HOW TO STOP NATIONS FROM FIGHTING WARS

The idea presented here is not new, and it would not be effective in stopping insurgencies, or guerilla wars. However, modern technology has made it more practical to use to effectively prevent wars between nations.

Many years ago, after viewing a news program that deplored the killing of woman and children in wartime, I began to think about why it seemed acceptable to kill young men. I suppose that, if they are armed and shooting at you, it is okay to shoot back. However, armed combatants may have been drafted or subjects of indoctrination. They are still vital young men with full lives ahead of them. They are fathers, husbands and sons, and their loss is always deeply mourned.

The old idea that came to mind is to have the national leaders, who are morally responsible for the war, go out and shoot at each other. If they felt that their own lives, and the lives of their own families would be in danger, they would exhaust every diplomatic effort to settle issues before declaring a war.

All that would be necessary to accomplish this would be to spread the concept that the only legitimate target in a war would be the leadership of the contries involved. Once that particular genie is out of the bottle, no leader can know what the leadership of its potential enemy is thinking. Each country will be forced to develop the specialized weapons necessary as a precaution. With all countries armed to attack the leadership of a potential enemy, instead of its citizens or soldiers, no leader will feel safe enough to declare war.

The legitimate targets for such a war would be any place, building or area where the senior leadership of a country works, lives vacations, or is otherwise known to frequent. Any innocents who would normally be in those areas will be sure to stay away. The result will be that friends, family and all government employees will stay far away from high government officials and from any place that they may frequent. Countries with hardened underground facilities will immediately have to govern from those locations. Government employees and the families and associates of government leaders, could not be in any of their normal places. They would have to go elsewhere, or join the acting government in their hole in the ground. It would be hard to put forth the image of a leader bravely leading his country in wartime under those circumstances. Above-ground facilities would remain legitimate targets, and have to be protected or abandoned. War would become, if not openly dangerous, extremely difficult for those who would dare to declare it.

The usual weapons can be used by countries to attack the leadership of their enemies. More appropriate, however, would be a new generation of unmanned, small, remote-controlled aircraft that are currently under development in the United States and, I assume, elsewhere. I am not referring to systems like the Predator UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) which costs $40 million for four planes and their backup equipment.

I am referring to small inexpensive model plane sized aircraft equipped with a camera, transmitter, and a few pounds of high explosives that can be operated from afar like a video game. They can be cheaply mass-produced, released from miles away by a mother plane, or ship, and swarm to their target like bees. Even if none of these planes could get through, a small country could afford to keep the capital of a large country under steady bombardment for a long time.

These mini-aircraft could even be equipped with a missile to fly the last thousand feet to their target, or they can be released from a high altitude by a large drone to dive straight down. Attacks can be done at night using infra-red cameras, or homing devices could be planted at target sites. In today's world, this is all very low-tech. The main advantage, however, would be their low cost.

It’s a simple concept. If the lives of the leaders, their families and associates would be in danger they would never declare war. Even actions that could be interpreted as acts of war would be scrupulously avoided. A new era of diplomacy, moral suasion and economic pressure will be created.

This would not stop the nations of the world from getting together under the banner of the United Nations to take military action in any part of the world. A united humanity would have a major advantage in its effort to police itself. International action could be taken to bring peace to areas racked by insurgency, civil war and outright crime.

The first step would be to get national leaders to start thinking about their own personal vulnerability if they should get into a war. One way would be for any country to introduce a resolution into the United Nations that the only legitimate targets in a war are the leadership of the opposing nations. The motion need not be passed, just introduced. Another way would be for the United States, or any major nation, to declare that it is inhuman and immoral to target soldiers or civilians, and the only legitimate targets are the leaders who declared the war in the first place. The nation could state that this will be their new policy and recommend that it be the policy for every nation. These events are, of course, not likely to occur.

Perhaps the way to disseminate the idea is to publish it and try to get enough interest to have it widely discussed in the media. If it gets enough attention, no nation will know whether their potential enemies are developing this targeting ability. All nations will be forced to develop these weapons systems as a contingency against the probability that other nations will do so. In a way, this would be like a targeted version of the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) idea that has kept us out of nuclear war (so far).

We can certainly hope that articles such as this can be the beginning of this process.

LHS

CESSNA OVER THE CAPITOL

The article above on how to prevent wars, stressed that a government under attack cannot function. Coincidentally the point was unequivocally driven home by the Cessna mishap on May 11. On that day a slow flying, unarmed, single engine Cessna strayed into restricted airspace over Washington DC. As a result there was a chaotic evacuation of the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court and the White House. American Panthers’ plan to make war between nations impossible is to get it universally accepted that the only morally legitimate targets in wartime were the national leaders who declared the war in the first place. With national leaders under threat of attack, they would be sure to exhaust every non-violent option to avoid a war before actually declaring one. The Cessna incident proved that even low-tech, unsuccessful attacks can make it impossible for governments to function.

LHS

WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?

It may not be relevant to the issue of preventing war, but it should be noted how badly our government botched the defense of its capitol in the Cessna incident. The issue is multi-faceted because it points out how the administration covered up what should have been an important story, and how the media failed to ask the right questions and report what should have been considered to be real news. The F.A.A. reported that the Cessna got as close as four miles from the White House, which is two minutes away at its top speed of 125 mph. If a slow, innocent plane could get that close, one must wonder how close a faster, hostile, aircraft could get.

Then we were given the idiotic assurance form the Pentagon that since the plane only weighed 1500 pounds, it could have done little damage even if it crashed into the building. Well guys, what if it was carrying a bomb? Do they think that terrorists would pack their lunch, but forget the bomb?

Meanwhile, our President was riding a bicycle at the nearby Patuxent Wildlife Reserve while his White House was put on Red Alert. The Secret Service security detail, following him on bicycles and in other vehicles, apparently made the decision not to inform Mr. Bush about what was going on. They also decided that it was not necessary to consult the White House Chief of Staff, or other administration officials, on that decision. White House Spokesman, Scott McClellan explained that the President did not need to be informed because he himself was not in danger, and that evacuating buildings in Washington did not require the President’s authorization.

All of these decisions were made by some unknown, and un-elected, Secret Service agents were making those decisions.

LHS

IS THERE MORE THAN ONE WAY TO STOP NATIONS FROM STARTING WARS?

Newsletter Number 5 suggested that nations would not declare war against each other if their leadership thought that they would become the main target in the war that they declared. Another way to prevent wars would be to make it impossible for one nation to launch a surprise attack against another.

In order to launch a surprise attack, a nation would have to amass troops and equipment on their own soil, or on the land of a co-operating nation. Reconnaissance satellites can now photograph any area of the world in great detail. Cloud cover problems can be overcome with infrared cameras. Planes, tanks, troops and their movements can be seen and easily identified. All that would be necessary would be for any nation with satellite capability to offer for sale detailed photos of specified global coordinates to anyone who orders them. Charge plenty, of course. It would certainly be a profitable business to get into. Come to think of it, it would be a great business for the United States to get into. We can use some products to sell internationally just to get income to cover our budget deficit, and to help with the balance-of-payments problem.

LHS

WHAT IS MANKIND'S GREATEST CRIME?

Perhaps this headline is a bit overdramatic, and perhaps not. The greatest tragedy that can happen to mankind would be its total extinction. Therefore, causing that total extinction is the greatest possible crime. Arguably, the greatest crime committed thus far could be the creating of the circumstances for that extinction to occur.

The maniacal nuclear arms race of the cold war had, for the first time, made the total annihilation of the human race a real possibility. The combined cold war nuclear arsenal was enough to destroy humanity several hundred times. Considering the weight of the problem, it was discussed very little at that time, and almost not at all now. I suppose that people are just unable to deal with a problem of this magnitude and prefer to expel it from their consciousness. Unfortunately, most of those bombs still exist, and so the possibility of the extinction of mankind is still real.

What brings this forbidden subject to mind is a recent article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, printed on December 14th. The title of the article was “U.S. Weighs Whether to Build Some New Nuclear Warheads”. While the editorial page of the Journal is decidedly slanted to the right, the news stories seem to tell it like it is. Another example of a WSJ liberal headline was the day before when an article appeared on the front page entitled “At Medical Journals, Writers Paid by Industry Play a Big Role”.

During the cold war, there was an excuse, however idiotic, to build more nuclear warheads. It was called Mutual Assured Destruction and aptly abbreviated MAD. Today there is no such excuse. There are no superpowers ready to rain thousands of warheads on us. In the event of a terrorist nuclear attack, just what city would we retaliate against? Who would Jesus nuke? If terrorists in Iran bombed us, would we nuke Tehran and its civilian population?

The Wall Street Journal article forced the problem back into my consciousness because it revealed that the neocon loonies (my characterization) are pushing for the construction of new, and “more reliable” nuclear warheads. This comes fifteen years after the end of the cold war and at a time when we are pushing other countries to forgo their nuclear plans. The right is simply convinced that America has to have a special warhead called the “bunker buster” to destroy underground terrorist hideouts and arms caches. In their sick minds, it is also vital that we upgrade (rather than destroy) our current arsenal. In November Congress voted $25 million to fund research into this and other sturdier, more reliable nuclear warheads. Lucky us!

Of course, W, in his infinite ignorance, has announced a plan to cut back on our current nuclear arsenal. By 2012 he plans a 40% reduction from about 10,000 warheads to 5900. Meanwhile, he would like to convince Iran and North Korea to be happy and secure with an arsenal of zero while we modernize our arsenal.

At this point it seems as if all attempts at worldwide nuclear disarmament have ceased. In fact, the media seem to never mention the idea at all. Shouldn’t someone care? Shouldn’t we at least want to know the whereabouts of the old Soviet arsenal? Doesn’t anybody understand that the explosion of any one of the old Soviet ten or twenty megaton bombs would annihilate a city of any size, and that the radioactive cloud could kill an equal number of people?

The Bush Administration claims that the construction of a new generation of nuclear warheads can be done without testing. However, like the other things that Bush claims, the rest of the world does not believe him. Current plans are to use the new generation of warheads to replace the old generation. This would make our nuclear arsenal easier to maintain, less likely to be full of duds, smaller and cleaner. This, according to the administration, is not an expansion of our arsenal, just an improvement!

At this time the threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan has subsided, at least temporarily. It would be great if this hiatus could be used to encourage those two nations to give up their nukes, but why should they while we keep improving and maintaining ours?

Meanwhile, the threat of nuclear war between Israel and Iran is growing. Iran could have nuclear weapons in two years. It’s an open secret that Israel has had them since the 1960s. To make things worse, the Israelis believe that if Iran had a nuclear bomb, they would use it. If Iran ever gets close, the Israelis will feel that they have no choice but to employ another pre-emptive strike.

It is becoming much less difficult to make a nuclear bomb, or to buy one, or to accumulate fissionable material, or to develop a timed, low-tech, delivery system. The danger can only get worse.

Nuclear arms are a result of a coalition of the greedy, the insecure and the incompetent. The greedy make a profit on these weapons. The insecure are convinced that they need them to be safe. The incompetent (the rest of us) cannot seem to find a way to convince the insecure that these weapons are more of a danger than a protection.

LHS