The following appears in a footnote to chapter 7 of Herman Kahn‘s 1962 book Thinking about the Unthinkable. He is discussing whether it is inevitable that a conflict will escalate to the highest level of violence available to the combatants.
The fact that such unilateral restraints exist should not surprise anyone. Indeed almost all nations and individuals are likely to have limits which they will not cross even if under great pressure to do so to protect themselves or to further their policies. I have used the following chart to illustrate this point:
Where Do You Draw the Line?
- Insecticides
- Eating meat
- Any violence
- Police
- Conventional warfare
- Kiloton weapons
- Megaton weapons
- Gigaton weapons
- Doomsday machines
- Galaxy-destroying machines
It is the purpose of the above chart to make it clear to both the pacifist (who generally draws the line somewhere between 3 and 5) and the more resolute militarist (who draws the line somewhere between 7 and 9) that both believe in some degree of universal disarmament; that there are means neither would use, no matter what risk results. In particular, if one could show that by building a doomsday machine one doubled one’s personal (or one’s nation’s) chance of survival, one would still be unalterably opposed to building such a machine.
So, where do you draw the line?
I don’t know but an organic grass fed steak sounds good for dinner!
I draw the line at nine. I prefer the 8.5
‘one side doomsday” option.
The reasonable player always loses this game.
I would suggest we inform the North Koreans that we will not include sanctuary cities in our missile defense and will not retaliate.
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Your listing is a bit extreme. No one would field a galaxy-demolishing weapon. It would mean not only his death but that of the whole planet – AND the whole galaxy. ?What’s the point of that, unless you are truly insane.
That said, I believe we have over the years “over-terrored” nuclear weapons. They are highly damaging, but so have various other munitions in their initial deployment been. Look at the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both are vibrant, thriving cities – unlike Detroit and maybe Baltimore. And certainly sections of places like Chicago and LA.
I would not reach for a nuke immediately for most things. But I would DEFINITELY reach for one in certain circumstances. So, eg, someone detonates a nuke in Israel, I would pulverize Iran with nukes. Take out the whole country. To the cries of “you’re killing innocents, too!” the answer is, “There are no innocents left in that God-forsaken land.”
>> Your listing is a bit extreme. No one would field a galaxy-demolishing weapon. It would mean not only his death but that of the whole planet – AND the whole galaxy. ?
It is not my listing; it is Herman Kahn’s.
That is precisely his point—that everybody and every society has a point beyond which they will not escalate violence, not due to winning or losing in a conflict, but because of inherent scruples. But that point may differ substantially from one society to another, and that may pose a problem if two who draw the lines at different places come into conflict. (Recall Khomeini’s statement that Islam could rebuild after losing half of its population and all of its major cities, but Israel could not survive a first strike. [Khomeini went on to say that he cared little about the survival of Iran as a nation if Islam would prevail.] Mao said similar things in the 1960s.)
The galaxy-destroying machine is an extrapolation of the doomsday machine (a bomb, triggered automatically in case of destruction of those who built it, which destroys all life on Earth). This would seem similarly irrational, and yet some would argue it is the ultimate in deterrence: who would dare attack its possessor if the certain outcome were their own destruction (along with everybody else)?
(If it were my list, I’d have expanded it on both ends, with “Antibiotics” as the first item and “Universe-destroying machines” as the last. Galaxy-destroying machines are relatively straightforward to build: all you need is a von Neumann self-replicating machine bent on extinguishing all life. This was the central concept in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen) stories. Some have suggested this is why intelligent life appears to be so rare in the Universe. Why does it exist on Earth? We only revealed our presence around a century ago and they haven’t gotten here yet.
Anything short of doomsday machines works for me. Doomsday machines are worthy of reconsideration under certain circumstances. For example, if our own extermination could possibly be prevented by the deterrence of a doomsday machine, it would be worth the risk. I don’t see much distinction between 9 and 10 unless there is intelligent life elsewhere, which seems unlikely because the argument based on von Neumann machines made by Frank Tipler. Fermi’s paradox remains unanswered by the proponents of extraterrestrial intelligence.
What does Kahn say?
“What does Kahn say?”
KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRKKKK!!!!!!!!
The symbolism for justice is a blind lady with scales. It is not where you draw the line as much as where the other person draws the line. You measure the force accordingly.
The other analogy is the doctor with the patient. Where does the doctor draw the line in cutting things out/off? The object is to keep the patient alive and not deal with getting rid of the cancer. A lot of violence to the body is acceptable if it makes life for the patient better than without it.
Centime, measuring force via the other person’s line is not necessarily a rational way to deploy force. We constantly talk about “proportional response”. But in truth, it is the “Out of proportion response” that keeps enemies at bay. So were the islamists to nuke Israel, destroying Iran, or even the Arabs in general, would be an out of proportion response, BUT it would deter other islamists from doing something similar.
Notice how quiet “the Arab street” became when W invaded Iraq. Suddenly it was, that cowboy means business. It’s only when we failed to keep up that pose (letting Iran get away with making IED’s that injured/killed our men with no reprisal) that things slipped. Taking out large parts of their Republican Guard would have made a difference. Khomeni says a lot of things, but interestingly HE has no interest in risking HIS life.
I agree that you don’t want to be predictable.
Doesn’t even the “out of proportion response” have some sense of proportion?
As David Hackworth put it pithily — “If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t plan your mission properly.”
I don’t have an understanding of a doomsday machine. I would place my limit up to anything that ensures the survival of my nation without also destroying it.
There is no limit or constraint on the damage I will inflict on an enemy.
The doomsday machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCKJi3CKGE
BrentB67, the doomsday machine would probably be a fusion weapon with the catch phrase “Stronger Together”.
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Philosophically I fall between justice and mercy. You have to have rules but you also have to have mercy and grace. There is a difference between an honest mistake done in the learning process and doing something repeatedly and intentionally.
I take it the post was about North Korea. It is a problem that was allowed to fester.
John Walker, where would you draw the line?
>> I take it the post was about North Korea. It is a problem that was allowed to fester.
It wasn’t really about North Korea, just the general question of deterrence and self-imposed limits on escalation.
When Herman Kahn was writing in the early 1960s, it was in an environment in which all of the nuclear powers could be assumed to be rational actors. China did not test their first bomb until 1964—two years after “Thinking about the Unthinkable”—and it was only then that the world was confronted by a power whose leaders boasted they could ride out a nuclear strike. Within a few years after that, confidence grew that the Chinese weren’t behaving irrationally.
In “On Thermonuclear War” (1960), Kahn discusses possible alternative futures, including one in which nuclear proliferation dramatically expands the number of nuclear armed countries, presumably including those less stable and more likely to use nuclear weapons. He believed this was a scenario to be avoided, if possible. This is the situation posed by North Korea. Any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be suicidal for the country (the U.S., alone, with purely conventional weapons, could destroy the infrastructure of the country [such as it is] within 72 hours), but there’s no way to be sure they aren’t crazy enough to do it anyway.
Thanks, John.
This is off topic but why do people not get that a person just finds the general topic interesting? It is not that I doubt their mind reading but wonder why they don’t monetize it. (Okay, I doubt they can mind read.)
>> John Walker, where would you draw the line?
Between 5 and 6.
I think it’s important to maintain the “nuclear taboo”, in which use of any nuclear weapon is considered qualitatively different than conventional weapons, and hence a step not to be taken lightly.
This is easier to do in an age where precision weapons have made many of the original applications of nuclear weapons, as the man said in a different context, impotent and obsolete. There just aren’t many military objectives which can’t be achieved when you can drop 11 tons of TNT (MOAB) within one metre of where you want it to go.
I don’t advocate nuclear disarmament, but, as for the last 72 years, retaining the weapons as a deterrent against their use by other parties.
John, I call BS on that. The ability to drop one on a particularly dug-in terrorist is hardly “many of the original applications of nuclear weapons”.
You are severely limited by the available numbers of MOAB or MOP and by the ability to get them into defended airspace.
Consider how many of them would be required to neutralize NorK artillery adjacent Seoul or Iranian nukes.
Retaining any weapon implies the willingness to use it. Else it isn’t a deterrent.
The question to you now is what size nuke would you be willing to use.
This is only one side of an equation. If I have something I want and am willing to use force for it, then there is a degree to which I want it. Anybody can be deterred. Some can be deterred by demanding less than their own life, while others require more strenuous deterrent. If mere death is not enough to distress, then excruciating death, humiliation, unbearable shame, etc. Well, we are talking about extremes.
One willing to give up the galaxy in order to accomplish some goal may be driven by spiteful rage — the “burn it all down” mentality which says “if I can’t have X, then nobody gets X”.
Leftist Greenies think that we on the right are willing to burn the planet down for mere money and comfort now — they see it as an exchange. NeverTrumpers frequently cannot understand that a desire to punish or “burn down” the GOP establishment is not the same as a desire to wipe out the universe — that there are logical ends and a continuing strategy beyond the initial act. It’s like the CBO was scoring an individual raid in a war — looking only one move into a chess game. They cannot credit that we discount their assessed outcome.
I would argue that 5, 6, and 7 are fairly meaninglessly differentiated, as the tonnage is only a shorthand for the likely result or impact, which is explicit in the rest of the selections. Also, “police” rather than a police activity. I realize it’s Kahn’s list, but these are issues.
Outcomes are the unit of exchange. Everybody has a price for everything. In the real world, most prices have nothing to do with money, but remain just as valid a matter of inquiry and analysis for the tools of economics.
What’s the Galaxy worth? We can put a price on it if we can find relevant decision-makers.
So the thing about relevant decision-makers toward the high end of the list is that there aren’t any. It’s like asking ants about explosives.
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I would posit that the relevant question for homo sapiens is at what point do we surrender all notion of human dignity, liberty, self-determination, and so forth in the name of simple species survival? Easy to say “Live Free or Die”, but everybody has a price for everything — even freedom.
The acceptable price for an individual to live free may be very different than the price for a nation or a species. Individuals routinely give their freedom and sometimes their lives for the freedom of their nation, and hopefully the species. Heck, there’s a career path in it. On the other hand, many individuals guarantee their personal freedom by consigning the freedom and lives of others — and sometimes nations — to the flames.