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The gross amount and the net proportion of nonproductive military expenditures since World War II assignable to the need for war as an economic stabilizer;

The amount and proportion of military expenditures and destruction of life, property, and natural resources during this period assignable to the need for war as an instrument for political control;

Similar figures, to the extent that they can be separately arrived at, assignable to the need for war to maintain social cohesiveness;

Levels of recruitment and expenditures on the draft and other forms of personnel deployment attributable to the need for military institutions to control social disaffection;

The statistical relationship of war casualties to world food supplies; 6) the correlation of military actions and expenditures with cultural activities and scientific advances (including necessarily the development of measurable standards in these areas).

(b) Establishment of a priori modern criteria for the execution of the non- military functions of war. These will include, but not be limited to:

Calculation of minimum and optimum ranges of military expenditure required, under varying hypothetical conditions, to fulfill these several functions, separately and collectively;

Determination of minimum and optimum levels of destruction of LIFE, PROPERTY, and NATURAL RESOURCES prerequisite to the credibility of external threat essential to the political and motivational functions;

Development of a negotiable formula governing the relationship between military recruitment and training policies and the exigencies of social control.

(c) Reconciliation of these criteria with prevailing economic, political, sociological, and ecological limitations. The ultimate object of this phase of War Research is to rationalize the heretofore informal operations of the war system. It should provide practical working procedures through which responsible governmental authority may resolve the following war-function problems, among others, under any given circumstances:

How to determine the optimum quantity, nature, and timing of military expenditures to ensure a desired degree of economic control;

How to organize the recruitment, deployment, and ostensible use of military personnel to ensure a desired degree of acceptance of authorized social values;

3) how to compute on a short-term basis, the nature and extent of the LOSS OF LIFE and other resources which SHOULD BE SUFFERED and/or INFLICTED DURING any single outbreak of hostilities to achieve a desired degree of internal political authority and social allegiance;

How to project, over extended periods, the nature and quality of overt warfare which must be planned and budgeted to achieve a desired degree of contextual stability for the same purpose; factors to be determined must include frequency of occurrence, length of phase, INTENSITY OF PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION, extensiveness of geographical involvement, and OPTIMUM MEAN LOSS OF LIFE;



How to extrapolate accurately from the foregoing, for ecological purposes, the continuing effect of the war system, over such extended cycles, on population pressures, and to adjust the planning of casualty rates accordingly.

War Research procedures will necessarily include, but not be limited to, the following:

(a) The collation of economic, military, and other relevant date into uniform terms, permitting the reversible translation of heretofore discrete categories of information.

(b) The development and application of appropriate forms of cost-effectiveness analysis suitable for adapting such new constructs to computer terminology, programming, and projection.

(c) Extension of the "war games" methods of systems testing to apply, as a quasi-adversary proceeding, to the nonmilitary functions of war.

(4) Since Both Programs of the WAR/PEACE RESEARCH Agency will share the same purpose---to maintain governmental freedom of choice in respect to war and peace until the direction of social survival is no longer in doubt -- it is of the essence of this proposal that the agency be constituted without limitation of time. Its examination of existing and proposed institutions will be self- liquidating when its own function shall have been superseded by the historical developments it will have, at least in part, initiated.

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NOTES.........

SECTION 1

1. The Economic and Social Consequences of Disarmament: U.S.Reply to the Inquiry of the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, June 1964), pp. 8-9.

2. Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon, 1962), p.35.


Date: 2016-01-03; view: 676


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SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS | Robert S. McNamara, in an address before the American Society of News- paper Editors, in Montreal, P.Q., Canada, 18 May 1966.
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