The chemical weapons convention : strategic implications for the United States
Abstract : On January 13, 1993, in Paris, 130 countries signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), to ban the entire class of Chemical Weapons. Debate continues on the strategic implications of the Convention, as drafted, and whether it is in the U.S. national security interest. This paper explores the historical, moral, and legal aspects of chemical warfare, and the strategic implications of the Convention, including operational, policy, constitutional, and industry impact for the U.S. This paper concludes that, although 'imperfect,' the Convention represents a significant contribution to U.S. security objectives, and serves the national interest.
Ethics and War: A Catholic View
World War II and Cold War I have influenced the moral appraisal of diplomacy much as they have influenced all systematic analysis of international relations. Commentators are now more aware that the wide gap between what is and what ought to be cannot be nullified by exhortation or legal formula or inexorable institutional evolution. They appreciate more profoundly the structure and function of power. They have learned from Mukden, Wal-Wal and Munich that accommodation can be more costly than resoluteness, and that an ethic dissociated from the world in which men live cannot give adequate moral guidance for men's living. Nevertheless the commentators remain reluctant, on both political and moral grounds, to accept Realpolitik's ethical outlook on the use of force. The shortcomings of yesterday's total victory have been too sobering; and Hiroshima's destruction has left a scar upon the conscience. Moral judgments on diplomacy are accordingly less simplist, less absolute, more troubled and uneasy than in the pre-war decades. The moral theories that have attracted most attention among students of international politics are either Protestant Christian or secular humanist in their basic orientations. This is not to say that these orientations are clearly distinguishable in any particular statement; more or less of them can be found in Niebuhr, Wolfers, Butterfield, Lefever, and Osgood among others. Less well known is a view that can be classified as Catholic or Scholastic. In the hope that this could illuminate, if it does not modify, the problems and the answers as conceived by the better known theories, the present study will put forth such a view. The position will be stated first, with such explanation as might be needed for understanding it, and some indication of differences from the Protestant and humanist conceptions. The theory can then be applied to varying hypothetical projections of the contemporary international scene.
The Morality of Obliteration Bombing
Í N GENERAL the term obliteration bombing is used as the opposite of precision bombing. In precision bombing very definite, limited targets, such as airfields, munitions factories, railroad bridges, etc., are picked out and aimed at. But in obliteration bombing, the target is not a well-defined military objective, as that term has been understood in the past. The target is a large area, for instance, a whole city, or all the built-up part of a city, or at least a very large section of the total built-up area, often including by design residential districts. In the early days of the present war the British did not make use of obliteration bombing; the government insisted that only military objectives in the narrow sense were to be ai,med at. It was such insistence by the British government that led Canon E. J. Mahoney to justify the Catholic pilot or bombardier ordered by his commanding officers to drop bombs on Continental targets. Churchill, on Jan. 27, 1940, had condemned Germany's policy of indiscrimiijate bombing as a "new and odious form of warfare." But with the appointment of Sir Arthur Travers Harris to the control of the Bomber Command, on March 3, 1942, the RAF changed its policy and took up obliteration bombing. According to Time, the men responsible for the new policy were Sir Arthur Harris, Chief of the RAF Bomber Command, and Major General Clarence Eaker, commander of the United States Eighth Air Force. The leaders in England acknowledged the new policy. Churchill no longer condemned this "odious form of warfare," and promised the House of Commons on June 2, 1942, that Germany was to be 1 J. M. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1944), p. 67; also Vera Brittain, "Massacre by Bombing," Fellowship, X (March, 1944), 51. 2 E . J. Mahoney, "Reprisals," Clergy Review, XIX (Dec, 1940), 471. 3 Vera Brittain, loe. cit. 4 Vera Brittain, loe. cit.; ]. M. Spaight, loe. cit.; Charles J. V. Murphy, "The Airmen and the Invasion," Life, XVI (Apr. 10, 1944), 95. 6 "Highroad to Hell," Time, July 7, 1943.