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Reviewing RAND's Influence On America

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By MARY PATRICK

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 29, 2008

"Soldiers of Reason," by Alex Abella (Harcourt, $27)

Depending on what history (or novels) you read, a different set of people control the course of the Western World. Maybe it's the Knights Templar and the Freemasons; maybe it's the Catholic Church; maybe the Bilderberg Group. Alex Abella offers a pretty good argument that it's the RAND Corp.

RAND - a contraction of the term research and development - is a think tank formed at the end of World War II. It is actually the original modern think tank, a place designed for brilliant people to attempt to solve complex problems. These include Herman Kahn, who Stanley Kubrick used as the model for the title character in "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Kubrick used so much of Kahn's work, Abella writes, that Kahn demanded royalties, to which Kubrick told him, "Herman, it doesn't work that way."

"RANDites" influenced much of U.S. foreign policy, particularly during the Cold War, arguing for a build-up of weapons rather than trying to negotiate disarmament treaties. They also provided detailed plans for when and where nuclear bombs should be dropped in case the Cold War went hot. Abella provides brief but interesting biographies of RAND's top people, including Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in hopes of ending the Vietnam War (the papers showed the covert involvement of the United States in Vietnam starting in 1945).

Ellsberg aside, most people associated with RAND are considered to be hawks. Abella demonstrates how their ideas led to a bigger military and also the rise of the neoconservativism.

Mary Patrick of Tampa is a freelance writer.

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