Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: war

  • Veterans Day Again

    David Krieger“The one thing I never want to see again
    is a military parade.”  — Ulysses S. Grant

    We’ve seen far too many military parades
    with their missiles, marching bands
    and mechanized young men.

    We’ve witnessed enough high-stepping
    soldiers in their polished black boots
    marching to the sounds of brass.

    Spare us the old men dressed in uniforms
    with their sorrowful hats and sewn-on patches.
    Spare us the slippery words of politicians.

    Let’s return to basics: On Armistice Day
    the soldiers laid down their arms on the 11th hour
    of the 11th day of the 11th month.

    The survivors had had enough of war.
    The 11th hour is here again, the sky clear blue.

  • Do Wars Really Defend America’s Freedom?

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    Lawrence WittnerU.S. politicians and pundits are fond of saying that America’s wars have defended America’s freedom. But the historical record doesn’t bear out this contention. In fact, over the past century, U.S. wars have triggered major encroachments upon civil liberties.

    Shortly after the United States entered World War I, seven states passed laws abridging freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In June 1917, they were joined by Congress, which passed the Espionage Act. This law granted the federal government the power to censor publications and ban them from the mail, and made the obstruction of the draft or of enlistment in the armed forces punishable by a hefty fine and up to 20 years’ imprisonment. Thereafter, the U.S. government censored newspapers and magazines while conducting prosecutions of the war’s critics, sending over 1,500 to prison with lengthy sentences. This included the prominent labor leader and Socialist Party presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs. Meanwhile, teachers were fired from the public schools and universities, elected state and federal legislators critical of the war were prevented from taking office, and religious pacifists who refused to carry weapons after they were drafted into the armed forces were forcibly clad in uniform, beaten, stabbed with bayonets, dragged by ropes around their necks, tortured, and killed. It was the worst outbreak of government repression in U.S. history, and sparked the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Although America’s civil liberties record was much better during World War II, the nation’s participation in that conflict did lead to serious infringements upon American freedoms. Probably the best-known was the federal government’s incarceration of 110,000 people of Japanese heritage in internment camps. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens, most of whom had been born (and many of whose parents had been born) in the United States. In 1988, recognizing the blatant unconstitutionality of the wartime internment, Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which apologized for the action and paid reparations to the survivors and their families. But the war led to other violations of rights, as well, including the imprisonment of roughly 6,000 conscientious objectors and the confinement of some 12,000 others in Civilian Public Service camps. Congress also passed the Smith Act, which made the advocacy of the overthrow of the government a crime punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment. As this legislation was used to prosecute and imprison members of groups that merely talked abstractly of revolution, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately narrowed its scope considerably.

    The civil liberties situation worsened considerably with the advent of the Cold War. In Congress, the House Un-American Activities Committee gathered files on over a million Americans whose loyalty it questioned and held contentious hearings designed to expose alleged subversives. Jumping into the act, Senator Joseph McCarthy began reckless, demagogic accusations of Communism and treason, using his political power and, later, a Senate investigations subcommittee, to defame and intimidate. The president, for his part, established the Attorney General’s List of “subversive” organizations, as well as a federal Loyalty Program, which dismissed thousands of U.S. public servants from their jobs. The compulsory signing of loyalty oaths became standard practice on the federal, state, and local level. By 1952, 30 states required some sort of loyalty oath for teachers. Although this effort to root out “un-Americans” never resulted in the discovery of a single spy or saboteur, it did play havoc with people’s lives and cast a pall of fear over the nation.

    When citizen activism bubbled up in the form of protest against the Vietnam War, the federal government responded with a stepped-up program of repression. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, had been expanding his agency’s power ever since World War I, and swung into action with his COINTELPRO program. Designed to expose, disrupt, and neutralize the new wave of activism by any means necessary, COINTELPRO spread false, derogatory information about dissident leaders and organizations, created conflicts among their leaders and members, and resorted to burglary and violence. It targeted nearly all social change movements, including the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement. The FBI’s files bulged with information on millions of Americans it viewed as national enemies or potential enemies, and it placed many of them under surveillance, including writers, teachers, activists, and U.S. senators Convinced that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dangerous subversive, Hoover made numerous efforts to destroy him, including encouraging him to commit suicide.

    Although revelations about the unsavory activities of U.S. intelligence agencies led to curbs on them in the 1970s, subsequent wars encouraged a new surge of police state measures. In 1981, the FBI opened an investigation of individuals and groups opposing President Reagan’s military intervention in Central America. It utilized informers at political meetings, break-ins at churches, members’ homes, and organizational offices, and surveillance of hundreds of peace demonstrations. Among the targeted groups were the National Council of Churches, the United Auto Workers, and the Maryknoll Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church. After the beginning of the Global War on Terror, the remaining checks on U.S. intelligence agencies were swept aside. The Patriot Act provided the government with sweeping power to spy on individuals, in some cases without any suspicion of wrongdoing, while the National Security Agency collected all Americans’ phone and internet communications.

    The problem here lies not in some unique flaw of the United States but, rather, in the fact that warfare is not conducive to freedom. Amid the heightened fear and inflamed nationalism that accompany war, governments and many of their citizens regard dissent as akin to treason. In these circumstances, “national security” usually trumps liberty. As the journalist Randolph Bourne remarked during World War I: “War is the health of the state.” Americans who cherish freedom should keep this in mind.

    Dr. Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, “What’s Going On at UAardvark?”

  • Bombing Gaza: A Pilot Speaks

    The stain of death spreads below,
    but from my cockpit I see none of it.
    I only drop bombs as I have been trained
    and then, far above the haze and blood,
    I speed toward home.

    I am deaf to the screams of pain.
    Nor can I smell the stench of slaughter.
    I try not to think of children shivering
    with fear or of those blown to pieces.

    They tell me I am brave, but
    how brave can it be to drop bombs
    on a crowded city?  I am a cog,
    only that, a cog in a fancy machine
    of death.

  • Eliminating War to Eradicate Polio

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Robert DodgePolio, once a global scourge, was on the verge of eradication in 2012. Since that time, it has reemerged as a global public health emergency according to the World Health Organization. Why has it now spread from its final strongholds in Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan to at least 10 countries spanning Asia, Africa and the Middle East? It is not because of changes in the virus or ineffective vaccines. The answer is war, and as we all know, “truth is the first casualty of war.”

    The Taliban claims that immunizations can cause infertility or worse, and violently obstructs the polio vaccinators while vilifying them as part of a U.S. plot. In years past, the U.S. CIA did a great disservice when it disguised its officers as polio vaccine workers in efforts to capture Bin Laden, which has given fuel to the Taliban in its initiatives.

    Efforts to reclaim the momentum in eradicating polio will require a renewed global effort, and ultimately the elimination of war itself. In our ever shrinking world, it is only a matter of time before we see this scenario play out with a resurgence of polio in the U.S. and West as more and more young families avoid vaccinating their children against polio thinking it is a disease of generations past and in some cases a disease they have never heard of.

    How and where will the global effort to eliminate war in order to eradicate polio arise?

    There may be no organization in the world better suited to take on the challenge than Rotary International with its longstanding mission of peace and peace building, and a dedicated membership of 1.2 million Rotarians joined together in service work though Rotary clubs in 220 countries of the world including China and Russia.

    In our nuclear-armed, polio-infected world, President Kennedy’s statement that “mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind” remains true today.

    We must not be naïve in this effort. Self defense and international peacekeeping will always be needed. Peacekeeping and preventing war is much harder than fighting war.

    There will always be conflict – it is the tools of resolving conflict without war that must become the cultural norms. These are tools that already exist and that have been used to resolve every conflict that has ever been fought. These include:

    1. Diplomacy;
    2. Cooperation and collaboration on international programs like polio eradication;
    3. Appropriate foreign aid emphasizing the meeting of essential human needs of food, water, shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment and, finally;
    4. Adherence to international law, not unilateral action.

    We must abandon unexamined assumptions. Assumptions that war will always exist, that we can continue to wage war and survive, and that we are separate and not connected. When we awaken to the reality of interconnectedness we see that polio cannot be eradicated without ending war.

    As a ground up organization, Rotary International has had a university level peace fellows program for over 10 years pursuing understanding and international peace building. Individual Rotarians joined together to form a growing and active Rotarian Action Group for Peace in 2012. Eliminating nuclear weapons is an important step in this process. The Rotary Action Group for Peace has collaborated with the Nobel Peace Prize group Physicians for Social Responsibility and their international affiliate International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War to educate on the humanitarian consequences of even a very limited nuclear war. This has resulted in developing an international physician Rotary speaker’s bureau of 79 physicians in 21 countries speaking and engaging Rotary clubs the world over.

    This type of remarkable collaboration may be just the prescription for our very survival.

  • Similarities: 1914 and 2014

    David KriegerThe countries of Europe, it is said,
    stumbled into World War I, a war
    no one wanted and yet, and yet…it happened.
    After Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination,
    it became the Great War, taking the lives
    of a generation of young men too eager to fight
    in the battlefield trenches.

    What can we say about the confrontation
    of great powers, going on at this very moment,
    in Ukraine? Could the leaders of these countries
    be stumbling again, this time on a powder
    keg of nuclear alliance, misunderstandings,
    irrationality, false promises, political realities
    and unrealities, indignation and, above all,
    bravado, as always, bravado for God and country?

    David Krieger
    March 2014

    This poem was originally published by Truthout.

  • Ukraine and the Danger of Nuclear War

    The need for restraint and balance

    john_averyThe current situation in Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula is an extremely dangerous one. Unless restraint and a willingness to compromise are shown by all of the the parties involved, the crisis might escalate uncontrollably into a full-scale war, perhaps involving nuclear weapons. What is urgently required is for all the stakeholders to understand each other’s positions and feelings. Public understanding of the points of view of all sides is also very much needed.

    We in the West already know the point of view of our own governments from the mainstream media, because they tell us of nothing else. For the sake of balance, it would be good for us to look closely at the way in which the citizens of Russia and the Crimean Peninsula view recent events. To them the overthrow of the government of Viktor Yanukovitch appears to be another in a long series of coups engineered by the US and its allies. The list of such coups is very long indeed. One can think, for example of the the overthrow Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, or the coup that overthrew Chile’s democratically elected President, Salvador Allende, and replaced him with General Pinochet. There are very many other examples:

    During the period from 1945 to the present, the US interfered, militarily or covertly, in the internal affairs of a large number of nations: China, 1945-49; Italy, 1947-48; Greece, 1947-49; Philippines, 1946-53; South Korea, 1945-53; Albania, 1949-53; Germany, 1950s; Iran, 1953; Guatemala, 1953-1990s; Middle East, 1956-58; Indonesia, 1957-58; British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64; Vietnam, 1950-73; Cambodia, 1955-73; The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65; Brazil, 1961-64; Dominican Republic, 1963-66; Cuba, 1959-present; Indonesia, 1965; Chile, 1964-73; Greece, 1964-74; East Timor, 1975-present; Nicaragua, 1978-89; Grenada, 1979-84; Libya, 1981-89; Panama, 1989; Iraq, 1990-present; Afghanistan 1979-92; El Salvador, 1980-92; Haiti, 1987-94; Yugoslavia, 1999; and Afghanistan, 2001-present, Syria, 2013-present. Egypt, 2013-present. Most of these interventions were explained to the American people as being necessary to combat communism (or more recently, terrorism), but an underlying motive was undoubtedly the desire to put in place governments and laws that would be favorable to the economic interests of the US and its allies.

    For the sake of balance, we should remember that during the Cold War period, the Soviet Union and China also intervened in the internal affairs of many countries, for example in Korea in 1950-53, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and so on; another very long list. These Cold War interventions were also unjustifiable, like those mentioned above. Nothing can justify military or covert interference by superpowers in the internal affairs of smaller countries, since people have a
    right to live under governments of their own choosing even if those governments are not optimal.

    In the case of Ukraine, there is much evidence that the Western coup was planned long in advance. On December 13, 2013, US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Victoria Nuland said: “Since the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the United States has supported the Ukrainians in the development of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government… We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals.” Furthermore, Nuland’s famous “Fuck the EU” telephone call, made well in advance of the coup, gives further evidence that the coup was planned long in advance, and engineered in detail.

    Although Victoria Nuland’s December 13 2013 speech talks much about democracy, the people who carried out the coup in Kiev can hardly be said to be democracy’s best representatives. Many belong to the Svoboda Party, which had its roots in the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU). The name  was an intentional reference to the Nazi Party in Germany. According to Der Spiegal’s article about SNPU, “anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party’s platform”, which rejects certain minority and human rights. The article states that in 2013, a Svoboda youth leader distributed Nazi propaganda written by Joseph Goebels. According to the journalist Michael Goldfarb, Svoboda’s platform calls for a Ukraine that is “one race, one nation, one Fatherland”.

    The referendum regarding self-determination, which will soon take place in Crimea is perfectly legal according to international law. A completely analogous referendum will take place in Scotland, to determine whether Scotland will continue to be a part of the United Kingdom, or whether the majority of Scots would like their country to be independent. If Scotland decides to become independent, it is certain to maintain very close ties with the UK. Analogously, if Crimea chooses independence, all parties would benefit by an arrangement under which close economic and political ties with Ukraine would be maintained.

    We should remember that for almost all the time since the reign of Catherine the Great, who established a naval base at Sevastopol, the Autonomous Republic Republic of Crimea has been a part of Russia. But in 1954 the Soviet government under Nikita Krushchev passed a law transferring Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia still maintained its naval base at Sevastopol under an agreement which also allowed it to base a military force in Crimea.

    It seems to be the intention of the US to establish NATO bases in Ukraine, no doubt armed with nuclear weapons. In trying to imagine how the Russians feel about this, we might think of the US reaction when a fleet of ships sailed to Cuba in 1962, bringing Soviet nuclear weapons. In the confrontation that followed, the world was bought very close indeed to an all-destroying nuclear war. Does not Russia feel similarly threatened by the thought of hostile nuclear weapons on its very doorstep? Can we not learn from the past, and avoid the extremely high risks associated with the similar confrontation in Ukraine today?

    Lessons from the First World War

    Since we are now approaching the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, it is appropriate to view the crisis in Ukraine against the background of that catastrophic event, which still casts a dark shadow over the future of human civilization. We must learn the bitter lessons which World War I has to teach us, in order to avoid a repetition of the disaster.

    We can remember that the First World War started as a small operation by the Austrian government to punish the Serbian nationalists; but it escalated uncontrollably into a global disaster. Today, there are many parallel situations, where uncontrollable escalation might produce a world-destroying conflagration.

    In general, aggressive interventions, in Iran, Syria, Ukraine, the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere, all present dangers for uncontrollable escalation into large and disastrous conflicts, which might potentially threaten the survival of human civilization.

    Another lesson from the history of World War I comes from the fact that none of the people who started it had the slightest idea of what it would be like. Science and technology had changed the character of war. The politicians and military figures of the time ought to have known this, but they didn’t. They ought to have known it from the million casualties produced by the use of the breach-loading rifle in the American Civil War. They ought to have known it from the deadly effectiveness of the Maxim machine gun against the native populations of Africa, but the effects of the machine gun in a European war caught them by surprise.

    Today, science and technology have again changed the character of war beyond all recognition. In the words of the Nobel Laureate biochemist, Albert Szent Györgyi, “ The story of man consists of two parts, divided by the appearance of modern science…. In the first  period, man lived in the world in which his species was born and to which his senses were adapted. In the second, man stepped into a new, cosmic world to which he was a complete stranger….The forces at man’s disposal were no longer terrestrial forces, of human dimension, but were cosmic forces, the forces which shaped the universe. The few hundred Fahrenheit degrees of our flimsy terrestrial fires were exchanged for the ten million degrees of the atomic reactions which heat the sun….Man lives in a new cosmic world for which he was not made. His survival depends on how well and how fast he can adapt himself to it, rebuilding all his ideas, all his social and political institutions.”

    Few politicians or military figures today have any imaginative understanding of what a war with thermonuclear weapons would be like. Recent studies have shown that in a nuclear war, the smoke from firestorms in burning cities would rise to the stratosphere where it would remain for
    a decade, spreading throughout the world, blocking sunlight, blocking the hydrological cycle and destroying the ozone layer. The effect on global agriculture would be devastating, and the billion people who are chronically undernourished today would be at risk. Furthermore, the tragedies of Chernobyl and Fukushima remind us that a nuclear war would make large areas of the world permanently uninhabitable because of radioactive contamination. A full-scale thermonuclear war would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It would destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere.

    Finally, we must remember the role of the arms race in the origin of World War I, and ask what parallels we can find in today’s world. England was the first nation to complete the first stages of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialism and colonialism are linked, and consequently England obtained an extensive colonial empire. In Germany, the Industrial Revolution occurred somewhat later. However, by the late 19th century, Germany had surpassed England in steel production, and, particularly at the huge Krupp plants in Essen, Germany was turning to weapons production. The Germans felt frustrated because by that time there were fewer opportunities for the acquisition of colonies.

    According to the historian David Stevensen (1954 – ), writing on the causes of World War I, “A self-reinforcing cycle of heightened military preparedness… was an essential element in the conjuncture that led to disaster… The armaments race… was a necessary precondition for the outbreak of hostilities.”

    Today, the seemingly endless conflicts that threaten to destroy our beautiful world are driven by what has been called “The Devil’s Dynamo”. In many of the larger nations of the world a military-industrial complex seems to have enormous power. Each year the world spends roughly 1,700,000,000.000 US dollars on armaments, almost 2 trillion. This vast river of money, almost too large to be imagined, pours into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, and is used by them to control governments. This is the reason for the seemingly endless cycle of threats to peace with which the ordinary people of the world are confronted. Constant threats are needed to justify the diversion of such enormous quantities of money from urgently needed social projects into the bottomless pit of war.

    World War I had its roots in the fanatical and quasi-religious nationalist movements that developed in Europe during the 19th century. Nationalism is still a potent force in todays world, but in an era of all-destroying weapons, instantaneous worldwide communication, and global economic interdependence, fanatical nationalism has become a dangerous anachronism. Of course, we should continue to be loyal to our families, our local groups and our nations. But this must be supplemented by a wider loyalty to the human race as a whole. Human unity has become more and more essential, because of the serious problems that we are facing, for example climate change, vanishing resources, and threats to food security. The problems are soluble, but only within a framework of peace and cooperation.

    We must not allow the military-industrial complex to continually bring us to the brink of a catastrophic nuclear war, from which our civilization would never recover. The peoples of the earth must instead realize that it is in their common interest to join hands and cooperate for the preservation and improvement of our beautiful world.

  • Rejecting the Rule of Law

    The most important lesson one can acquire about US foreign policy is the understanding that our leaders do not mean well. They do not have any noble goals of democracy and freedom and all that jazz. They aim to dominate the world by any means necessary. And as long as an American believes that the intentions are noble and honorable, it’s very difficult to penetrate that wall. That wall surrounds the thinking and blocks any attempt to make them realize the harm being done by US foreign policy.
    — William Blum, former member of the US State Department, author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II

    alice_slaterMore than 5,000 satellites have been launched into orbit since the space age began. Today, eleven countries have space launch capability, with over sixty countries operating about 1,100 active satellites orbiting the earth providing a constant stream of data and information relied upon for critical civilian communications as well as for military operations by some. As we grow ever more dependent on the ability of these satellites to perform their essential functions without interruption, there are growing concerns that this useful technology is giving rise to a new battleground in space for the purpose of sabotaging or destroying the vital services our space-based communications now provide.

    The US and Russia have been testing anti-satellite technology (ASAT) since the space age began, and have even contemplated using  nuclear tipped ballistic missiles to destroy space assets. In 1967, the US and Russia  realized it would be in their interest to support the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which banned the placement of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in space, although they failed to ban the use of conventional weapons in space. And in 1972 they agreed to sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) to slow down the space race and the ability to harm each other’s assets in space. Unfortunately, George Bush walked out of the ABM treaty in 2002, and the race to weaponize space was on once again in full force. China is getting into the act too, having launched, in 2007, a device which destroyed one of its aging weather satellites orbiting in space. The US followed suit in 2008, destroying a non-functioning satellite, while both nations denied any military mission for their acts, claiming they were merely trying to destroy outdated satellites that no longer functioned.

    With the proliferation of military spacecraft such as imaging and communications satellites and ballistic missile and anti-missile systems which often pass through outer space, there have been numerous efforts in the UN Committee on Disarmament (CD) to outlaw the weaponization of space through a legally binding treaty. But the United States is having none of it. In the CD, which requires consensus to take action, the US has been the only nation to block every vote to begin negotiations on such a treaty, with Israel generally abstaining in support. Russia and China actually prepared a draft treaty to ban weapons in space in 2008, but the US blocked the proposal, voting against it each year thereafter when it was reintroduced for consideration, saying the proposal was “a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage”.

    While continuing to block a legally binding treaty to ban weapons in space, the US has recently begun to work with a group of nations in a new initiative that began in the European Union in 2008, proposing a “Code of Conduct  for Outer Space Activities“  which would lay out a non-binding set of rules of the road for a safer and more responsible environment in space. Some of its key objectives are to mitigate damage to satellites that could be caused by space debris orbiting the earth, to avoid the potential of destructive collisions, and to manage the crowding of satellites and the saturation of the radio-frequency spectrum, as well as to address direct threats of hostility to assets in space. At first, the US rejected any support for the Code, but has now agreed to participate in drafting a new version based on the third iteration from the European Union. Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, acknowledged in 2012 the necessity for a Code to deal with orbital debris and “other irresponsible actions in space”, while at the same time, noting that:

    It is important to clarify several points with respect to the code. It is still under development, we would not subscribe to any code unless it protects and enhances our national security, and the code would not be legally binding.

    In addition, the US is insisting on a provision in this third version of the Code of Conduct that, while making a voluntary promise to “refrain from any action which brings about, directly or indirectly, damage, or destruction, of space objects”, qualifies that directive with the language “unless such action is justified”. One justification given for destructive action is “the Charter of the United Nations including the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense”, thus lending legitimacy and codifying the possibility for warfare in space as part of the Code’s established norm. And while the Charter of the United Nations prohibits aggressive action by any nation without Security Council approval unless a nation acts in self-defense, we know there have been numerous occasions where nations have by-passed the Security Council to take aggressive action, often protesting they were acting in self-defense. Instead of banning ASAT development and warfare, this Code justifies such warfare as long as it’s done, individually and collectively, under the guise of “self-defense”. Thus despite lacking the force of law that would be established with a legally binding treaty, this new US version of the Code creates, as the norm it is proposing, a possibility for space warfare. Our world deserves better!

    Alice Slater is NAPF’s New York representative and serves on the Council of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

  • When Will They Ever Learn? The American People and Support for War

    When it comes to war, the American public is remarkably fickle.

    Lawrence WittnerThe responses of Americans to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide telling examples.  In 2003, according to opinion polls, 72 percent of Americans thought going to war in Iraq was the right decision.  By early 2013, support for that decision had declined to 41 percent.  Similarly, in October 2001, when U.S. military action began in Afghanistan, it was backed by 90 percent of the American public.  By December 2013, public approval of the Afghanistan war had dropped to only 17 percent.

    In fact, this collapse of public support for once-popular wars is a long-term phenomenon.  Although World War I preceded public opinion polling, observers reported considerable enthusiasm for U.S. entry into that conflict in April 1917.  But, after the war, the enthusiasm melted away.  In 1937, when pollsters asked Americans whether the United States should participate in another war like the World War, 95 percent of the respondents said “No.”

    And so it went.  When President Truman dispatched U.S. troops to Korea in June 1950, 78 percent of Americans polled expressed their approval.  By February 1952, according to polls, 50 percent of Americans believed that U.S. entry into the Korean War had been a mistake.  The same phenomenon occurred in connection with the Vietnam War.  In August 1965, when Americans were asked if the U.S. government had made “a mistake in sending troops to fight in Vietnam,” 61 percent of them said “No.”  But by August 1968, support for the war had fallen to 35 percent, and by May 1971 it had dropped to 28 percent.

    Of all America’s wars over the past century, only World War II has retained mass public approval.  And this was a very unusual war – one involving a devastating military attack upon American soil, fiendish foes determined to conquer and enslave the world, and a clear-cut, total victory.

    In almost all cases, though, Americans turned against wars they once supported.  How should one explain this pattern of disillusionment?

    The major reason appears to be the immense cost of war — in lives and resources.  During the Korean and Vietnam wars, as the body bags and crippled veterans began coming back to the United States in large numbers, public support for the wars dwindled considerably.  Although the Afghanistan and Iraq wars produced fewer American casualties, the economic costs have been immense.  Two recent scholarly studies have estimated that these two wars will ultimately cost American taxpayers from $4 trillion to $6 trillion.  As a result, most of the U.S. government’s spending no longer goes for education, health care, parks, and infrastructure, but to cover the costs of war.  It is hardly surprising that many Americans have turned sour on these conflicts.

    But if the heavy burden of wars has disillusioned many Americans, why are they so easily suckered into supporting new ones?

    A key reason seems to be that that powerful, opinion-molding institutions – the mass communications media, government, political parties, and even education – are controlled, more or less, by what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.”  And, at the outset of a conflict, these institutions are usually capable of getting flags waving, bands playing, and crowds cheering for war.

    But it is also true that much of the American public is very gullible and, at least initially, quite ready to rally ‘round the flag.  Certainly, many Americans are very nationalistic and resonate to super-patriotic appeals.  A mainstay of U.S. political rhetoric is the sacrosanct claim that America is “the greatest nation in the world” – a very useful motivator of U.S. military action against other countries.  And this heady brew is topped off with considerable reverence for guns and U.S. soldiers.  (“Let’s hear the applause for Our Heroes!”)

    Of course, there is also an important American peace constituency, which has formed long-term peace organizations, including Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other antiwar groups.  This peace constituency, often driven by moral and political ideals, provides the key force behind the opposition to U.S. wars in their early stages.  But it is counterbalanced by staunch military enthusiasts, ready to applaud wars to the last surviving American.  The shifting force in U.S. public opinion is the large number of people who rally ‘round the flag at the beginning of a war and, then, gradually, become fed up with the conflict.

    And so a cyclical process ensues.  Benjamin Franklin recognized it as early as the eighteenth century, when he penned a short poem for  A Pocket Almanack For the Year 1744:

    War begets Poverty,
    Poverty Peace;
    Peace makes Riches flow,
    (Fate ne’er doth cease.)
    Riches produce Pride,
    Pride is War’s Ground;
    War begets Poverty &c.
    The World goes round.

    There would certainly be less disillusionment, as well as a great savings in lives and resources, if more Americans recognized the terrible costs of war before they rushed to embrace it.  But a clearer understanding of war and its consequences will probably be necessary to convince Americans to break out of the cycle in which they seem trapped.

  • Avoiding Needless Wars, Part 10: Iran

    Martin HellmanThe interim agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear program has been praised by some as a diplomatic breakthrough and condemned by others as a prelude to nuclear disaster. A full appraisal must wait until we see what the follow-on agreements, if any, look like. In the meantime, here’s my take:

    1. The only alternative to negotiations is a military strike powerful and sustained enough to not only destroy Iran’s current nuclear program but also to prevent its resurrection. Such actions are impossible in the current political climate — and probably in any environment.

    Domestically, Americans are tired of wars, and our budget is already highly stressed. Internationally, we’ve developed a reputation as a bull in a china shop, so an American attack would be met with howls of indignation. It also would reinvigorate terrorism against Israel as Iran totally unleashed Hezbollah and Hamas.

    A strike which prevented Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapons would not be surgical or short lived and might be impossible. At a minimum, it would require hundreds of thousands of American “boots on the ground” for years on end, and cost trillions of dollars. It probably would cost tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives.

    Even with that level of effort, an American invasion probably would fail to achieve its objective since Iran would be a more powerful adversary than either Iraq or Afghanistan, both of which have failed to produce anything that might be called an American victory.

    In 2010, TIME magazine explained why then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates advised against attacking Iran: “Military action, Gates warned, would solve nothing; in fact it would be more likely to drive Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.”

    Gates’ warning was echoed last year by former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright: “If they [the Iranians] have the intent, all the weapons in the world are not going to change that. … They can slow it down. They can delay it, some estimate two to five years. But that does not take away the intellectual capital.”

    Also last year, Yuval Diskin, a former head of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, warned that, contrary to its intention, attacking Iran might accelerate its nuclear program.

    While a military strike is the only alternative to negotiations, the above arguments show that it is not a viable option. Diplomacy is our only real option, so the question becomes how to practice it most effectively.

    2. Given that diplomacy is our only viable option, we need to recognize that our past negotiating position – and the one Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is demanding be reinstated – is a non-starter.

    There’s no way Iran will dismantle its centrifuges and the rest of its nuclear program based on American promises of sanctions relief, especially when those promises might be rescinded by a new administration in 2015, over-ridden by Congress, or nullified by an Israeli attack.

    Our broken promises to Gaddafi add to Iran’s mistrust. In 2003, when he gave up his nuclear weapons program, President Bush promised that this good behavior would be rewarded. Yet, in 2011, our airstrikes played a key role in toppling and murdering Gaddafi.

    Iran also mistrusts us because we aided Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War, even though we knew he was using chemical weapons – an action we later used as part of our tortured logic for deposing him.

    For diplomacy to work, we will have to prove that we have experienced a fundamental change of heart with respect to Iran and are prepared to follow through on the promises we make.

    3. Iran appears to be only months away from being able to make at least a crude nuclear weapon. While there’s plenty of blame to go around, Israel and the US need to stop putting all of the onus on Iran and recognize that we, too, played a part in creating the current mess.

    Repeatedly threatening to attack Iran, including with nuclear weapons (a possibility threatened in President Obama’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review) would have made even the most rational Iranian leaders seek a deterrent. And their leadership over the last 30 years has often been far from rational. Fortunately, the current leadership appears more reasonable, and that’s an opening we need to test. If, instead, we maintain a bellicose posture, we will pull the rug out from under the moderates and empower the hardliners in Iran. Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar recently warned that American and Israeli hawks who mistrust diplomacy may be intentionally trying to strengthen hard-liners in Iran since they, too, oppose diplomacy.

    While our intention was to halt nuclear proliferation, we have actually encouraged it – particularly in Iran and North Korea – with our militarized approach to foreign affairs.

    I don’t like leaving Iran so close to having a nuclear capability, but the alternatives appear  far worse. It’s time to admit that our Iranian policy thus far has been a disaster and try something new – real diplomacy.

    Suggestions for Further Reading

    Harvard’s Belfer Center has a summary of the best arguments both pro and con on the interim agreement.

    Dr. Abbas Milani, Co-Director of the Iran Democracy Project at Stanford’s Hoover Institution has an excellent article assessing Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani.

    Handout #5 from my Stanford seminar on “Nuclear Weapons, Risk, and Hope” applies critical thinking to North Korea and Iran. All handouts are accessible from my Courses Page.

    This article was originally published by Defusing the Nuclear Threat.

  • Another War Is Not the Answer

    The actions leading toward US involvement in the civil war in Syria have been moving at a rapid pace. US officials, starting with President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, have been strong advocates of a limited attack on Syria to punish the Assad regime for an alleged chemical attack on its own citizens. It is unlikely, though, that a limited US military attack on the Syrian regime will result in a positive outcome.  More likely, it will cause additional death and untold sorrow to Syrian civilians, make Syrian President Assad a hero in the region, increase the possibilities of a broader regional war, increase tensions between the US and Russia, further undermine respect for international law, and diminish rather than uphold US credibility in the region and beyond.

    Below is a sketch of the sequence of events leading to where we are now; important choice points for the Congress with implications for the president and the American people; and some conclusions and recommendations.

    Sequence of Events

    1. The president threatens to take military action if Syria uses chemical weapons. This was a deterrent threat — a threat meant to prevent the Syrian government from using chemical weapons.
    2. The deterrent threat apparently fails when chemical weapons are used in the Syrian civil war, although it is not known with certainty what party to the conflict actually used them.
    3. US leaders accuse the Syrian government of being the perpetrator of the chemical attack, which is believed by US leaders to have killed over 1,400 people, including over 400 children.
    4. The president indicates his intention to punish the Syrian government by initiating a missile attack on Syrian government forces. Other administration officials, including the secretary of state, publically support the president.
    5. Some commentators argue that a US attack is necessary to maintain US credibility in the world, despite the fact that in this case it will pit the US against Russia, with each country still maintaining some 1,000 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert. That is, when the president makes a threat, even an ill-advised and dangerous one, it must be carried out so that US threats will be credible in the future.
    6. Other commentators point out that a US military attack on Syria would be illegal under international law since it is neither a military action made in self-defense nor one authorized by the United Nations Security Council. They also point out that US law requires Congress to authorize such an act of war.
    7. The president responds by ignoring concerns about the planned attack being a breach of international law, but says he will send the matter to Congress for consideration when Congress reconvenes, even though he believes that Congressional approval is not necessary for him to act as commander-in-chief.

    Congressional Choice

    1. Congress will have to make a choice to approve or not approve the president’s plan to initiate a US military attack on Syria.
    2. Even if Congress approves US military action, a likely possibility, a US attack on Syria will not be legal under international law.  Nor will such an attack be moral, in that it would likely kill large numbers of innocent Syrians and bring more suffering to the people of Syria. Nor would such an attack be prudent, with its potential to bog the US down in yet another war in the Middle East, at the expense of the people of Syria and US citizens at home.
    3. If Congress votes against approval of US military action, an unlikely possibility, the president will have to decide whether he bends to the will of Congress and backs down, or initiates the attack on his own authority with the potential to trigger a constitutional crisis in addition to all the other negative consequences of initiating an illegal war.

    Conclusions and Recommendations

    1. The American people should speak out against US military action that could involve the US in yet another war with unknown consequences and of unknown duration.
    2. Congress should say No to authorization of the president’s proposed military action against Syria.
    3. The president should back down on his threat to attack Syria. Following through on every presidential threat with military action is a dangerous game for the US, as well as for the world, particularly on threats that violate and undermine international law.
    4. The US should work with the United Nations, and specifically with Russia, on finding a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Syria and, in general, on resolving the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East that are poisoning the well of international relations.
    5. Those responsible for the chemical attack in Syria should be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution under international law. The US should also sign and ratify the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and become a member of the Court.

    This article was originally published by Truthout.