Tribunal Finds Monsanto an Abuser of Human Rights and Environment

Pete Dolack

The corporation most determined to acquire control of the world’s food supply, a behemoth determined to bend the world’s farmers to its will, douse the world with pesticides and place genetically modified organisms on everyone’s dinner plate, Monsanto Company has long operated beyond effective control.

Although in no position to alter that status by itself, the International Monsanto Tribunal believes it could set an example of how international law could be used to counter the immense power of the company. The idea behind the tribunal, convened seven months ago, is that an international panel of legal professionals and practicing judges would provide victims and their legal counsel with arguments and legal grounds for further lawsuits in courts of law.

The tribunal, consisting of five international judges, has found Monsanto guilty. The tribunal is not a court of law and it has no power to enforce any judgment. The decision is a moral one, albeit grounded, the tribunal says, in international human rights and humanitarian law. The main conclusion drawn by the tribunal, which handed down its ruling on April 18, is this:

“The judges conclude that Monsanto has engaged in practices which have negatively impacted the right to a healthy environment, the right to food and the right to health. On top of that Monsanto’s conduct is negatively affecting the right to freedom indispensable for scientific research. … International law should be improved for better protection of the environment and include the crime of ecocide. The Tribunal concludes that if such a crime of ecocide were recognized in international criminal law, the activities of Monsanto could possibly constitute a crime of ecocide.”

Those are certainly damning words. But they are based on interpretations of customary international law, specifically the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of December 1966; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of December 1966; the Convention on the Rights of the Child of November 1989; and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women of December 1979. Each of these treaties has been signed by more than 160 countries.

Monsanto was given the opportunity to participate in the tribunal, which took place in The Hague, but declined to do so. (In response to the tribunal’s decision, a Monsanto spokeswoman said the company “stand[s] committed to real dialogue with those who are genuinely interested in sustainable agriculture; human rights to food, health and a safe environment; who we are and what we do. The original event was staged by a select group of anti-agriculture technology and anti-Monsanto critics who played organizers, judge and jury. It denied existing scientific evidence and judicial outcomes on several topics; and was organized with a pre-determined outcomes. The opinion — characterized by the Tribunal panel itself as advisory only — was the anticipated next communication from this group.”)

Criticized around the world

Monsanto has come under sustained criticism from not only the organizers of the tribunal, but from a wide range of people around the world. Research questioning the safety of glyphosate has been published in dozens of articles in peer-reviewed journals. Numerous groups and researchers, who have no involvement with the tribunal, have issued reports and written books condemning Monsanto products and practices. Moreover, people will be participating in the annual March on Monsanto on May 20 in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries around the world.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s massively profitable Roundup herbicide; the company in turns sells agricultural products genetically engineered to be resistant to Roundup. Monsanto is a heavy promoter of food containing genetically modified organisms. Standard contracts with seed companies forbid farmers from saving seeds, requiring them to buy new genetically engineered seeds from the company every year and the herbicide to which the seed has been engineered to be resistant.

GMOs are inadequately studied and laws requiring GMO labeling of foods are fiercely opposed by Monsanto and other multi-national agribusinesses. GMO labeling is required by 64 countries, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and all 28 EU countries. And Monsanto has relentlessly pursued a strategy of patenting seeds (as do other agribusinesses) as part of its effort to control farmers and every aspect of agriculture.

The International Monsanto Tribunal was specifically tasked with answering six questions regarding Monsanto’s behavior. Issuing its findings in a 60-page document, the answer was firmly negative on four questions, provisionally negative on a fifth while no decision was rendered on the remaining question due to a lack of relevant evidence. More than 30 witnesses and legal experts testified in the tribunal’s hearings, representing 17 countries on six continents.

Answering questions about Monsanto’s practices

Question 1: Did the firm Monsanto act in conformity with the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, as recognized in international human rights law?

The tribunal’s answer: “Monsanto has engaged in practices that have serious and negative environmental impacts. These impacts have affected countless individuals and communities in many countries, as well as the health of the environment itself, with its consequent impacts on plants and animals and biodiversity.” The tribunal cited the aggressive marketing of Roundup, which affects human health, soil health, aquatic ecosystems, micro-organism diversity and the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Question 2: Did Monsanto act in conformity with the right to food, as recognized in international treaties?

The tribunal answered, “Monsanto’s activities have negatively affected food availability for individuals and communities. Monsanto has interfered with the ability of individuals and communities to feed themselves directly from productive land. Monsanto’s activities have caused and are causing damages to the soil, water and generally to the environment, thereby reducing the productive possibilities for the production of adequate food.” The tribunal said communal agriculture and forests are “being devastated by the spread of genetically engineered seeds that use large amounts of herbicides like glyphosate” while restricting food choice, imposing GMO seeds, causing genetic contamination and threatening food sovereignty.

Question 3: Did Monsanto act in conformity with the right to the highest attainable standard of health, as recognized in international treaties?

The tribunal’s answer: “According to the testimonies, Monsanto’s activities have not only negatively affected the physical health of individuals and communities. Monsanto’s conduct has also interfered with the mental health of countless individuals and communities around the world. Moreover, Monsanto’s activities have had a negative impact on the realization of the underlying factors of the right to health, including access to adequate and safe food and water, as well as the enjoyment of a healthy environment.” The tribunal cited the company’s manufacturing of PCBs and other toxic products, the widespread use of glyphosate (the key ingredient in its Roundup herbicide) and the promotion of GMOs despite the lack of scientific consensus as to their safety.

Question 4: Did Monsanto act in conformity with the freedom indispensable for scientific research, as recognized in international treaties?

The tribunal answered, “Monsanto’s conduct has negatively affected the freedom indispensable for scientific research. … The abuse of the freedom indispensable for scientific research is aggravated by the health and environmental risks posed by Monsanto’s conduct.” In support of that conclusion, the tribunal referred to widespread allegations that Monsanto discredits scientific research that raises questions about its products, allegations that the company pressures and sometimes bribes public officials to approve its products, and allegations that Monsanto uses intimidation tactics against critics.

Question 5: Could Monsanto be held complicit in the commission of a war crime, as defined in Article 8(2) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court, by providing materials to the United States Army in the context of operation “Ranch Hand” launched in Vietnam in 1962?

The tribunal believes the use of Agent Orange by the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War “could have fallen under the notion of war crimes” and that the U.S. government “knew or should have known that the use of Agent Orange would cause widespread damage to human health and the environment.” The tribunal, however, said it could not make any definitive finding on Monsanto’s complicity because “no relevant evidence” was provided to it, although it suggests further investigation into the company’s knowledge would be warranted.

Question 6: Could the past and present activities of Monsanto constitute a crime of ecocide, understood as causing serious damage or destroying the environment, so as to significantly and durably alter the global commons or ecosystem services upon which certain human groups rely?

“Ecocide” is not recognized in international criminal law, but the tribunal concluded that if it were, “the activities of Monsanto could possibly constitute a crime of ecocide as causing substantive and lasting damages to biodiversity and ecosystems, affecting the life and the health of human populations.” To support this charge, the tribunal cited the use of its pesticides in “Plan Colombia” (a program that imposes the U.S. military in Colombia as part of the U.S. “war on drugs”); the large-scale use of agrochemicals in industrial agriculture; the engineering, production, introduction and release of genetically engineered crops; and “severe contamination” of plant diversity, soils and water.

Human rights versus corporate rights

Monsanto does not act in a vacuum, nor is it a unique repository of aberrational behavior. The company operates in the global capitalist system. In this system, human rights are subordinated to corporate “rights” to maximize profits regardless of cost.

The current global corporate trade regime bestows increasing rights to multi-national enterprises without any corresponding rights to people or the environment. The ability of governments to establish or maintain laws and regulations safeguarding labor, environmental or health are increasingly restrained as corporations have the right to submit their claims to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) arbitration panels with no democratic oversight or appeal. Examining this larger perspective, the tribunal wrote:

“Fundamentally, it is essential in the Tribunal’s view that human and environmental rights be accorded primacy in any conflict with trade or investments rights. Indeed this primacy has been recognized by the international community in the Vienna Conference on Human Rights of 1993, which affirmed that “[h]uman rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings; their protection promotion is the first responsibility of government.”

That concept of human rights, however, is in conflict with the mandates of capitalism — including the relentless competitive pressures that make “grow or die” an imperative. The domination of markets by a small number of behemoths is the inevitable product of that ceaseless competition, behemoths that by virtue of their immense size and command of capital can and do exert dominance over government and civil society. Among agribusinesses, Monsanto happens to be the company that is most ruthless at navigating and further developing these ongoing systemic trends, just as Wal-Mart is the company that is the leader among retailers forcing the moving of production to the lowest-wage countries and exploiting workforces.

One corporation (or any group of corporations) controlling the world’s food supply should be relegated to a fantastic dystopia belonging to the realm of science fiction, not a real possibility in the real world. Everything is reduced to a commodity under capitalism, even life itself. We really can’t do better than this?

The Shame of Killing Innocent People

KATHY KELLY

On April 26th, 2017, in Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah, the Saudi-led coalition which has been waging war in Yemen for the past two years dropped leaflets informing Hodeidah’s residents of an impending attack.  One leaflet read:

“Our forces of legitimacy are heading to liberate Hodeidah and end the suffering of our gracious Yemeni people. Join your legitimate government in favor of the free and happy Yemen.”

And another: “The control of the Hodeidah port by the terrorist Houthi militia will increase famine and hinder the delivery of international relief aid to our gracious Yemeni people.”

Certainly the leaflets represent one aspect of a confusing and highly complicated set of battles raging in Yemen. Given alarming reports about near famine conditions in Yemen, it seems the only ethical “side” for outsiders to choose would be that of children and families afflicted by hunger and disease.

Yet the U.S. has decidedly taken the side of the Saudi-led coalition. Consider a Reuters report, on April 19, 2017, after U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met with senior Saudi officials. According to the report, U.S. officials said “U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition was discussed including what more assistance the United States could provide, including potential intelligence support…”  The Reuters report notes that Mattis believes “Iran’s destabilizing influence in the Middle East would have to be overcome to end the conflict in Yemen, as the United States weighs increasing support to the Saudi-led coalition fighting there.”

Iran may be providing some weapons to the  Houthi rebels, but it’s important to clarify what support the U.S. has given to the Saudi-led coalition.  As of March 21, 2016, Human Rights Watch reported the following weapon sales, in 2015 to the Saudi government:

* July 2015, the US Defense Department approved a number of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, including a US $5.4 billion deal for 600 Patriot Missiles and a $500 million deal for more than a million rounds of ammunition, hand grenades, and other items, for the Saudi army.

* According to the US Congressional review, between May and September, the US sold $7.8 billion worth of weapons to the Saudis.

* In October, the US government approved the sale to Saudi Arabia of up to four Lockheed Littoral Combat Ships for $11.25 billion.

* In November, the US signed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth $1.29 billion for more than 10,000 advanced air-to-surface munitions including laser-guided bombs, “bunker buster” bombs, and MK84 general purpose bombs; the Saudis have used all three in Yemen.

Reporting about the role of the United Kingdom in selling weapons to the Saudis, Peace News notes that “Since the bombing began in March 2015, the UK has licensed over £3.3bn worth of arms to the regime, including:

*£2.2 bn worth of ML10 licences (aircraft, helicopters, drones)

*£1.1 bn worth of ML4 licences (grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

*£430,000 worth of ML6 licences (armoured vehicles, tanks)

What has the Saudi-led coalition done with all of this weaponry?  A United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights panel of experts found that:

“At least 3,200 civilians have been killed and 5,700 wounded since coalition military operations began, 60 percent of them in coalition airstrikes.”

A Human Rights Watch report, referring to the UN panel’s findings, notes that the panel documented attacks on camps for internally displaced persons and refugees; civilian gatherings, including weddings; civilian vehicles, including buses; civilian residential areas; medical facilities; schools; mosques; markets, factories and food storage warehouses; and other essential civilian infrastructure, such as the airport in Sana’a, the port in Hodeidah and domestic transit routes.”

Five cranes in Hodeidah which were formerly used to offload goods from ships arriving in the port city were destroyed by Saudi airstrikes.  70% of Yemen’s food comes through the port city.

Saudi coalition airstrikes have hit at least four hospitals supported by Doctors Without Borders.

In light of these findings, the leaflets fluttering down from Saudi jets on the beleaguered city of Hodeidah, encouraging residents to side with the Saudis “in favor of the free and happy Yemen” seem exceptionally bizarre.

UN agencies have clamored for humanitarian relief. Yet the role the UN Security Council has played in calling for negotiations seems entirely lopsided. On April 14, 2016, UN Security Council Resolution 2216 demanded “that all parties in the embattled country, in particular the Houthis, immediately and unconditionally end violence and refrain from further unilateral actions that threatened the political transition.” At no point is Saudi Arabia mentioned in the Resolution.

Speaking on December 19, 2016, Sheila Carpico, Professor of Political Science at the University of Richmond and a leading Yemen specialist called the UN Security Council sponsored negotiations a cruel joke.

These negotiations are based on UN Security Council resolutions 2201 and 2216. Resolution 2216 of 14 April 2015, reads as if Saudi Arabia is an impartial arbitrator rather than a party to an escalating conflict, and as if the GCC “transition plan” offers a “peaceful, inclusive, orderly and Yemeni-led political transition process that meets the legitimate demands and aspirations of the Yemeni people, including women.”

Although scarcely three weeks into the Saudi-led intervention the UN’s deputy secretary-general for human rights said that the majority of the 600 people already killed were civilian victims of Saudi and Coalition airstrikes, UNSC 2216 called only on “Yemeni parties” to end the use of violence. There was no mention of the Saudi-led intervention. There was similarly no call for a humanitarian pause or corridor.

The UN Security Council resolution seems as bizarre as the leaflets delivered by the Saudi jets.

The U.S. Congress could put an end to U.S. complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by military forces in Yemen. Congress could insist that the U.S. stop supplying the Saudi led coalition with weapons, stop helping Saudi jets to refuel, end diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia, and stop providing the Saudis with intelligence support. And perhaps the U.S. Congress would move in this direction if elected representatives believed that their constituents care deeply about these issues. In today’s political climate, public pressure has become vital.

Historian Howard Zinn famously said, in 1993, “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable. If the purpose is to stop terrorism, even the supporters of the bombing say it won’t work; if the purpose is to gain respect for the United States, the result is the opposite…”  And if the purpose is to raise the profits of major military contractors and weapon peddlers?

Reckless in the White House

Vijay Prashad

Within a week, United States President Donald Trump authorised two major strikes—one against the Syrian Air Force and the other against an ISIS base in Afghanistan. Both of these strikes came with little warning, although these are not the first such attacks in either sector. The U.S. has bombed Syria almost 8,000 times over the past few years and Iraq uncountable times since 2003, dropping ordnance that has already dwarfed the tonnage dropped in all sectors of the Second World War. But these bombing raids were against the ISIS, largely, and not the Syrian government.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has been at war since 2001—making this the longest war in its history. Aerial bombardment of Afghanistan by the U.S. is now perfectly normal. What made this attack so extraordinary was the scale of the bomb—a-10-tonne monstrosity, the largest non-nuclear weapon used on planet earth. Not long after Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar shuddered with the intensity of that bomb, a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) spokesperson talked to The Hill (a Washington D.C.-based political newspaper and website) about the attack. President Trump, said this military spokesperson, had given his armed forces greater latitude to fight the War on Terror. This freedom in combat, said the anonymous spokesperson, was “empowering the commanders and winning the war against the bad guys. In this administration, the military is given empowerment to do what we need to do”. Most stunningly, the spokesperson then spoke as if he were the manager of a prize-fighting boxer. “We mean business. President Trump said that once he gets in [to office] he’s going to kick the shit out of the enemy. That was his promise and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said the spokesperson.

Hastily, a denial came from Doha (Qatar), where this spokesperson is based. CENTCOM’s media chief Major Josh Jacques said that the person who talked to The Hillwas “unauthorised to speak on behalf of the U.S. Central Command”. But that statement had already been made. It revealed the unvarnished attitude of the military, or at least the section that favoured Trump’s more aggressive posture towards the world. The language and tone of the unauthorised spokesperson from CENTCOM mirrored that of Trump. “We have the greatest military in the world,” Trump said. “We have given total authorisation, and that’s what they’re doing, and frankly, that’s why they’ve been so successful recently.”

The measure of success

Since Trump assumed office, the U.S. has indeed stepped up aerial bombing across the geography of the War on Terror, from Syria to Afghanistan. Reports of civilian casualties from these strikes began to trickle out in the days after Trump came into office. The non-profit monitoring group Airwars decided to shift its resources to track civilian deaths from U.S. strikes and stop using its limited resources to look at strikes by Russians. The number of deaths from the former dwarfs those from the latter. In March 2017 itself, Airwars counted 1,782 civilian non-combatant deaths from U.S. strikes. There were three mass casualty attacks that month, one in Syria’s Aleppo (47 civilians dead), another in Syria’s Raqqa (33 civilians dead) and the third in Iraq’s Mosul (200 civilians dead). “Nothing has prepared us for that level of civilian casualties,” said Chris Woods of Airwars.

The bombing has been severe but the strategic gains have been limited. In Syria, the U.S.-backed forces have struggled to push against the ISIS in the country’s north. One aerial strike, in fact, killed a dozen soldiers of the U.S.-backed Syrian Defence Forces (SDF). The SDF has been hemmed in because of pressure from the Turkish government, whose Operation Euphrates Shield is intended to block the advance of these mainly Kurdish fighters along the Syrian-Turkish border. The strike on the Shayrat Air Base in Syria by the U.S. also came with little strategic foresight. From this base, the Syrian Air Force had been striking ISIS columns as they moved to threaten the city of Palmyra. With the destruction of several aircraft by the U.S. cruise missiles, the ISIS has been given relief from the skies.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. targeted the meagre forces of the ISIS’s Khorasan division, which had already been badly dented during an offensive by the Afghan Army in January 2016. It is not the ISIS but the Taliban that is a threat to the Afghan government. The monstrous 10-tonne bomb was used against an opportunistic group of fighters who have been unsuccessful in trying to build momentum in Afghanistan and who have been unable to inflame a sectarian war inside the country. These fighters, in fact, have been a thorn in the side of the Taliban, challenging it to be more brutal in its tactics to win over young fighters. With the ISIS weakened, the Taliban will have the field to themselves just as the summer of fighting is ready to open up.

Even those who have congratulated Trump on his actions, such as the U.S. Senator John McCain, bemoan the lack of a strategy to win the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The Trump Doctrine, if there is any such thing, is to show that the U.S. is willing to use the full extent of its military power to intimidate its enemies. But the problem with this view, if this is indeed the vision of the Trump Doctrine, is that the U.S. might indeed fire its massive arsenal but it will also earn itself more enemies from the families of dead civilians and from patriotic-minded people who will not tolerate the attempt to intimidate. Even Hamid Karzai, former President of Afghanistan who was close to the U.S., said after the bombing: “This is an inhuman act, a brutal act against an innocent country, against innocent people, against our land, against our sovereignty, against our soil and against our future.” Karzai is not alone. Trump’s especially brutal language and the relish with which he has unleashed military power have alienated many potential allies and friends. It is easy to bomb a country; far harder to build alliances in its aftermath.

When he was asked to define the Trump Doctrine, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the two words that are essential to the Trump world view are “America First”. “We’re not just going to become the world’s policeman, running around the world,” Spicer said. But, the U.S. would use its military only when there is a “clear and defined national interest,” he said. What “clear and defined national interest” was served in the attacks on Syria and Afghanistan? Of Syria, Spicer said that the U.S. was acting so that weapons of mass destruction do not “spread to other groups” that might threaten the U.S. The logic here is similar to that advanced by George W. Bush in 2002 and 2003, that the U.S. should destroy Iraq’s fictional weapons of mass destruction arsenal before the country shared it with Al Qaeda. There is little evidence that the Syrian government, like the Iraqi government before it, would ally itself with a group like Al Qaeda, which it sees as an enemy. But that is beside the point. Logic and history are unimportant in the Trump White House (Spicer even said that Adolf Hitler had not used chemical weapons against his own people, which, of course, denies what the Nazis did in the Holocaust). The U.S.’ national interest is not served by the attack on the Syrian government. That is the kind of regime-change policy that Trump had campaigned against during his run for the White House.

Selective outrage

Almost no logical account has been provided by the White House as to why the U.S. acted against the Syrian government for the as-yet-to-be-investigated attack in Idlib. The White House said that Trump was moved by pictures of the children killed in the attack, and that his daughter, Ivanka, implored him to do something. There was no such reaction when at least 126 people were killed by extremists who bombed buses outside Aleppo in midApril. There were 60 children amongst those killed then. No U.S. outrage was evident against the extremists, many of whom have links of one kind or the other with the U.S. and its allies.

Minimal explanation has been given for the U.S. attack in Afghanistan apart from the assertion by the U.S. commander that this massive bomb was necessary to take out the tunnel networks used by the ISIS. These tunnels, many of which were built with the assistance of the U.S.’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the mujahideen in the 1980s, have been used for long by various extremist groups. Why strike the ISIS, already weakened, when it would have been far more useful to the Kabul government if the U.S. had turned its firepower against the more threatening Taliban? No explanation has been given for this.

After Trump’s two strikes, he received accolades in the U.S. from a range of politicians and commentators. It is as if U.S. culture is incapable of being unhappy with a President who bombs another country. The term “presidential” began to be used for Trump by people who had previously seen him merely as a usurper. Perhaps Trump’s bombing raids had less to do with Syria and Afghanistan and more to do with U.S. politics, where his personal approval ratings are miserable. Trump would not be the first U.S. President to use the U.S. military to bolster his popularity. President Bill Clinton routinely used cruise missiles as a way to distract people from his domestic scandals. It has even been suggested that Trump used the attacks on Syria and Afghanistan to send a message to North Korea—that he would act if he sees fit (as in Syria) and he would use massive weaponry that is unimaginable (as in Afghanistan). Whether Trump acts for domestic reasons or to send a message to North Korea, either way his use of violence seems to be lacking a logical strategy for Syria and Afghanistan.

Richard Nixon pioneered a theory of foreign affairs known as the “Madman Theory”. He told his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman: “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.” Nixon’s people would spread the rumour, he said, that the nuclear option was available and that Nixon was mad enough to use it.

“Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace,” Nixon said. Perhaps Trump, like Nixon, believes in the Madman Theory, one pioneered by Machiavelli, who wrote: “It is a wise thing to simulate madness.” It terrifies one’s adversaries. It pleases the bloodlust of one’s supporters. But it does not make the world a safer place.

America’s New Nuclear Missile Endangers the World

Conn Hallinan

At a time of growing tensions between nuclear powers—Russia and NATO in Europe, and the U.S., North Korea and China in Asia—Washington has quietly upgraded its nuclear weapons arsenal to create, according to three leading American scientists, “exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”

Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the American Federation of Scientists, Matthew McKinzie of the National Resources Defense Council, and physicist and ballistic missile expert Theodore Postol, conclude that “Under the veil of an otherwise-legitimate warhead life-extension program,” the U.S. military has vastly expanded the “killing power” of its warheads such that it can “now destroy all of Russia’s ICBM silos.”

The upgrade—part of the Obama administration’s $1 trillion modernization of America’s nuclear forces—allows Washington to destroy Russia’s land-based nuclear weapons, while still retaining 80 percent of the U.S.’s warheads in reserve. If Russia chose to retaliate, it would be reduced to ash.

Any discussion of nuclear war encounters several major problems. First, it is difficult to imagine or to grasp what it would mean in real life. We have only had one conflict involving nuclear weapons—the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945—and the memory of those events has faded over the years. In any case, the two bombs that flattened the Japanese cities bear little resemblance to the killing power of modern nuclear weapons.

The Hiroshima bomb exploded with a force of 15 kilotons. The Nagasaki bomb was slightly more powerful at about 18 kt. Between them, they killed over 215,000 people. In contrast, the most common nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal today, the W76, has an explosive power of 100 kt. The next most common, the W88, packs a 475-kt punch.

Another problem is that most of the public thinks nuclear war is impossible because both sides would be destroyed. This is the idea behind the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, aptly named “MAD.”

But MAD is not a U.S. military doctrine. A “first strike” attack has always been central to U.S. military planning, until recently, however, there was no guarantee that such an attack would so cripple an opponent that it would be unable—or unwilling, given the consequences of total annihilation— to retaliate.

The strategy behind a first strike—sometimes called a “counter force” attack—is not to destroy an opponent’s population centers, but to eliminate the other sides’ nuclear weapons, or at least most of them. Anti-missile systems would then intercept a weakened retaliatory strike.

The technical breakthrough that suddenly makes this a possibility is something called the “super-fuze”, which allows for a much more precise ignition of a warhead. If the aim is to blow up a city, such precision is superfluous, but taking out a reinforced missile silo requires a warhead to exert a force of at least 10,000 pounds per square inch on the target.

Up until the 2009 modernization program, the only way to do that was to use the much more powerful—but limited in numbers—W88 warhead. Fitted with the super-fuze, however, the smaller W76 can now do the job, freeing the W88 for other targets.

Traditionally, land-based missiles are more accurate than sea-based missiles, but the former are more vulnerable to a first-strike than the latter, because submarines are good at hiding. The new super-fuze does not increase the accuracy of Trident II submarine missiles, but it makes up for that with the precision of where the weapon detonates. “In the case of the 100-kt Trident II warhead,” write the three scientists, “the super-fuze triples the killing power of the nuclear force it is applied to.”

Before the super-fuze was deployed, only 20 percent of U.S. subs had the ability to destroy re-enforced missile silos. Today, all have that capacity.

Trident II missiles typically carry from four to five warheads, but can expand that up to eight. While the missile is capable of hosting as many as 12 warheads, that configuration would violate current nuclear treaties. U.S. submarines currently deploy about 890 warheads, of which 506 are W76s and 384 are W88s.

The land-based ICBMs are Minuteman III, each armed with three warheads—400 in total—ranging from 300 kt to 500 kt apiece. There are also air and sea-launched nuclear tipped missiles and bombs. The Tomahawk cruise missiles that recently struck Syria can be configured to carry a nuclear warhead.

The super-fuze also increases the possibility of an accidental nuclear conflict.

So far, the world has managed to avoid a nuclear war, although during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis it came distressingly close. There have also been several scary incidents when U.S. and Soviet forces went to full alert because of faulty radar images or a test tape that someone thought was real. While the military downplays these events, former Secretary of Defense William Perry argues that it is pure luck that we have avoided a nuclear exchange, and that the possibility of nuclear war is greater today than it was at the height of the Cold War.

In part, this is because of a technology gap between the U.S. and Russia.

In January 1995, Russian early warning radar on the Kola Peninsula picked up a rocket launch from a Norwegian island that looked as if it was targeting Russia. In fact, the rocket was headed toward the North Pole, but Russian radar tagged it as a Trident II missile coming in from the North Atlantic. The scenario was plausible. While some first strike attacks envision launching a massive number of missiles, others call for detonating a large warhead over a target at about 800 miles altitude. The massive pulse of electro-magnetic radiation that such an explosion generates would blind or cripple radar systems over a broad area. That would be followed with a first strike.

At the time, calmer heads prevailed,, and the Russians called off their alert, but for a few minutes the doomsday clock moved very close to midnight.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the 1995 crisis suggests that Russia does not have “a reliable and working global space-based satellite early warning system.” Instead, Moscow has focused on building ground-based systems that give the Russians less warning time than satellite-based ones do. What that means is that while the U.S. would have about 30 minutes warning time to investigate whether an attack was really taking place, the Russians would have 15 minutes or less.

That, according to the magazine, would likely mean that “Russian leadership would have little choice but to pre-delegate nuclear launch authority to lower levels of command,” hardly a situation that would be in the national security interests of either country.

Or, for that matter, the world.

A recent study found that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan using Hiroshima-sized weapons would generate a nuclear winter that would make it impossible to grow wheat in Russia and Canada and cut the Asian Monsoon’s rainfall by 10 percent. The result would be up to 100 million deaths by starvation. Imagine what the outcome would be if the weapons were the size used by Russia, China or the U.S.

For the Russians, the upgrading of U.S. sea-based missiles with the super-fuze would be an ominous development. By “shifting the capacity to submarines that can move to missile launch positions much closer to their targets than land-based missiles,” the three scientists conclude, “the U.S. military has achieved a significantly greater capacity to conduct a surprise first strike against Russian ICBM silos.”

The U.S. Ohio class submarine is armed with 24 Trident II missiles, carrying as many as 192 warheads. The missiles can be launched in less than a minute.

The Russians and Chinese have missile-firing submarines as well, but not as many and some are close to obsolete. The U.S. has also seeded the world’s oceans and seas with networks of sensors to keep track of those subs. In any case, would the Russians or Chinese retaliate if they knew that the U.S. still retained most of its nuclear strike force? Faced with a choice committing national suicide or holding their fire, they may well choose the former.

The other element in this modernization program that has Russia and China uneasy is the decision by the Obama administration to place anti-missile systems in Europe and Asia, and to deploy Aegis ship-based anti missile systems off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. From Moscow’s perspective—and Beijing’s as well—those interceptors are there to absorb the few missiles that a first strike might miss.

In reality, anti-missile systems are pretty iffy. Once they migrate off the drawing boards, their lethal efficiency drops rather sharply. Indeed, most of them can’t hit the broad side of a barn. But that is not a chance the Chinese and the Russians can afford to take.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Forum in June 2016, Russian President Valdimir Putin charged that U.S. anti-missile systems in Poland and Rumania were not aimed at Iran, but Russia and China. “The Iranian threat does not exist, but missile defense systems continue to be positioned—a missile defense system is one element of the whole system of offensive military potential.”

The danger here is that arms agreements will begin to unravel if countries decide that they are suddenly vulnerable. For the Russians and the Chinese, the easiest solution to the American breakthrough is to build a lot more missiles and warheads, and treaties be dammed.

The new Russian cruise missile may indeed strain the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, but it is also a natural response to what are, from Moscow’s view, alarming technological advances by the U.S. Had the Obama administration reversed the 2002 decision by George W. Bush’s administration to unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the new cruise might never have been deployed.

There are a number of immediate steps that the U.S. and the Russians could take to de-escalate the current tensions. First, taking nuclear weapons off their hair-trigger status, which would immediately reduce the possibility of accidental nuclear war. That could be followed by a pledge of “no first use” of nuclear weapons.

If this does not happen, it will almost certainly result in an accelerated nuclear arms race. “I don’t know how this is all going to end,” Putin told the St. Petersburg delegates. “What I do know is that we will need to defend ourselves.”

Yemen: Effective Humanitarian Aid Depends on a Peace Accord

René Wadlow

The United Nations (UN) together with the governments of Sweden and Switzerland which have often led humanitarian issues in the UN system held a high-level pledging conference in Geneva on April 25, 2017 to again draw attention to the deepening humanitarian crisis in war-torn Yemen, currently the largest food security emergency in the world. Some 60% of the population are in a food-insecure situation.

More than 3.5 million people have been displaced in the cycle of escalating violence. “We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation. We must act now, to save lives” said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who presided over the conference. Realistically, he stressed that funding and humanitarian aid alone will not reverse the fortunes of the millions of people impacted. Diplomatically, he called for a cessation of hostilities and a political settlement with talks facilitated by the Special Envoy of the Secretary General, the Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Chekh Ahmed.

UN officials and most diplomats are reluctant to call the armed conflict by its real name: “a war of aggression”. The aggression of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates) against Yemen began on March 24, 2015.

The Saudi-led coalition is helped with arms and “intelligence” by the USA and the UK which appreciate Saudi money for arms and do not want to antagonize a large segment of the Arab world when the conflicts of Syria-Iraq-Kurds-Turkey is still “on the table.”

However, the aggression of the Saudi coalition is what has turned an internal Yemen struggle for power between the current and the former President of Yemen into a war with regional implications, now drawing Iran into the picture.

Intellectually, the “political solution” is clear. There needs to be an end to the Saudi bombing and a withdrawal of its coalition troops. Then, the different factions in Yemen can try to develop some sort of inclusive government. The Swiss Foreign Minister, a co-host of the conference, hinted to the issue in suggesting very briefly that, if asked, Switzerland could provide expertise on forms of decentralization and con-federal government.

The effort to create a centralized Yemen government has failed. The future lies in a very decentralized government with great autonomy for the regions, taking into consideration the diverse tribal configuration of the country. With intelligence and patience – always in short supply – a single, highly decentralized State might be developed.

The most difficult first-step is ending Saudi-led aggression, after which an effective humanitarian aid and development program can be put into effect.

Terrorism And Militancy: Are They Quite The Same?

S.G. Vombatkere

 Maoists (or Naxals, according to some) ambushed a 100-strong CRPF road-opening patrol (ROP) on 24 April in Chintagufa Police Station limits of Sukma District of Chhattisgarh, killing 25 CRPF personnel and wounding six. The Maoists were reportedly around 200 in strength, and they ruthlessly continued engaging the pinned-down CRPF patrol for about one hour. The killing and wounding of CRPF personnel, causing irreparable loss not merely to their families but to the CRPF as well, is both condemnable and utterly sad. The Maoists reportedly captured some weapons, but their losses will only be known later if at all, through intelligence sources.

ROP is for “sanitizing” a route, and the most important factor here is intelligence, meaning knowledge of the terrain (including precise locations where ambush is likely) and of the movements and strengths of the opposing (in this case, Maoist) force. It is only to be expected that a ROP may be ambushed, since it is necessarily on a precise route, and only the time and strength of the ROP will not be known to the Maoists unless their intelligence is exceedingly good. To be able to lay an ambush with 200 strength speaks for the Maoists’ intelligence, counter-intelligence and training.

In this hour of loss and mourning, it is still necessary to make a few points on what is not generally known to civilians. First, what is “ambush”? It is “a surprise attack by people lying in wait in a hidden position”. It is an age-old operation conducted by armies, regular forces as well as irregular forces and militants, against other armies, regular forces and irregular forces. Indeed in all armies, patrolling is an operation of war, which is studied and for which rigorous training is imparted on how to plan and conduct patrols (field intelligence, routes, drills, procedures, briefings, etc.) including planning and laying ambushes, and also practicing drills of what members of a patrol have to do when ambushed, without commands being issued. The ruling principles in patrolling and ambushing are intelligence, surprise, stealth, speed and offensive action, with the aim of inflicting maximum damage. Patrolling is risky and difficult, and ambushing is its flip side and not “cowardly” – these are the harsh realities of armed combat. Good intelligence and rigorous training can minimize casualties among a patrol which is ambushed.

The tiger always ambushes the deer, approaching it stealthily, waiting motionless in hiding until its quarry is within striking range, and then striking with deadly speed. Every infantryman is an expert in patrolling, with real-time experience. Others even though not from the infantry, like this writer, nevertheless have the knowledge and training and even some experience. None of these would ever describe an ambush as cowardly or describe the killings as murder. Indeed the use of these words assigns a sort of victimhood to the slain and detracts from learning lessons from failures. People who use the words “cowardly” and “murder” are victims of their own rhetoric.

There is no element of terror in patrolling even though there may be fear of being ambushed. A soldier may and usually does experience fear, but he is never terrorised. In fun, late Field Marshal S.H.F.J.Manekshaw, himself a decorated soldier from the Gorkha Regiment, famously said: “If a soldier says he does not know fear, he is either a liar or a Gorkha”. Team spirit and rigorous training in field craft inculcates confidence and eliminates fear.

Second, there is confusion between the terms “terrorist” and “militant”, and hence between terrorism and militancy. All terrorists are militant, but all militants are not terrorists – a person can be militant without using firearms or weapons, only using strong language or, like boys in Kashmir, pelting stones. Of course, such militants can and often do “graduate” to using firearms and explosives. Militants strike at hard targets by all sorts of means including ambush, use of deception by disguise, concealment, etc.

Terrorists on the other hand, strike deliberately at soft targets of unsuspecting, uninvolved, innocent people. By detonating a bomb in a public place, a terrorist aims at causing maximum casualties and destroying as much property as possible. A suicide attack using an explosive belt detonated amidst a crowd is another kind of terrorist attack. Terrorist attacks are certainly cowardly, and terrorists can only and must only be put down by use of all possible forceful police and/or military means and measures. Deadly force is undoubtedly the only and unequivocal answer to terrorism. However, in dealing with militancy, force is necessary but not sufficient. Force needs to be calibrated to specific situations, along with suitable political and social action, which includes diplomacy and dialogue.

Reverting to the Maoists’ ambush of the CRPF’s ROP, the reason for the large number of casualties could be some combination of intelligence failure, inadequate training and shortfall in leadership at the higher levels of command. Only an honest inquiry will reveal the causes, and it is neither necessary nor desirable to make the reasons public, although it would be vital to implement the lessons learned at all levels. As for dealing with Maoists, it needs to be recognized that they are militants who have to be tackled with a combination of force and political-social means which can only flow out of good and honest governance.

Ahead of EU Brexit summit, Merkel takes tough stance on UK

Johannes Stern

Germany and the European Union insisted on a tough stance towards the UK in the run-up to today’s special EU summit on Brexit in Brussels and the upcoming British elections on June 8. In a government statement to the German parliament (Bundestag) on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) spoke out sharply against London and announced there would be no concessions made in the EU-UK negotiations.

“A third country—and this will be the case with the United Kingdom—cannot and will not have the same rights and cannot expect to be treated better than a member of the European Union,” Merkel threatened. She had “to unfortunately express that clearly here” because “some in the UK still have illusions. That, however, would just be a waste of time.”

Merkel defended the EU’s position not to conduct substantive negotiations on any future relationship with London until the details of the withdrawal were clarified. The UK government is pressing to address this issue at the end of the planned two-year interim talks, but according to Merkel: “We cannot conclude these negotiations.” They are part of the most important aspects “that will be on the agenda from the very beginning.” Therefore we “can only proceed in this order and not vice versa.”

Germany and the other member states of the European Union “did not want this withdrawal,” Merkel said, stressing that it was now up to Germany and other EU member states to “define our own interests and objectives for the forthcoming negotiations.” To this end, “the European Council will take the first step on Saturday and adopt the 27 common guidelines for negotiations.”

The “Guidelines” read like a declaration of war on Britain on the part of Berlin and the European states. The Süddeutsche Zeitung published a preliminary report on the document prepared by the EU Commission under the title, “EU plans very hard Brexit negotiations.” The paper contained “a number of demands that would be regarded in London as impertinent” and run counter to the plans of the British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Among other things, the rights of EU citizens already resident in Britain are to be preserved “life-long” without any restrictions. This means that all EU citizens living in the UK would continue to enjoy equal access to the labour market and the British social system, even after Brexit. For the conservative British government such a demand is unacceptable. In the course of the Brexit campaign, the Tory right-wing agitated against EU migrants and, after leaving the EU, demanded an immediate end to all relations with Brussels.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the EU Commission is also “unrelenting” regarding financial commitments. Brussels insists that “Great Britain should pay all the costs associated with leaving the EU—in euros.” In this manner the Commission would “shift any currency risks back into the lap of the United Kingdom.”

All the costs incurred by Brexit, such as the relocation of EU institutions back to the continent, are to be “fully covered” by London. This would be the case, for example, for the European Banking supervision authority, which has so far been based in London, and also the European Medicines Agency.

Merkel left no doubt that the main motion was largely drafted in Berlin. She thanked the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, for “a very good and balanced draft of the text, after intensive preparation, in which, of course, the German government has participated.”

In the run-up to the summit, Berlin systematically worked to create a united front of EU countries against London. Their many talks in recent weeks have shown that “there is now a great deal of agreement among the 27 Member States and the institutions on our common negotiating line with the UK,” Merkel said. One could therefore “assume that the European Council of 27 will send a strong signal of unity.”

There is one central aim behind the tough stance of the chancellor. Berlin is seeking to fuse Europe together under German domination in order to further its geo-strategic and economic interests as effectively as possible. Any concessions to London are unacceptable to the German ruling class because they would put at risk German hegemony and accelerate the break-up of the EU under conditions of growing political and economic conflicts across the continent.

A government resolution adopted by the German parliament states: “From the standpoint of the German Bundestag, the ultimate objective of the Brexit negotiations is to ensure the unity of the EU. Particular interests should not jeopardise the achievement of this long-term and overarching objective. ‘Cherry picking’ by the UK is not allowed.”

In an attempt to play the role of Europe’s “disciplinarian,” the German government can count on the country’s so-called opposition parties in the Bundestag. The chair of the Left Party fraction in the Bundestag, Sahra Wagenknecht, who spoke directly after Merkel, solidarised herself with the chancellor in her very first sentence. “Mrs. Chancellor, I agree with your criticism of the current developments in Turkey,” she said.

As a concerned representative of the ruling elite, Wagenknecht warned the government that it “put at risk the legacy of the great founding fathers of Europe” with its “strategy of deterring other potential imitators by attaching the worst possible conditions to withdrawal.” Among the “great founding fathers of Europe” to whom Wagenknecht referred was Konrad Adenauer (CDU), the arch-conservative and deeply anti-Communist first German chancellor of the post-war period.

From start to finish Wagenknecht identified herself with the EU, which is increasingly dominated by Berlin. Her handful of social phrases were intended to obscure the reactionary character of the institutions in Brussels, which are increasingly recognised by workers and youth for what they really are: instruments in the hands of a tiny hyper-wealthy financial oligarchy which has declared war on the working class, encourages extreme right-wing forces and is rearming for war at home and abroad.

US economic growth slumps to slowest pace in three years

Barry Grey

The US gross domestic product barely rose in the first three months of 2017, increasing by an annual rate of only 0.7 percent from the last quarter of 2016, according to a report released Friday by the Commerce Department. It was the slowest rate of economic growth since the first quarter of 2014.

The figure fell short of the already low consensus estimate of economists, who had predicted a 1 percent rise in the GDP. The first quarter performance was sharply lower than the final three months of 2016, when the economy grew by 2.1 percent.

The most important factor depressing economic growth was a virtual collapse in the growth of consumption, which tumbled to 0.3 percent from 3.5 percent in the previous quarter. Consumption accounts for some 70 percent of GDP in the United States. The first quarter consumption figure was the weakest since the end of 2009, when the official recovery from the severe recession that followed the 2008 Wall Street crash was just getting underway.

Just two months ago, economists were predicting that the first quarter output figure would be 2 percent, but recent months have seen a marked slowdown in consumer purchases, particularly of cars. The BBC quoted Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at Capital Economics, as saying, “Household spending was held down by a drop in motor vehicle sales from the near-record high at the end of last year and the unseasonably warm winter weather, which depressed utilities spending.”

While many economists brushed off the miserable GDP report as a fluke, the result mainly of temporary factors such as unusually warm weather, Carl R. Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, told the New York Times, “I have to be honest: The hard data just wasn’t very good last quarter. The retail retreat, especially in autos, was greater than many people anticipated.”

There have been other signs of stagnation, including the Labor Department’s employment report for March, which showed an expansion in payrolls of only 98,000 new jobs, less than half the pace of previous months.

The economic growth report took on added political significance coming as it did on the eve of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. Trump’s pledge to dramatically slash taxes for corporations and the rich, gut business regulations and launch a pro-corporate infrastructure program has fueled a euphoric rise on the stock market and a spurt in business confidence and investment, as the financial elite anticipates an enormous increase in profits and personal wealth.

But Friday’s report underscores the disconnect between the rising fortunes of the corporate oligarchy on the one hand, and the depressed state of the real economy and the fall in living standards for broad sections of the population on the other.

Just two days before the release of the Commerce Department report, Trump’s two top economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the director of the White House National Economic Council, released an outline of the administration's plans for a multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and the rich.

The two multi-millionaire former Goldman Sachs bankers insisted that the plan would not add to the national debt and require major social cuts because it would boost the growth rate to a sustainable 3 percent from the current average of around 2 percent, adding sufficient tax revenues to offset the impact of lower tax rates.

This lie is part of the attempt to present the wholesale redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top as a boon to workers, driven by the desire to create “American jobs.” The dismal GDP figure for the first quarter of the year has underscored the fraudulent character of these claims.

This will not in any way deter the government from implementing the demands of the financial oligarchy. On the contrary, the poor first quarter report will be cited as proof of the necessity for a tax boondoggle for the rich. As Republican Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, put it, “This report underscores the urgent need for pro-growth tax reform.”