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War

Return to Iron Mountain

David Limond takes a critical look at arguments in support of war.

In 1996 various US publications reported that armed, self-styled militia members had been found in possession of copies of a book entitled Report From Iron Mountain. Though they seemed not to know it, this work (hereafter, the Report) isn’t the leaked government document it purports to be but is in fact a satire on US foreign and defence policy of the 1960s couched as a leaked document. Based on close observation of works associated with the cold-hearted style of policy making known as ‘systems analysis’, the Report is authentic only insofar as it seems to represent the logical conclusion of such thinking. It imagines what a group of academics and others sequestered at Iron Mountain (a popular but secluded winter resort in Michigan) might have written given the task of “consider[ing] the problems involved in the contingency of a transition to a general condition of peace, and … [of] recommend[ing] procedures for dealing with this contingency.” (p.

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