Albert Wohlstetter

Albert Wohlstetter (born 1913, died January 10, 1997) was a Neoconservative ideologue and long time director of the Rand Corporation. He and his wife Roberta Wohlstetter, an historian and intelligence expert, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985. He was one of the inspirations for the film Dr. Strangelove.

Career

A native of New York, New York, Wohlstetter earned degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University in the 1930s. During the 1940s, he worked with the War Production Board, at Atlas Aircraft Products Company and, after World War II, at the General Panel Corporation of California.

From 1951 to 1963, he served first as a consultant and later as a senior policy analyst for the RAND Corporation, and maintained his affiliation with RAND for years afterward. He and his wife also advised both Democratic and Republican administrations, including President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. On February 25, 1963, the Wohlstetters published "Studies for a Post-Communist Cuba."

During his long career, Wohlstetter also taught at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s. From 1964 to 1980, he taught in the political science department of the University of Chicago, and chaired the dissertation committees of Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad. He is often credited with influencing a number of prominent members of the neoconservative movement, including Richard Perle (who, as a teenager, dated Wohlstetter's daughter).

Views regarding mutually assured destruction

In 2003, two French journalists writing for Le Monde (Paris) tried to summarize Wohlstetter's ideas on nuclear strategy. They wrote that Wohlstetter:

was at the origin of the rethinking of the traditional doctrine known as 'mutual assured destruction' (MAD, in its English acronym), which was the basis for nuclear deterrence. According to this theory, two blocs capable of inflicting upon each other irreparable damages would cause leaders to hesitate to unleash the nuclear fire. For Wohlstetter and his pupils, MAD was both immoral -- because of the destruction inflicted on civilian populations -- and ineffective: it led to the mutual neutralization of nuclear arsenals. No statesman endowed with reason, and in any case no American president, would decide on 'reciprocal suicide.' Wohlstetter proposed on the contrary a 'graduated deterrence,' i.e. the acceptance of limited wars, possibly using tactical nuclear arms, together with 'smart' precision-guided weapons capable of hitting the enemy's military apparatus. He criticized the politics of nuclear arms limitations conducted together with Moscow. It amounted, according to him, to constraining the technological creativity of the United States in order to maintain an artificial equilibrium with the USSR.

Resources, Links, References

External links

• Online library of Wohlstetter's works at the RAND Corporation
• Writings of Albert Wohlstetter, RAND Corporation.
• Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com, a website that details the careers and writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter.
• Aspin, Woolsey, Join Center in Honoring Albert Wohlstetter, Winner of 1993 'Freedom Flame', Center for Security Policy, September 21, 1993.
• Bob Djurdjevic, The Hidden Truth About Gorazde, Bosnia. Fishing for Bodies in the Drina, Truth in Media, August 1, 1994.
• Wohlstetter--The Ultimate Pocket-Book Election Issue: Clinton Is Inviting Costly International Conflicts, Center for Security Policy, October 2, 1996.
• Albert Wohlstetter, R.I.P., Polyconomics, January 16, 1997.
• Jude Wanniski, Tribute to Albert Wohlstetter, Voice of America, January 21, 1997.
• Marshall Freeman Harris and Stephen Walker, Remembering Albert Wohlstetter, Bosnian Report/Bosnian Institute, February-May 1997.
• Jason Vest, Darth Rumsfeld, The American Prospect, February 26, 2001.
• Jude Wanniski, The Prince of Darkness. Memo To: Henry Kissinger Re: Richard Perle, wanniski.com, September 18, 2001.
• Jude Wanniski, Fire Paul Wolfowitz. Memo to Donald Rumsfeld Re: "The Monkeys on your Back", informationclearinghouse, October 9, 2001. Memo discusses role of Wohlstetter.
• Khurram Husain, American Dreams. Intellectual Roots of Neo-conservative Thinking (cache file), Studien von Zeitfragen, 2003.
• Elizabeth Drew, The Neocons in Power, The New York Review of Books, January 12, 2003.
• Neil Swidey, The Analyst, Boston Globe, May 18, 2003: "Albert Wohlstetter". Also here.
• Alain Frachon and Daniel Vernet; translated by Norman Madarasz, The Strategist and the Philosopher, CounterPunch, June 2, 2003.
• Robert L. Bartley, Joining LaRouche In the Fever Swamps. The New York Times and The New Yorker go off the deep end, Opinion Journal, June 9, 2003.
• Khurram Husain, "Neocons: The men behind the curtain", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2003.
• Tom Barry, A History of Threat Escalation. Remembering Team B, RightWeb Analysis, February 12, 2004: "Wohlstetter, who had left his full-time position at RAND to become a professor at the University of Chicago, organized an informal study group that included younger neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz and longtime hawks like Paul H. Nitze."