James K Galbraith, Guardian Comment is Free, January 25:
Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “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.”
In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.
Under this doctrine, the US could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country’s presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country’s nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.