“Even in an unclassified world this is not the kind of thing you want flying around the Internet,” says Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita. He was talking about a document, yanked from a Pentagon website on September 19th, which outlines US nuclear warfighting plans, including the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons and the use of nukes in conventional war.
Comments to the document by the various military branches reveal squabbling about who gets to run a nuclear war, a disagreement about the legality of pre-emptive warfighting strategies, and a discussion of the etiquette of alerting allied troops that a nuclear attack is coming their way.
This is exactly the kind of information which we believe ought to be flying around the internet; these guys really shouldn’t be left alone to talk about this stuff behind closed doors.
So we took our copy and uploaded it here at www.greenpeace.org…
Get your very own copy today!
Of course now the warlords will have to make a new nuclear war plan.
They will be very angry at GreenPeace, and at you, because making nuclear war plans is hard work.
So remember to Duck and Cover.
Thanks, Ductape, for bringing this to our attention. I had heard about this, but didn’t think to locate it personally. I do appreciate this and all that you do to keep us informed.
We have, in a sense, returned to the mid/late 1950’s, when some elements of the US government and military were fixed on the idea of launching and winning a nuclear war. First strike or not first strike is not the point, per se, the point is that these elements want and would cause nuclear war to happen, by striking first, or by some other means.
In the 21st century environment, this could include a provocative “attack” by our own government, blamed on another, to provide an excuse for “retaliation.”
To some extent, the document represents the continuation of a 60-year search for a justification and way to fight a nuclear war, that is, to use nuclear weapons to achieve a military aim. The difficulty has been, and remains, how to keep victory from being synonymous with annihilation, extermination, or genocide.
Also, it is plainly an attempt to make a Coldwar military machine relevant to 21st century guerrilla war, or 4th generation war, environment. Some absurdities stand out above the general madness of reality-disconnect: There is a passage outlining the use of nuclear weapons against non-state actors. The document blithely ignores the matter that an enemy too weak or too difuse to control a state is also to weak or difuse for nuclear targeting to have a useful military effect. (Though it would certainly have other effects!) In ordinary words, it seems to be: If we think bin Laden is hiding in France, we nuke Paris.
This sort of disconnect is already familiar to us in Iraq, where the counter-insurgency techniques that failed so spectacularly in Vietnam are being repeated in the higher stakes-region of the Persian Gulf, with the discrepancy between plans and reality bridged by a greatly enlarged PR/propaganda effort. But I digress.
Another aspect of this Coldwar retread is that it assumes the US will have a single enemy. This makes the document already obsolete, as the world is now already multi-polar, and the US has willfully acquired several enemies. The document gives the impression they should all be treated as one military threat. This is absurd on its face, leaving us to wonder: If the US can tell the difference between one enemy and another why don’t they say so? There is no concept in the document that the political and military situation is already a multi-player game.
A key point in the document is the US feels free to use nuclear weapons if its strategic interests are threatened. Obvious, right? But, unsaid, this is (among other things) about oil. No US politician has yet entertained the notion that the US would give up its addiction to oil, and some of the most prominent have asserted that oil consumption is the American Way of Life, more basic than any freedom or civil liberty. This leads us to just one, unstated, conclusion: They intend that the US should threaten, and launch, nuclear war to defend its oil supply.
Since we are entering a period where oil supplies are sure–for many reasons–to be disrupted, this is bad news.
Unsurprisingly, the document has no heart. After all, war is cruel. But this is a deep flaw: War is, fundamentally, about life and death. Without heart, it can only turn to evil. Modern history alone should make this obvious.
I have just come off of reading a series of posts about how America is wonderful wonderful wonderful, seemingly in response to posts paraphaseable: “America–the Evil Empire.”
Argue away, if that pleases you!
Read what the US is planning to do. The outlook for multi-cell organisms (once again) is not good.
Oh boy those pics bring back memories- we were led out into the hall in elementary school and told to huddle on the floor.Nice way to scare the shit out of little kids.
And, my aunt has a bomb shelter in her yard that looks just like that.