Just happened to find a write-up published on Boing Boing on Samuel Cohen, a fascinating read for various reasons. For those who don't know who he is, Cohen invented the neutron bomb. It sounds absurd, wacky, and peripheral - but there are some core insights on the military and politics to be gleaned from this little bit. Yes, there is the whole discussion of the game theory behind deterrence policy - i.e. let's assume the other guy is ready to push The Button, so we'd better scare him out of that - but there is more to it than that. More can surely be had from reading Cohen's own book, Shame. It's not available on Amazon.com, but the UK branch has it.
One thing interesting is Cohen's rationale for inventing the device. He was a member of RAND, the first think tank and perhaps the think tank. A passage:
Sam Cohen might have remained relatively unknown, troubled by ethical lapses in government and the military but unable to do anything about them, if he had not visited Seoul in 1951, during the Korean war. In the aftermath of bombing sorties he witnessed scenes of intolerable devastation. Civilians wandered like zombies through the ruins of a city in which all services had ceased. Children were drinking water from gutters that were being used as sewers. "I'd seen countless pictures of Hiroshima by then," Cohen recalls, "and what I saw in Seoul was precious little different. . . . The question I asked of myself was something like: If we're going to go on fighting these damned fool wars in the future, shelling and bombing cities to smithereens and wrecking the lives of their surviving inhabitants, might there be some kind of nuclear weapon that could avoid all this?"Years later, after he finally got backing to develop it, the design of the bomb was reworked, effectively dissolving Cohen's intent.
One bit is very mistaken, however, but also very revealing:
The bomb would still kill people--but this was the purpose of all weapons.That's not true. The purpose of weapons, and war, never was to kill the enemy but to overpower them. And you don't have to kill to accomplish that. The ammunition of military rifles is steel-jacketed, whereas hunting rifles use bullets with copper jackets. Why? Steel-jacketed bullets will just pass through the body, wounding but not necessarily killing. Brass-or copper-jacketed rounds, however, are softer and are slowed down more by the body upon contact. Why not just use hunting ammo then? After all, it's more lethal - and don't you want to kill 'em? No. If you kill a bunch of enemy soldiers, the other has to recruit more soldiers; but if you wound a bunch of soldiers, they have to recruit more and nurse the casualties - a significantly more expensive , exhausting, demoralizing consequence. When they can't afford to keep it up, they surrender. (We're assuming, of course, that the opposition doesn't consider leaving the wounded alone as a viable option.)
The military is to the government as the fist is to the brain. War is above all a political tool; people often forget this, as they're hung up on the killing thing. Even Mr. Cohen forgot this to an extent, which gives you an idea as to the force of conceptions on our thinking. I didn't realize the real aim of war until I read Sun Tzu; when a WWII veteran explained to me the thing about bullets, it only confirmed that. He knew the purpose too. What is needed is to see things with a fresh eye, so that the stale ideas we inherit have no undue power over our minds. If you can put 2 and 2 together, you're reasoning just fine. The thing to be concerned about is to see.
(Image ruthlessly hijacked from www.shadowfist.com/
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