A new study by the RAND Corporation titled
"War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable" is just the latest think tank paper devoted to assessing a US war against China. The study, commissioned by the US Army, provides further evidence that a war with China is being planned and prepared in the upper echelons of the American military-intelligence apparatus.
That the paper emerges from the RAND Corporation has a particular and sinister significance. Throughout the Cold War, RAND was the premier think tank for "thinking the unthinkable"—a phrase made notorious by RAND's chief strategist in the 1950s, Herman Kahn. Kahn devoted his macabre book
On Thermonuclear War to elaborating a strategy for a "winnable" nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
According to the preface of the new study, released last week, "This research was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and conducted within the RAND Arroyo Center's Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the United States Army."
The paper is a war-gaming exercise in the Kahn tradition: weighing the possible outcomes of a war between two nuclear powers with utter indifference to the catastrophic consequences for people in the United States, China and the rest of the world.
Comment: How many times have we heard a similar story? "Known to police/intelligence" but seemingly ignored. Previous arrests, ties to 'known' terrorists... Could it be because the state actually wants the crazies running free? Just like the far-right Gladio networks of the Cold War, jihadis are well-suited to keep the "strategy of tension" up and running. And all the state has to do is claim total incompetence, after which the public begs to give them more power in order to become less incompetent.