Soldiers of Reason

The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Alex Abella

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780156035125
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

An "entertaining and fast-paced" account of the organization that defines the military-industrial complex—and continues to shape our world today ( The New York Times Book Review ). The RAND Corporation was born in the wake of World War II as a think tank to generate research and analysis for the United States military. It was a magnet for the best and the brightest—and also the most dangerous. RAND quickly became the creator of America's anti-Soviet nuclear strategy, attracting such Cold War luminaries as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation—and unquestionably created the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned against. In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts and their theories of rational warfare steered our conduct in Vietnam. Those same theories drove our invasion of Iraq forty-five years later, championed by RAND affiliated actors such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Zalmay Khalilzad. But RAND's greatest contribution might be its least known: rational choice theory, a model explaining all human behavior through self-interest. Through it RAND sparked the Reagan-led transformation of our social and economic system, but also unleashed a resurgence of precisely the forces whose existence it denied: religion, patriotism, tribalism. With Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella shares a "well-researched" history of America's last half century that casts a new light on our problematic present ( San Francisco Chronicle ).

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraphs
• Foreword
• PART 1
• 1 A Great Beginning
• 2 The Human Factor
• 3 The Wages of Sin
• PART 2
• 4 A Talk Before Dinner
• 5 The Secret Keepers
• 6 The Jester of Death
• 7 In RAND’s Orbit
• PART 3
• 8 A Delicate Dance
• 9 Whiz Kids Rule
• 10 The Art of Science
• 11 A Final Solution to the Soviet Problem
• 12 An Irresistible Force
• PART 4
• 13 A Night in Rach Kien
• 14 The Price of Success
• 15 Stealing Away
• 16 Plus Ça Change
• 17 Team B Strikes
• PART 5
• 18 Witnessing End Times
• 19 The Terror Network
• 20 Yoda and the Knights of Counterforce
• 21 Back to Iraq
• PART 6
• 22 Death of a Strategist
• 23 Whither RAND?
• Acknowledgments
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Footnotes