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.
what the fuck is wrong with these people?
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.
#4 I was going to do the same thing you did. Pair this with Russia’s statement from this week about their right for pre-emptively strike whomever they saw fit.
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.
1. god. Most of the “manifesto’s” writers served under liberal or socialist administrations including:
“US’s top soldier under Bill Clinton”
Social-Democrat/Liberal Dutch government’s Chief of Staff
Socialist François Mitterrand’s Military Chief of Staff
RBG