http://www.truthout.org/120708A
"Remember Pearl Harbor!"
by: John Lamperti,
T r u t h o u t: Sunday, December 7th, 2008
"Pre-emptive" war, then and now.
The name Pearl Harbor resonates in American history; it is synonymous
with the U.S. entry into World War II. It stands for tragedy - and for
treachery. On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier-based aircraft attacked
United States naval and air forces in the Hawaiian Islands, and scored a
major victory. Over 2,300 U.S. military personnel lost their lives - almost
half of them when the battleship Arizona was blown up and sunk by bombs and
torpedoes. The U. S. Pacific fleet was devastated.[1] The next day President
Franklin Roosevelt called for a declaration of war, and described December
7, 1941, and the Japanese attack as "a date which will live in infamy."
But why, exactly, was the Pearl Harbor attack "infamous"? The Japanese
planes attacked strictly military targets and there were relatively few
civilian casualties.[2] The battle was a terrible blow for the American
forces, which were taken completely by surprise. But a surprise attack is
not infamous in wartime; every military commander would like to attack by
surprise if possible. Nor did the bitter facts of U.S. defeat and heavy
losses make the raid criminal. President Roosevelt used the word "infamy"
because the raid was an act of military aggression. Until that moment Japan
and the United States were not at war, although their conflicting interests
had been threatening to boil over. The attack turned a dispute into a war;
Pearl Harbor was a crime because the Japanese struck first.
Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, the administration of G. W. Bush has
made "preemption" an official part of U.S. policy. According to this
so-called "Bush Doctrine," the United States claims the right to use
military force whenever it determines that its security or economic
interests may be threatened by another nation in the future. The Bush
National Security Strategy of 2002 states that "The greater the threat, the
greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for
taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains
as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such
hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act
preemptively."[3] In other words, if it is to our advantage, we will strike
first - begin a war - when we see a potential threat.
That is exactly what the Japanese did in 1941, when the United States
posed a huge threat to their leaders' conception of Japan's national
interests. With bases reaching across the Pacific, the U.S. Navy, in
particular, was potentially a major obstacle to Japanese expansion in China
and Southeast Asia. Moreover, the United States had imposed an embargo on
oil and steel shipments to Japan, a nation that depended on imports and had
oil reserves sufficient for only about two years. By November 1941,
negotiations to resolve or defuse these issues had stalled. Japanese
military planners, by then in control of their country's government, saw
armed conflict with the United States as inevitable, and disabling U.S.
naval power in the Pacific seemed essential for achieving their goals. They
judged that a high-risk, high-gain surprise attack would give Japan its best
chance for success. That is, they chose preemption.
After the war, the United States and its allies did not accept Japanese
or German claims that their preemptive acts had been legitimate. U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was the chief allied prosecutor of
major Axis war criminals. In August 1945 Jackson wrote: "We must make it
clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on
trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it... Our
position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive
war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."[4]
During the next few years, officials and military officers of both Germany
and Japan were tried and convicted for planning and carrying out aggression
by their countries' armed forces. There was no exception for "preemptive
war," although some of the accused tried to use that concept in their
defense.[5] The Bush administration's doctrine thus represents a reversal of
long-standing principles of international law, principles that the United
States has championed in the past.
In the years since 2002, far from reconsidering its doctrine of
preemption, the Bush administration has reaffirmed and extended it. The
invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, was supposed to preempt the use by
that nation of "weapons of mass destruction,"[6] weapons which did not exist
and could not in any case have threatened U.S. security. Moreover, the
administration's policy now specifically includes the possible use of
nuclear weapons. The new (2005) nuclear doctrine identifies four conditions
in which preemptive use of nuclear weapons could occur, including "An
adversary intending to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S.,
multinational, or allies' forces or civilian populations."[7] The preamble
states: "The US does not make positive statements defining the circumstances
under which it would use nuclear weapons." This "calculated ambiguity" is
said to "reinforce deterrence"; it is a sort of "mad dog" strategy meant to
induce fear of our dangerous unpredictability. Such threats are both
dangerous and immoral. Instead, there should be absolute clarity that this
country will never attack another with nuclear weapons; starting a nuclear
war would be an act that would truly "live in infamy." A declared U.S. "no
first use" policy is long overdue, as part of a genuine campaign for
world-wide abolition.
The Bush administration has also broadened the scope of non-nuclear
preemption, calling its policy an "expansive new definition of
self-defense." Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other officials
recently cited this doctrine to justify attacks such as the October 26 raid
inside Syria and others inside Pakistan. The policy, they said, permits
strikes on "militant targets" in a sovereign nation without its consent when
that nation does not act on its own as the U.S. wishes.[8]
If these standards are applied to the Japan of 1941, the Pearl Harbor
attack can no longer be seen as criminal; certainly George W. Bush and his
associates are in no position to condemn it. For the rest of us, December 7,
1941 will remain a "day of infamy" as the war crimes tribunals concluded and
as virtually all Americans have believed ever since. And if Japan's attack
on that day was infamous, the policy of preemption must be condemned as
well. Preemptive war was not legitimate for the Japanese in 1941, and it is
not legitimate for the United States today.
Any policy that plans for "preemptive" or "preventive" war to promote
national interests must be considered criminal, for the same reasons as was
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It is an urgent challenge for incoming
U.S. President Barack Obama to repudiate the Bush Doctrine and correct this
dangerous situation. The United States must once again "renounce and
condemn" any policy of preemptive war.
- - - - -
Notes:
[1] In addition to the Arizona, the battleship Oklahoma was lost, three
others were sunk or beached but later salvaged, and three more were damaged.
In all, 18 ships were sunk or seriously damaged, 188 U.S. aircraft were
destroyed, and 158 other planes were damaged. The Japanese lost 29 planes in
the raid. (From Walter Lord, Day of Infamy, first edition 1957.)
[2] 68 civilians were killed and 35 others wounded. There were some 40
explosions in the city of Honolulu, but all except one were caused by U.S.
antiaircraft fire. (Lord, page 212.)
[3] The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,
White House document, September 17, 2002, page. 19. Available on the web.
[4] Department of State Bulletin, June 10, 1945.
[5] Nazi leaders claimed, for example, that the 1940 German invasion of
neutral Denmark and Norway was preemption, needed to "protect" them from an
imminent British attack and occupation.
[6] The introduction of this terminology may have been intended to blur
the distinction between chemical and biological weapons, which Iraq could
conceivably have possessed in 2003 (although it in fact did not), and true
weapons of mass destruction, i.e. nuclear weapons, which it could not have
possessed.
[7] JP 3-12: Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. Cited by Hans M.
Kristensen in Arms Control Today, September 2005.
[8] Thom Shanker, "Gates Gives Rationale for Expanded Deterrence," New
York Times, October 28, 2008.
-------
John Lamperti is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Dartmouth
College. He is the author of several books on the theory of probability and
on random processes. Since 1985 one of his main interests has been Central
America and what the United States has been doing there. He is the author of
"Enrique Alvarez Cordova: Life of a Salvadoran Revolutionary and
Gentleman"(MacFarland, 2006).
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