The Causes of Perpetual War(Thomas Hobbes) | ||
| Competition | Diffidence | Glory |
| Gain | Safety | Reputation |
| Predation | Preemption | Deterrence |
The Causes of Perpetual Peace(Immanuel Kant) | ||
| Democracy | Trade | Intergovernmental Organizations |
Contents
An Unnecessary War
The Logic of War
The Dogs of War
Sacrificing Children for Guns
A Responsibility to Protect
Firestorm
No Quarter
A War Against Evil
American Justice
The Honored Dead
Death of the Frontier
The Right to Personal Security
Global Military Expenditure and the Arms Trade Treaty
Korea
Sri Lanka
War Is Peace
The Sum Of All Fears
(National Insecurity, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 4, Season 1, Vice, 2020)Robert Kaplan (1952) [Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security]:
Unlike America, China does not come armed with a missionary approach to world affairs.
It has no ideology or system of government it seeks to spread.
Moral progress in international politics is an American goal, not a Chinese one. …
China does not pose an existential threat.
(The Geography of Chinese Power, The Revenge of Geography, Chapter 11, Random House, 2012, pp 199-200)
P W Singer (1974):
From 2002 to 2008, [in the aftermath of 9/11, the annual US] defense budget has risen by 74% to $515 billion.
This figure does not include … the cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq …
If you include these, the total Pentagon budget is at its highest level in real … terms since 1946 [—] more than the peak spending during the Korean and Vietnam wars …
(p 61)
Michael Shermer (1954):
The United States alone has spent upwards of $6 trillion since 9/11 on two wars and a bloated bureaucracy in response to the loss of 3,000 lives — less than a tenth of the number of people who die annually on American highways.
(The Moral Arc, 2015, p 86)
Neta Crawford: Professor of Political Science, Boston University
The United States borrowed to pay for [the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan —] we didn't tax.
[The] United States has [already] paid $316 billion in interest on the borrowing …
[The US will ultimately] pay $7 trillion in interest alone on a war that has so far cost $4.4 trillion.
(Anti war history, ABC Big Ideas, 22 July 2014)
John Kennedy (1917 – 63):
Now, to anyone who works in the laboratories today a 30 megaton weapon is perhaps not as sophisticated as a 60 or 70 or 80 megaton weapon, but it's still many, many, many times, dozens of times stronger, than the weapon that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
How many weapons do you need and how many megatons do you need to destroy?
I said in my speech what we now have on hand without any further testing will kill 300 million people in one hour, and I suppose they can even improve on that if it's necessary.
(Susan Bellows, JFK, PBS American Experience, WGBH, November 2013)
Niall Ferguson (1964):
Given that the population of the world in 1992 was approximately 5 billion, nuclear weapons gave the superpowers the notional ability to destroy the entire human race 15 times over. …
[The] real cost of a nuclear warhead … is almost certainly lower today than at any time since the Manhattan Project achieved its goal at a cost of $2 billion 1945 dollars.
Converted into prices of 1993, that figure rises tenfold: enough to buy 400 Trident II missiles.
The fact that France could almost double its nuclear arsenal from 222 warheads in 1985 to 436 in 1991 while increasing its defence budget by less than 7% in real terms speaks for itself.
In terms of "bangs per buck" — destructive capability in relation to expenditure — military technology has never been cheaper.
(The Case Nexus, Basic Books, 2001)
Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 74):
[Organised warfare,] is not a human instinct.
It is a highly planned and co-operative form of theft.
(The Harvest of the Seasons, The Ascent of Man, Chapter 2, BBC, 1973)
The Dogs Of War
Cry Havoc!
And let slip the dogs of war.
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Julius Caesar, 1599.
Extermination is a long and very tiring business.
— Horatio Kitchener (1850 – 1916), Earl of Khartoum.
(P W Singer, Wired For War, Penguin, 2009)
(Inhuman Kind, Vice, 2016)
Greg Bear (1951):
A team of fifty agents from the FBI and the Secret Service had stormed a Muncrow Building in downtown Portland two years previously …
What … brought down nearly all of the team within twenty seconds, cutting them into bloody gobbets had been an Israeli Solem-Schmidt D-7, a self-directed, insect-carriage automated cannon. …
Before it had run into a brick wall, jammed and blown its super-heated barrels into shrapnel, the
D-7 had all by itself killed forty-three agents.
(Quantico, Harper, 2006, pp 64-5)
Nick Turse (1975):
[All] sorts of lethal enhancements [to unmanned vehicles] are in various stages of development to enable American troops to more effectively kick down the doors of the poor in 2025.
(Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums, 7 January 2007)
Samuel Butler (1835 ‒ 1902):
… I cannot think it will ever be safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of any machine.
(Erewhon, 1872)
Sacrificing Children for Guns
Wayne LaPierre (1949) [Executive Vice President, National Rifle Association]:
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Marcus Luttrell (1975):
I know you're watching, so pay attention.
You hate my freedom, my religion and my country, and I will never, never surrender my rights to your terror.
I'll say what I think, worship according to my beliefs and raise my children how I see fit, and I defend it all with the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
I cower to no one because I am the National Rifle Association of America and I am freedom's safest place.
Student:
[The] fact that we can't go to school and feel safe every day when we are supposed to feel safe is a problem.
And fact that our senators are sacrificing us for NRA money is a problem.
Congress has one job and that's to make laws, so make some law.
Brian DeLay [Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley]:
Private arm sales just exploded after 2005 … with the advent of Barack Obama as president.
[The] gun lobby, led most especially by the National Rifle Association, was phenomenally successful in creating [the] illusion that government is the enemy; that what we have is … gun manufacturers who are [simply trying to] satisfy the needs and the desires of freedom-loving Americans, and the government is threatening to … get in between them and to stop them.
[It was] this fear based campaign [that] helped convince millions of Americans in a time of declining crime that they were surrounded by danger and that the only way that they could be safe, and … keep their family safe, [was not simply to become] a gun owner, but a person who is always armed and is always ready and is ever alert for threats.
Josh Harkinson:
[The NRA] polices not only Washington but the gun industry itself.
So in the past when some gun makers like Smith & Wesson for example have attempted to compromise with political forces … and put in place some reasonable controls on preventing sales to criminals … the NRA has targeted them [with] boycotts.
(The American Gun Industry: A billion dollar business, ABC Rear Vision, 18 March 2018)
Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery:
[For each] time a gun in the home was used [for] self-defense or [a] legally justifiable shooting, there were
- 4 unintentional shootings,
- 7 criminal assaults or homicides, and
- 11 attempted or completed suicides.
Norman Swan:
Last week a confusing set of seven gun measures failed to pass the US Senate [—] some of them, perversely, aimed to make gun ownership easier. …
David Hemenway:
[In America] 5- to 14-year-old children [are …]
- 13 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than an average child in the other developed countries …
- 8 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun [and]
- 10 times more likely to be unintentionally killed with a gun …
[If] it wasn't for guns we'd be an average country.
(Gun control in the United States, ABC Health Report, 22 April 2013)
Daniel Webster & Jon Vernic [Professors in Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University]:
Strong regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers — defined as have state law that required …
- licensing of retail firearm sellers,
- mandatory record keeping by those sellers,
- law enforcement access to records for inspection,
- Regular inspections of gun dealers, and
- [mandatory] reporting of theft or loss of firearms
(Editors, Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, 2013)
Love is a Warm Gun
In addition to the 31,672 people killed by guns in 2010, another 73,505 [suffered] nonfatal bullet wounds [for a total of 105,177 gun related casualties.]
Of the 31,672 [killed,] 61% were suicides …
[The] vast majority of the rest were homicides by people who knew one another.
[Of] the 1,082 women and 267 men killed … by their intimate partners, 54% were shot …
[In the last 25 years] guns were involved in a greater number of intimate partner homicides that all other causes combined.
[If] a woman is murdered, it is most likely by her intimate partner with a gun. …
[In] states that prohibit gun ownership by men who have received a domestic violence restraining order [gun-related] homicides of intimate female partners have been reduced by 25%.
…… I owned a Ruger .357 Magnum [for 20 years. …]
[When] I learned about these statistics, I got rid of the gun. …
(Michael Shermer, Gun Science, Scientific American, May 2013, p 69)
Francis Fukuyama (1952)
[Andrew Jackson's (1767 – 1845)] presidency was the foundation [of a] tradition of populism in American politics that continues up to the present day …
This tradition has its roots in the the so-called Scotch-Irish settlers who [originated] from
- northern Ireland,
- the Scottish lowlands, and
- the parts of northern England bordering on Scotland.
The Scotch-Irish were poor but intensely proud …
[They] came from what had been an extraordinarily violent region, racked by centuries of fighting between local warlords, and between these warlords and the English.
Out of this environment came an intense individualism, as well as a love of guns, which would become the origins of the American gun [and honor] culture.
(Political Order and Political Decay, FSG, 2014, pp 141-2)
A Responsibility To Protect
[We] cannot resolve someone else's civil war by force.
— Barack Obama (1961), Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on Syria,
10 September 2013.
Martin Smith:
[21 August 2013: 1,400 men, women and children are killed in a chemical attack by Syrian government forces.]
Sarin is a nerve agent that causes lung muscle paralysis and results in death from suffocation. …
Martin Dempsey [General & Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff]:
Our finger was on the trigger.
We had gone through the targeting plans and targeting solutions.
The crews were alerted and so we had everything in place …
We were just waiting for instructions to proceed.
(Obama At War, PBS Frontline, 26 May 2015)
Blood and Treasure
Kate Adams [Policy and Advocacy Manager, War Child UK]:
- Hundreds of children have been maimed or killed by exploded cluster bomblets since 1991. …
- There are an estimated 35,000 infant deaths every year in Iraq.
- One in four children has stunted physical and intellectual development due to under-nutrition. …
- [Up] to 1 million children have lost one or both parents in the conflict.
- In 2010 … it was estimated that over a quarter of Iraqi children, or 3 million, suffered varying degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. …
- Children have been directly caught up in and targeted by conflict in Iraq, which continues to rage in pockets of the country: children as young as 14 years old have been recruited and used as suicide bombers.
David Kilcullen (1967) [Counterinsurgency Expert]:
[If] we hadn't invaded Iraq, there wouldn't be an ISIS. …
[In 2007, about 400] Iraqis were getting killed every [day.]
[Boston Marathon Bombing death toll: 3 civilians, two police officers, and one perpetrator.]
(Islamic State and global terrorism: where to now?, ABC Big Ideas, 1 June 2015)
In the northern summer of 2014, over roughly one hundred days,
- ISIS launched its blitzkrieg in Iraq,
- Libya’s government collapsed,
- civil war engulfed Yemen,
- Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself Caliph,
- the latest Israel–Palestine peace initiative failed in a welter of violence, and
- the United States and its allies (including the United Kingdom and Australia) sent aircraft and troops back to Iraq. …
[12 times as many foreign] fighters (from the Middle East, Europe, Australia, … Asia, the Americas and … Africa) poured into Syria and Iraq [than] at the height of the American war …
ISIS numbers [swelled to] above 30,000 (for comparison, al-Qaeda, at its peak before 9/11, never had more than 25,000). …
ISIS provinces appeared in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt, and extremists in Indonesia and Nigeria swore allegiance to Baghdadi’s new 'caliphate.'
Attacks by ISIS-inspired terrorists hit Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East. …
13 years, thousands of lives, and billions upon billions of dollars after 9/11, any gains against terrorism had seemingly been swept away in a matter of weeks. …
Anyone thinking of joining ISIS needs to understand that the chance of being killed … is extremely high …
Rates of return for foreign fighters have been less than 10% …
(p 73)
ISIS has already inspired rivals to adopt its tactics, increasing the threat from all extremist groups.
This suggests that [hopes that the competing strains of] Salafi-jihadist terrorism might neutralise one another ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend") are unrealistic.
Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is simply another enemy.
(Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State, Quarterly Essay 58, Black Inc, May 2015, p 77)
