Cluster bombs and Black Sea grain deal

Military questions are interesting, like ‘Should the US send cluster munitions to Ukraine?’ or ‘Should Russia walk out of the Black Sea grain deal?’ Questions that had huge military, political, social and economic consequences have been raised by generals since time immemorial but it is the politicians, both of liberal and illiberal world, who have mostly succumbed to the generals’ demands. Carl Von Clausewitz defined war as not just the military contest on the battlefield that the generals and their armies win or lose but an ‘act of politics’ that is schemed, planned and eventually won or lost because of the quality of politics practised and the decisions made by the politicians.

President Bush’s Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage is believed to have told General Musharraf after the 9/11 attacks to “be prepared to be bombed back to the stone age” if Pakistan did not cooperate with America on its war in Afghanistan. That too was an interesting question raised by Armitage. It was not even a question because he didn’t ask if Pakistan was willing to cooperate with America on its war in Afghanistan; he just dictated and attached a threat to that dictation. Musharraf didn’t act badly — “the strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept” — this wasn’t Musharraf reply; this is Thucydides (460BC-400BC), the great Athenian general, writing during 30 years of tension and war between Athens and Sparta.

I am glad Musharraf remembered this statement and didn’t disagree and put the Pakistani military and its nation’s resolve to test. But a question was raised and answered affirmatively. The consequences of answering this question in affirmative served the underlying needs of American war in Afghanistan but fighting this war did more harm than good to Pakistan. Look at Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, which is back under attack from suicide bombers who have struck the targets in the province twice in as many days. Armitage has retired and Musharraf is dead but the people of Pakistan live on to bear the consequence of how Musharraf answered the question that Armitage had raised. Ironically, the sending to stone age statement doesn’t originally belong to Armitage, it is attributed to Major General LeMay, the head of American 21^st Bomber Command in the Second World War, and published in his memoirs, Mission with LeMay, just before his retirement in 1965. LeMay is quoted to say this about North Vietnam: “We are going to bomb them back into the stone age.”

General LeMay fought in the Pacific theater; and the war in the Pacific theater which started as a sea war was essentially fought in the air and ended as an air war. He took over the 21^st Bomber Command from General Haywood Hansel, the man who wrote the air war plan that was used against Hitler in Europe. General Hansel, stationed at Mariana islands, the archipelago in the north-western Pacific Ocean as Commander of 21^st Bomber Command, failed in the most critical mission of his life — to destroy the Japanese aircraft manufacturing plants in Tokyo.

LeMay who replaced him simply asked a different question. Bombs being dropped from 30,000 feet were not hitting the target and so LeMay decided to replace Haywood’s precision bombing campaign with the firebombing. In March 1945, LeMay’s B-29 bombers launched a full-scale attack on the city of Tokyo. The bombs this time were small steel pipes twenty inches long weighing six pounds each and packed with napalm. B-29 bombers dropped 1665 tons of napalm in a targeted attack on Tokyo that lasted for three hours and everything within the sixteen miles target area was burnt to ashes. As many as one hundred thousand Japanese men, women and children died that night.

A military question — what if firebombing is replaced with precision-bombing — must have been asked. Political bosses must have given the go-ahead, the consequences of such a decision must also have been known. Firebombing didn’t stop at Tokyo. After the firebombing of Tokyo, LeMay and his B-29 bombers burnt down 70% of Okayama, 85% of Tokushima, 99% of Toyama. Overall, 67 Japanese cities were burnt down over a course of half a year. According to an estimate, over 500,000 Japanese were burnt to death in these attacks.

The military question of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is also an interesting question because General LeMay thought that ‘dropping of atomic bombs was superfluous’ as the real work in Japan had already been done through firebombing.

Conard Crane, a retired American Army Officer and a historian who has taught at West Point and American War College, also raises an interesting military question — if Japan had not surrendered in August 1945 due to American firebombing and atomic bombs, millions of Japanese would have starved to death in the winters? He considers that the surrender gave General MacArthur time to come in with his occupation forces and feed Japan, bringing in massive amount of food to avoid starvation in the winters of 1945. Americans killed millions to force Japanese to surrender so that they could save millions who had surrendered from dying in winters due to starvation. This is not a military strategy of cutting the boot to fit your size but cutting your feet to fit the boot.

The world is today once again busy asking military questions on why Russian is walking out on the grain deal in Black Sea and how it may result in the global food shortage. It is also busy talking about the cluster bombs and how despite over 100 countries banning the use of such bombs the Americans are still sending them to a war zone. It is beyond me to understand how Americans first bomb a nation and destroy it and then talk about its starving people and rebuilding that nation. But maybe there is an answer.

Nineteen years after LeMay’s firebombing of Japan, in 1964, Japanese Prime Minister Esako Satu awarded LeMay the highest award their country could give to a foreigner — The First Class Order of Merit of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun. The general was rewarded for his great contribution to training the Japanese Air Self-Defense Units.

As long as there are Satus and Zelenskyys in this world who are ready to decorate the LeMays and Bidens of this world for first creating conditions for destroying their countries and then rebuilding them after their destruction, we will continue to have a world that will remain divided, devastated and poor.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2023.

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