On
the “uselessness” of nuclear weapons
One common view in nuclear disarmament studies is that
nuclear weapons are useless because they can never be used. Colin Powell is one
of many voices for disarmament who have expressed this view that they have no purpose
because no one dare use them. [1] In this view, the policy of mutual assured
destruction is merely an absurd trap from which the superpowers must extricate
themselves. But if this were all there was to it, we would have to ask why they
continue to exist. Nuclear weapons are a colossal expenditure of national
wealth, lives and the natural environment, so it would be better to look for
rational rather than irrational reasons for their continual existence. We have
to ask what makes them so worthwhile to the nations that sacrificed so much to
get them and now cling to them so stubbornly. If they really did have no
advantages, surely we would have eliminated them by now. Perhaps the
conventional wisdom is missing something.
In the 1991 documentary film, The Truth of
Christmas Island, a high ranking officer in Britain’s nuclear program
described the thinking that was behind the decision to test hydrogen bombs in
the Pacific in the late 1950s:
The government had
made a decision many years before in its secret committee that Britain had to
be a nuclear power or otherwise we were right out of world politics. That was
not to be tolerated for a moment. And then suddenly it was realized that an
international ban on testing... was about to come into force in perhaps a year’s
time and we would be left outside, so Britain would immediately become a second
rate power. In no way were we ready to do a test in a year’s time. [2]
-Air Vice-Marshall Richard Oulton, Task Force
Commander 1955-57
Similar comments can be found elsewhere in the historical
records of other nuclear powers. Possession of nuclear weapons brings much more
than just symbolic status. French leaders have also spoken frequently of the
glory of having la force de la frappe (the power to strike).
Elsewhere, when asked to make a commitment to never strike first, nuclear
powers prefer to remain coy because ambiguity is key. As the old hair dye
television commercial used to say, “Keep them guessing.” The value of the
weapons would be diminished if a state were to announce to potential
adversaries that they wouldn’t be used in certain situations. After spending so
much national treasure and destroying lives and the natural environment just to
make the bombs, states have no intention of lowering their strategic value.
Besides, even if a state promised to never launch a first strike, the promise
would be very easy to break. The world that followed would be too shattered to
hold a war crimes tribunal.
In truth, planners envision many disastrous scenarios in
which a first strike might be the only way to preserve national sovereignty.
Tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons, for example, are meant to be used at
the discretion of field commanders in some instances, as is the case in
Pakistan presently. [3]
A nation might be depleted of all means of defense, near
defeat, facing imminent ruin and occupation. It might be under threat of an
ambiguously worded threat of “mass destruction” which does not necessarily
imply a nuclear strike. When backed into such a corner, what government would
refrain from using, or threatening to use, every weapon at its disposal? The
ability to threaten is useful in itself, but a nation can’t threaten to use a
weapon if it doesn’t possess it or if it has promised to not use it in certain
circumstance–unless of course it breaks the promise, which could be done quite
easily. The term “non-explosive use of nuclear weapons” has been coined to
refer to all the ways nations use nuclear weapons while they remain ostensibly
unused.
The French have been very talkative on this point whenever
they discuss their country’s possession of la frappe. When
President Hollande was asked in February 2016, during a state visit to French
Polynesia, whether the state should apologize to the victims of the fallout and
admit that nuclear testing was a mistake, he balked as if the question were
absurd, and bluntly said, no, that’s how we got la frappe, la
dissuasion. [4] In French politics, it is beyond the pale to question the
value of this achievement. They thank the French veterans and Polynesians for
their sacrifice, made with uninformed consent, and have recognized that there
were “effects,” but that is as far as it goes.
Two quotations by recent French presidents make it clear
that deterrence does not mean only deterring an opponent from a nuclear first
strike:
On the topic,
President Sarkozy said: My first duty as head of state and of the military is
to assure that in all circumstances France, its territory, its people, and its
republican institutions, are secure. And in all circumstances, our national
independence and our autonomy of decision-making must be preserved. Nuclear
deterrence is the ultimate guarantee of this. Taking measure of this reality is
the heavy responsibility of every president of the republic. (March 21, 2008)
[5]
President Chirac declared:
It is the
responsibility of the head of state to appreciate always the extent of our
vital interests. The uncertainty of this limit is consubstantial with the
doctrine of deterrence… It is up to the president of the republic to appreciate
the profound potential consequences of an aggression, a menace or an
unacceptable blackmail threatening our interests. This analysis could, in an
applicable case, lead to an understanding that a threat to our vital interests
exists. (January 19, 2006) [6]
North Korea has also stated a similar stance on the
use of its nuclear weapons. Reuters and Russia Today translated
and interpreted Kim Jong-un’s statement incorrectly as saying “the North
will adhere to the principles of nuclear non-proliferation and would never
attack first.” Further down in the report the policy was clarified as
something a little different: “As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our
Republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached
upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes.” [7] In other words, their
policy retains the same ambiguity as that of other
nuclear powers. They will not necessarily wait to be struck by a
nuclear bomb before launching their own. They will use a nuclear
weapon when their “sovereignty is encroached upon.” The difference is
crucial. Being the victim of a first nuclear strike would be a fact, an
event which no one could dispute, but having “sovereignty encroached upon”
by forces equipped with nuclear weapons would be a subjective
feeling and matter of interpretation. The nuclear powers all
retain the right to make this judgment for themselves and strike
pre-emptively. When the promise of no first use is
discussed, it can best be understood as a wishful
preference, as the nuclear powers never make an unambiguous
commitment to it.
In August 2016, US President Obama floated the idea of
committing to “no first use,” but he received little support within his own
administration and from allies that are protected by the American nuclear
umbrella. President Bush’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review stated three scenarios
in which the US would respond with a first nuclear strike: when attacked by
weapons of mass destruction of any type, to penetrate hardened underground
targets that couldn’t be destroyed by conventional weapons, and in the event of
“surprising military developments.” [8] It is plausible that all nations in
possession of nuclear weapons have similar policies, whether they are
explicitly stated or not. Half the motivation for wanting the weapons in the
first place is to be able to wield these threats.
In Empire and Nuclear
Weapons, an article written in 2007 about his new book, Joseph Gerson
described how American officials have defined nuclear deterrence in a similarly
broad fashion over the years. His description of the five established uses of
nuclear weapons is paraphrased below:
1. Battlefield use,
with the term “battlefield” meant to include the civilian populations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The long-held consensus among scholars has been that
these first atomic bombings were not necessary to end the war against Japan,
and that they were designed to serve a second function of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal…
2. Dictate the
parameters of the global (dis)order by implicitly terrorizing U.S. enemies and
allies.
3. Threaten opponents
with first strike nuclear attacks in order to terrorize them into negotiating
on terms acceptable to the United States or... to ensure that desperate
governments do not defend themselves with chemical or biological weapons. Once
the Soviet Union joined the nuclear club, the U.S. arsenal began to play a
fourth role...
4. Complement U.S.
conventional forces, to make them, in the words of former Secretary of Defense
Harold Brown, “meaningful instruments of military and political power.”
Implicit and explicit U.S. nuclear threats were repeatedly used to intimidate
those who might consider intervening militarily to assist those we are
determined to attack.
5. Deterrence, which
is popularly understood to mean preventing a surprise first strike nuclear
attack against the United States by guaranteeing “mutual assured destruction”
(MAD). Pentagon leaders have testified that this understanding of deterrence
has never been U.S. policy. In contrast, they have defined deterrence as
including function number 2 above, as preventing other nations from taking “courses
of action” that are inimical to U.S. interests. This could include decisions
related to allocation of scarce resources like oil and water, defending access
to markets, or preventing non-nuclear attacks against U.S. allies and clients.
[9]
Gerson points out that these five functions did not
necessarily always succeed because history provides many examples of nations
and revolutionary movements that called the bluff. To cite a few examples,
China was “lost” to communism in the late 1940s, the North Vietnamese held out
until the Americans left in 1975, and Cuba, the USSR and Angola resisted
American power in Southern Africa for a quarter century. Yet in other cases,
listed in Gerson’s article, nuclear threats were implicit or explicit in
America’s actions on the world stage, and they advanced the political agenda.
The full spectrum of American military power, ultimately backed up by nuclear
weapons, succeeded in imposing the American military, economic and political
order. The usefulness of nuclear weapons is implicit and clearly understood by
all nations that possess them, and, of course, by those that don’t.
Unfortunately, much of the Western discourse on nuclear
disarmament has lost sight of these reasons that the most powerful nations have
for refusing to give up their arsenals. Long ago in 1986,
Joseph Gerson wrote, “Few disarmament and arms-control activists or
leaders have understood the relationship between the nuclear arms race and the
global ambitions of the U.S. Similarly, efforts to halt and restrain U.S.
intervention in the third world have too often proceeded in ignorance of the
nuclear ramifications of ‘conventional’ conflicts in Asia, the Middle East,
Latin America, or Africa.” [10]
This misunderstanding seems just as prevalent today.
Many activists think the reason might be bureaucratic inertia, entrenched
financial interests of those who make and work with the bombs, or it might be
that states are just trapped in an absurd game in which making a first strike
is unthinkable but deterring one is essential. Many of the people who write
about disarmament know everything about nuclear arsenals and disarmament
agreements, but they are often somewhat oblivious to the wider
context of international relations or uncritical of
the way global power has been exercised over the last seventy
years.
The Nuclear Security Summit hosted by US President Obama
(April 2016) illustrated how the disarmament movement itself has been colonized
by the Western consensus and the tropes of mainstream media punditry. Russia
chose not to participate, and Western commentators unanimously chastised Russia
for this absence and its recent “aggressive” behavior in Syria, Crimea and
Ukraine. No effort was made to reflect more deeply on why Russia saw nothing to
gain from participating. Despite America’s long and well-documented record of
flouting international law in numerous CIA-managed coups and regime change
operations, people who are apparently deeply committed to disarmament can now
focus only on Russian aggression. Is this willful neglect or ignorance? If it
is the latter, it requires considerable effort to maintain.
Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Crimea are ambiguous cases
under international law, but the outrage over these actions seems to stem from
the fact that this time a large power other than the United States, France,
Israel or the UK decided it had vital interests to protect. Russia defended its
actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine by pointing to the American meddling in
the internal affairs Ukraine to overthrow an elected head of a sovereign
nation. The 2014 revolution in Ukraine involved nationalist and fascist
elements, and it drove the country into economic chaos, worsening corruption
and ethnic divisions. Russia had genuine concerns about stopping the spread of
the chaos toward Russian minorities in Ukraine, and preventing a flow of
refugees into Russia. Thus, though their actions were legally dubious, their hand
was forced, probably intentionally, by America’s illegal meddling in the Maidan
revolt and overthrow of the head of state without a constitutionally required
impeachment. Thus, if one is going to invoke international law when pointing to
Russia’s reaction, one must note that the Ukrainian government is illegitimate
and there was illegal interference by a foreign power in the Maidan revolt. As
NATO did in Kosovo in 1999, Russia invoked the “right to protect” and it must
be noted that in the end Russia’s actions brought stability. In contrast to the
consequences of the American attempt to overthrow the government of Syria, there
hasn’t been a flow of refugees from Crimea making dangerous sea journeys across
the Black Sea in the hope of getting to Turkey, Bulgaria or Romania then
onward to Western Europe. Nonetheless, the vilification of Russia in Western
media has been out of all proportion. If we really wanted to know where the
present state of international lawlessness came from, there are other places
besides Russia we could look for ultimate causes.
The downside for Russia in its reaction to the Ukraine
crisis was that it suffered illegally imposed economic sanctions, expulsion
from the G8, and branding as a global pariah. There is also speculation that
the decline in world oil prices was a deliberate manipulation to inflict
economic pain on Russia. [11] The timing of the drop was certainly curious.
Western and Saudi oil interests suffered for this as well, but it seems like
there may have been a choice made to pay a sacrifice in order to inflict more
pain on a rival. The Ukraine problem was preceded by the great game being
played for Syria and pipelines through the region, but I’ll leave that topic
aside. [12] These points are made here just to illustrate how absurd it would
be to ignore this intense superpower conflict in discussions of nuclear
disarmament.
The disarmament movement in the West, however, is showing
signs that it is oblivious to international affairs. It has developed a Western
bias in which it has begun to disregard the views of other nuclear powers,
which means, ironically, that it has lost its impartiality and begun to work
against its own stated purposes. In this isolated bubble of opinion, little consideration
is given to the way nuclear weapons are folded within the deployment of
conventional military and economic power.
Apparently, we should expect Russia and China to
participate in disarmament talks without addressing their concerns about how
their counterpart outspends all other nations on military, maintains a global
empire of military bases, and arbitrarily imposes economic sanctions on other
nations as if it were a law unto itself. The Americans are disingenuously
stumped as to what could possibly be stopping Russia from coming to the table
to discuss arms reductions. A recent editorial by the editor of The
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists had some blistering critiques of the
American plan to spend $1 trillion on nuclear arsenal upgrades that will upset
the balance of power between the US and other nations, but the author couldn’t
help casting blame on Russia for its absence from the Nuclear Security
Summit and recent “bad behavior”:
Deteriorated relations
between the United States and Russia make for a terribly risky world security
situation. As badly as the Russians are behaving in Ukraine and Syria,
Washington simply must continue to reach out. [13]
Yes, it would be such a grand, magnanimous gesture for
innocent and benevolent Washington to turn the other cheek and “reach out.” The
same theme reappeared in another article in The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists later in the same month. In this one, the author, Fiona
Hill, from the American think tank The Brookings Institution wrote:
Russia has assets it
can use, but its… modernization is still underway. So, in an “asymmetric”
struggle with the United States, Putin and Russia have to be innovative, catch
the West off guard, and fight dirty... Putin makes it clear that Russia will
act on multiple fronts at the same time and do things that Western leaders
would not contemplate–including the threat of crossing the nuclear threshold
and breaking the post-World War II taboo against using a battlefield nuclear
weapon... Putin wants to intimidate Western leaders and their publics, but
his big mission is to get Russia a seat at the table with the West, on Russia’s
terms, which he declares is on “equal” terms with the United States… The
ultimate problem for the United States and the West is how to handle these demands,
at a juncture when Putin has seemed set on bombing his way to that table, with
interventions in Ukraine and Syria, and negotiating terms at gunpoint. Putin’s
behavior is completely unacceptable to Western leaders. But they cannot simply
reject the idea of dealing with Russia in international affairs. There are
common crises that the West and Russia need to solve together, like planning
the future of the Middle East beyond Syria, stopping the proliferation of
nuclear weapons, countering transnational terrorism, adapting to climate
change, and responding to pandemic disease. The best way to ensure that Putin
will act as a spoiler on these and other issues is to try to isolate Russia.
[14]
Fiona Hill seems to be unfamiliar with the history
described above in Empire and Nuclear Weapons. All states that
possess nuclear weapons have used them to implicitly or explicitly threaten to
break taboos. Putin is not the first to cross this line. To possess nuclear
weapons is to threaten to use them, and opponents have no way to know for
sure if any taboos or thresholds exist. Fiona Hill seems to possess a
crystal ball that sees into Putin’s mind, which allows her know with certainty
that Russia “will do things that Western leaders would not contemplate.” She
doesn’t say might or may or could. She knows somehow. Unlike the supposedly benevolent
governments of other nations, Russia is described as “fighting dirty,”
“intimidating,” and “threatening to cross the nuclear threshold,” as if
these actions are not standard strategy for all nuclear
powers. Furthermore, she states, with utmost obliviousness to
the hypocrisy of the accusation coming from an American, that Russia
has been “bombing their way to the table” and “negotiating terms at gunpoint.” She also
seems to scoff at the idea that Russia or any other nation should expect to be
treated on equal terms because it is just assumed that the global
order has a hierarchy in which America is supreme.
This sort of commentary is standard and
unsurprising in sources such as the Brookings Institution, but it is
appalling to see it in a journal dedicated to international dialog and the goal
of eliminating nuclear weapons. Has The Bulletin become just
another Washington think tank and mouthpiece for the State Department? If
the discourse of the disarmament movement is to be based
on willful ignorance of history and international relations, we are
entering a period when there will be multiple nation-based disarmament
movements functioning as national echo chamber propaganda tools that cancel
each other out in their pursuit of global dialog and cooperation.
Disarmament activists have to start asking questions about the sources of
funding and support that have gained influence over groups that were once
believed to be neutral and above national biases.
Another flaw in the disarmament discourse is
that there is a false understanding that nuclear deterrence is just
an infrastructure, a financial interest, or a bureaucratic remnant of a bygone
era, no longer relevant to the present era. On the contrary, nuclear deterrence
needs to be understood for what it really is. Nuclear weapons are not useless.
They are still the ultimate tool, among many, for influencing the behavior of
adversaries and allies. They still confer the status of major power. The word deterrence actually conceals what is really going
on: dissuasion, persuasion, environmental contamination, nuclear energy
proliferation, private profit, threats, intimidation and terror,
but as long as these wider meanings are not addressed, nothing will be done
to deter or dissuade nuclear powers from
wanting to retain their status as “first rate” powers in world politics. The
allure of possessing la frappe has remained unchanged since
those words spoken by the British task force commander in 1957. The prospect of
being “right out of world politics” is not to be tolerated for a
moment.
A
partial list of nuclear blackmail, from:
1946
|
Truman threatens Soviets regarding
Northern Iran.
|
1946
|
Truman sends SAC bombers to
intimidate Yugoslavia following the downing of U.S. aircraft over Yugoslavia.
|
1948
|
Truman threatens Soviets in response
to Berlin blockade.
|
1950
|
Truman threatens Chinese when U.S.
Marines were surrounded at Chosin Reservoir in Korea.
|
1951
|
Truman approves military request to
attack Manchuria with nuclear weapons if significant numbers of new Chinese
forces join the war.
|
1953
|
Eisenhower threatens China to force
an end to Korean War on terms acceptable to the United States.
|
1954
|
Eisenhower’s Secretary of State
Dulles offers French three tactical nuclear weapons to break the siege at
Dienbienphu, Vietnam. Supported by Nixon’s public trial balloons.
|
1954
|
Eisenhower used nuclear armed SAC
bombers to reinforce CIA-backed coup in Guatemala.
|
1956
|
Bulganin threatens London and Paris
with nuclear attacks, demanding withdrawal following their invasion of Egypt.
|
1956
|
Eisenhower counters by threatening
the U.S.S.R. while also demanding British and French retreat from Egypt.
|
1958
|
Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of
Staff to prepare to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, if necessary to prevent
extension of revolution into Kuwait.
|
1958
|
Eisenhower orders Joint Chiefs of
Staff to prepare to use nuclear weapons against China if they invade the
island of Quemoy.
|
1961
|
Kennedy threatens Soviets during
Berlin Crisis.
|
1962
|
Cuban Missile Crisis.
|
1967
|
Johnson threatens Soviets during
Middle East War.
|
1967
|
Johnson’s public threats against
Vietnam are linked to possible use of nuclear weapons to break siege at Khe
Shan.
|
1969
|
Brezhnev threatens China during
border war.
|
1969
|
Nixon’s “November Ultimatum” against
Vietnam.
|
1970
|
Nixon signals U.S. preparations to
fight nuclear war during Black September War in Jordan.
|
1973
|
Israeli Government threatens use of
nuclear weapons during the “October War.”
|
1973
|
Kissinger threatens Soviet Union
during the last hours of the “October War” in the Middle East.
|
1973
|
Nixon pledges to South Vietnamese
President Thieu that he will respond with nuclear attacks or the bombing of
North Vietnam’s dikes if it violated the provisions of the Paris Peace
Accords.
|
1975
|
Sec. of Defense Schlesinger threatens
North Korea with nuclear retaliation should it attack South Korea in the wake
of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.
|
1980
|
Carter Doctrine announced.
|
1981
|
Reagan reaffirms the Carter Doctrine.
|
1982
|
British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher threatens to eliminate Buenos Aires during the Falklands War.
|
1990
|
Pakistan threatens India during
confrontation over Kashmir.
|
1990-91
|
Bush threatens Iraq during the “Gulf
War.”
|
1993
|
Clinton threatens North Korea.
|
1994
|
Clinton’s confrontation with North
Korea.
|
1996
|
China threatens “Los Angeles” during
confrontation over Taiwan. Clinton responds by sending two nuclear-capable
aircraft carrier fleets through the Taiwan Strait.
|
1996
|
Clinton threatens Libya with nuclear
attack to prevent completion of underground chemical weapons production
complex.
|
1998
|
Clinton threatens Iraq with nuclear
attack.
|
1999
|
India and Pakistan threaten and
prepare nuclear threats during the Kargil War.
|
2001
|
U.S. forces placed on a DEFCON alert
in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
|
2001
|
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld refuses
to rule out using tactical nuclear weapons against Afghan caves possibly
sheltering Osama Bin Laden.
|
2002
|
Bush communicates an implied threat
to counter any Iraqi use of chemical weapons to defend Iraqi troops with
chemical or biological weapons with a U.S. nuclear attack.
|
2006
|
French Prime Minister Chirac
threatens first strike nuclear attacks against nations that practice
terrorism against France.
|
2006 &
2007
|
“All options are on the table”: U.S.
threats to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure made by President Bush
and presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton.
|
Notes
[1] Max Bergmann, “Colin Powell: ‘Nuclear Weapons Are Useless,’”
ThinkProgress, January 27, 2010, http://thinkprogress.org/security/2010/01/27/175869/colin-powell-nuclear-weapons-are-useless/ .
[2] Ross Wilson (director) Paul
Murricane (producer), Dispatches: The Truth of
Christmas Island, 12:48~ Scottish
Television Productions, 1991
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3_GRMHdlU .
[3] Dilip Hiro, “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth: A Nuclear Armageddon in the
Making in South Asia,” TomDispatch.com, April 3, 2016, http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176123/tomgram%3A_dilip_hiro,_flashpoint_for_the_planet/ .
[4] Le Petit Journal, February 23, 2016, http://www.canalplus.fr/c-emissions/le-petit-journal/pid6515-le-petit-journal.html?vid=1365601 .
[5] “La dissuasion c’est moi dit l’inconnu de
province,” Initiatives pour le Désarmement
Nucléaire, March 23, 2016, http://www.idn-france.org/2016/03/la-dissuasion-cest-moi-dit-linconnu-de-province/ .
[6] Initiatives
pour le Désarmement Nucléaire.
[7] “North
Korea to ‘normalize relations with hostile states,’ won’t launch nuke strike
first – Kim,” Russia Today, May 6, 2016, https://www.rt.com/news/342236-north-korea-normalize-relations-nukes/ .
[8] William M. Arkin, “Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable,” Los
Angeles Times, March 10, 2002. http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/10/opinion/op-arkin .
[9] Joseph Gerson, “Empire and Nuclear Weapons,” Commondreams,
December 5, 2007, http://www.commondreams.org/views/2007/12/05/empire-and-nuclear-weapons .
[10] Joseph Gerson, “What is a
Deadly Connection?” The Deadly Connection: Nuclear War and U.S. Intervention,
ed. Joseph Gerson, (Philadelphia, New Society Publishers, 1986) p.9. Cited in
John Steinbach, “The Bush Administration, U.S. Nuclear
War-Fighting Policy & the War On Iraq,” Counterpunch,
May 13, 2016, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/13/the-bush-administration-u-s-nuclear-war-fighting-policy-the-war-on-iraq/ . (Although the article was published in May
2016, it does not refer to any events since the first term of
G.W. Bush. It is an updated version of a talk given by John Steinbach at
the Berkeley Unitarian Fellowship in 2003.)
[11] Eric Draister, “BRICS Under Attack: Western Banks, Governments Launch Full-Spectrum
Assault On Russia (Part I),” Mint Press News,
April 20, 2016,
http://www.mintpressnews.com/brics-attack-western-banks-governments-launch-full-spectrum-assault-russia-part/215761/ .
[12] For an in-depth discussion of the
roots causes of the Syria conflict and the renewed Cold War, see Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., “Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria,” Politico, February 23, 2016, http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-mideast-conflict-oil-intervention/ .
[13] Rachel Bronson, “‘Command and Control,’ terrifying soon at a theater near you,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 3,
2016, http://thebulletin.org/command-and-control-terrifying-soon-theater-near-you9302 .
