Nuking the world to save it from, well...nukes

You'd be forgiven for thinking of Ben Tre after reading this excerpt from a NATO manifesto by former military leaders of the US, Britain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands:

"The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

I suppose it would have been a bit too on-the-nose to write "to prevent the first use of nuclear weapons."

One of the changes to NATO that the authors are calling for is:

- The use of force without UN security council authorisation when "immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings".

This is known as the "Bill Clinton option":

French officials said the deployment of NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo needed to be backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, a proposition that the Clinton Administration opposed. Washington, according to State Department officials, was sticking to its stand that NATO should be able to act independently of the United Nations.

The debate played out in Paris, Rambouillet, London and Washington with a compromise worked out this afternoon by the British. Instead of the United Nations being asked to ''authorize'' the deployment, the Security Council will be asked to ''endorse'' it, a British diplomat said.

In this way, all sides could claim victory. For the French, the United Nations still got a nod. For the Americans the ''neuralgic word 'authorize,' '' was avoided, the diplomat said.

No such resolution was passed, but the lack of the required authorization didn't stop Clinton from attacking Yugoslavia, of course (and it also didn't lead the throngs of adoring Democrats who'd put him in office to criticize him for thumbing his nose at international law and marginalizing the UN; after all, those kinds of considerations are mainly political weapons to be brandished against hated Republican presidents like George Bush).  Given that one of the authors of this manifesto is John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Clinton, it's no surprise that this would be included.

Comments

[SteveB]

You haven't taken into account the fact that the Iranians have scary slogans, like "Death to Israel!" painted on their missiles. Our missiles, on the other hand, just have a nice American flag painted on them, so they're obviously not a threat to anyone.

[Save the Oocytes]

What was it that the Israeli children were writing on those missiles again? I actually don't remember. Somebody had an argument that that wasn't sick and wrong, but I forget how it went.

We could come up with other ways to save the world from things:

• Stop the whale hunt and the consumption of whalemeat—by exterminating the whales.
  
• Eliminate poverty—kill the poor. Or encourage them to spend more.
  
• Save the rainforest—in Home Depot for future home decorators.
  
• Stop the occupation of Palestine—by saying Palestine doesn't exist anyway.
  
• Allay Americans' privacy concerns—by abolishing privacy.
  
• End the War on Terror—by becoming terrorists ourselves.
  
• Stop torture—by redefining it to be exclusively impalement on wooden stakes of specified dimensions.
  

Disturbingly, a lot of these aren't original with me. Surely we can come up with some others?

[John Caruso]

StO: That's a bold platform you have there; perhaps you should consider running for president.

[Save the Oocytes]

I tried, but no one was interested in having a teetotaling, vegan, anarchist mathematician as president. I told them I was an obsessive-compulsive depressive with mild autism, but they wouldn't listen. I never even got the chance to win them over with my idea that people should almost entirely cease reproducing or my takes on the social value of black/death metal. If those hadn't worked, I think my pessimism about the future of America and my view that it is the world's number one predator surely would have convinced them—but people are so prejudiced against white males.