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Concept
Fred Iklé
Summary
Fred Charles Iklé (né Fritz Karl Iklé; August 21, 1924 – November 10, 2011) was a Swiss-American sociologist and defense expert. Iklé's expertise was in defense and foreign policy, nuclear strategy, and the role of technology in the emerging international order. After a career in academia (including a professorship at MIT) he was appointed director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1973–1977, before becoming Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (1981 to 1988). He was later a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Department of Defense's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a Distinguished Scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a Director of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Iklé is credited with a key role in increasing U.S. aid to anti-Soviet rebels in the Soviet–Afghan War. He successfully proposed and promoted the idea of supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, overcoming CIA opposition. He was a first cousin of Elisabeth Kopp, the first woman in the Swiss Federal Council, elected in 1984.
Iklé was born Fritz Karl Iklé in Samedan, Switzerland, in 1924, and grew up in St. Gallen. He anglicized his name after moving to the United States in 1946. He earned a degree at the University of Zurich with a master's and doctorate from the University of Chicago (1948 and 1950), both in sociology. His doctorate involved research in Dresden and Nagasaki and led to a book, The Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, (1958).
In 1962, Iklé was cited in a bestselling American novel on the risks of accidental nuclear war, Fail-Safe, as an example of one of "the right people" whose warnings should have been heeded: "...for years there has been a fellow named Fred Iklé, who has been working with the Rand Corporation and the Air Force on how to reduce war by accident. He has found flaw after flaw in the system, at just the same time that the newspapers were saying it was perfect." From 1964 to 1967 Iklé was a professor in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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