Stefan Thomas Possony

Stefan Thomas Possony (born March 15, 1913 in Vienna , † April 26, 1995 in Los Altos , California ) was an Austrian-born American economist and military strategist who designed the American Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

biography

Possony graduated from the University of Vienna in history and economics in 1930. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, he first emigrated to Czechoslovakia and then fled in October when German troops, the country occupied , by France. In August before that, he took part in the Colloque Walter Lippmann , which aimed for a renaissance of classical liberal ideas, which had received less and less attention since the 1920s. With this aim in mind, he began working for the French Foreign Ministry as a psychological warfare advisor and also worked as a consultant for the French armed forces. After the German Wehrmacht occupied France, he, who had been on the Gestapo's wanted list since 1938, was captured. However, he managed to escape and fled to Spain in 1940 and from there to the United States, where he found a position at Princeton University . In 1942 he moved to New York and worked for the shortwave radio department of the CBS and broadcast for Austria under the motto " The Allies will win the war and Austria will be free again - The Allies will win the war and Austria will be free again ".
On the basis of his expertise in psychological strategy, he was called to formulate the declaration of surrender that was intended to be presented to the Japanese emperor. He later worked at Stanford University and as Director of International Studies at the Hoover Institution . There he developed the theory of space-based missile defense systems. In doing so, he helped to ensure that Ronald Reagan finally ordered the development of the SDI program in 1983. In 1982 he co-founded the International Strategic Studies Association .

In 1983 he accompanied the research of the US military on the strategic use of microwaves as a weapon of war.

family

Possony met Regina, the woman he married, in America. Like himself, she and her family had to flee from the Nazis. Since her father was both a German Jew and a Communist, the family was put in a camp in accordance with prevailing Stalinist policy - which was still better than staying in Nazi Germany. The family's situation in the camp improved somewhat because of their acquaintance with Albert Einstein , whom they once met on a visit to the United States. She wrote him a letter from the warehouse, which she simply addressed to "Dr. Albert Einstein, United States of America", which was duly delivered by US Post to his address at Princeton University. Einstein bothered to respond, and even sent a small package of groceries and toiletries, which supposedly helped raise her status somewhat in Stalin's estimate.

After Possony suffered a stroke in 1985 and although medical prognoses would not allow him a month more, his wife cared for him herself and kept him alive for another 10 years. He died on April 25, 1995 in Los Altos, California.

plant

Possony worked out the psychology of the revolutionary people's war (as it was used, for example, by Mao Zedong ), which he called "People's war" and how this can be exploited.

In 1970 he describes the characteristics of the people as follows:

• A people's war is a long process of revolution. The inevitable duration is exploited by guerrillas to destroy their opponents politically, morally and economically. The aim of guerrilla warfare is to create chaos in the target country and prevent the development of an effective, efficient and good government.
• The key to people's war is building a second (competing) power by building guerrilla forces.
• The transfer of power from government No. 1 to government No. 2 is achieved by withdrawing the loyalty of the population from the existing government and transferring it to the new government, which at the same time creates the impression of legitimacy. This transition represents the revolutionary process.
• Victory means that in the end there will be a government. Defeat means the losing government disappears. The transfer of loyalty depends to a large extent on the success of violent guerrilla operations.

Some of the tactical methods developed on it are:

• The use of propaganda to weaken the opponent's legitimacy and prevent outside support. Especially when propaganda is accompanied by conquests, this is the most important method with which legitimation can be withdrawn, since this is assigned to the new power (elite). In this context, propaganda has a special task. Just as the war is portrayed on the news and then completely disappears from the news, but in truth continues to rage for years, the opinion of the world public is conditioned to accept that a victory for the rebels is inevitable, even predetermined.
• Destruction of the enemy's economic foundations.
• Anti-militarist ideas are promoted, soldiers are encouraged to defeat, desertion and mutiny are stimulated.
• Psychologically deliberately planned mass terror weakens the forces and morale of the enemy and strengthens the guerrillas.
• Ensuring one's own reconnaissance and obstruction of the reconnaissance of the enemy.

In addition to these specific tactics, there are some basic principles that a group of insurgents must observe:

• To stay alive
• Adapt the speed of the actions to the circumstances.
• Securing and protecting possible places of refuge

The ultimate goal of insurgents, whether their actions are violent or not, is to avoid their annihilation. To do this, they must avoid being discovered during their actions, concentrating too many in one place, and getting involved in battles. The uprising is not interested in speed, but in long-term survival and growth - it has to learn to calculate in decades.

Bibliography (excerpts)

1964 - Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary

Web links

• Stefan Thomas Possony in the Encyclopedia Britannica
• Jerry Pournelle - A CHAOS MANOR Disquisition
• Strategy of technology
• Literature by and about Stefan Thomas Possony in the catalog of the German National Library

swell

1. ↑ Los Angeles Times - May 3, 1995