Do WMDs justify war? My question is posed from reading the Korea thread but rather then hijack I’ll make a new one.
My nation, Australia, recently went to war with Iraq, and may in days to come still do so with North Korea. We mouthed the customary platitudes beforehand of course about the ‘threat’ posed by this impoverished third world country to Australia and the rest of the world. And yet the reality is that Iraq had done nothing to my people, not harmed us in any way, she had done us no injury and offered us no offence. And nor has North Korea. No vital Australian interest is at stake but Master demanded it from Washington and so we tugged our fetlocks and obediently off to war we went and may do so again, and after North Korea perhaps yet another war in Iran will be our lot. Iran, another country that has done Australia no harm and threatens us I would suggest not in the least.
The ostensible reason in all cases is the possession of WMDs or the even more nebulous concept of ‘programmes’ where actual WMDs cannot be proved to exist. Now obviously I have the Iraqi experience in mind but I am not concerned so much for this topic with whether Iraq did or didnt actually have them or the extent of any she did possess. Thats been thrashed to death and we all have our opinions on the matter. Let’s assume for the following two questions that the WMDs held or developed by our target nation are quite real.
A. The first is whether the possession or development of WMDs in itself justifies war. Is war justified to prevent proliferation? Why? Why is Nation A allowed to possess WMD and Nation B must be invaded to deny them?
And does your answer depend upon the nature of the WMD, or do you distinguish between say chemical and nuclear weapons? Why is one malignant regime (Pakistan, Israel) allowed them and not another (North Korea, Iran)?
B. The second is whether the term WMD which covers nuclear, biological and chemical weapons is actually useful. Personally I dont see a lot of value in conflating nuclear weapons with chemical ones, they are so radically differently in kind and destructive effect that I dont see what useful purpose the term ‘WMD’ serves other then being convenient for fearmongering.
In closing, to explain something of my perspective I am an old fashioned lefty who has long believed in nuclear disarmament. I dont like the damn things and wish Pandora’s box hadn’t been opened. And yet I have lived under the threat of ‘the bomb’ all my life, its the world we live in, and I dont see we are making that world better by bullying and threatening those that seek to do what we have already done. And I also dont like flimsy pretexts and the manipulation of fear to justify war.
Totally agree here. The WMDs that Iraq had been alleged to have would have stood little chance of actually causing “mass destruction” to well-equiped American and British forces even if they had existed. As has been demonstrated, the conventional fire power that the US can bring to bear has much more potential in terms of actual destruction.
As I understand it, the defining factor of a WMD is it’s potential to remain in the environment into the future, although I have not heard any convincing arguments as to why the category does not include in that case cluster bombs and depleted uranium weapons which were used in Iraq.
I don’t think you will. This is the real demonstration of the bankruptcy of the Bush administrations foreign policy. If you already have viable WMDs, you don’t get attacked. Don’t have them, and your a sitting duck. North Korea got the message as soon as Bush made his axis of evil speech - get nuclear weapons quick or I’m coming after you. So, that’s what they’re doing, making sure the world know’s they’re doing it, whilst maintaining just enough of an air of mystery over how far along they are. If the Iranian government has any sense they will be doing the same thing. What is the alternative - don’t have WMDs and condemn yourself to having to prove a negative to people who don’t want to believe you? Which offers the greater security?
The point is not whether it is justified to go to war to prevent proliferation. The point is that the policies being followed are actively causing proliferation.
Well, the WoMD alone don’t justify the war. There was also the critical but now hardly discussed threat to th e"Free World" from these weapons and the likelihood of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.
Second, WoMD covers a wvery wide variety of weapons, most of which aren’t banned. Guns larger than 1/2 inch diameter barrels, (except shotguns), hand grenades, bombs of all sorts, and quite a number of conventional types of weaponry all fall into the category of WoMD. What was considerd critical in Iraq was BANNED WoMD which included nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. to wit:
Someone in GQ was so kind as to provide this cite.
The intent of the government has more to do with whether a country has WMD or not. If a country has WMD as a means of self defense and does not use them to threaten its neighbors or the interests of your country than there is no reason to oppose a country having them. However, regimes that have attacked and threatened its neighbors, or have active ties with international terrorism are a totally different matter. Once such a country gets its hands on WMD it becomes a much dire threat to the world and the price of removing that threat goes up exponentially.
Nuclear weapons are on a different level, but biological and chemical weapons are similar in that they are designed to indiscriminately kills large numbers of people with small amounts of weapon.
The fact that a country is much safer from attack if it has nuclear weapons did not become true with the advent of the Bush administration. There are several countries which have spent billions of dollars on nebolous weapons programs starting decades before Bush made that speech. How they acquired the knowledge that nuclear weapons could make them safer is not known for sure, but my guess is they heard about it from the May 1960 edition of “The Bleeding Obvious”.
has more nukes then needed to destroy the whole planet uncountable times
threatens other nations
invades other nations
has dreams of grandeur beyond any reason
actually is busy since decades to make these dreams of complete world dominance reality
is the only nation on the globe that actually already used nuclear weapons
is currently governed by people who invaded a sovereign nation and occupy it
is currently involved in advocating and realizing the development of yet other nuclear weapons
is in fact governed by people who wouldn’t be afraid at all of using those “mini nukes”
is a nation where a majority of the citizens applauded and still applaud the current lying, deceiving criminal government and its actions
makes the USA the greatest current threat to world peace.
So what is the solution?
Should the USA be put under pressure, be “contained” and if not willing to comply with the wish of the world that they stop forming a threat to the world, stop forcing through their wish to have and keep complete world dominance at all costs, dismantle their nukes and all the other so called WMD:
Should the USA be invaded in order to first of all overthrow the current government and next to destroy all these weapons.
If not, why not?
If yes, how do yo see that happen?
There was a cease fire in the 1990 Gulf War (in which SH invaded Kuwait) on the condition that Iraq would dismantle WMD programs and not develop them in the future.
But to answer the general question, no, WMDs in and of themselves do not justify war.
I addressed what exactly the term meant as a starting point for the discussion of the usefulness of the term. The implication that I tried to make was that the term was a very broad term that covered much of what is thought of as weapons of conventional warfare and therefore not an incredibly useful term as it applied to a wide variety of items that aren’t really the current subject of concern.
I also posted something in reference to the question about the difference between countries A and B:
What I meant by this is that the perceived level of threat is the difference bewteen country A and country B.
In my morning paper today, there is some alarmist talk by William Perry, former US Secretary of Defence. He is quoted today as saying the US and North Korea are drifting towards war, that “we are losing control of the situation” and most disturbingly that “there is an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities”. Granted, its just a former official voicing a private opinion, or is it? It appears to me, and not just from these particular comments that we are again seeing a deliberate raising of tension, fearmongering and the creation of a psychological readiness for war just as preceded the Iraq conflict. I note in this regard that the Australian prime minister first voiced the prospect of war with North Korea this week. I now suspect we will ultimately go to war in North Korea, and all along the way beforehand we will talk the talk of how it was ‘a last resort’ and that ‘we had no choice’ and we have ‘exhausted all the peaceful options’, all the usual rhetoric that means we go to war because we want to after a crisis of our own creation.
But I am getting sidetracked from my OP. If there is no inherent justification for war from WMDs, and I agree there isnt, then what is the case for war with North Korea over WMD? Its a sovereign nation that is presumably entitled to develop weaponry as is the prerogative of a sovereign nation. It is highly unlikely to attack any of its neighbours all of whom are more powerful and given the disparities in economic strength and military technology has no prospect of winning any such war should she start one. In the circumstances she is more likely to be the victim of an invasion then the initiator which for other nations we have accepted as a compelling reason to possess a nuclear deterrent.
What are we left with? Handing over weapons to Islamic terrorists? Well I suppose in theory she has the ‘capability’ to do this, as does the UK or France but what seems to be missing from this fear is any evidence of a history of or willingness to do this, and most of all any appreciation of consequence. If New York went bang, shortly afterwards the temperature of Pyongyang would reach 6,000 degrees, I know it, you know it and most assuredly the North Koreans know it so it doesn’t seem to me a plausible scenario.
In relation to my second question, I think for my own purposes I will try and stop using the term WMD. Its too broad and too vague. if I mean chemical or biological weapons I will say so, and if I mean nuclear weapons I will say as much.
This could be “saber rattling” by North Korea or it could be that they do have the capability. Are you willing to gamble the decimation of one of your cities? The world is becoming a smaller place daily and this is a question that the people of many countries will have to decide.
I’m not gambling anything and fearmongering doesnt work on me.
a. North Korea has no weapons capable of hitting Australia. Its a very long way
b. North Korea has no reason to nuke Australia
c. The figure you quote is not a representative of North Korea and has no official status
d. He has been refuted by the North Korean government
"I addressed what exactly the term meant as a starting point for the discussion of the usefulness of the term. "
What I saw you do was clarify that the use of the word WMDs in this conversation is in fact really shorthand for ‘banned WMDs’ whihc while itneresting wasnt really the issue of concern, whether they’re called WMDs or banned WMDs or flimdangles, the concern was more about why this particular troika of weapon types have been defined under a single category and are so commonly discussed as such. I can see the historical rationale to some extent as all being ‘terror weapons’, but I think its pretty obvious that theres a tendency to conflate the three for other reasons again, in short it has propaganda value.
The ‘terrorists will get them’ rationale also seems rather thin to me, given the history of the biological and chemical attacks that we have in fact seen (ie sarin in Japan and anthrax in the US), and the former USSR is probably a much better possibility for nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists than Iraq ever was. As Eolbo points out conflating these three as a terrorist threat from ‘rogue states’ simply doesnt hold very much water, thier effects and accessibility are very different.
I must say todays news did have me worrying as well, seemed awfully familiar.
Are you saying that the perception of threat is wrong, or are you saying that there is something other than the perception of threat that distinguishes one country from another in regards to NBC weapons?
While I understand the rationale behind the policy of nuclear non-proliferation in general, and the more concentrated desire to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of aggressive nations that seem likely to use them to invade and conquer, the genie is out of the bottle and there’s no stuffing it back in. Any nation that wants nukes will have them pretty soon.
Heck, in the long run it might improve international relations considerably if every nation knew that its neighbor had the capacity to turn the world into a smoldering cinderball.
Just think: if Iraq had had some nukes, America wouldn’t have dared to do what it just did.
A projection on the lower part of the leg of a horse or related animal, above and behind the hoof.
A tuft of hair on such a projection.
The joint marked by such a projection.
But no. However, a “surgical strike” I could see. It woudl have to be oin a case-by-case basis, but Korea should not have Nukes. So- sending in a few “smart missles” to target their program- that is a bitdifferent that War, with th eattendants deaths, expenses, etc.
But no. However, a “surgical strike” I could see. It woudl have to be oin a case-by-case basis, but Korea should not have Nukes. So- sending in a few “smart missles” to target their program- that is a bitdifferent that War, with the attendant deaths, expenses, etc.
