Five former NATO generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a "radical manifesto" which states that "the West must be ready to resort to a preemptive nuclear attack to try to halt the 'imminent' spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction."
In other words, the generals argue that "the West" -- meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain -- should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to preempt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.
Under this doctrine, the U.S. could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country's presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons -- stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country's nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.
The Nuremberg principles are the bedrock of international law on war crimes. Principle VI criminalizes the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression ..." and states that the following are war crimes:
Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
To state the obvious: the use of a nuclear weapon on the military production facilities of a non-nuclear state will mean dropping big bombs on populated areas. Nuclear test sites are kept remote for obvious reasons; research labs, reactors and enrichment facilities need not be. Nuclear bombs inflict total devastation on the "cities, towns or villages" that they hit. They are the ultimate in "wanton destruction." Their use against a state with whom we are not actually at war cannot, by definition, be "justified by military necessity."
"The West" has lived from 1949 to the present day with a nuclear-armed Russia; no necessity of using nuclear weapons against that country ever arose. Similarly with China, since 1964. To attack some new nuclear pretender now would certainly constitute the "waging of a war of aggression ..." That's a crime. And the planning and preparation for such a war is no less a crime than the war itself.
Next, consider what it means to determine that a country is about to acquire nuclear weapons. How does one know? The facilities that Iran possesses to enrich uranium are legal under the non-proliferation treaty. Yes, they might be used, at some point, to provide fuel for bombs. But maybe they won't be. How could we tell? And suppose we were wrong? Ambiguity is the nature of this situation, and of the world in which we live. During the Cold War, ambiguity helped keep both sides safe: it was a stabilizing force. We would not use nuclear weapons, under the systems then devised, unless ambiguity disappeared. But the generals' doctrine has no tolerance for ambiguity; it would make ambiguity itself a cause for war. Thus, causes for war could be made to arise, wherever anyone in power wanted them to.
The generals' doctrine would not only violate international law, it repudiates the principle of international law. For a law to be a law, it must apply equally to all. But the doctrine holds that "the West" is fundamentally a different entity from all other countries. As the former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it holds that our use of weapons of mass destruction to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is not, itself, an illegal use of weapons of mass destruction. Thus "the West" can stand as judge, jury and executioner over all other countries. By what right? No law works that way. And no country claiming such a right can also claim to respect the law, or ask any other country to respect it.
Conversely, suppose we stated the generals' doctrine as a principle: that any nuclear state which suspects another state of being about to acquire nuclear weapons has the right to attack that state -- and with nuclear weapons if it has them. Now suppose North Korea suspects South Korea of that intention. Does North Korea acquire a right to strike the South? Under any principle of law, the generals' answer must be, that it does. Thus their doctrine does not protect against nuclear war. It leads, rather, directly to nuclear war.
Is this proposed doctrine unprecedented? No, in fact it is not. For as Heather Purcell and I documented in 1994, US nuclear war-fighting plans in 1961 called for an unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union, as soon as sufficient nuclear forces were expected to be ready, in late 1963. President Kennedy quashed the plan. As JFK's adviser Ted Sorensen put it in a letter to the New York Times on July 1, 2002:
A pre-emptive strike is usually sold to the president as a 'surgical' air strike; there is no such thing. So many bombings are required that widespread devastation, chaos and war unavoidably follow ... Yes, Kennedy 'thought about' a pre-emptive strike; but he forcefully rejected it, as would any thoughtful American president or citizen.
It's not just citizens and presidents who are obliged to think carefully about what General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues now suggest. Military officers -- as they know well -- also have that obligation. Nuremberg Principle IV states:
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
Any officer in the nuclear chain of command of the United States, Britain or France, faced with an order to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state would be obliged, as a matter of law, to ponder those words with care. For ultimately, as Nuremberg showed, it is not force that prevails. In the final analysis, it is law.
Originally published in the Guardian.
did i mention only two candidates are not members? gravel and paul.
If you want to reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation you don't threaten a nuclear attack that can only be avoided by the possession of nuclear weapons. A far better idea would be to start unilateral nuclear reductions and campaign for a no first use treaty.
Clearly these Generals have no common sense so why should we support them?
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/global_security/the_new_atlantic_century
The NAC or New Atlantic Century calls for a super-NATO and is being called a"radical manifesto".
I think Ambassador Galbraith has hit it on the head.
For us to have x-thousand war heads is inexcusable. Should we be the first to disarm? I'll leave that discussion for another time, but it is clear that we could certainly start a policy of unilaterally halving the size of our arsenal ever five or ten years. To have some number of weapons like the British, French, or even Israel have would seem to be sufficient for every conceivable legitimate purpose, and then some. Terms like "mutually assured destruction" and "nuclear winter" used to be taken very seriously, and I can't even comprehend policy makers who would leave them out of this discussion.
For us to have x-thousand war heads is inexcusable. Should we be the first to disarm? I'll leave that discussion for another time, but it is clear that we could certainly start a policy of unilaterally halving the size of our arsenal ever five or ten years. To have some number of weapons like the British, French, or even Israel have would seem to be sufficient for every conceivable legitimate purpose, and then some. Terms like "mutually assured destruction" and "nuclear winter" used to be taken very seriously, and I can't even comprehend policy makers who would leave them out of this discussion.
I ask you, just reading of these manifestos and knowing that WE have nuclear capabilities, and are apparently itching to use them willy-nilly, and given our recent questionable judgement about who does and doesn't constitute a "threat" - doesn't that make US the biggest threat to other countries, thereby giving them the right to preemptively strike us?
These old warmongers need to be decomissioned and committed to the nearest insane asylum.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!
We also prosecuted after WWII for waterboarding, now we practice it.
What has happened to our moral compass?
I'm sure Cheney and other cowards will welcome this with open arms as the means to attack Iran.
Just don't make the oil radioactive.
At the time I wrote my essay, the manifesto had not yet been made public.
The manifesto is now available at:
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/080110_grand_strategy.pdf
The language relating to nuclear weapons is murky, but the following paragraph, on page 97, confirms that The Guardian's reporter read it correctly:
"Regrettably, nuclear weapons - and with them the option of first use - are indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world. On the contrary, the risk of further proliferation is imminent and with it, the danger that nuclear war-fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible. This development must be prevented. It should therefore be kept in mind that technology could produce options that go beyond the traditional role of nuclear weapons in preventing a nuclear armed opponent from using nuclear weapons. In sum, nuclear weapons remain indispensable, and nuclear escalation continues to remain an element of any modern strategy."
JG
The Germans were Nazis; General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues are Nazis.