Book Reviews : On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. By HERMAN KAHN. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. Pp. 308. $6.95.)

• Author: Hoyt M. Jackson
• Date: 01 December 1965
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296501800442
• Published date: 01 December 1965
• Subject Matter: Articles

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interesting to know whether or to what extent we are living in darkness and which
party or political leaders are sufficiently enlightened to lead us out of the wilderness
into the promised land.
DONALD P. KOMMERS
University of Notre Dame
On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios. By HERMAN KAHN. (New York: Fred-
erick A. Praeger. Pp. 308. $6.95.)
This intriguing book is the outgrowth of a series of lectures designed initially to
persuade military-political decision-makers that nuclear escalation or rather the
decision to escalate involves more than mere confidence in a weapons system and
the willingness to use it. While conceding that the decision-makers are, by definition,
more competent to handle questions of military policy than liberal intellectuals,
Herman Kahn, nevertheless, feels that the latter are duty-bound to ask the crucial
questions: why escalate, how much escalation and to what purpose.
In recent years some of Kahn’s critics have tended to equate the position that
nuclear war is possible with the position that the use of atomic or thermonuclear
weapons is the only effective way of defending the nation’s interest. Since Kahn
obviously holds to the first position, it is therefore assumed that he advocates the
second as a complete and sufficient military policy. To the extent that he anticipates
the use of nuclear weapons in future if not present crises, there is perhaps some
validity to the equation. Kahn does believe that as long as &dquo;each nation remains
the sovereign judge of the justice and practicality of its cause and of the methods
and the intensity with which it chooses to forward its interests,&dquo; the use of such
weapons for at least &dquo;instrumental&dquo; purposes is highly likely. But this simply high-
lights what seems to be his major thesis, that is, that nuclear wars can be fought for
limited purposes with limited (nuclear) means.
Force is a permanent element in the human situation; it may be used rationally
as well as...