by Damozel | My childhood was haunted by the monster known to South Carolinians as "the atom bum." I lay awake nights worrying about a nuclear strike the same way children of earlier generations worried about the monsters under their beds or the crazy man reputedly locked in a neighbor's attic. It was my Boo Radley, but one I would never really come to terms with. We heard---from whispered rumors on the
playground of things overheard on the evening news or from adult
conversations--- that if it fell on our heads it would leave a crater
stretching to the next small town; we heard about shadows on walls in Japan;
we heard about radiation burns and radiation sickness and the poisoning of the air and water.
During a brief period---I don't know what prompted it or why it stopped---we used to have "bum" drills, where we'd hide under our desks. What good would hiding under a desk do? I asked my teacher. She told me to hush up and get back under the desk, but then admitted she didn't know.
During the late seventies, when I was a teen-ager, post-apocalyptic fiction abounded. (The best were--if you're looking for something to read-- were Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz and Russell Hoban's beautiful but challenging Riddley Walker.)
After the Cold War receded, people didn't talk about it so much for awhile. But of course it's never really gone away.
It's with a certain sense of inevitability that I now read in The Guardian that "five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists," have put together a manifesto warning NATO that it needs to face up to the nuclear option if it wants to be able to cope with the dangers facing the dangerous, fragmented world today. Specifically, they say we must keep open the option of a preemptive strike "to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destructions." (The Guardian)
While no monolithic superpowers may be planning to invade our countries (as we were told at various times in my little town the USSR was gearing up to do, primed to do, on the point of doing), our enemies today really are everywhere. This manifesto insists that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world." (The Guardian) The authors, who certainly have some distinguished credentials, are:
General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe. Shalikashvili was "the US's top soldier under Bill Clinton and former NATO commander in Europe."
General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato's military committee. "On his watch, Germany overcame its post-WWII taboo about combat operations, with the Luftwaffe taking to the skies for the first time since 1945 in the NATO air campaign against Serbia."
General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff. The Guardian mentions that he is an "accomplished organist." For some reason I find this slightly cheering.
Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff.
Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defense staff in the UK. (The Guardian)
These five military experts argue that NATO's decision-making processes need to be reformed, among other ways by "[a] shift from consensus decision-taking in NATO bodies to majority voting, meaning faster action through an end to national vetoes."(The Guardian)
But even among the five authors of the manifesto, the nuclear first-strike option is reportedly "controversial." (The Guardian). Lord Inge said that "to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence". (The Guardian).
But "[r]eserving the right to initiate nuclear attack was a central element of the west's cold war strategy in defeating the Soviet Union," the writer of the article remarks. Did we "defeat" the Soviet Union? I thought it just came apart at the seams, i.e., from internal pressures. But I don't really know; I must ask someone who does.
[General Klaus] Naumann [Germany] suggested the threat of nuclear attack was a counsel of desperation. "Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it. We don't know how to deal with this."
NATO needed to show "there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option", he said.(The Guardian)
A lot of people back in the day thought that the overt acknowledgment of the "nuclear option" led by a direct and inevitable path to nuclear proliferation. Won't letting it be known overtly that we are prepared to unleash hell against a significant threat simply encourage little and big countries that aren't part of NATO to reignite the Arms Race? And is that something we can afford these days? "Critics argue that what was a productive instrument to face down a nuclear superpower is no longer appropriate," says The Guardian.
Robert Cooper, an influential shaper of European foreign and security policy in Brussels, said he was "puzzled".
"Maybe we are going to use nuclear weapons before anyone else, but I'd be wary of saying it out loud."(The Guardian; emphasis added)
Which in a way is what I'm saying. Even if we want to keep this as an option---and I wasn't really aware that we'd let it go--- should we be announcing it to all these angry third world countries and terrorists?
I suppose that the authors of the manifesto feel that citizens of the western democracies need to acknowledge the risks and take responsibility for the policy. Perhaps they're right militarily; I don't know about diplomatically. From a moral standpoint, my religious convictions require me to find this stance deplorable, but I am well aware that my religion---emphasizing as it does a principle of nonviolence and persuasion---doesn't work against the sort of enemies these five military experts are envisionings.
.But all I can think right now through my reflexive dismay is "Hello, Mr. A. Bum. We meet again, old friend."
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