The Logic of War

Live Long and Prosper: Ministry of Peace

For such is the logic of war.
If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles.
And then mutual annihilation will commence. …

What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that,
though our great nation and the United States were in complete ruins,
the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact?

— Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971), October 1962 & 1963.


[Peace is] the necessary rational end of rational men. …
[The] expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them [is not] the most efficient, means of assuring peace. …

[In] the final analysis, our most basic common link is that …

• we all inhabit this small planet …
• we all breathe the same air …
• we all cherish our children's future, and
• we are all mortal.

—John Kennedy (1917 – 63), Commencement Address, American University, Washington, 10 June 1963)

(Susan Bellows, JFK, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2013)

(Adriana Bosch, Eisenhower, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 1993)

Harry Haldeman (1926 – 93) [White House Chief of Staff, Nixon Administration, 1969–73]:
When Eisenhower arrived in the White House, the Korean War was stalemated.
Eisenhower ended the impasse in a hurry.
He secretly got word to the Chinese that he would drop nuclear bombs on North Korea unless a truce was signed immediately.
In a few weeks, the Chinese called for a truce and the Korean War ended.
(The Ends of Power, Times Books, 1978)

Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Whether such threats actually affected the Chinese decision makers or whether they even received them remains uncertain and controversial.
What is neither uncertain nor inconsequential is that the Eisenhower administration, including [then vice president] Richard Nixon, regarded them as successful.
In line with this belief, Eisenhower and Dulles relied on such threats repeatedly, in a series of crises.
[And later Nixon, as president, made similar threats towards the North Vietnamese.]
(pp 311-2)

[Eisenhower’s judgment was] that no war between any significant forces of the United States and the Soviet Union could remain limited more than momentarily.
Therefore, if such a conflict were pending, the United States should immediately go to an all-out nuclear first strike rather than allow the Soviets to do so. …

[Any] alternative approach was unacceptable from a fiscal point of view.
[His economic advisors had convinced him] that preparation to fight even a limited number of Soviet divisions on the ground … would compel an increase in defense spending that would cause inflation, precipitating a depression and "national bankruptcy."
(pp 94-5)

In 1961, [within the US] arsenal there were some 500 bombs with an explosive power of 25 megatons.
Each of these warheads had more firepower than all the bombs and shells exploded in all the wars of human history. …
The preplanned targets for the whole force included … every city in the Soviet Union and China.
There was at least one warhead allocated for every city of 25,000 people or more in the Soviet Union.
(pp 98-9)

In 1986, the US had 23,317 nuclear warheads and Russia had 40,159, for a total of 63,836 weapons.
(p 144)

[The Strategic Integrated Operations Plan:]

• provided for no distinction between the USSR and China; …
• allowed for no avoidance or postponement of attacks on cities; …
• allowed for no option to minimize nonmilitary casualties; …
• offered no option for preserving enemy command and control capability, [and]
• allowed for no Stop order once an authenticated Execute order was received by [Strategic Air Command] forces.

Since this unleashed attacks on all major Sino-Soviet urban-industrial centers and governmental and military control centers, this policy maintained no plausible basis for inducing any Soviet commanders or units to terminate operations prior to expending all their weapons upon US and allied cities.
(pp 126-7)

David Shoup (1904 – 83) [General, US Marine Corp]:
[Any] plan that murders 300 million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan.
That is not the American way.
(p 103, emphasis added)

Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack — or responding to such an attack — has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations.
The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the [imperative] to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a US first strike against the USSR or Russia.
(p 12)

The … arrangements made in Russia and the United States have long made it highly likely, if not virtually certain, that a single Hiroshima-type fission weapon exploding on either Washington or Moscow — whether deliberate or the result of a mistaken attack (as in Fail Safe or Dr Strangelove) or as a result of an independent terrorist action — would lead to the end of human civilization (and most other species).
(The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury, 2017, p 305)

Robert McMahon:
By 1960, the United States [had achieved] the coveted ‘triad’ of bomber-, land-, and submarine-based nuclear weapons, each part of the triad capable of obliterating major Soviet targets.
The total US nuclear arsenal had grown from approximately 1,000 warheads in 1953, Eisenhower’s first year in office, to 18,000 in 1960, his last.
By then, the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) boasted a total of 1,735 strategic bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons on Soviet targets. …
Aided by secret reconnaissance photographs [Eisenhower knew] that the United States maintained a formidable lead over its rival in deliverable nuclear weapons.
Still, a political frenzy surrounded the supposed missile gap, and the non-existent gap actually emerged as a galvanizing issue in the 1960 presidential election.
(The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 74‒6)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900):
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, [and] ages, it is the rule.
(Aphorism 156, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)

(Nuclear Nightmeres, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 5, Season 2, Vice, 2021)

Rationality Alone Will Not Save Us

Against stupidity
The Gods themselves
Contend in vain

— Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)


India and Pakistan have fought three vicious conventional land wars.
Yet despite their border disputes [they] have not fought a major conflict since since they generated nuclear capacity in the 1970s. …
Post-WWII history is littered with examples of deterrence preventing powers from using nuclear weapons in an offensive manner.
During the long peace of the Cold War there was actually a very limited chance of nuclear war.
Why?
Because Washington and Moscow were rational calculators of nuclear risks. …
Now it's true that Pakistan could one day implode into chaos and one or more of its nukes could fall into the hands of jihadists who are irrational enough to use them.
Still, the lesson [of history] is clear: nuclear deterrence works.

— Tom Switzer (1971), India and Pakistan nuclear tests 1998, ABC Between the Lines, 31 May 2018.

An Unnecessary War

Live Long and Prosper: Ministry of Peace

As we act, let us not become the evil who we deplore.

— Nathan Baxter (1948), Eulogy for the Victims of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks, 14 September 2001.


Preventative war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.

— George Orwell (1903 – 50), 1947.


And yet I doubt, if there be a more reprehensible human act than to lead a nation into an unnecessary war …

— Richard Cobden (1804 – 65), 8 August 1855.


The advantages of successful war are doubtful, but the disadvantages of unsuccessful war are certain.

— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Power, 1938.


The policy of my government … is regime change. …

A liberated Iraq could show the power of freedom to transform the Middle East, by bringing hope and progress to the lives of millions. …

The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

— George W Bush (1946)


If we have to use force, it is because we are America.
We are the indispensable nation.
We stand tall and … see further than other countries …

— Madeleine Albright (1937), US Secretary of State, 1998.

(Alex Gibney, Taxi to the Dark Side, 2007)

Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001:
[The] President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those … he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 … in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States …
(107th United States Congress, 18 September 2001)

Barbara Lee (1946) [Member of the US House of Representatives from California]:
[The AUMF has] been used 41 times in about 19 countries not related at all to 9/11. …
That is unconstitutional.
It sets the stage for perpetual war. …
It's also been used for domestic spying in the United States.
(Graveyard of Empires, Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror, Episode 5, 2021)

Colin_Powell (1937 – 2021) [US Secretary of State, 2001–5]:
My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.
These are not assertions.
What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.
(Remarks to the United Nations Security Council, 5 February 2003)

War on Terror: Direct* Civilian War Deaths (2019) (Neta Crawford & Catherine Lutz)
Iraq	184,382-207,156
Syria/ISIS	49,591
Afghanistan	43,074
Pakistan	23,924
Yemen	12,000
Total	312,971-335,745
*Several times as many have been killed indirectly as a result of … water loss, sewage and other infrastructural issues, and war-related disease.

Kevin Power [Iraq War Veteran]:
The thing that is … most troubling to me [is that, the invasion of Iraq] doesn't seem to have been necessary. …
If I had to go through all that.
The people I was with, had to experience, what they experienced.
All the lives that were lost.
All the damage that was done:

• to the country,
• to the local people

I wish that it had been necessary.
And I just can't find a way to accept the fact that it was.
I just don't think it was necessary.
It doesn't seem like we needed to be there.
(The Yellow Birds, ABC Big Ideas, 6 June 2013)

Francis Fukuyama (1952):
It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W Bush.
It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the United States throughout the world in his first term.
But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come.
(The Right Choice?, The American Conservative, 3 November 2008)

(National Insecurity, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 4, Season 1, Vice, 2020)

(Greg Wilesmith, ABC Beyond The Towers, 2021)

Ron Suskind (1959) [Journalist]:
Afghanistan's not big enough.
It’s not proportional.
It needs to be bigger.
The towers are burning, the Pentagon’s burning.
They attacked the United States, the response has to be proportional to what occurred to us. …

Cheney says [that] if there’s a 1 percent chance that terrorists have gotten their hands on weapons of mass destruction, we need to treat it as a certainty.

Richard Cheney (1941):
My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
The read we get on the people of Iraq is [that] they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
(Barak Goodman, George W Bush, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2020)

Ministry of Peace

Live Long and Prosper

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

My Lai

Live Long and Prosper: Ministry of Peace

William Westmoreland (1914 – 2005) [General and Chief of Staff, US Army]:
The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner.
Life is plentiful.
Live is cheap in the Orient.
(Peter Davis, Hearts and Minds, 1974)

Dallas Morning News:
Supposedly the purpose of fortified villages is to keep the Vietcong out. …
Vietnamese farmers are forced at gunpoint into these virtual concentration camps.
Their homes, possessions and crops are burned.
[Seven villagers had their] stomachs slashed, their livers extracted and put on display.
These victims were woman and children.
In another village, expectant mothers [had their stomachs] ripped open and their unborn babies removed.
(1 January 1963)

Vietnamese Democratic Bulletin:
It is certainly an ironic way to protect the peasant masses from Communism. …
(September 1963)

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
The advantages of successful war are doubtful, but the disadvantages of unsuccessful war are certain.
(Power, 1938, p 103)

peaceandlonglife:
Fanaticism is the breeding ground of atrocity.
Atrocity is the breeding ground of fanaticism.

William Peers (1914 – 84)

General, US Army

1. During the period 16-19 March 1968, US Army troops of [Task Force] Barker, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, massacred a large number of noncombatants in two hamlets [My Lai and My Khe] of Son My Village, Quang Ngai Province, Republic of Vietnam.
   The precise number of Vietnamese killed cannot be determined but was at least 175 and may exceed 400.
2. The massacre occurred in conjunction with a combat operation which was intended
   • to neutralize Son My Village as a logistical support base and staging area, and
   • to destroy elements of an enemy battalion [mistakenly] thought to be located in the Son My area.
3. The massacre resulted primarily from the nature of the orders issued to persons in the chain of command within TF Barker.
4. The task force commander's order and the associated intelligence estimate issued prior to the operation were embellished [such that they] ultimately presented to the individual soldier a false and misleading picture of the Son My area as an armed enemy camp, largely devoid of civilian inhabitants.
5. Prior to the incident, there had developed within certain elements of the 11th Brigade a permissive attitude toward the treatment and safeguarding of noncombatants which (contributed to the mistreatment of such persons during the Son Ply Operation).
6. The permissive attitude in the treatment of Vietnamese was, on 16-19 March 1968, exemplified by an almost total disregard for the lives and property of the civilian population of Son My Village on the part of commanders and key staff officers of TF Barker.
7. On 16 March, soldiers at the squad and platoon level, within some elements of TF Barker, murdered noncombatants while under the supervision and control of their immediate superiors.
8. [Crimes] visited on the inhabitants of Son My Village included individual and group acts of murder, rape, sodomy, maiming, and assault on noncombatants and the mistreatment and killing of detainees. …
9. Some attempts were made to stop the criminal acts …
   [But,] with few exceptions, such efforts were too feeble or too late.
10. [There was] no evidence that any member [engaged in the] operation was under the influence of marijuana or other narcotics.

(Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident, Department of Army, 1970)

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

… South Vietnam was part of French Cochin-China, but after a long process of civil war, the French were excluded from the whole region.
A conference was summoned to meet at Geneva in 1954.
The conclusions reached were sensible and, if they had been carried out, no trouble would have arisen.
Vietnam was to be independent and neutral, and was to have a parliamentary government established by a General Election.
The Americans did not like this.
They professed to suspect that [a unified] Vietnam would become part of the Communist bloc if left to itself… in spite of reiterated statements by the Government of North Vietnam that they wished to be neutral. …

There were in South Vietnam three parties:

• the peasants [—] who constituted the large majority;
• the Buddhists; and
• a tiny minority of Christians [—] who had been supporters of the French.

The Americans [chose] to support [the Catholics.]
[Consequently, war] ensued between the American-supported minority and the Buddhists and peasants. …

It has been warfare of an incredibly brutal kind [—] brutal to a degree seldom equaled by any civilised power. …
It is generally admitted that there is no hope that the Americans can win this war. …

[8,000,000 South Vietnamese] have been put in barbed wire concentration camps involving forced labour.
The country — civilians, animals and crops, as well as warriors and jungle — has been sprayed with jelly gasoline and poison chemicals.
50,000 villages were burnt in 1962 alone. …

[The] anti-Communist Democratic Party of Vietnam told the International Control Commission that:

Decapitation, eviscerations and the public display of murdered women and children are common.

(The Labour Party's Foreign Policy, London School of Economics, 15 February, 1965)

John Kennedy (1917 – 63)

You can never defeat the Communist movement in Indochina until you get the support of natives …
[And] you won't get [that support,] until the French … pull out and give this country the right of self-determination and the right to govern themselves.
(1951)

[I believe] that no amount of military assistance in Indochina can conquer

• an enemy that is everywhere and at the same time nowhere,
• "an enemy of the people" which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.

(1954)

(Chris Matthews, Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Simon & Schuster, 2011, Reader's Digest, 2013, pp 67 & 98)

(A Disrespectful Loyalty, Episode 9: May 1970 – March 1973)




(Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, Things Fall Apart, PBS The Vietnam War, Episode 6: January – July 1968, 2017)

The Only Sin is Pride

The enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.
He continues to hope that America's will to persevere can be broken.
Well … he is wrong.

— Lyndon Johnson (1908 – 73)


[War] is killing people.
When you kill enough of them, the other guy quits.

— Curtis LeMay (1906 – 90), General & Chief of Staff, US Air Force.


All men make mistakes.
But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the error.
The only sin is pride.

— Robert Kennedy (1925 – 68)

(John McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs,
Draft Memorandum to Robert McNamara — Plan of Action for South Vietnam, 24 March 1965)

Robert McNamara (1916 – 2009) [Secretary of Defense, 1961-68]:
There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go.
The picture of the world's greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.
(Resolve, Episode 4: January 1966 – June 1967)

There was no reason to believe that the prolonged infliction of grievous causalities, or the heavy punishment of air bombardment, will suffice to break the will of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
The continuation of our present course of action in South East Asia would be dangerous, costly in lives, and unsatisfactory for the American people.
(This Is What We Do, Episode 5: July – December 1967)

Ken Burns & Lynn Novick:
[In mid-1965] Undersecretary of State George Ball [told Johnson] the war could not be won.
The American people will grow weary of it.
Our troops will get bogged down in the jungles and rice paddies, he warned, while we slowly blow the country to pieces.
No one else agreed.

(The River Styx, Episode 3: January 1964 – December 1965)




(This Is What We Do, Episode 5: July – December 1967)




(Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, Déjà Vu, PBS The Vietnam War, Episode 1: 1858 – 1961, 2017)