Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
by Alex Abella

Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire
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Book Summary Information

Author: Alex Abella
Edition: Hardcover
Published: 2008-05-12
ISBN: 0151010811
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Harcourt

Book Reviews of Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

Book Review: A Good Start, But More Is Needed
Summary: 3 Stars

Soldiers of Reason offers great insight into the formation of RAND and its defense policy work. As someone who has used RAND research at work, I found the history quite interesting. Many of the reviewers are spot on though in their characterization of the book giving a lot of vignettes on RAND's more colorful characters, as opposed to a more comprehensive history.

One place that lack of a comprehensive approach appears is in yhr lack of discussion of RAND's work and influence outside the defense sphere. Another big gap is a lack of discussion of RAND's place in the modern think tank era. RAND was groundbreaking for its time, although places like the Naval War College did start doing some of the military think tank work the book suggest RAND pioneered, but today there are hundreds (if not more) think tanks working to influence public policy and enjoying government contracting dollars. Except for a discussion of the Urban Institute, there is no mention of other comprehensive institutes like Brookings, or more ideological ones like the Center for American Progress or Heritage Institute. How does RAND, and its methods, fit in with this newer breed?

If you are looking for information on these issues, look somewhere else. But if you just want some general history of RAND with a focus on its defense work, the book offers a good, quick read on the topic.

Summary of Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire

The first-ever popular history of the RAND Corporation, written with full access to its archives, Soldiers of Reason is a page-turning chronicle of the rise of the secretive think tank that has been the driving force behind American government for sixty years.

Born in the wake of World War II as an idea factory to advise the air force on how to wage and win wars, RAND quickly became the creator of America’s anti-Soviet nuclear strategy. A magnet for the best and the brightest, its ranks included Cold War luminaries such as Albert Wohlstetter, Bernard Brodie, and Herman Kahn, who arguably saved us from nuclear annihilation and unquestionably created Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex.”

In the Kennedy era, RAND analysts became McNamara’s Whiz Kids 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 has rewritten the history of America’s last half century and cast a new light on our problematic present.

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