FOREWORD ANYONE WHO questions the official version of Nato's wars is likely to be accused by British journalists of 'knee-jerk anti-Americanism', 'trite radicalism', 'credulous armchair generalship', of being a 'fellow traveller of terrorism', or worse. I should like briefly to outline the development of my views on foreign and defence policy, not because they were ever of any importance, but merely to indicate 'where I am coming from'. To be pro- or anti-American does not seem to me a sensible basis for national policy. I believe that the Founding Fathers of the USA made a crucial contribution in the history of democracy with a system which subjected the executive to an independent legislature and a written constitution. I regret that Britain (which originally developed the idea) has not followed suit, although the McCarthy era, the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, and more recent events show that no constitutional guarantees will work in a climate of political hysteria. When I was in the USA in the 1960s, I was impressed by some things, especially the Universities and Colleges, but other things - poverty alongside opulence, organised crime alongside an inflated and brutalising prison system, the coarseness and violence of some popular magazines - seemed to me advance warnings for Britain, as indeed they proved to be. The USA has pioneered many good and bad things in the modern world, including a fossil-fuel-based life-style which threatens to make much of the planet uninhabitable. Anti-Americanism is the most heinous political sin in Britain today but it is surely legitimate to oppose US wars if they are misguided, counterproductive and wrong, and the 'Americanisation of the world' if it is socially and environmentally disastrous. For many years, the farsightedness of the Marshall Plan, and my respect for some American political scientists and economists, probably led me to take a more charitable view of US foreign policy than it deserved. However, in 1949 I was appalled by the 'drive to the Yalu' in Korea and, at first, simply could not believe that the USA would have engaged in such an apparently foolhardy action without a secret agreement with the People's Republic of China. In 1948, I could not see the logic in a cartoon which showed Britain calling in Uncle Sam, carrying his big stick, because of the communist coup in Czechoslovakia. Once Nato had been formed, however, it seemed to me that, as long as the Soviet Army was on the Elbe, it was sensible to keep it. CND never attracted me. I felt, unfairly perhaps, that many of its leaders took a rose-coloured view of the Soviet Union and that Bertrand Russell had discredited himself with his earlier call for nuclear war on the Soviet Union. (I have, more recently, joined CND). A 'twin pillar' Nato, as President Kennedy proposed and quickly abandonned, seemed to me a sensible arrangement at the time. However, I regarded the deployment of 'tactical' nuclear weapons as lunancy, and sympathised with General de Gaulle when he took France out of Nato on this issue. In 1986, I attended a conference on international economic policy in Poland, during the period of martial law. I arrived during a lecture by a man with an American accent who was putting forward some very free-market views. He was the representative of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. I discovered that martial law was a put-up job, to avoid Soviet intervention, and that there were no communists in governing circles in Poland or Hungary. It was clear, even to an outsider like myself, that the Soviet Empire was doomed, and that the belief, in governing circles in Britain, that the Warsaw Pact forces would overrun Western Europe in three days if it were not for American forces and thousands of nuclear weapons, was a dangerous delusion. Were British leaders, I wondered, mendacious or grossly mis-informed? When the USA bombed Libya in the same year, with British support, I felt that this was an immensely dangerous precedent. The Gadaffi regime was deeply unpleasant, but the USA was acting not only as judge and jury, but as legislator, investigator, prosecutor and executioner; blurring the distinction between war and peace; and using the methods of terrorism. For the first time, I felt that Nato was, on balance, a threat to international security and that Britain should leave it, and wrote to this effect in one of the dissident magazines that briefly flourished at the time. Having been a Labour and then a Conservative voter, I joined the Social Democratic Party on its inception but was surprised to discover that it included British membership of Nato in its constitution. Perhaps that should have been a warning! The Falklands War and the Gulf War seemed to me deeply regrettable necessities, justified by clear acts of international aggression, which could have been avoided if wiser policies had been pursued by the UK and the USA. The British Government had (perhaps) agreed in principle to hand over sovereignty of the Falkiands in return for guarantees for the Islanders - and certainly should have done - but failed to take a firm line with the 1,972 inhabitants. Then, in the face of Argentinian threats, it withdrew the sole patrol vessel, encouraging General Galtieri to believe that it would secretly welcome a fait accompli. The USA's support for Saddam's war on Iran, and its failure to show the flag off Kuwait, encouraged a similar misconception. Although regretfully supporting the Gulf War, I regarded the (militarily pointless) destruction of the Iraqi water, electicity and sewage system, followed by thirteen years of UN sanctions and five years of USAAF/RAF bombing, with devastating consequences for the Iraqi people, as one of the great crimes against humanity of the 20th century. When the Iron Curtain fell, I hoped that the dissidents would take over from the communists, that more appropriate European security arrangements would replace Nato, and that the countries of Western Europe would repay to the ex-communist countries the equivalent of the Marshall Aid they had received, giving these countries an economic underpinning for the development of the rule of law, liberal democracy and a humane economy. Of course, it did not happen like that. I began this book as a critique of the generally held view that Britain and France 'helped to destroy Bosnia', and that, in the Kosovo War, 'Good has triumphed over evil, justice has overcome barbarism, and the values of civilisation have prevailed' (Tony Blair). I went on to examine the assertions about other recent or more distant wars that were being used in the press to justify the planned war on Iraq; they were invariably untrue or misleading. This military history is highly topical. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Britain, through Nato, has participated in one mass population expulsion, brought about another, revived the bombing of civilian facilities, and joined in a sanctions/bombing war which killed over half a million babies without achieving anything worthwhile. It has supported the USA in a disastrous response to 9/11. At the time, the military historian Sir Michael Howard argued that, in declaring that the USA was 'at war', General Colin Powell had made a terrible error (see Chapter 9). Trying to eradicate terrorism by bonbing was 'like trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch'. A 'Long March' through 'rogue states' beginning with Iraq would 'indefinitely prolong the war and ensure that we can never win it'. Instead of giving the USA the benefit of its long experience in dealing with terrorism, Britain has enthusiastically joined this 'Long March'. In two wars that have killed over 100,000 people, mostly civilians, it has replaced theocracy with warlordism in one Moslem country and secular dictatorship with chaos and theocracy in another. It has given military and diplomatic support to Israel's devastating air war on Lebanon. These wars - which have enormously intensified militant Islamism - are defended by British politicians, Labour and Conservative, and newspapers from The Sun to The Observer, 'in strains of indignant morality' (J. S. Mill), often citing Britain's debt to the USA. It seems clear that, alongside pervasive mid-Atlantic business pressures, there are deep-seated unexamined assumptions underlying British war policy, which will not be affected by any changes in Downing Street. Only when these assumptions have been shown and accepted to be based on false history and confused morality will it be possible to develop a rational defence policy. I write as a concerned citizen, not as a military expert, but war is too serious a matter to be left to military men, or to politicians, who today are often more bellicose than the military men. GRAHAM HALLETT