Editorial: Necessary evil / Of war and a wise man's words
Published Dec. 16, 2002 ED16
startribune.com
In the world as President Bush sees it, there are many reasons to go to war. There's retaliatory war, the sort waged in response to affront. There's the war of self-defense, the kind mounted against an oncoming attack. There's the war of just intervention, the brand intended to restore the rights of a wronged people. Then there's the new war against terrorism, a tricky quest to hunt down an elusive gang of murderers skulking in the world's dark corners. And last week the White House articulated yet another kind of attack: the "preventive war," meant to disarm a potential foe before the first gun is pointed, let alone fired.
At first hearing, this "doctrine of preemption" sounds sensible enough. Why should rogue states be allowed to gather up vast piles of arms? Why, especially, should they be allowed to play about with nukes, germs and other weapons of mass destruction ("WMDs" in wonk parlance)? Surely even the suspicion that such iniquity may be underway is reason to launch a strike against an unfriendly state. After all, the fate of the entire planet could be at stake.
That, at least, is the thinking behind last week's declaration by the White House. The United States, the new strategy document says, "must have the capability to defend against WMD-armed adversaries, including in appropriate cases through preemptive measures."
One moment, please, before the principle is put into practice. It is worth mulling what might happen if this policy were fairly applied to all the world's nose-thumbing arms-hoarders. Indeed, that question occurred to one bright mind last week in Oslo, as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize: "For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war," observed Jimmy Carter, "may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences."
How can it be that such good intentions can breed disaster? The implication of the new doctrine is that this administration may very well use a small-yield nuclear bomb in a preemptive strike on a site thought to hold weapons of mass destruction. In issuing that subtle threat, the White House telegraphs a willingness to cross the nuclear threshold for the first time since 1945. Even by toying with the idea, the United States opens an ominous door: It invites other powers -- nuclear and nonnuclear -- to consider similar preemptive strikes to disarm their most-feared foes.
The possible upshot? Anarchy; disaster; a smoky, pockmarked, poisoned planet -- fully preempted, and largely de-peopled. Things may not come to this, and most probably won't. But this is the ultimate expression of the White House doctrine, were it to be honored to the hilt. And this is why it's so dangerous.
There's no question that much must be done to rid the world of its arsenals, the very existence of which turn farmers into gangsters and politicians into sophists. But threatening to use nuclear weapons to advance the ends of nonproliferation is outrageous and hypocritical. It won't work.
And it ignores a truth uttered by an ex-president last week in Oslo -- one that the wagers of war have seemed close to forgetting: "War may sometimes be a necessary evil," said the wise man. "But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good." May his words be heeded. |
