African's Lake Chad: Why the U.S. Should Not Help

       As James Tindall correctly stated, “Critical resources like water and arable land will likely become scarcer than oil, exacerbating political, economic, and ethnic tensions, which will present risks for corporations, Non-Government Organizations, government agencies, and militaries through massive civil unrest.”  Therefore, the United States must treat all potential environmental disasters as a security concern. Additionally, the United States has a proven track record of humanitarian aid. Many US policy makers believe it is in the best interest to provide aid to those who need, or request it. However, given recent US concerns, the US can ill afford to directly participate in every short or long term aid project. Therefore, the US must carefully weigh any potential aid to against the likelihood for long term entanglements. As a result, not every humanitarian program is worth helping using direct means. 

Case in point: Lake Chad. The Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) is asking the international community to help pay for their plan to refill Lake Chad. Most agree the problem of Lake Chad is obvious and something must be done to save it, if humans are going to continue to live in the lake basin. Therefore, in February 2013, the LCBC announced plans for a 14.5 billion dollar project to reroute waters from the Congo 1,500 miles north and into Lake Chad. They claim the strategy will save the lake and the people living near the lake from certain disaster. 

Historical background: Over the last four decades, water has been disappearing from Lake Chad at an alarming rate. According to LCBC, if nothing is done, within twenty years, more than 20 million people are at risk of not having water. The proposed plan is both daunting and daring. If it succeeds, it will be an engineering marvel, but only if it is successfully completed and safely maintained over the coming decades. 

To give a better idea of what is involved, the Lake Chad Basin is situated in the Sudano-Sahelian zone in Western and Central Africa and covers an estimated area of between 2,381,635 and 2,434,000 square kilometers, or approximately eight percent of the total African land surface area. The basin itself, spreads over seven modern countries: Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Sudan. However traditionally, the area called the “Conventional Basin” includes only five states: Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Central African Republic, or an area of just over 96,000 square kilometers. It was this Conventional Basin, and not the entire Lake Chad Basin, that came under the mandate of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) in 1964.

Since the 1970s, the region experienced a number of devastating droughts.

 Even when it was at its fullest, Lake Chad only averaged an overall depth of about seven meters, making it particularly susceptible, even though it was one of Africa’s largest freshwater lakes, to the combination of the naturally occurring droughts, construction mistakes, and mismanagement. Enhanced satellite images demonstrate the water losses for anyone willing to look at them. For example, in 1984, Lake Chad’s open surface water at 1,1612.23 square kilometers, but only by 2001, the lake had shrunk to a mere 4,691.09 square kilometers. That meant, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, Lake Chad had shrunk to less than one-twentieth its former size thirty-five years earlier.

 While that seems alarming, there is no way to tell for sure because no accurate record exist for the size of the lake before 1964.  Therefore, some researchers believe the lake may be experiencing its normal drying cycle, however most disagree. Although the written records do not exist, there is ample historical evidence to support the premise that the shrinking of Lake Chad is unique to our time. 

Ample archeological evidence demonstrates numerous peoples lived in the Lake Chad Basin since possibly the dawn of history. Written records show lake itself became a unifying entity in the ninth-century when that the Islamic Kanen-Borno Empire took over the basin. Early European explorers who visited the area praised the Kanen-Borno Empire for its culture, learning, and for its commercial and diplomatic links with North Africa and the Middle East. However all that changed in the nineteenth century, when colonizing European powers destroyed the traditional cultural and political links among the indigenous peoples by redrawing political boundaries and enforcing those changes with force. 

In the 1960s, four countries, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria gained their independence. During that time, the new political leaders soon recognized that only by working together could Lake Chad benefit of all their peoples. Therefore, the leaders created the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) in 1964 to coordinate the development, promote cooperation, and to benefit all the people who lived in Lake Chad drainage basin. Eventually, two more countries joined the LCBC; Central African Republic as a full member in 1984, and Sudan with observer status in 2000.

 Together, the LCBC attempted tried to use Lake Chad to benefit all their peoples. So why did Lake Chad shrink?

The LCBC blamed the shrinking Lake Chad on a number of important reasons. Severe droughts during the 1970s and 1980s caused the lake basin to begin to shrink. The LCBC tried new approaches to the management, but the combined effects of climate fluctuations and unsustainable mismanaged water projects led to further reductions of rivers that drained into Lake Chad. Eventually, the situation got so bad that projects like the South Chad Irrigation Project (SCIP) in Nigeria, and the MAMDI Polder Project in Chad, began failing. By the 1990s, the LCBC abandoned the projects altogether; the lake shore left them completely dry.  Further climatic changes took place. Poorly designed dams, dikes, irrigation systems, and unsustainable reservoir operations further degraded the lake. For example, while dams along the rivers helped control flooding, they then resulted in degrading the river channels. Flood waters that formally cleaned out the riverbeds, no longer did. Without the naturally occurring floods, dramatic changes of topography along the riverbanks took place. Wetlands dried up. Invasive weeds, such as the Typha, helped destroy what was left of the trees along the lake shore. Without the tree canopies, the sun baked the soil. Wind erosion made the land even more arid. Farmers misused chemical fertilizers because a poor, uneducated farmers, naturally assumed that if a little fertilizer was good, a whole lot more of fertilizer would be even better! Eventually, soil around the lake became almost sterile. Now, almost nothing grows there. As a result, the desert sands are encroaching, and the lake today is in danger of near total collapse.

 So what could be done? According to the LCBC, the solution was to refill the lake. 

In 2004, the LCBC came up with a novel plan to harness the Congo to refill Lake Chad. The idea was to divert 80 million acre feet of water every year from the Chari River and have it flow almost 1500 miles northwards into Lake Chad. According to Adamou Namata, Niger Water Minister and Chairperson of the LCBC, “If nothing is done, the lake will disappear.” In 2002, several governments met in the rain-forests of Central Africa and signed an agreement on sharing the waters of the Congo. They hoped to raise $5 billion for a dam and waterworks that would barricade one of the river's major arms, the Ubangi River, at Palambo, in the Central African Republic, and then reroute thirty percent of the water north towards Lake Chad, instead of directly out to sea.

In late 2004, the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, agreed to pay $2.5 million for a feasibility study of the project. Eventually in 2008, 14 million dollars was raised, and Canada’s CIMA-International, began the study. 

According to the LCBC, the survival of more than 20 million people in the lake basin depends on the Lake Chad Replenishment Project. Their hope was the project would be “an opportuinty to rebuild the ecosystem, rehabilitate the lake, reconstitute its biodiversity, and safeguard its people.”

Safeguarding the people in and around the Lake Chad Basin may be a major problem. 

Since the 1960s, when the main countries solidified their independence from the colonial powers, every one of the basin countries have had civil wars of some degree and some countries remain unstable. According research by Stucki and Niasse, since the 1960s, twenty-six coups and sixteen cases of civil unrest occurred in the region. Furthermore, while the area has been relatively calm since 2002, the possibility of a sudden change is always real because some of the countries remain relatively weak. Additionally, war-torn countries also suffer from financial shortcomings. LCBC member states that were supposed to provide yearly disbursements to the commission had not been doing so, so how can they possibly raise the money necessary for such a huge project? They cannot. The LCBC seems to be fully dependent on outside donor financing. Outside influences will affect the LCBC ability to work and maintain its work once the vast amount of money starts flowing.

In February 2013, CIMA-International released its final report. CIMA agreed that if nothing is done to save Lake Chad, the lake would probably disappear altogether by 2025. However, there was some good news, and some more bad news. CIMA International announced the lake could be saved by refilling the lake, but it will cost a minimum of 14.5 billion dollars to do so. Furthermore, the scheme will only work if regional cooperation between the countries in the Congo Basin and the Lake Chad Basin continues unimpeded.”

 Although the LCBC now has the regional leader support, everyone agrees, financially, it will not be enough if there is to be any chance at success. 

Sanusi Imran Abdullahi, executive director of the Lake Chad Basin Commission announced, "We will host an international donors' conference early this year [2013] to see what we can get, and from there we will [assess] what the member states will contribute." Abdullahi was quick to add, “As long as funders are guaranteed a return on their investment,” the bulk of the financing will probably come from the private sector.”

 However, financing the scheme using the private sector poses risks too. Rasheed and Sadig pointed out that while privatization is seen as a way to increase both efficiency and capital it may mean “cherry picking of the profitable segments of the sector leaving poorer areas to fend for themselves.” Furthermore, “To attract foreign capital, governments are often eager to surrender their rights on bulk water pricing and control, agreeing to conditions and clauses which sacrifice the national interest and the right of the people to safe and sufficient water use.”

In 2010, the UN made water a human right issue because it was concerned the availability of relatively cheap water and good sanitation became a problem when water became privatized.

 However, the LCBC does not seem concerned. Instead, the LCBC claims the water project would do more than just provide water: The waterway will encourage electric lines to be extended. Better river transportation will allow goods to be moved from east to west across Africa. New irrigation and agribusiness in the region will also improve economic activity and the livelihoods for people throughout the basin. In all, the LCBC believes using private enterprise is a good way to finance the project. However, this plan has several problems too. 

Even if the proposed financing solution works as intended, Lake Chad basin faces many challenges including: ecological, socioeconomic, institutional, political origins, variable and unreliable rainfall pattern. Additionally, a highly interlinked water balance, considerable variability of soil types, a proneness to droughts, desertification, and human-caused environmental degradation all must be considered with the  problems that come with deforestation and dam construction. Additionally, historical conflicts may re-erupt producing political issues over sovereignty and other security concerns.

 Because of the large number of people who already completely depend on Lake Chad for their water needs, any major failure to the new water project will deprive critical water, and pose a huge and significant security risk to the entire regional population.

Once the waterway is built and the water begins flowing, security concerns associated with waterway will continue to be challenging. People relying on a single water project for all their needs means any deprivation of the water become critical because there are no available substitutions for that water. This is especially true for Chad, who unlike their neighbor Nigeria that produces three million cubic meters of desalinated water every day and so cut its outside dependency on water to just 23%, Chad produces no desalinated water. As of 2007, Chad continued to get nearly 65% of its water from outside the country.

 This becomes a major problem because, “The complexities and the cascading failures and resulting disruptions among infrastructures will decrease the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts during man-made, natural, or technological hazards, or may result in common cause failures that leave planners and emergency response personnel unprepared to effectively deal with operational continuity and the impacts of these disruptions."

 Once American firms join in the effort to refill Lake Chad, they then open themselves up to a host of potential security concerns, including terrorism. Unfortunately, once American firms become entrenched in an issue, it then also becomes a US security concern. So while the Lake Chad issue can rightly be called humanitarian problem, it is a humanitarian problem that the US can ill afford to participate in, particularly if there is a good chance it will escalate into a new zone of regional conflicts. 

Along with the actual construction of the waterway, American firms will be quick to realize the infrastructure and equipment needed to provide sanitation and water reclamation associated with the project will be potentially lucrative too. Therefore, once the money starts flowing to make the scheme work, the combined potential economic gains may be too much for US investors to ignore. 

However, it cannot be stressed enough, the Lake Chad Basin has a history of many problems and conflicts. Local laws make the owners of public works completely responsible for anything that goes wrong. Once American firms jump onboard the multibillion dollar project, they become responsible for whatever happens, for good or bad. Since artificial waterways are inherently  difficult to maintain and secure over long distances, US interests and American firms may be better served only by participating through government proxies and the more easily defended public support roles through international aid groups so it can disentangle itself quickly from the region if necessary instead of finding itself in a new protracted fight or security arrangement of one kind or another.

In conclusion, while the United States of America has a proven track record of providing humanitarian aid throughout the world, it must carefully weigh the potential for long term problems whenever aid is requested. US policy makers must learn any disaster may end up being a national security issue. Therefore, not every humanitarian program is worth the associated risks. Humanitarian missions, even when legitimate, may sometimes prove more trouble than they are worth. Therefore, although the aid given to the Lake Chad Restoration Project could potentially help more than twenty-million people, the likely long term political and security risks of the basin demonstrate the Untied States should not participate directly in the LCBC’s scheme. 

Bibliography:

Secondary Sources:

International Water Security: Domestic Threats and Opportunities. Ed. Nakayama Pachova, and L. Jansky, United Nations University Press, 2008.

Water Security: The Water-Food-Energy-Climate Nexus, Ed. Dominic Waughray, Washington: Island Press, 2011.

Black, M and J. King, The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource, Second edition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Pearce, F., When the Rivers Run Dry: Water -- the Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.

Tindall, J., and A. A. Campbell, Water Security: Conflicts, Threats, Politics, Denver: DTP Publishing, 2012.

Internet Sources:

Odada, Eric O, "Lake Chad: Experience and Lessons Learned Brief," International Waters Learning & Exchange Resource Network, 2005.

http://iwlearn.net/iw-projects/1665/experience-notes-and-lessonslearnedlakechad_2005.pdf

Rasheed, Gourisankar Ghosh and Sadig. "Integrated Water Resources Management: A Right Based Community Approach Towards Sustainable Development." In Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Harare, Zimbabwe: United Nations, 1998. http://www.un.org/documents/ecosoc/cn17/1998/background/ecn171998-comu2.htm

"Central Africa: Saving a Shrinking Lake (2)" African Seer: African's Information Portal Online: African Seer: African's Information Portal Online, 2013,

http://www.africanseer.com/news/african-news/252052-central-africa-saving-a-shrinking/lake-2.html.

Press Releases:

Africa’s Disappearing Lake Chad, University of Wisconsin-Madison, (International Waters Learning & Exchange Resource Network, 2001),

http://iwlearn.net/iw-projects/767/maps_graphics/africas-disappearing-lake-chad/view

Press Release: CIMA International Website, 2009

  http://www.international.cima.ca/cgi-cs/cs.waframe.content?click=105396&lang=2

UN News Centre, "General Assembly Declares Access to Clean Water and Sanitation Is a Human Right." July 28, 2010. 

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35456&Cr=SANITATION&Cr1=#.UTIndI6AecM

UN News Centre, “Right to water and sanitation vital for achieving anti-poverty goals - 

UN officials,” July 27, 2011.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39163&Cr=sanitation&Cr1=#.UTIlyo6AecM

WWII Japanese Paper-Balloon Attacks: Part 2B

      By 1944, Japan had already sent several weather balloons towards North America. These initial balloons contained radio transmitters and weather equipment designed to record and send back real time weather information to Japan. Although the Americans did not know it at the time, these balloons had traveled more than 2,000 miles before they quit transmitting and then miraculously continued the next four thousand miles to the North American mainland. 

 

      Since weather gathering equipment was well known by military intelligence during WWII, the Japanese balloons were looked at more as a curiosity than as any important military event. However, that began to change after November 4,1944 when a rubberized silk balloon reached Fourth Air Force. Located just north of San Francisco, California, the Fourth Air Force was in charge of the defense of the West Coast. Even though the balloon was thought to have been Japanese, military intelligence probably rightly assumed it was just another weather balloon released by a Japanese submarine somewhere in the Pacific, but near the West Coast. However, in December, Fourth Air Force began taking the balloons more of a threat as reports started coming in from the Western Defense Command. 

 

     On December 6, 1944, reports from ranchers in and around Wyoming of unexplained explosions forced Fourth Air to look for explanations and for some kind of proof that what the farmers and rancher heard, was real. The proof came on December 19,1944 with the discovery of a bomb crater near Thermopiles, Wyoming. The investigation was turned over to Army and Navy military intelligence who found the first evidence of Japanese paper balloons causing the explosions on December 31,1944 when another balloon was discovered, this one in the state of Oregon. 

 

     The balloon in Oregon had also detonated, but instead of disintegrating and destroying all evidence, as in Wyoming, this Oregon crater contained pieces of both the balloon and parts of the Japanese high-explosives. Within the next two weeks, four more balloon bombs were discovered and analyzed. Military Intelligence concluded the balloons were the first wave of a new Japanese offensive weapon. The Fourth Air Force then notified the War Department of the new Japanese attacks. Within hours, on January 4,1945, George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff made the Western Defense Command coordinator for all balloon intelligence activities. 

 

     Twenty-five officers of the U.S. Army and Navy began investigating every reported unexplained explosion in North America, including those in Canada and in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. While gathering information about the balloons proved difficult, early reports indicated the balloons were dropping either incendiary or antipersonnel bombs, or both. Even so, other more hideous reports indicated the Japanese were in the process of developing bacteriological and chemical warfare bombs, and some reports indicate the War Department felt it likely that as the Japanese lost islands in the Pacific, the Japanese would likely use the balloons to carry biologic and chemicals into North America. Obviously, the War Department concluded, something needed to be done about free floating Japanese paper balloons that had the potential of setting huge expanses of Western timberland on fire. Therefore, the Western Defense Command created two military projects, Firefly and Lightning, to defend against the invisible balloon threat.  

 

     Project Firefly used aircraft and almost three thousand troops stationed at critical junctions throughout Western America to fight potential forest fires that might otherwise affect America’s ability to continue fighting the war. While Firefly addressed known hazards, the Lightning Project quietly advised agricultural officers, veterinarians, and farmers to be on the lookout for unexplained or strange diseases in livestock and crops, and to report them immediately. Furthermore, the Army then sent decontamination chemicals and sprays to strategic points in the Western States. Along with the reactive projects, the Army and Navy also attempted to intercept the balloons before they reached North America.

  

     Throughout much of 1945, the Army and Navy dispatched more than 500 aircraft to search for reported balloons. Although defense of North America was paramount, collecting and analyzing the balloons was also important. Therefore, a new kind of ammunition, called “headlight tracer” aloud the balloons to be shot down without destroying them. However, only two balloons were ever shot down, one with conventional ammunition destroyed a ballon in Nevada while the other was safely brought down in California. Other balloons were found in the Aleutians and in Canada. In one case, a slow moving unarmed USN aircraft brought down a balloon using nothing more than its prop wash as it repeatedly flew by the balloon. 

  

      By April, Navy Aircraft spotted a large number of balloons and on April 13, shot down nine balloons flying between 30,000 and 37,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. Although that one day was an exceptional day, it also demonstrates how difficult it was to find balloons on any other day. Weather, inaccurate spotters, and high altitudes made intercepting balloons very difficult even for the best pilots. Furthermore, even the best new RADAR techniques proved ineffective at locating the balloons at virtually any altitude. About the only thing that seemed to be certain was where the balloons came from. 

  

     After several balloons surfaced without blowing up, the Army successfully disarmed the balloons and began an in-depth analysis. While the balloons were obviously Japanese in origin, the question became, where were they constructed and launched? Early thoughts were that they were possibly being launched from Japanese midget submarines, however, that theory was discarded after America began reading the new Japanese naval codes. The next theory was that the Japanese were using ships or possibly an island near America to launch the balloons, but that too proved wrong. Eventually, ballast sand was sent to a geologist in Canada who analyzed microscopic features of the sand. He determined the sand came from a specific beach in Japan. On May 25, 1945, aerial photographs taken along the beach near Sendai, Japan, showed what looked like partially inflated balloons, railways, taxiways, and what looked like heavily defended positions that otherwise had no other reasonable explanation. Although the launching pads had been found, there was no immediate plan to destroy them. However, although no one in the US or Canada knew it at the time, it really did not matter that the location was known because by late April, 1945, the Japanese paper-balloon offensive was over; the highest level Japanese military officials ended the project without converting the balloons to either biological or chemical weapons. 

  

     Part three of this series will discuss the successes and failures of the Japanese attacks from both the Japanese and the US and Canada points of view. Although we touched upon the worst case scenarios in this chapter, part four will revisit the worst case scenarios to set the stage for part five of this series, examining what might happen if similar balloon attacks would take place today. 

WWII: Terror From The Sky: Part Two "A"

Many military historians believe the Japanese Balloon attacks on North America was their military response to General Doolittle's 1942 Tokyo Raid. The Doolittle raid enraged the Japanese military command, and they searched for ways to reciprocate the feeling of vulnerability they felt as the Doolittle bombers dropped their ordinance. The Japanese military learned about the high altitude winds while sending balloons across China. They also knew about early balloon tests being done by the British. Both the Japanese and the British used the first balloons for propaganda delivery. Unfortunately for the British, early British balloons wandered into Sweden and Switzerland airspace before dropping the leaflets asking the finders to surrender. It was unfortunate because both Sweden and Switzerland were neutral at the time, and the entire incident became a British embarrassment. 

By 1943, the Japanese were concerned about creating their own international incidents; not with the Swedes or Swiss, but with the Russians. The Japanese had signed a nonaggression pact with the Russians at the start of the war, and although the Russians were now defending themselves against Hitler's "Operation Barbarossa," the Japanese did not want to encourage their own two front war by angering the Russians with balloons accidentally dropping munitions or propaganda on Eastern Russia. 

By 1942, the Japanese had a pretty good understanding about the Jet Stream and how it functioned throughout the year, and how it moved. By 1944, the Japanese had determined not only when the optimum time of year would be to launch the balloons, but also the best balloon size. Too small a balloon would never reach the 30-40 thousand feet in the stratosphere needed. Too large a balloon would take too many resources to make any large scale attack possible. In the end, Japanese scientists discovered a 61 foot balloon would be perfect for the trip. However, there were other problems.

During the day, the energy of the sun heats up balloons so that the balloon becomes more buoyant and floats higher into the sky. At night, the balloon cools and sinks. If it sank below approximately 28,000 feet, the balloon would leave the jet stream, slow its passage across the Pacific Ocean to the point it could not reach landfall before dropping its explosives. Consequently, the Japanese faced some extreme difficulties to overcome if they wanted the project to succeed. But these were the only problems. 

At first, the Japanese tried making their sixty-one foot Japanese balloon out of rubber. However, the rubber version had several problems: It took too long to rise to the required hight. Once it did make it to the correct altitude, the rubber had a tendency to leak. Last, the weight of the rubber cut down the weight of payload the ballon could carry. Consequently, the Japanese looked for other suitable materials to use to make their balloons.  Therefore, after much trial and error, the Japanese military planners settled on using paper, and the Japanese Paper Balloons were created. 

Now it should be pointed out that the Japanese Paper Balloons were covered in a resin, and the huge structures were glued together using a paste made of potatoes. Since the Japanese had plenty of paper and potato products, it made the overall cost of the balloons fairly cheap to produce. Eventually, the problem became how to manufacture the balloons, not what the balloons should be made of. The other problem was how to keep the balloon within the magic height needed to stay in the Jet Stream during the four days and nights needed to make the trip.  Finally, the Japanese came up with an ingenious solution to the problems.

Using a series of solenoids, altimeters, sandbags, and miniature explosives, and a large baffle, the Japanese managed to get their balloons to bob up and down through the Jet Stream no matter if it was day or night. As the balloon went up in height during the day, when the sun heated the gas inside the balloon, the altimeter released helium from the base of the balloon so it would not go to high. At night, as the gasses cooled, the balloon sank. When it reached approximately 28,000 feet, the altimeter fired off a small explosive that released a sandbag that acted as ballast. The balloon then ascended back into the Jet Stream and the balloon continued on its merry way. 

Japanese teenage girls built the paper balloons. Using their bare hands and silk gloves, they lovingly created the balloon's envelope. Other girls glued the panels, and still others looked for leaks. The balloon was then pressurized and checked for leaks. If no leaks were found, the balloon was put into service. If a leak was found, the young girls cried in shame and the leaks were fixed. The Japanese girls thought they were doing something important and honorable. It was not until the end of the war that they learned the truth. By then, their shame was complete. The girls and the Japanese people never learned during the war of the attack on Hawaii. Instead, they believed the Americans were the aggressors. Consequently, they worked very hard to do their part for the war. 

In all, those Japanese girls made 9,200 balloons before the project was cancelled. Of those balloons, most experts believe about ten percent, or 920, made a successful four day journey across Pacific to land on the North America. Of the 920, only 268 balloons were ever located. The Balloons were found in the Western half of the United States, Canada, and Alaska. Some historians and military personal believe the missing six hundred balloons may continue to pose a danger to people because most of the balloons had a payload of about 45 pounds of explosives including at least one incendiary bomb. 

in the Spring of 1945, a family took a trip into the mountains for a picnic. While there, the father of the family was parking the car as his wife and their five children walked to the picnic area. In the bushes, one of the children spotted something strange and went into the bushes for a closer look. He called for his mother. She and the other four children went up for a closer look too. As the father, a pastor at the local church pulled his car around, he heard and saw an explosion. Running to his wife and children, he found a crater and pieces of his family.  Onlookers agreed, there was nothing to be done except attempt to save one of the children by getting her to the closest hospital. 

Five days later, a mass funeral was held for the wife and five children. The pastor was not there. He was too grief stricken and was hospitalized for the trauma. As of this writing, they are the only known members to have died directly from any Japanese attack. However, experts warn that other balloons may continue to pose a risk to anyone accidentally stumbling across a balloon because the explosives may be truly unstable. Furthermore, if any of the balloons do exist, and they explode during the dry season, massive forest fires might erupt, precisely the what the Japanese military had hoped would happen when they released the balloons in 1944 and 45. 

This was a very short historical overview of the Japanese Paper Balloons. For further information, I suggest you review the following documents:

Robert C. Mikesh, Japan's World War II Balloon Bom Attacks on North America, (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 1972). 

Robert Webber, Silent Siege -- III: Japanese Attacks on North America in World War II -- Ships Sunk, Air Raids, Bombs Dropped, Civilians Killed, (Webb Research Group, Medford, Oregon, 1992).

Also available are two videos:

"The Japanese Paper Balloon Bomb," United States National Archives, ARC: 13084. This is original video of a real Japanese paper balloon bomb and how it worked, filmed during the war in 1945. It shows all the parts and how they worked together to keep the balloon aloft.  It is the military training film from the Department of Defense and can be ordered from WWW.acrchives.gov.

Michael White's, "On a Wind and a Prayer: The true story of the Japanese Balloon Bomb attacks on North America during World War II." Released in 2005 on Michael White Films and distributed by PBS, the DVD runs approximately 60 minutes and is a more modern look back at the balloon attacks and uses interviews with several historians and military experts to take a fresh look at the attacks from both the American and Japanese sides of the war. Filmed in color and using special effects, the video does a great job of making the balloon attacks accessible for the average lay person who knows little about the attacks. 

While the documents mentioned above give a very good overview of the attack, they also explain in great detail why the US and Canada military was so concerned about them. Additionally, with the exception of the archival footage, they also discuss a greater fear, the use of chemical and biological agents by way of balloon attack. 

By 1945, the Japanese were firmly on the defensive. The US military was getting closer and closer to the main Japanese islands, and US and Canada Intelligence Operations were convinced the Japanese would use whatever they could to extend the war, including that of biological and chemical agents. What the US and Canada military tried to do about it, is the subject of the next blog. 

WWII: Terrorism From The Sky? (Part 1)

WWII: Terrorism From The Sky?  (Part One)

In the winter and spring of 1944-45, the Japanese military sent 9,200 paper balloons to bomb North America. The best historical evidence guesses state approximately ten percent, or 920 made it across the Pacific Ocean and onto North America. However, according to United States National Archive records, only 268 balloon incidents were recorded, leaving more than six hundred balloons unaccounted. Historians familiar with the attack, however, now call the attacks the only intercontinental ballistic missile attack ever on North America,  in the time of war. Additionally, they state those six hundred unaccounted for balloons may continue to pose a risk to anyone unfortunate enough to find them. Each balloon was loaded with approximately 45 pounds of explosives. Because they would now be very unstable, they continue to be dangerous, and may still explode, and would either kill the people who find them, or may start fires in dry areas. Furthermore, no one knows how many of the balloons continue to pose a risk. However, it is likely the balloons, if they really do exist, are probably in very difficult terrain to transverse, making it less likely very many people would be injured by any potential blast. Last, while it is  likely few major problems would happen from any of the unaccounted for balloons, it is also just as likely educated terrorists have heard the story and  may attempt to duplicate the Japanese military efforts some time in the near future. 

Since the 1960s, many terrorist events have taken place. Although it is impossible to say with any certainty, it seems likely that many terrorist attacks had their planning roots in historical events. Many terror leaders are educated individuals. During their education, many became professionals in their fields of studies. Furthermore, even the most scientific fields require history lessons. Since many terrorist are well read, it is also likely that the terror planners probably develop their plans based on historical records. For example, while no one knows for certain where the idea for the September 11, 2001 came from, it seems likely that someone planning that event probably knew about the bomber that flew into the side of the Empire State Building near the end of WWII. To give you a better understanding of why that event is important to understand, here is a short overview of what happened:

On July 28, 1945, the United States Army-Air Corps B-25 Bomber, “Old John Feather Merchant,” flying from New Bedford, Mass., to LaGuardia Airport in New York, through heavy fog, was diverted to Newark Airport because of that heavy fog. Instead, the aircraft accidentally crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building when the pilots tried to avoid hitting the Chrysler Building. The aircraft fuel then exploded and caused a fire that burned everything to the 75th floor. The plane itself was destroyed, with the force of the impact so great that one engine smashed all the way through the building and ended up in the penthouse of the building across the street. Investigators found small parts of the aircraft in and on top of other nearby buildings. To give you a better understanding of the forces involved, one only needs to look at the famous records of the Guinness Book of World Records, which claimed one woman has the world record for surviving an elevator fall of seventy-five stories when the second engine of the B-25 snapped the elevator cable for the car she had been riding in. According to the notes, once the cable snapped, the elevator car went into a free fall until the automatic breaks kicked in. Then the engine fell down the shaft and landed on top of the elevator car. Even so, the woman survived and was eventually pulled from the wreckage by rescuers. Although she was lucky, some did not  survive. In the end, fourteen people died: three in the aircraft, and eleven more who worked for the War Relief Services department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. The accident also caused about a million dollars in damage to the Empire State Building. 

Although this aircraft accident was a historical event, Tom Clancy wrote about a fictional attack on the White House several years before 9-11 too. Could Clancy’s writings also have been the catalyst for the September 11 attacks? No one knows for sure, but it seems likely that either the historical event or fictional event may have led to the 9-11 attacks. If so, this example of the WWII Japanese balloon attacks on U.S. and Canada soils may provide a useful historical guide for anyone attempting to predict future attacks by anyone who knows the historical record.

Part Two of “Terror From The Sky: Balloons” will give a short history of the Japanese Balloon Attacks and the North America military response to the balloons. 

Part Three will discuss the successes and failures of the Japanese attacks from both the Japanese and the US and Canada points of view. 

Part Four will address the worst case scenarios which includes germ warfare, and explains why the US and Canada WWII military intelligence organizations were so nervous about the Japanese balloon attacks and why they pressed so hard to keep the American Free Press from reporting the story.

Part Five will examine what might happen if new attacks takes place on American soil today and examines the questions raised by the previous posts.

A critical response to: Bruce L. Benson’s, "Enterprise of Customary Law"

          Although Bruce L. Benson’s, Enterprise of Customary Law was an informative paper full of useful information, it failed to address several key issues concerning mercantile law. For example, by conveniently omitting the role of religion in mercantile law, Benson missed an important lynchpin that should have been addressed. Additionally, by completely ignoring the banking and mercantile roles of both the Catholic and Jewish religions, Benson then missed the opportunity to better discuss how and why middlemen developed. Instead, Benson restated the over simplified thesis that middle men developed because extreme distances meant it was unlikely buyers and sellers would meet in person, and therefore would never develop lasting and trusting relationships. However, that oversimplification ignores the relationship between the Christian and Jewish faiths and the role of the government. Additionally, by ignoring those relationships, Benson failed to show how that relationship not only changed over time, and how it directly led to the demonizing of the Jewish people. 

Benson could have addressed that demonizing issue quite easily by stating the basic premiss of exchange was an exchange where both parties expected something of more value than what was given up, Benson stated those distances made exchanges more difficult. While true, the argument completely ignores the question of why middle men should spring up at all? Christian laws made lending money at a profit illegal. However, the laws were circumvented by merchants and others using Jewish merchants and bankers. 

Benson’s text only coved the first two chapters of his book, and for al I know, Benson could have ultimately addressed the issue later, but by failing to make mention the role religion played in the mercantile industry during the first two chapters, not only did Benson miss an important opportunity to discuss the Jewish question, but also the opportunity to show how the mercantile exchanges of Church medallions ultimately bifurcated the Church, while simultaneously causing the Jewish people to be seen as evil within the Christian and Muslim worlds, ultimately leading to the many atrocities against the Jewish people. 

However that was not the only historical issue Benson also failed to make note of. In his treatment of England, Benson failed to recognize the mercantile role in the war between Spain’s Philip II, and Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen of England. By completely failing to show how merchants in the latter half of the sixteenth century not only led to the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and ultimately led to the emergence of England as an important naval power and mercantile trader; Benson failed to adequately explain how both changed the world outside Europe. 

In conclusion, Benson claimed Merchant Law “evolved into a universal legal system through a process of natural selection.” Although he correctly stated merchants transacted business across international boundaries, however, without also examining the roles of both the Church and State, Benson’s first two chapters failed to make use of helpful and important discussions that should have been addressed. Instead, Benson chose to keep the discussion secular. While can be good from a scientific review, from a historical perspective it weakened his overall conclusion because, as demonstrated by Philip II, who declared bankruptcy several times while Elizabeth I did not, merchants supported Elizabeth I and simultaneously turned their collective backs on Philip II. Therefore, by not addressing the historical significances that change the world, Benson missed opportunities he should have exploited. 

WWII Code Breakers: The Unsung Heroes of Bletchley Park

It began with the Poles. Polish Codebreakers began breaking the German unbreakable enigma codes by December 1932. According to official histories at Bletchley Park, the three Polish mathematicians who first broke the German military Enigma codes over that 1932 Christmas, continued to break the codes until as late as 1938, when the Germans changed the number of coded wheels on their Enigma machines. When that happened, the three Polish mathematicians knew they did not have the amount of resources needed to overcome the mathematical obstacles. So by July, 1939, the Poles decided to quietly get information about how the German military codes to British and French codebreakers. With the British and French codebreakers in Warsaw, the Poles explained their techniques of how to overcome the Enigma machines. 

They also explained what they knew about the current German Enigma machine and gave their counterparts sheets of paper, called Zygalski sheets, that worked like mathematical cheat sheets, designed to force a solution for every setting of the Enigma machine. The Poles explained, using the Zygalski sheets,  given enough time and numbers of people running the equations, every German code could eventually be broken. However the problem was that given the way the Zygalski sheets were set up, it could take years of work just to break one code of the new German Enigma machines. 

Then, after Warsaw fell to the Germans in 1939, the Polish mathematicians managed to flee to Chateau de Vignolles, near Paris. They continued their work and sent copies of Zygalski sheets to British hands. Alan Turing took the sheets to a private home, about an hour by train from the outskirts of London, called Bletchley Park. From there, he quietly gathered some of the most brilliant minds available. They join him there and worked the problem of how to break the new Enigma machine codes. Unfortunately, just as progress was being made,  the Germans made a major change to the Enigma machine on May 1,1941. The new changes rendered the Zygalski sheet method of breaking the German codes completely useless. The new enigma machines had added two extra wheels and extra plug-ins too. Now the cheat sheets were worthless because instead of tens of thousands of combinations, there were now tens of millions of combinations.

The the Germans took Paris. Once again, the Polish mathematicians escaped, this time to the south of France. However, as the Germans took over France, the Poles had no choice. They ultimately reached London in August 1943, long after the Americans joined in the fight to defeat Germany and the Polish help was no longer needed or wanted for security reasons. 

Seeds of the UK and US relationship germinated at Bletchley Park almost a year before the US officially entered the war in December, 1941. In February of 1941, the Americans brought a “Purple” machine to Bletchley Park. The “Purple” machine was specifically used to break the Japanese diplomatic messages and it was hoped the machine would also be useful in breaking the German codes. (Note: Many conspiracy theorists claimed over the years that this “Purple” machine had broken the Japanese diplomatic and military codes in plenty of time to warn the Generals and Admirals in the Pacific of the impending Japanese attacks. This included military in Hawaii, but conspiracy theorists claim President F.D Roosevelt intentionally held the information back to allow the Japanese to attack. They state FDR did this so the American people would be outraged and want to go to war against Japan and the Germans. Of course, military historians have disproven the accusations enough times that the matter should be put to rest, but every so often someone else comes along to muddy the waters again. Consequently, I will not address these conspiracy theories in this short history, other to say the historical record proves these charges are unfounded.)

While the “Purple” machine did help the Bletchley Park wizards figure out how to break the Japanese codes, major advances did not take place until 1943 because it was not until then that the two important machines had been built and were being used successfully. The first was called the “Turing Bombe.” 

These six machines, called Bombe’s, looked like upright pianos with wheels turning and whirling than any great new code breaking machines, but in reality each Bombe contained twelve to twenty-four Enigma machines that automatically and systematically tried every one of the wheel combinations that the German military could use for their Enigma machines. Although the machines were very fast, there were literally thousands, and later millions of possible combinations for each of the messages the Germans sent, so that meant it might take up to six or seven hours just to figure out the correct wheel combination for just one important message. However, the Bletchley Park wizards did have several things in their favor. 

The first was that the Enigma machines were set up every month on the first day of the month, and the Germans never used the same set up twice. Second, the Germans always used the same format for their messages. This meant German messages for one unit always started out with the time, then the weather and so on. However, not every unit used the same format for their messages. Therefore, once the format was recognized for each military unit, then the messages could be deciphered using scientific guesses which sometimes worked out, but more often did not. For many months, it meant Bletchley Park had some messages it was able to break, but other times they struggled for any messages they could break.

However all that soon changed. The biggest break in 1943 occurred when a German code sender accidentally sent out the same message twice, using two different wheel combinations on the machine. He sent the message out in the clear, or uncoded, the first time, and then realized his mistake and sent the message a second time correctly encoded on the machine. When he did that, the Bletchley Park wizards broke the code, using the first message as a crib. With the crib, the code breakers knew at once how the wheels would then be changed every day until the end of the month. The result was spectacular for British Intelligence, for that month anyway. 

Additionally, about that time, British and American Naval forces had made their own important scores. It turns out that German Submarine commanders were required to make position checks. They sent the position checks using their own Enigma machines. However, on several occasions, British and American ships had “special information” telling them where to find the waiting submarines. Instead, the UK and US Navies were waiting for the German subs to surface. When they did, the navies successfully forced the German Subs to surface. Once surfaced, the Marines got on board the submarines and secure Enigma machines and the code books telling the German operators how to change the wheels every day for three to four months ahead of time. The naval attacks were daring and dangerous, but successfully managed to snare enough intelligence from the submarines to keep Bletchley Park breaking codes until well into 1944. 

In the autumn of 1943, despite the huge numbers of US codebreakers needed to break Japanese military codes in the US, the US managed to send three companies of US Army Signal Security Agency forces to the UK. One company was set to Y Station at Bexley, with the other two companies, including over 200 staff with two women, to Bletchley Park. At first the Americans were looked at by the British as a curiosity, but after the Americans began proving themselves, the British soon accepted the Americans as their equals. By then, Bletchley Park had almost 20,000 people working in the compound. The codebreakers were forced to find housing wherever they could in the surrounding villages. Only one family lived in Bletchley Park, and that was the family of the man who was head of security. 

By 1944, as additional military and civilian personnel arrived at Bletchley Park, it became harder to keep everything hush-hush. However, because the codebreakers, intelligence staff, and the linguists knew better than to ask any questions or to answer any questions, security remained so tight that one female driver, who had transported people to and from the area villages said she did not know who she was driving, or what  was done in Bletchley Park during the war, until 1972 when the first book about the Enigma and Bletchley Park was released! Even then, the security remained so tight that it took the Queen’s signature to allow the book’s publication.

The buildings, known as huts, were numbered and positioned so that no one had any idea what was going on in the other huts. Everything was on a need to know basis. For example hut eight was where the German linguists translated the broken codes from German to English, but they had no idea how Bletchley Park broke the German codes. Nor did they know what happened to the messages after they translated them. Instead, all they knew was that there was a little window between their hut and the hut next door. The window had a board and a box connected by some ropes along with a bell. When the message was decoded and then translated, they put the message in the box, rang the bell and it disappeared into the next building. Where it went, the linguists had no idea. All they knew for sure was that they were making a difference.

Where it went depended on what the message was. In 1943, for example, the British and Americans were fighting the Germans in North Africa. In North Africa,  armies fought and died on petrol. This was important because the German transported petroleum from Italy to North Africa by ships. However, they also transported blankets, food, and supplies for Allied POWs. Allied Command knew it was important to sink the ships with fuel, but not the ships with food and blankets for POWs. However, they also knew they could not just sink the ships with German military supplies like ammunition and petrol because the Germans would get wise about it in a hurry and would probably then change their codes making the Bletchley Park effort worthless. Luckily for the British, the Germans allowed the Italians to set up the ship transportation and Italian communication skills were not nearly as regimented as the Germans would have liked. Consequently, as their harbor pilots navigated ships out of their harbors, their radio communications were intercepted and retransmitted to Bletchley Park, where the code breakers quickly broke the Italian codes. Then, to cover up the fact that the British had broken the coded messages, the ships would be “spotted” by allied aircraft in the area. The German captains would then radio in they had been “spotted” and minutes later, as they were trying to race to the protection of the North African ports, British or American fighters and bombers would attack the specified ships that carried weapons, fuel, and ammunition. Ships carrying POW supplies would not be spotted  by Allied aircraft, and the majority of those ships carrying the POW supplies would make it safely across the Mediterranean Sea. The same thing happened with the broken German codes. If valuable targets were found in the broken German codes, cover stories, including fictitious spies and double agents, were created to convince the Germans they had been betrayed by people, not their own codes.

However, in 1943, the biggest secret was yet to be exposed. This secret was so secret that it was not ultimately exposed to the world until 1983! Its name? Colossus.

No matter what IBM and Bill Gates may claim, Colossus was the world’s first fully programable electronic computer. Built at the Post Office research department at Dollis Hill and named after the cartoonist designer of fantastic machines, Heath Robinson, it was slow and unreliable, but its design was good enough to prove the idea. Tommy Flowers, a brilliant Post Office Electronics Engineer used the idea and then built Colossus. 

Colossus used telephone switchers and radio tubes. It arrived at Bletchley Park in December 1943, just in time to break the new German “Lorenz” code. Lorenz no longer used dits and dots. Instead, it used teletype machines for communications and the old style computations were again worthless. Instead, because Colossus could read paper tape at 5,000 characters per second on wheels that traveled at 30 miles an hour, its computer capabilities meant it could also break codes in hours, that had originally taken weeks or months. On average, Colossus was so fast that it was able to break the new German Lorenz codes in six hours or less. 

As fast as the first generation of Colossus was, it was upgraded and replaced in early June 1944, just in time for Eisenhower to make his decision for the D-Day invasion on June 4,1944. The replacement, called the Mark II Colossus, proved Hitler and his General Staff had swallowed the deceptions orchestrated for them that Patton would attack land his army in the northern France. Instead, as the world now knows, it was Montgomery who led the invasion in an area to the south, known as Normandy. 

Eventually ten Colossus computers were made and used during WWII. However, Colossus remained a secret until 1986. As it turns out, Colossus was breaking codes long after WWII was over and was reading Soviet Union diplomatic codes until 1968, when it was replaced with then faster “supercomputers.” 

In 1968, ten Colossus Mark II’s were dismantled and destroyed because neither the UK or US could allow the Soviet Union to know its codes were vulnerable to Western attack. Consequently, all that remained after 1968 was one set of secret prints which detailed some of how Colossus was constructed. Even so, much of the information was lost forever. 

However, in July, 2011, the Queen and King of England visited Bletchley Park. While there, they Colossus and its rebuilder, Tony Sales. It took Tony Sales eighteen years with the help of hundreds of graduate students. The now retired and knighted computer genus, Tony Sales now is the curator of the computer museum that houses Colossus. It is a working display in its original Bletchley Park home, and open to the public.

Bletchley Park is also open to the general public for guided and unguided tours. It was here that the codes were broken. Many of the buildings are run down and falling down, but the excitement is still there for anyone looking to see for themselves where the brilliant mathematical minds went in the UK during WWII. The Polish mathematicians have not been forgotten either. In one end of a courtyard is a Polish monument. Next to it are the names of the three men that helped jumpstart the decryption techniques needed to break the German Enigma codes. 

So what would have happened had the codes not been broken? Would the war have been lost? Most likely, no. However, historians calculate that if the codes had not been broken, the war probably would have lasted another two years and a half. In that time, Hitler’s scientists might have succeeded in building jet aircraft, better rockets, and even a crude atomic weapon or two. Furthermore, in two an a half years of total warfare, no one knows what might have happened. 

Even so, the people of Bletchley Park were heros that need to be remembered. Their efforts saved untold lives and considerably shortened the war. Well Done. 

Globalization and Economic Interdependency

          Ever increasing globalization and economic interdependence will not lead to a safer world so long as shortages of goods and services remain. Even so, some modern political theorists believe that the end of the Cold War and recent trends towards globalization - i.e. growing international economic interdependence and reliance on international organizations - will make traditional instruments of power, such as military force, alliances, espionage, propaganda, and economic and diplomatic pressure, less important in international relations. These modern political base this idea on Montesquieu’s original argument that commercial republicanism can be a key tool to overcome expansionistic foreign policies. 

While some, like Walzer and Montesquieu thought humankind could somehow end conflict using commercialism and moral behavior and thus stop being reliant on the traditional instruments of power, other political thinkers like Hobbes, Machiavelli, and Kaplan all tended to disagree, saying interdependence and international organizations are not enough to end the threat of conflicts.

For example, Hobbes stated, “...I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death”

 This referred to Hobbes belief that human happiness was dependent the attempts to gain power to offset future needs and desires. Our own United States Declaration of Independence refers to this idea with the phrase, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

 Furthermore, if happiness were possible on its own, then the phrase preamble would be meaningless. Therefore, since state leaders are human too, then they too must also have the inclination to pursue happiness through the acquisition of power. Consequently, not having a world government makes no difference. State leaders rely on power politics to pursue their own self-interests.

Machiavelli agreed, claiming in The Prince that most leaders try to gain more power,  adding the effort to is not necessarily a moral one. However, in The Prince Machiavelli also argued that once the power was gained, “He who does not properly manage this business will soon lose what he has acquired, and whilst he does hold it he will have endless difficulties and troubles.”

 This meant that vice and cruelty may be necessary to achieve a moral end because strict moral arguments lead to war and civil conflict. In other words, morals have little place in politics. They limit the possible state responses and only states with leaders willing to use anything in its arsenal, including traditional instruments of power, will remain strong enough, and survive long enough, to end up with a moral society. 

Kaplan makes a similar argument and points out all foreign policy should be treated as a permanent form of crisis management. Furthermore, he states it is not realistic to expect relations among states to become more harmonic even as technology advances, no matter what technology is available. Instead, while technology can be used in ways to verify what other States are doing, but not explain why they are doing what they are doing. Furthermore, even knowing what other states is doing is no guarantee that a solution to a crisis can be found because Kaplan claims there are often no complete solutions to international problems “only confusion and unsatisfactory choices.”

          However, not everyone completely agrees. Walzer, for example goes even further and says states must sometimes behave in immoral ways to end up with a moral outcome. He states while Realists claim that morality does not exist, Walzer says there must be morals. Even in time of war, we discuss and debate morality in the forms of “the rules of war,”  and therefore, if there were no rules of war, then discussions and debates about morality would be unnecessary because they simply would not exist. Consequently, morals must exist. Rules and conventions of war prove that morality exists. Furthermore, if morals exist in total war, then they must also exist in times of peace. This idea led Walzer to claim as the world becomes more civilized, and governments become more interdependent, then conflicts will be decided in ever more moral ways.

           Montesquieu, advocated a different view. He stated commercial republicanism and commercial interdependence were the keys needed to overcome expansionistic foreign policies. Of course, Hitler’s role in WWII proves otherwise, but Montesquieu would have responded by stating Hitler’s early great successes left him arrogant and ungovernable, leading to his willfully attacking other states, all because his power was left uncheck by the German people.

          However, whether you agree or disagree with the great thinkers, as long people and states manage to exploit economic shortages for their own self-interests, the use of alliances, espionage, propaganda, economic and diplomatic pressures, backed by military force to preserve their self-interests will continue unabated. Furthermore, as Machiavelli pointed out, only the meek allow themselves to be dominated. Therefore, to maintain sovereignty, self-preservation demands diligence and the knowledge of what potential enemies are doing. That means so long as economic shortages exist, not even the growing interdependence and trends towards globalization will not be enough to end the reliance of states on traditional instruments of power for use in international relations.

¹ Hobbes, Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, (editor Edwin Curley, Hackett Publishing company, Inc, Indianapolis, IN, 1994) XI, Sec 2, p. 58.

² Preamble, United States Declaration of Independence, July 4,1776.

³ Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Translated by W.K. Marriott, (Project Gutenberg) p. 73.

⁴ Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics, (Vintage Books, 2002) pp. 12-13.

⁵ Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed (Basic Books, NY, New York, 2006). 

⁶ Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, translated and edited by Cohler, Miller, and Stone, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass), 11.4. pg. 154.