Cold War Propaganda in the USSR
The period following the Second World War, particularly the Cold War era (1945–1989), was largely characterised by a unique interplay between science and fear, especially concerning the Soviet Union. This era saw the emergence of scientific methods applied to international conflict, aiming to understand, predict, and control the behaviour of adversaries, fundamentally shaping American strategy towards the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The Genesis of Scientific Strategy: The Rand Corporation
The application of scientific methodologies to national security challenges originated from the shocking realisation in America that the Soviet Union, previously perceived as a backward power, was capable of significant technological feats. This was starkly demonstrated on 4 October 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Two months later, Sputnik 2 carried the dog Laika into space, further flaunting Soviet success. This created a sense of vulnerability across America, as it became evident that the USSR possessed capabilities, such as those that could deliver a nuclear warhead from outer space, against which the United States had no defence.
In response to this perceived threat, scientists on the Californian coast, working at the Rand Corporation, believed they possessed the answers. Rand, an acronym for Research and Development, emerged as the first scientific think tank. Funded by the Air Force but staffed by young academics, Rand’s core belief was that the scientific method could bring the Cold War back under American control. This institution became a central focus of study for its pioneering approach to strategic thought.
Rand gathered engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and political scientists to address problems of national defence and security. Their primary concern was understanding the future of American security in the nuclear age, exploring how technology could be harnessed for this purpose.
Systems Analysis and Game Theory
The techniques developed at Rand were generally categorised as systems analytic techniques. This involved creating enormous mathematical models, calculable thanks to the advent of high-speed computers. The aim was to understand the world to a degree where it could be calculated and predicted.
The strategists at Rand viewed the Cold War as an entirely new system of conflict, where past experience and traditional politics offered no guidance in predicting the other side's behaviour. Consequently, they turned to game theory, a method of predicting behaviour in uncertain situations. This theory had been developed by the mathematician John Von Neumann, who observed poker games in the 1920s in Berlin, noting how each player's strategy depended on their assumption of the other side's rational actions. Von Neumann demonstrated how to assign numerical values to different choices to determine the optimal move, framing conflict as a game with rational players possessing certain information about their opponent's capabilities.
A crucial concept that evolved at Rand was the notion of "Kriegspiel," or war game, akin to a game of chess where players do not see the opponent's pieces. Participants had to infer the location of enemy pieces from indirect information and make the best possible judgements. This approach assumed perfect rational actors, a fundamental limitation as human psychology and non-logical actions were not adequately accounted for in the calculations.
Rand strategists meticulously studied every piece of information available about the Soviet Union. They even authored an operational code for the Politburo and commissioned the renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead to study Russian attitudes towards authority. From these inputs, complex mathematical models were generated, designed to reveal the best possible moves. However, in this process, the Cold War began to transform from a resolvable political conflict into a mechanical system, where all parts, including the enemy, operated according to rational laws. The strategists' objective was to maintain this system in a state of equilibrium.
A highly influential figure at Rand was Albert Wohlstetter, a mathematical logician and admirer of modern architecture. Wohlstetter perceived the system of conflict as dangerously unstable. He was convinced that the Soviet Union might launch an attack, not necessarily out of malicious intent, but because the rational logic of the system itself would compel them to strike first. This thinking alluded to the Nash equilibrium, where mutual predictability could foster a strange form of trust even among adversaries. Wohlstetter advocated for a strategic posture that would make an adversary's attack irrational from their own perspective. He proposed iconic elements of the nuclear age, such as protected underground missile silos and bombers airborne 24 hours a day, controlled by a system called "failsafe". The goal was to assure the Soviets that America would always retain sufficient retaliatory capability to destroy them, thereby stabilising the "delicate balance of terror" and making the Cold War safer.
The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Test of Theory
In October 1962, the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba presented a critical real-world test for these elaborate theories. To the strategists, this was a clear opportunity to apply their scenarios. Discussions within President Kennedy's cabinet, recorded on tape, show men confronting the nuclear crisis as a bargaining game. Yet, faced with the need for action, they found themselves uncertain how the Soviet side would respond to any move. They even questioned the rationality of the Soviet leadership. The crisis highlighted a disparity in perceptions, where the American system itself could be viewed as totalitarian from an external perspective, given the top-down plans that affected ordinary citizens. Ultimately, President Kennedy disregarded the complex plans for controlled war, instead issuing a direct threat: any single missile launched from Cuba would result in America's entire arsenal retaliating. To the strategists, this threat appeared irrational and humiliating.
The McNamara Era and the Illusion of Intelligence
In 1961, the influence of Rand's strategists dramatically increased. The new president, John F. Kennedy, turned to them to impose order not only on nuclear strategy but also on the escalating arms race. Kennedy believed that the scientific method was key to solving the problems of modern industrialised societies. Leading members of the Rand Corporation were appointed as aides to the new Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. McNamara, who had previously applied systems analysis to rationalise production at the Ford Motor Company, directed the strategists to apply the same principles to America's defence. Under McNamara, these individuals transitioned from military advisors to masters of defence strategy.
A significant revelation occurred early in McNamara's tenure: new reconnaissance satellite intelligence showed that the Soviets possessed only four intercontinental ballistic missiles, far fewer than the 600 previously claimed by the Air Force. This was severely embarrassing for the strategists, as the Air Force's inflated figures had formed the basis of much of their work. Air Force intelligence inputs were largely parochial and designed to portray the Soviets at their worst, thereby securing billions of dollars for more aircraft and missiles. For years, the Air Force had used slides depicting Russian monasteries and war memorials, falsely claiming they were disguised missile silos. The implication was that Rand's studies, built on this erroneous data, might be equally fictitious.
Despite this, the strategists remained undeterred. With fewer and located Soviet missiles, they believed a nuclear war could involve selective strikes, allowing for control and even victory in the conflict. This challenged the notion of an unavoidable "big spasm" war where all weapons would be fired.
Herman Kahn and the Prospect of Controlled Nuclear War
A prominent proponent of these plans was Herman Kahn, who left Rand to establish his own think tank, the Hudson Institute. Kahn argued that a controlled nuclear war was possible. He posited that even if the decision to go to war was irrational, the conduct of the war need not be. Contrary to popular belief, Kahn suggested that the post-war environment, while hostile, would not "preclude normal and happy lives". His scenarios included a hypothetical nuclear bargaining game where cities on both sides were assigned precise values. An accidental bomb drop on a city like Kiev, for instance, could lead to negotiations for an equivalent retaliatory strike, escalating progressively from targets of equal value to major cities like New York or Moscow. This concept reduced populations to "pawns in a game of bargaining with nuclear weapons". Kahn even envisioned that American cities might need to be evacuated two or three times a decade as the US engaged in brinkmanship with the Soviet Union. He believed the public needed to be taught to think rationally about nuclear war, citing childhood discussions about who to let into a bomb shelter during an attack.
Critics, however, questioned whether a limited engagement was truly feasible, given the inherent complications and the tendency of models to diverge from reality as they grew more complex. The massive overestimation of the Soviet arsenal (thought to be 600, actually four) highlighted the fragility of these calculations.
Application to Domestic Policy: The Great Society
The belief in the scientific method's ability to solve problems extended beyond military strategy. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched his "Great Society" initiative, promising to tackle deep-rooted social problems such as poverty through a new approach to government. The architects of this vision were the same systems analysts from Rand and the Pentagon. They saw themselves as "apostles of rationality," applying their techniques and methods of thinking to civilian issues. This approach was intended to bring systematic, rational thinking to social problems, which they believed were solvable. This marked a transfer of the same Managerialism mindset, previously applied to military operations, to domestic policy. They even believed their techniques could predict the future.
This era saw a fascination with "futurists" like Dr. Olaf Helmer of the Rand Corporation, who conducted simulation exercises with panels of experts. They estimated numerical probabilities for various 21st-century developments, from personality control drugs to household robots. This process, resembling a game of Dungeons and Dragons with dice, represented government decision-making, albeit in a more demystified form than later computer simulations. Despite predictions of 90-95% of the world's population living at higher than current American standards of living within 100-200 years, the actual material conditions for many did not improve significantly, or only at the cost of other aspects of life, such as ownership and autonomy.
The Reagan Administration and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars)
By the mid-1970s, the system of deterrence, or Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), seemed to have become an end in itself. This perception shifted dramatically with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan, after visiting the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), questioned the lack of a missile defence system, believing that science, if unleashed, could surely achieve it.
The solution proposed to Reagan came from "zealot scientists" such as Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. Teller had long envisioned a defensive missile shield in space. A lobby group, led not by strategists but by two science fiction writers, formed to propose such a defence using the new space shuttle. This became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star Wars.
These science fiction writers proved pivotal in crafting documents understandable to the President. Reagan's announcement of the Star Wars proposal, delivered without prior warning to many in his cabinet, was met with scepticism. The concept involved putting lasers in the sky powerful enough to knock out Russian ICBMs, a proposition met with the counter-argument that such advanced technology could be defeated by simply carrying a mirror.
Despite dramatic tests of high-powered lasers shown on American television, serious problems plagued the initiative. A small number of x-ray laser tests conducted underground in Nevada were failures as weapons. Edward Teller, however, wrote glowing, deceptive letters to high government officials under President Reagan, claiming a single x-ray laser module "the size of an executive desk" could potentially shoot down the entire Soviet land-based missile force. This statement was regarded as "absolute blithering nonsense," "science fiction," and a "corruption of science technology to promote a fantastic idea that could not ever work".
As the Soviet Union approached collapse, proponents of Star Wars retrospectively claimed that the true intention had been to bankrupt the "evil empire" by forcing them into an unwinnable arms race. This narrative suggested that a "science fiction plot was used to defeat the Soviet Union," a fictional weapon that never worked. Those who claimed this outcome believed they had used rational analysis to implement a strategy that brought down the Soviet Union, viewing it as a "key event of the 20th century". However, the general consensus among many was that Star Wars played a negligible role in the Soviet Union's eventual downfall.
The Collapse of the Soviet Union and its Aftermath
The sudden collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991 marked the end of the Cold War's rigid, bipolar world. For those who had dedicated their professional lives to managing this conflict, the disappearance of the enemy was disorienting. The period from the end of World War II until 1989 was seen as a "very unique period in history" due to the relatively frozen balance of power between two superpowers. This "odd moment in history" ended, and with it, the optimistic faith in scientific application to consistently improve the world.
The disappearance of the primary adversary meant that the American system lost its "measuring stick". Institutions like NATO, originally designed as a common defence against the Warsaw Pact, found their primary mission accomplished yet remained in existence without a clearly defined purpose. New, often ambiguous, objectives such as spreading liberal democracy or fighting "terrorism" emerged, but these lacked the clarity of the Cold War's direct opposition.
Critique of Scientific Rationality in Foreign Policy
The reliance on scientific models and rational calculation, while seemingly offering control, often disregarded the inherent irrationality of human behaviour. While the Rand Corporation's approach aimed to impose rationality on an irrational world, the subsequent shift towards an embrace of irrationality in leadership also proved problematic.
The Vietnam War, in particular, exposed the limitations of this analytical approach. Robert McNamara's "whiz kids" believed the conflict could be managed scientifically, despite it not being a war for territory. This led to a reliance on quantifiable statistics—body counts, missions flown, bomb tonnage—to measure progress, which ultimately "obscured the reality" and presented a picture "180 degrees removed from reality". This tendency to reduce complex situations to numbers created a "fiction" that served to preserve political power. The same patterns of "cooking the books" observed in the Soviet Union, where numbers were manipulated to show productivity, were mirrored in the US military's reporting.
The Managerialism approach, while aiming for control, failed to account for the non-logical nature of human action, which often operates on instinct despite a desire to appear rational. Moreover, positions of power tend to select individuals who conform to a logic of centralisation and the elimination of rivals, irrespective of individual rationality.
The legacy of this era includes a shift in leadership behaviour, with modern foreign policy characterised by being "quick to anger," "irrational," and "changeable". Current decision-making often appears "knee-jerk" and lacks deliberate thought, driven by sentiment rather than strategy. This contrast highlights the divergence from the seemingly cold, bureaucratic rationality that defined the Cold War strategists.