Donovan Webster’s Book Aftermath Essay

Introduction

War, described as an armed clash between countries or between rival groups within a nation, can have serious effects on our surroundings, public well-being, and natural resources. The influence of weapons and military strategies is considered to be under expansion without any involvement of civilian populations and any kind of their infrastructure, water, and air; besides, the military used to target jungles, forests, and other ecosystems for the purpose of taking away rival groups of shelter, cover, and food. It is necessary to underline the fact that mass refugee movements as well other commotions resulted from armed conflicts, can easily run down resources of wildlife and timber. (Webster, 1996). Even peacetime military actions and training for war can be extremely damaging to the environment.

Though wartime ecological damage is as old as war itself, it is up to date, an industrial conflict that has increased the likelihood of devastation on our ecosystem or worldwide scale. From the use of toxic gases in World War I and atomic missiles in World War II to the use of defoliants substances in Vietnam and land mines in several internal clashes, war now leaves a heritage that expands far beyond the battleground and long past the period of the original conflict (Lanier-Graham, 1993). This crisis has resulted in worldwide agreements that challenge limiting the undesirable consequences of fighting on civilian populations and the surroundings. It also guarantees that the global community will strongly observe ecological issues during the time of war, in much the same way as humanitarian or refugee concerns.

History

During the U.S. Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea” put down waste to huge areas of the South, as well as civilian settlements and farms (Zumwalt, 1986). During World War I, the military of Great Britain managed to set in flames all Romanian oilfields; both Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II were engaged in the strategies of “scorched earth”; and the US in the Korean War deliberately bombed North Korean dams in order to cause floods. (Webster, 1996).

Since the twentieth century, a series of agreements followed the ruling of global armed clashes; thus, Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions, having increasingly limiting military weaponry and strategies, such as the targeting civilian lands prohibition, were considered to be centralized policies. Occasionally, this law body was leading to global ecological damage. On the other hand, the main objective of the global law of war remained humanitarian, which meant to get rid of merciless weapons and reducing civilian fatalities.

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was the earliest clash that emphasized the overwhelming effects of present fighting on our ecosystems. U.S. military implemented tactics of defoliating jungle covering, eventually spraying “Agent Orange” and other poisonous herbicides over 10 percent of South Vietnam (Webster, 1996). In adding up to demolishing vegetation, the public health implications of these events were primarily birth defects, illness, and untimely deaths that turn out to be obvious, both in the Vietnamese people and U.S. war veterans (Levy, 1997).

The defoliation attack and other U.S. strategies in Vietnam led to a global movement for agreements that particularly defend the surroundings during the time of war. This led to the Environmental Modification Convention acceptance (1976) forbidding any maneuvering of the environment as the principal war weapon, and of Geneva Conventions Protocol Additional I (1977), containing prevention against “severe, extensive, and long-term damage to the environment.” though, plenty of detractors have identified these agreements as not practical and indistinct. (Dycus, 1996). The U.S. government managed to sign both represented agreements, though never officially approving Protocol Additional I.

Persian Gulf War

Wartime ecological damage once more came to the forefront during the 1990 to 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Iraq attack and invaded adjacent Kuwait. Being driven from Kuwait by the military coalition of the United States, troops from Iraq used to set fire to numerous abstracted pipelines and Kuwaiti oil wells (Bloom, 1994). As a result, oil slicks and smokes trails caused huge destruction to the Kuwaiti population, as well as to marine and desert ecosystems. Smoke from the oil fires was accounted as far away as the Himalayas and was able to be seen from space (Bloom, 1994).

With the destruction description spreading around the sphere, the UN Security Council had to pass Resolution 687, having held Iraq completely responsible for all damage caused, covering ecological damage, produced by the occupation and Kuwait release. (Dycus, 1996). Such unparalleled action led to the particular commission organization, the UN Compensation Commission, for the purpose of confirming issue awards and damage declaration. Kuwait together with some other Gulf States invested about sixty billion dollars in the development of the environment and natural resources. It is necessary to stress that public health claims aimed against Iraq, were also determined (Earle, 1992). The strange nature of the Security Council’s action led to changed calls for a worldwide agreement or organization to control the environmental effects of armed disagreement. Then, exclusion next to environmental damage was included in the contract for the International Criminal Court, a new committee that will have global authority over war offenses.

Internal Conflicts

Despite the fact that the best-known cases of environmental damage ate the period of the war were observed during global disagreements, the greater part of current disagreements is connected with social wars or other types of domestic troubles, in such places as Colombia, Congo, Angola, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Liberia. (Austin, 2000). These conflicts and disagreements are frequently faced in the form of fighting low-level rebels going on for years within the same territory. Together with civilian populations’ disastrous toll, the following clashes produce substantial environmental influence: the engagement of rival armies in defoliation and deforestation, antipersonnel land mines lay, hunt wildlife for food, as well as fight aimed at precious natural resources (covering timber and diamonds) in order to fund arms purchases (Austin, 2000).

Because independent nations usually manage their own relationships, it has been very hard for the global community to deal with internal conflicts and their human and environmental costs. The vast majority of global treaties dominating wartime environmental damage used not to apply to the disagreement of internal character. (Weinberg, 1992). Armed interference or international relations missions can resolve some humanitarian and environmental problems while creating others. For instance, the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 set fire to the Pancevo petrochemical plant, exposing the majority of civilians to a poisonous cloud of smoke; at the period of the Rwandan civil war, the refugee camps of United Nations noted wildlife reserves and natural resources in neighboring Congo (Austin, 2000). One more attempt to solution has been aimed at worldwide consumer boycotts of diamonds, tropical timber, and other merchandise coming from the war-torn state and giving rise to armed conflict.

The Cold War Legacy

Military arrangements and actions for war can lead to huge environmental effects without any shot being fired. The atomic bomb development in the early 1940s, appeared to be pertained to the Manhattan Project, leading to shocking consequences in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, as well as creating lethal radioactive contamination in the long-lasting legacy form in the United States (Rhodes, 1986). Nobel Prize physicist Niels Bohr, 1939, stressed the fact that though the United States was likely to construct an atom bomb, this failed to be done without “transforming the country into one enormous factory.” The consequences of the Cold War in 1991 demonstrated the degree of atom bomb factory infection produced on such sites as Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Rocky Flats, Colorado, and Hanford, Washington; where the groundwater, air, surface water, vegetation, soils, and wildlife show the radioactivity sighs. (Rhodes, 1986). The nuclear plant of the Soviet Union formed similar problems, centralizing construction in such “secret cities” as Chelyabinsk-7, being described as the most contaminated city. (Feshbach, 1992). It should be noted that the tremendously long half-life of the radioactive waste together with the extremely poisonous cleanup in nature and sites control will result in extreme problems for the majority age group.

The Cold War bequest brings into heart the “need” and “balanced” calculations that motivate the most logical choices about environmentally destructive wartime events: whether there are options to take a particular action, and whether the advantage of the armed forces gained from taking such an action overshadows the ecological and other damages that potentially may result. The majority of scholars would be in agreement that the development of the atomic bomb was acceptable as a means of defeating dictatorship and winning World War II; they likewise concur that Iraq’s actions in withdrawing from Kuwait were undefended, even on a military basis (Austin, 2000). Such cases as the defoliation operation in Vietnam of the US or civilian infrastructure bombing in Kosovo are considered to be more contentious. In any case, the historical evidence, the sustained growth of global agreements and organizations, and the growing consciousness that environmental subjects must be thinking about even during wartime, all should provide a foundation for better military plans and more environmentally responsible decision making in the future (Webster, 1996).

References

1. Austin, Jay E., and Bruch, Carl, eds. (2000). The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal, Economic, and Scientific Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2. Bloom, Saul; Miller, John M.; Warner, James; and Winkler, Philippa, eds. (1994). Hidden Casualties: The Environmental, Health and Political Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
3. Dycus, Stephen. (1996). National Defense and the Environment. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
4. Earle, Sylvia A. (1992). “Persian Gulf Pollution: Assessing the Damage One Year Later.” National Geographic 181:122.
5. Feshbach, Murray, and Friendly, Albert. (1992). Ecocide in the U.S.S.R.: The Looming Disaster in Soviet Health & Environment. New York: Basic Books.
6. Lanier-Graham, Susan. (1993). The Ecology of War: Environmental Impacts of Weaponry and Warfare. New York: Walker & Co.
7. Levy, Barry S., and Sidel, Victor W., eds. (1997). War and Public Health. New York: Oxford University Press.
8. Rhodes, Richard. (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster.
9. Webster, Donovan. (1996). Aftermath: The Landscape of War. New York: Pantheon.
10. Weinberg, William J. (1992). War on the Land: Ecology and Politics in Central America. London: Zed Press.
11. Zumwalt, Elmo Jr.; Zumwalt, Elmo III; and Pekkanen, John. (1986). My Father, My Son. New York: Macmillan.