Pentagon shocker
U.S. threatens nuclear first strike
By Fred Goldstein
The Bush administration has dramatically escalated its
campaign of global intimidation by going public with portions
of the Pentagon's latest classified plans for the use of
nuclear weapons and its targeting of China, Russia, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and
Libya with these weapons.
By clearly throwing out the policy of using nuclear weapons
for deterrence in favor of using them as part of the regular
arsenal of warfare, the Bush administration and the Pentagon
have openly demonstrated to the world that military madness and
the quest for imperialist world domination are inseparable.
Bush has thrown down the challenge to the anti-war movement
and the working class and oppressed of the whole world to
escalate the struggle against Washington's war plans. The
Pentagon has expanded its definition of the so-called "war
against terrorism" and enumerated a long series of instances in
which it would carry out a nuclear attack, including "in the
event of surprising military developments." This is a policy
carte blanche that can cover just about any situation in any
country that the Pentagon cares to designate.
The planning revealed by the Nuclear Policy Review (NPR)
document "reverses an almost two-decade-long trend of
relegating nuclear weapons to the category of weapons of last
resort," wrote William Arkin in the Los Angeles Times of March
10. Arkin, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins and an adjunct
professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Airpower
Studies, wrote that the NPR "offers a chilling glimpse into the
world of nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius,
they cover every conceivable circumstance in which the
president might wish to use nuclear weapons-planning in great
detail."
USSR's existence deterred nuclear threats
In the new policy guidelines, the Pentagon is dealing with
the fact that the nuclear arsenal it built up during the
struggle to destroy the Soviet Union and socialism left it with
a devastating military technology that it could not use for
ordinary warfare. Furthermore, the very existence of the Soviet
Union was a deterrent to Washington threatening smaller,
oppressed countries with nuclear weapons. The NPR seeks to
remedy this situation.
In the NPR, "Defense Department strategists," continued
Arkin, "promote tactical and so-called 'adaptive' nuclear
capabilities to deal with contingencies where large nuclear
arsenals are not demanded. They seek a host of new weapons and
support systems, including conventional weapons and cyber
warfare capabilities integrated with nuclear warfare."
The review calls for incorporation of "nuclear capability"
into many of the conventional systems now under development.
For example, an extended-range conventional cruise missile in
the works for the U.S. Air Force "would have to be modified to
carry nuclear warheads if necessary." The F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter should be modified to carry nuclear weapons. Starting
in April, research is to begin on fitting an existing nuclear
warhead into a new, 5,000-pound earth-penetrating bomb.
The NPR completely abandons the pretext of the so-called
"war against terrorism" in using nuclear weapons. It cites
examples of situations when it would use them: if the DPRK
invaded South Korea; if Iraq attacked Israel; if the People's
Republic of China was at war with Taiwan.
All three instances would be examples of nations that have
been oppressed by imperialism fighting back against U.S.-backed
regimes that had been set up to defeat the national liberation
struggle, or the socialist revolution, and protect the interest
of the giant U.S. banks and multinational corporations. In
other words, if any of the major clients of U.S. imperialism
were to be militarily threatened, the Pentagon would use
nuclear weapons.
The most immediately ominous aspect of the release of these
plans is the timing. The classified information revealed in the
documents leaked to the Los Angeles Times of March 10 has been
known since Jan. 8, when it was sent to Congress as part of the
nuclear policy review. Deputy Secretary of Defense for
International Policy J.D. Crouch and other officials testified
publicly on the unclassified sections of the document. The
Pentagon refused to answer questions about any of the
details-until this leak.
Timed for Cheney's trip
Whereas the Pentagon was tight-lipped in January, the
administration is now relishing these revelations. They have
been suspiciously timed to coincide with the 11-nation tour
Vice President Dick Cheney is making. He is on his way to the
Middle East to line up support for a U.S. war against Iraq.
The document emphasizes using nuclear weapons against
governments that have "weapons of mass destruction." The U.S.
propaganda campaign aimed at opening up a big war against Iraq
is exclusively predicated on the supposed possession by Baghdad
of "weapons of mass destruction." The timing and the
terminology are unmistakably aimed at bringing down the regime
of Saddam Hussein.
This goal on the part of Washington has nothing to do with
eliminating "weapons of mass destruction." It is the U.S.
military that is overloaded with enough means of mass
destruction--nuclear, chemical and biological--to destroy the
world several times over. U.S. imperialism is the only country
that ever used nuclear weapons and has used nuclear extortion
as a weapon of its diplomacy for over 55 years.
This campaign has everything to do with intimidating the
Iraqi government, trying to engender splits and demoralization
as a precursor to invasion. The goal is to establish a U.S.
puppet government that would turn over the fabulous wealth
represented by the 100 billion barrels of Iraq's oil reserves
to the oil monopolies behind the Bush administration. These
threats are also calculated to intimidate the regimes of the
Middle East into collaborating in the effort to bring down the
Iraqi government in order to avoid a massive war.
To emphasize the U.S. determination to go to war, Cheney has
been in London asking for the "possible commitment of 25,000
British troops to topple Saddam Hussein," according to the
Mirror of March 11. The British imperialists are extremely
reluctant to be pulled into a U.S. war, but the Blair regime
feels duty bound to comply with the demands of its
overlord.
Meanwhile, thousands have taken to the streets against
British participation in the war against Iraq and the cabinet
may split over it.
Media blitz to intimidate the world
It is most noteworthy that the ruling class here and its
media have been relatively passive and silent about this
development. This contrasts with 1991 in the period prior to
launching the Gulf War against Iraq, when President George Bush
Sr. threatened that if Iraq used chemical weapons, the U.S.
might retaliate with nuclear weapons. Bush was later forced to
write that he did not really intend to carry out the
threat.
The mood in the present Bush administration is quite
different. Defense Secretary Colin Powell went on CBS's "Face
the Nation" on March 10 and characterized the NPR as "prudent"
planning. "We think it is best for any potential adversary out
there to have uncertainty in his calculus."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's
"Meet the Press" that Washington wanted "to send a very strong
signal to anyone who might try to use weapons of mass
destruction against the United States that they'd be met with a
devastating response."
And Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, told CNN's "Late Edition" on the same day that "this
preserves for the president all the options a president would
want to have in case this country, its friends and allies were
attacked with weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear,
biological, chemical or, for that matter, high explosives."
In other words, far from being defensive about the leak of
this classified information, the administration had a
coordinated media blitz to arrogantly defend the NPR and to
proclaim before the world that any oppressed country targeted
by Washington and Wall Street that tries to develop any
significant deterrent to aggression by the super-armed
superpower risks nuclear destruction.
Whether or not this military madness will lead to a split in
the ruling class or not, and thus to a struggle over policy, is
a matter of sheer speculation. Indeed, at this point the New
York Times finally found its voice, after a period of delay,
and wrote an editorial, "America as Nuclear Rogue."
The Times pointed out that such a policy could force other
countries to develop nuclear weapons as a matter of deterrent
and "the unrestrained use of nuclear weapons in war could end
life as we know it. Nuclear weapons are not just another part
of the military arsenal. They are different, and lowering the
threshold for their use is reckless folly."
At present, and for the last several months, the Times seems
to be quite lonely in its attempts to restrain the Bush
administration and the Pentagon. The Democratic Party
establishment has been down on its knees praising Bush in his
war drive as he sends troops to the Philippines, Yemen, and the
former Soviet republic of Georgia, and brought devastating
destruction to the people of Afghanistan. They have uttered
only the meekest and most ineffectual protests about this or
that detail of the war.
It is important to note that the Times does not really
bemoan the suffering of the mass of the people in the colonial
world who would be incinerated in a nuclear attack. They bemoan
the end of life as we know it, in general. They fear the
escalation that would bring down capitalist civilization along
with everything else.
They are quite ready to put up with the horrendous bombs
euphemistically called daisy cutters, along with napalm, smart
bombs and all the other conventional means of destroying the
workers and oppressed in their struggles. They do not want to
call back the F-16s or the Apache helicopters that are
devastating Palestinian towns and refugee camps. And they are
fully prepared to support a full-scale attack on the people of
Iraq, just as they have backed the genocidal sanctions.
Madness of finance capital
What the Times does not point out is that the madness lying
behind the military minds in the Pentagon think-tanks is the
madness of the finance capitalist profiteers and the
multinationals that will stop at nothing to plunder and loot
the globe for profit. That is where the madness begins and that
is what the military was designed to serve in the first
place.
The movement must never wait for the moderates in the ruling
class to bring the Pentagon to its senses. Reaction and
military adventure are an integral part of imperialism in its
superpower phase. And now that the USSR no longer stands in
their way, the military planners feel like the Roman emperors
whose legions conquered the world.
But the difference between the Roman emperors and the modern
rulers in the U.S. is that this ruling class will have to
ultimately face a worldwide working class, including especially
the working class right here at home. The workers will
inevitably wake up and resist not only the nuclear plans of the
Pentagon but the system of exploitation that is its
foundation.
Reprinted from the March 21, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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