Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited — I’m only citing the opening paragraph of this article because the entire article will curdle your blood. These are not a couple of weird neo-cons promoting this. And the specific target appears to be Afghanistan and the apparently out-of-control Helmand Province where NATO is losing a battle. The Russians must be laughing their asses off. And there is general concern about nukes being bought and sold on the open market. This sort of “nukem” thinking is going to increase over time as less and less of the top thinkers have actually witnessed a nuclear explosion. Many old-timers believe that seeing one of these bombs go off during the testing years actually prevented anyone from wanting to use one. Those days are over. What is not discussed is the fact that dropping one of these devices anywhere will result in the collapse of the world’s financial markets. This could be a get-rich quick scheme too if you go short just before detonating the bomb. Read this article
excerpt:
The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the wests most senior military officers and strategists.
found by Howard Harawitz
related link:
Last March the Bush administration tells Livermore to update the H-bomb
We all probably expect the neocon nutballs to be nukem nutballs, too. It fits the dementia.
so the only way to prevent a nuclear war is to start a nuclear war?
Do not be fooled with all this BS talk, no one will nuke anyone. It’s just a scare tactic. Russia is doing the same thing, and China, and North Korea. Bullies barking at each other at school. But not a real fight!
Scary thing is, this isn’t Dubbya’s people. These are legit former military commanders from the US and Europe, including Clinton’s Top Soldier. These aren’t neocons, and that’s even scarier.
Dvorak sez – “What is not discussed is the fact that dropping one of these devices anywhere will result in the collapse of the world’s financial markets.”
I’m pretty sure facts are testable things, what you have here is your belief which is not testable. You believe that nukes in Afghanistan will collapse the world market’s – Markets would probably not give a whiff. Really. Folks are cold that way. But it’s nice to see that the Church of No Nukes still has it’s faithful cheerleaders. You go Dvorak.
Lovely! Fireworks! On a desert! I hope they put it live on TV! Otherwise nobody will notice…
Seriously, what *exactly* would you target in Afghanistan? Or do you target the entire country? How many nukes for that? 10? 20? 100?
To use one against a Middle East country would only serve to unite every Middle Eastern country hostile to the West, and maybe start WWIII… Which may kill several million, and thus reduce the number of unemployed people in the West…
Since 9/11 I feel like I ended up in some parallel universe akin to a bad sci-fi movie. A really bad one…
How is this any different than the cold war planning, which included tactical nukes? The military establishment of that era was known for pushing towards firing their best weapons at the slightest provocation. The politicians always whacked them down, fortunately.
Yeah, well, it might come down to a nuke going off somewhere, and NIMBY for sure. I hope it does not come to it.
The economy would probably have a small blip, but there would not be any long term effects unless the economy was too close to the edge to start with, and it might be.
Clinton’s “Top Soldier” is what I think of as a “brittle” leader. He did not have the flexibility to handle stuff happenning that he did not like, and he nearly set off a shooting war with Russia back in the Balkans when they landed a plane at an airport against his orders. Clinton should have canned his ass.
The 5 authors are military has-beens. Here’s one:
“Henk van den Breemen
An accomplished organist who has played at Westminster Abbey, Van den Breemen is the former Dutch chief of staff.”
What do the thousands of other officers, retired or otherwise from the other 21 NATO countries also have to say about this plan if individual opinions are so important?
Not to mention the opinion of the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that NATO falls under.
But first, I’d suggest the reporter start by getting the organization’s name right: “NATO” (as in North Atlantic Treaty Organization), not “Nato,” as in “Mortimer Nato.”
What would they do with a nuke anyway? Level a whole city to get hidden insurgents?
RBG
that seems to be a general thought for US leaders: we’re in deep shit, let’s use nukes.
Deep shit can be anthing from Afghanistan to a planetoid on collision course. No matter, if things get bad, nukes are gonna help us out, right?
I say there’s a lot of potential suicide bombers in Washington.
pj
Cripes, this is unthinkable. One nuke leads to many nukes. It is not an option.
Pre-emptive means unprovoked, based on intelligence gathered by the same patriots who planned the war in Iraq. A nuke’s only value is as a deterrent, when used they are indiscriminate and offer no strategic advantage.
The key item here I think is that NATO military leaders are revealing that they don’t have control of troops sufficient to respond to perceived threats–so they want to opt for nukes. It is merely the cheapist military response.
What is absent from all these hammers, is recognizing that not all the worlds problems and solutions are nails.
So–lets recognizing what they are “really” saying, deal with the real world, find solutions that will actually work?
Now to find that other post on how liberal western democracies can deal with intolerance. I wasn’t thinking of nuking them, but that would be fighting fire with fire—thermonuclear fire===unless god wishes to step in.
I don’t see the problem here. Smoke ’em if ya got ’em.
If you nuked Afghanistan how could you tell … the entire place already looks like a wasteland.
Just send a copy of “The Day After” to these planners. Word was when Regan saw it, he was so disturbed by it, that he started increased nuclear talks with the Soviet Union. I know when I first saw it, it scared the hell out of me.
A nuke is just another weapon. I would love to see one go off. At a minimum I would love to see above ground testing resumes and filmed in full HD for showing at IMAX theaters.
Tactical planning should include all scenarios, up to and including finding a way to make the Sun go nova, if necessary to prevent the enemy from winning.
#18. Yes, scared the hell out of me too.
Expect the price of opium to skyrocket
18, only Democrats can get credit for reducing the chances of a nuclear war–Reagan only made the world more dangerous.
Didn’t you get the memo?
I hope your kidding. Here is a quote from Wikipedia on the matter
1. we went to Afghanistan to fight a war..We lost the person we were looking for.
2. We invaded Iraq, and took 80% of the forces THERE, from afghanistan.
3. under armed, under man’d, WHAT the HELL are we still doing THERE.
4. A NUKE?? To BLOW up 1 county Sized area??
5. Bigger question…WHERES THE OIL FROM IRAQ?? They are selling it to OTHER NATIONS, and its NOT coming back to the USA, and neither IS’ the money..
During the cold war, NATO had a well-known policy that it would NOT rule out the use of nuclear weapons in response to a purely conventional war – the idea was that since the Soviets had significantly more conventional weapons (i.e. tanks) than western Europe was capable of defending against, then using nuclear weapons must remain an option.
The West also had a policy known as mutually assured destruction (MAD) – which was that the response to an attack on the west with nuclear weapons would result in a massive, overwhelming counter-attack, inevitably leading to the total destruction of all sides.
The purpose of both policies was to deter the idea of any attack.
It seemed to work – in the sense that the proxy wars between the West and the Soviets remained limited to low-level conflicts using conventional weapons.
Against the “new” threat of religious extremists potentially armed with nuclear weapons, we need a similar policy. But the idea of destroying the world in a nuclear war seems to be attractive to the religious extremists. So, instead, the policy needs to be aimed at the “governments” which are supposed to limit the violent aims of their citizens.
This means the Saudis, Afganistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, etc need to realize that if they cannot prevent the extremists within their population from attacking the West, they will face total destruction.
Agreed, but what politician would have the balls to propose such a doctrine. None that I can see.
awesome logic, lets prevent someone else from starting a nuclear war by starting it before them.
I could be mistaken, but I don’t think NATO has ever advocated a “don’t strike first” nuclear policy. They’re just crossing “USSR” off the cover of their playbook and replacing it with “THE MIDDLE EAST.”
#26, Chuck, the people in the “Arabic” countries in the Middle East and the Holy Land have a culture based on bargaining in the market square. There is no “truth in advertising” They lie, brag, slander, bluster, etc as part of the bargaining process, and this permeates the entire culture.
It carries over into politics, and international politics, everywhere.
Consider how they refused to believe the Taliban actually was going to try to enforce strict Sharia law, until the Taliban moved in and started beating up people for smoking cigarettes, wearing the wrong kind of pants, trimming their beards, etc. The locals are so used to everyone lying that they just cannot believe the plain truth unless they see it with their own eyes. They are not going to believe that they are going to get blown up until the blast wave knocks them on their butts.
Actually, those “Arabs” remind me of the lefties. They believe what they feel like believing, until reality smacks them, and then they start screaming about insensitivity, Bushitler, etc.
Yup, they’re nuts.
I’m with #6. How would dropping a nuke on Afghanistan cause a collapse of the financial markets?
For the simple reason that, in this world of immediate news, the markets are more volatile and responsive to ANYTHING that could be seen as destabilizing. Look how oil prices jump whenever anyone from Opec coughs.
However, while we’re at it….WHERE does it say anything about nuking Afghanistan??? The paper relaesed is talking about two different subjects relating to NATO: A) The half-assed ~my words~ management of NATO forces in Afghanistan with regard to the Taliban due to the way decision-making is handled within NATO (which allows those not contributing any forces to micro-manage/manipulate those operations); B) The reiteration that if it seems likely one of these outside threats looks to be gearing up to attack the West that NATO won’t hesitate to defend using a nuclear weapon.
There are major issues with NATO and how it’s run, especially since Germany and France decided a while back to create a second force outside of NATO with which to handle things—with the eventual aim of moving NATO out. Also, the aforementioned special rules that several countries like to place upon their own troops, etc…All in all it needs an overhaul.
As for the nuke, people are correct. Some radicals would *hope* to incur a nuclear war and point to it as the coming Apocolypse, or a sign of the Mahdi coming back, etc…or just incite more strife. True, but in some cases we just have to do what we must and weigh each option carefully.
If anything, the report shoudl serve notice to people on both sides of the Atlantic not to take anything for granted. The peacetime dividends people took after the fall of the Soviet Union are long gone.