a clear path to war termination. Without those, adversaries might miscalculate, escalation might race to extremes, and leaders could find themselves with only catastrophic choices.
He became a lightning rod because such analysis looks like normalization of horror. Critics saw a technocrat tallying megadeaths; Kahn replied that refusing to think through consequences was the greater moral failure. He tried to show how escalation could be controlled, with signaling, limited aims, and an explicit ladder of rungs to avoid spirals. War termination sat at the center of his thinking: if conflict erupts, the goal is to halt it on the least destructive terms and preserve the possibility of recovery.
The remark captures the paradox of deterrence strategy: planning to fight is part of planning not to fight. By articulating survivability and termination, Kahn sought to make threats credible, reduce incentives for preemption, and give diplomacy leverage. The discomfort his work provoked is integral to its purpose, forcing leaders to replace wishful thinking with structured choices in the shadow of irretrievable loss.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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