Airpower and the Environment

e Ecological Implications of 

Modern Air Warfare

Edited by 

Joel Hayward

Air University Press 

Air Force Research Institute 

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

July 2013
Airpower and the Environment

e Ecological Implications of 

Modern Air Warfare

Edited by 

Joel Hayward

Air University Press 

Air Force Research Institute 

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

July 2013
ii

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely 

those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the 

United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government 

agency. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Air University Press

Air Force Research Institute 

155 North Twining Street 

Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6026 

http://aupress.au.af.mil

AFRI

Air Force Research Institute

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Airpower and the environment : the ecological implications of modern air

warfare / edited by Joel Hayward.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58566-223-4

1. Air power—Environmental aspects. 2. Air warfare—Environmental

aspects. 3. Air warfare—Case studies. I. Hayward, Joel S. A. 

UG630.A3845 2012

363.739’2—dc23

 2012038356
iii

Contents

About the Authors v

Introduction: War, Airpower, and the Environment: 

Some Preliminary Thoughts

Joel Hayward ix

1 The Impact of War on the Environment, Public Health, 

and Natural Resources 1

Victor W. Sidel

2 “Very Large Secondary Effects”: Environmental 

Considerations in the Planning of the 

British Strategic Bombing Offensive 

against Germany, 1939–1945 9

Toby Thacker

3 The Environmental Impact of the US Army 

Air Forces’ Production and Training 

Infrastructure on the Great Plains 25

Christopher M. Rein 

4 Airpower and the Targeting of a Nation’s 

Energy Infrastructure 43

Mark A. Olinger 

5 The Forest and the Trees: Aerial Eradication 

in South Vietnam and Afghanistan 65

Evelyn Krache Morris 

6 Airpower and the Environment: Applications 

in Developing Countries 83

Dan Henk
iv

7 Airpower and Collateral Damage: 

Theory, Practice, and Challenges 107

Phillip S. Meilinger 

8 Environmental Degradation and Conflict 

in Africa: How AFRICOM Can Help Africans 133

John T. Ackerman 

9 Toward a Stable African Continent: The Role 

of AFRICOM and the USAF in Building 

Partnerships through Environmental Security 149

Robert R. Sands 

10 “Making the Desert Green”: The Effect of 

Environmental Considerations on the 

Deployment of the Israeli Air Force in the Negev 177

Tamir Libel

11 Airpower and the Environment: Some 

Ecological Implications of Modern Warfare 197

Joel Hayward

Abbreviations 225

Bibliography 229

Index 265

CONTENTS
v

About the Authors

Dr. Joel Hayward, the editor of this volume, is a scholar, author, 

and poet. His career highlights include dean of the Royal Air Force 

College, director of the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies 

(RAF CAPS), head of King’s College London’s Air Power Studies Division, and professor of strategy at the Indonesian Defense University. He is the author or editor of eight books as well as dozens of book 

chapters and journal articles, some of which have appeared in German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Serbian translations. He lectures widely throughout Europe, Asia, and beyond on various topics. 

He is currently writing An Ecological History of War: The Environmental Consequences of Warfare from Antiquity to the Present for 

Cambridge University Press and Prophet and Warrior: The Conduct 

and Justice of Muhammad’s Military Campaigns for Kube Publishing.

Dr. John T. Ackerman is an associate professor of national security studies at the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), Maxwell 

AFB, Alabama. He is also the International Security Studies course 

director for the ACSC Department of Distance Learning. Dr. Ackerman’s research efforts include exploration into the international relations implications of global climate change, security implications 

of global and regional environmental degradation, and the national 

security ramifications of strategic future trends.

Dr. Dan Henk, a social anthropologist, is the director of the US 

Air Force Culture and Language Center. He is a former US Army 

officer with combat experience in Vietnam and Grenada and military service in Europe and Africa. His recent publications have explored defense budgeting in African countries, evolving military 

roles and missions, and emerging definitions of security. A monograph in 2006 analyzed the evolution of South Africa’s armaments 

industry. His latest book, The Botswana Defense Force in the Struggle 

for an African Environment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), assessed 

the Botswana Defense Force in environmental security operations. 

Dr. Tamir Libel holds a BA in history from Tel Aviv University 

and an MA and PhD from Bar-Ilan University, both in political 

studies. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the BESA Center for Strategic 

Studies and is a Legacy Heritage Fellow at the Kinneret Research 

Center on Peace, Security, and Society at the Kinneret College of the 
vi

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sea of Galilee, Israel. His PhD dissertation compares changes in 

Western professional military education institutions between 1991 

and 2003. He has published several peer-reviewed journal articles 

and presented papers on military education, Israeli military doctrine, and airpower at major international conferences.

Dr. Phillip S. Meilinger is a retired US Air Force colonel who 

served 30 years as a command pilot, staff officer, and educator. He 

received a PhD in military history from the University of Michigan 

and has taught at the US Air Force Academy and the US Naval War 

College and was dean of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies. 

Upon retiring from the military he worked as a defense analyst in 

Washington, DC. He is the author of eight books and over 85 articles on military theory and operations.

Evelyn Krache Morris is a doctoral candidate in history at 

Georgetown University. Her chapter draws on research for her dissertation, “Into the Wind: Kennedy and the Use of Chemicals in 

Vietnam.” She holds a Royden B. Davis Fellowship at Georgetown. 

Ms. Krache Morris has a BA from Tufts University and an AM 

from the University of Chicago.

Mark A. Olinger, a retired US Army officer, received his BS in 

business administration from California Polytechnic State University, Pomona, and an MS in national security strategy from the National Defense University. He is also a graduate of the National War 

College. His career culminated as director of operations for the Defense Energy Support Center, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His publications include Logistics and the Combatant Commander: Meeting 

the Challenge (2008) and Conceptual Underpinnings of the Air Assault Concept: The Hogaboom, Rogers, and Howze Boards (2006).

Lt Col Chris Rein is a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, where Dr. Adrian Lewis advises him. From 2005 to 2008, he 

served as an assistant professor in the Department of History at the 

US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He earned 

a BS in naval architecture and marine engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and an MA in history 

from Louisiana State University in 2001.

Dr. Robert R. Sands is a professor of anthropology at the Air 

Force Culture and Language Center (AFCLC) at the Air University 
vii

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

and is responsible for designing curricula that infuse concepts of 

culture across the spectrum of professional military education and 

training. He is also director of the MINERVA Initiative for Energy 

and Environmental Security. He received his PhD in anthropology 

from the University of Illinois and his MA in anthropology from 

Iowa State University. Dr. Sands has authored six books and numerous chapters and articles on topics such as environmental security, 

building partnerships and sustainability, sport and culture, ethnographic theory, and origins of religion.

Victor W. Sidel, MD, is a distinguished university professor of 

social medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein 

College of Medicine and adjunct professor of public health at Weill 

Cornell Medical College. He has been president of the American 

Public Health Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and 

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. He is coeditor with Dr. Barry Levy of War and Public Health, Terrorism and 

Public Health, and Social Injustice and Public Health, all published by 

Oxford University Press.

Dr. Toby Thacker is a lecturer in modern European history at Cardiff University. He is the author of Music after Hitler, 1945–1955 

(Ashgate, 2007), The End of the Third Reich: Defeat, Denazification, 

and Nuremberg 1944–1946 (Tempus, 2006), and most recently, Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He is 

embarking on a comparative study of three towns in Britain, Germany, and France in the aftermath of the First World War.

ix

Introduction

War, Airpower, and the Environment: 

Some Preliminary Thoughts

Joel Hayward

Twenty years ago the Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem 

Brundtland, stated, “We are living in an historic transitional period 

in which awareness of the conflict between human activities and 

environmental constraints is literally exploding.”1

 We have come a 

long way in the subsequent two decades. Environmental responsibility now lies at the forefront of our Western world perspective and 

is constantly growing in importance. Ecological activism, which 

used to be a fringe movement, has now become mainstream. In 

2007 Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 

won the Nobel Peace Prize (and an Oscar!) for their efforts to raise 

environmental awareness. Greenpeace, which uses “non-violent, 

creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems,” 

alone has no fewer than 220,000 members in the United Kingdom 

and 2.8 million worldwide. Ecologists, environmentalists, activists, 

lobbyists, and of course strategists are already turning their attention to ecological aspects of modern warfare, including land mines, 

cluster ordnance, erosion and soil damage, air pollution, deforestation, nuclear testing and proliferation, oil spillage and fires, depleted uranium contamination, disposal of ordnance, and so forth. 

It seems likely that such concerns will also become increasingly 

mainstream. As a consequence, governments and their armed 

forces will be paying more attention to the serious ecological ramifications of conflict. Some already are. The Global Strategic Trends

paper published by the British Ministry of Defence’s Development, 

Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) illustrates the importance 

now being placed on these matters by some British strategists.2

Balancing strategic and operational needs with both military and 

environmental ethics is certainly not impossible, and responsible 

armed forces are already beginning to think about how best to balance what superficially seem to be (but actually are not) competing 

imperatives. Air forces face the greatest challenges. During both 

peace and war they have far greater carbon footprints than armies 
x

introduction

and navies. They use potentially more devastating ordnance. Their 

targets traditionally include objects in or near population centers 

and the aquifers, waterways, soils, and food sources that sustain 

them. Also, because of historic targeting trends that appear likely to 

continue for some years—a feature of several chapters herein—air 

forces cause far worse damage to environmentally significant production, storage, and distribution infrastructure, much of which is 

based on petroleum, oil, lubricants, or chemicals.

The manufacture and testing of aircraft are themselves major 

industrial undertakings that have always, and especially during 

wartime, damaged local ecosystems, sometimes substantially and 

perhaps in some cases permanently. Even when airframes were 

made mainly of canvas stretched over wood, the need for certain 

types of strong and light wood resulted in both deforestation and, 

paradoxically, the planting of new forests for future generations of 

aircraft that were never built. Although this may seem to have been 

environmentally cost-neutral, the planting of certain tree species in 

new regions permanently modified and upset fragile ecosystems.3

By the time of the Second World War, when most aircraft were 

composed mainly of various metals and alloys and relatively little 

wood, the industrial pollution caused by the aircraft industry was 

staggering (after all, hundreds of thousands of aircraft were built, a 

great portion of them were destroyed, and all the rest were later 

scrapped). Authors within this volume have addressed aspects of this 

pollution, although there is still much more for scholars to research 

and write.

Military aircraft have also consumed unimaginable quantities of 

fuel on training and operational sorties, adding negatively to the 

greenhouse effect. During World War II, military consumption of 

aviation fuel represented approximately half of all fossil fuels consumed throughout that dark period. Scholarly work has now begun 

to quantify the consumption, but it has not become an area of great 

academic activity. This author hopes that some bright aspiring doctoral student might one day be sufficiently motivated to provide a 

sustained piece of research that will qualitatively and quantitatively 

analyze the impact of the Second World War on both the oil industry and the physical environment itself.

Aside from reconnaissance, surveillance, and informationgathering, military aircraft have traditionally been used in three 

other key roles: control of the air (that is, to gain at least local air 
xi

introduction

superiority so that all friendly air and surface operations can occur 

without undue hindrance or danger); air mobility (lifting people 

and supplies to, from, and within theaters); and attack (striking 

enemy objects to coerce, deny, or punish). All roles have ecological ramifications.

Yet it is in the attack role that airpower has created the most controversial and publicly visible environmental consequences. Even 

aside from atomic and nuclear weapons (which have been covered 

splendidly in many other books), the bullets, shells, rockets, and 

bombs fired or released from military aircraft have devastated both 

urban and rural areas. From the first Zeppelin raids on French, British, 

and other cities and towns in 1914 and 1915 through to the most 

recent Israeli strikes on Gaza, air attacks against cities and citizens 

have not only razed buildings and taken lives; they have caused 

frightful public health hazards and polluted soil and waterways.

Likewise, in a less publicized but no less harmful manner, air attacks against enemy forces and infrastructure in rural areas (and 

sometimes directly against the rural environment itself, as in Vietnam) have impacted nature with dramatic negativity. Even during 

the First World War some air forces directly targeted the enemy’s 

forests and other natural ecological features.4

 Various authors in 

this volume chronicle and analyze the tremendous destruction 

from the air of both urban and rural areas, especially during World 

War II, the Vietnam War, and the 1999 Yugoslavian war. Although 

their chapters generally make for grim reading—from which we 

can all learn—they also reveal more positively that at times decision 

makers in recent years have intervened to ensure that polluted 

regions gain at least a degree of remediation. After NATO’s 1999 

air war against Yugoslavia, for example, the United Nations Environmental Program did what the attacking NATO states would 

not do: it provided thorough and expensive postwar environmental remediation.

We should of course make one point clear: air forces are not 

alone in causing ecological harm. As revealed by a number of excellent books—the best of which is undoubtedly The Environmental 

Consequences of War, edited by Jay E. Austin and Carl E. Bruch,5 

although it is now a dozen years old—armies and navies have also 

created and continue to create ecological harm, usually entirely unwittingly. In my own chapter, I touch on some of the harm done 
xii

throughout the twentieth century by war fighters who had no 

awareness of the ecological consequences of their actions.

The decommissioning and disposal of ordnance once caused few 

concerns for governments and their air forces. Following both 

world wars, air forces (like armies and navies, who were equally 

unconcerned about ecological consequences) got rid of massive 

amounts of no-longer-needed bombs and other ordnance, as well as 

overstocks of spare parts and other materiel, simply by dropping 

them into the world’s oceans or burying them within the ground. 

The scholars within this book touch on these unfortunate practices 

and highlight the fact that, at least in partial defense of those who 

committed these acts, during the first half of the twentieth century 

no governments or militaries possessed adequate scientific knowledge upon which to make better decisions. Less happily, this book 

demonstrates that the safe and environmentally harmless decommissioning and disposal of ordnance have only very recently become issues for air forces in developed nations (which are no further behind than the armies and navies in those nations). This book 

also reveals that, although no scandalously harmful disposal now 

occurs—that we know of—there is still a long way to go before we 

can state categorically that all unwanted ordnance and other materiel are disposed of without detrimental effects.

I know from my own experiences working with the Royal Air 

Force (RAF), and from previous experience with other air forces, 

that the disposal of oil and lubricants is now taken far more seriously than it was even 20 years ago when I commenced my career 

as a professional military educator. Indeed, air forces in developed 

nations are not only looking at the disposal of petroleum products, 

they are also exploring—and some making significant strides 

with—the entire issue of sustainability as it pertains to petroleum, 

oil, and lubricants. Within the British Ministry of Defence, for 

example, the RAF has led its sister services in the examination of 

fuel efficiency and the exploitation of alternative fuel sources, including the wider application of biofuels and synthetic fuels across 

the land, sea, and air environments. As far back as 1999, RAF aircraft were among the first in the world certified to fly on up to 50 

percent non-crude-oil-derived synthetic fuel.6

 Since April 2008, 

several RAF aircraft types have been certified to use 100 percent 

synthetic fuel. Efforts continue to achieve wider use of synthetic 

fuels for ships and land vehicles. Other major armed forces, including 

introduction
xiii

those of the United States, have made as much progress and in some 

cases are now the world leaders in this aspect of sustainability

According to a report in Stars and Stripes, the US military 

forces—which use around 2 percent of the nation’s fuel—are 

themselves acutely aware of the need to reduce their reliance on 

fossil fuels and to increase efficiency as a means of offsetting the 

seemingly inexorable rise of fuel costs.7

 Although there is considerable room for improvement, and the primary motivation is economic and not ecological, the US military has continually reduced 

its consumption and increased its efficiency year by year. It simply 

has to do so. As Tom H. Hastings wrote a decade ago:

The militaries of the world consume about as much energy as the entire economy of Japan—approximately six percent of the global annual energy budget. 

A US-made F-16 fighter warplane burns more fuel in an hour than the average 

US car does in one year. Militaries account for nine percent of the iron and 

steel consumed each year.8

Hasting’s view is, like that of many ecologists, rather antagonistic 

toward the military, yet, when discussing Gulf War I, he was correct 

in asserting “the oil consumed was staggering.” As he wrote:

Just one division of armored tanks burned more than 600,000 gallons of fuel 

per day; each F-15 in after burner gulps down 240 gallons per minute; four 

entire aircraft carrier groups “had” to throttle their way across the planet’s 

oceans to assemble in the Persian Gulf in order to wage war to protect their 

ability to throttle their way around the Earth. Just one of those carriers—not 

counting its retinue of smaller warships—the USS Independence, turned two 

million gallons of carbon-based fossil fuel into heat and airborne waste. The 

estimate of the 46-day war total oil consumption by the US-led UN forces to 

protect cheap oil: more than 900 million gallons.9

It should be pointed out that, even in terms of aviation, the military is not the biggest culprit. In 1976, civil aviation (passenger and 

cargo) consumed 64 percent of all aviation fuel, with the military 

consuming 36 percent. By 1992, the ratio had changed dramatically, with civil aviation consuming 82 percent and military aviation 18 percent. This ratio is predicted to change to 93 percent and 

7 percent respectively by 2015, and to 97 percent and 3 percent by 

2050.10 Explaining this is not difficult. Not only has there been a 

massive increase in passenger air travel and airfreight, but there has 

also been a substantial decrease in the number of military aircraft. 

The latter has resulted from the vastly different nature of airpower 

from, say, World War II, when great air fleets were needed to perform 

introduction
xiv

missions that today can be undertaken by single squadrons. Additionally, the increased multifunctionality of today’s combat aircraft has 

reduced the number of aircraft types that an air force needs.

Both civil and military aviation manufacturers are working 

zealously to make aircraft that are less environmentally damaging, 

with quieter engines, less carbon emissions, and far less nitrogen 

oxide emissions. As currently configured, at least, the tremendous 

improvement in jet engine efficiency (70 percent since the 1950s) 

and noise reduction (75 percent) is unlikely to continue, because 

engine and airframe designs are most likely reaching the limit of 

developmental potential.11 The future generation of aircraft, manufactured largely from composites and with advanced fly-by-wire 

controls, will probably feature unconventional shapes allowing 

highly efficient new engine mounting and wing configurations 

and ultra-low maintenance levels. Aircraft manufacturers are 

evaluating, testing, and developing new materials and new designs, even though this does not come cheaply, because they recognize that not only will the “customers” be pressing increasingly 

harder for greater efficiency and environmental responsibility, but 

the environmental lobby will be equally trenchant. Aircraft manufacturers are already factoring into their design and production 

processes ways of ensuring that when these aircraft reach the end 

of their lives, the composite parts—designed to be as environmentally harmless as possible—can be removed and reutilized 

easily and efficiently and with minimal waste or scrapping. With 

this in mind, tomorrow’s military aircraft graveyards may look 

very different from today’s seemingly endless landscapes of corroding and contaminating metal and other materials.

Books on ecology, of which there is an increasing number, tend 

to be rather negative; that is, they focus on the great harm that humans have done to the physical environment. I am pleased that, 

along with evidence of both harm and remediation, this book contains chapters of a different nature (weak pun intended). Several of 

the scholars who contributed chapters have highlighted the fact 

that military forces now take far more care of the environment than 

ever before and that many, even in less-developed regions such as 

central Africa, have developed strategies to minimize all harm and 

even to do environmentally beneficial activities. Humans live in constantly changing physical environments and are often vulnerable, 

along with all other living things, to not only natural change, but 

introduction
xv

also man-made changes. It is heartening that some military forces, 

utilizing the speed, reach, and intelligence-gathering capabilities of 

air assets, are providing highly positive contributions to conservation 

efforts and the maintenance and protection of ecological protection zones. It is a positive story and it brings richness and variety 

to this book.

Joel Hayward , PhD

Lincolnshire, United Kingdom 2012

introduction

Notes

(All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in 

the bibliography.)

1. Quoted in Antoine, “International Humanitarian Law and the Protection of 

the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict,” 517.

2. Global Strategic Trends, http://www.dcdc-strategictrends.org.uk/.

3. One of the best short pieces on the impact of war on the world’s forests is McNeill, 

“Woods and Warfare in World History.”

4. Hayward, “Air Power, Ethics and Civilian Immunity during the Great War and 

Its Aftermath.”

5. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War.

6. Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, Baroness Taylor of Bolton.

7. Weaver and Svan, “US Military Looks to Cut Fuel Costs.”

8. Hastings, Ecology of War & Peace: Counting Costs of Conflict, 96.

9. Ibid., 97.

10. Penner et al., eds., IPCC Special Report, 4.

11. Gardner, “How Green Is Your Contrail?”

Chapter 1

The Impact of War on the Environment, 

Public Health, and Natural Resources

Victor W. Sidel

Those who fly aircraft in every country of the world deserve our 

praise. They perform heroic services every day, such as fighting widespread fires, flying into hurricanes to determine their characteristics, 

and rescuing and evacuating stranded or injured people from disasters. Their service in defense of their nations under attack in war is 

legendary. As Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons on 

20 August 1940, “The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our 

Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the 

guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning 

the tide of world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in 

the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”1

Yet airpower can be used for destructive purposes as well. While 

there are examples from before the 1930s, that decade saw a dramatic 

increase in destructive use. An iconic example is the 1937 German 

bombing of Guernica, a small Basque town in northern Spain, during 

the Spanish Civil War. The wanton killing of civilians became a symbol for the use of airpower in war and was immortalized by Pablo 

Picasso in his painting Guernica for the Spanish Pavilion in the 1937 

Paris Exposition. Nazi bombers were used at the start of World War 

II in raids on cities in Poland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

The Royal Air Force’s (RAF) use of airpower at the beginning of 

the war was defensive—against enemy air raids on cities and towns, 

including London and Coventry—and in rescue services at Dunkirk. 

The Allies then began to use airpower in offensive operations. By the 

end of 1940, the RAF was bombing Munich and Mannheim in retaliation for the bombing of London and Coventry. The United States 

joined in air attacks on German cities starting in 1942. On both sides, 

the rationale for these attacks on civilian populations, along with the 

collateral damage to munitions plants and arms transport, was to 

damage morale and reduce the enemy’s will to continue the war. The 
2 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

later attacks on Dresden and Hamburg by RAF and US Army Air 

Forces (USAAF) bombers intensied this strategy.

US military aircra in the Pacic were employed for the same tactic, 

beginning with the 1942 bombing of Tokyo and other targets by the 

Doolittle Raiders.2

 en in March 1945, B-29s dropped incendiary 

bombs on the three largest cities of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya). 

e attacks on Tokyo killed an estimated 84,000 people, injured 

41,000, and made one million people homeless.3

 e dropping of 

atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was a continuation of this strategy using a new weapon whose blast, thermal energy, 

and ionizing radiation could kill close to 100,000 people and injure 

tens of thousands more with a single bomb.4

Following World War II, the use of airpower to harm people and 

destroy property continued. Air operations in Vietnam caused extensive casualties and physical destruction that were euphemized as 

“collateral damage.” e bombing of Cambodia, the full extent of 

which was not revealed until President Clinton did so in 2000, took 

place from 1964 to 1975.5

 Similar damage was inicted on Kosovo, 

Iraq, and Afghanistan. On 14 June 2009, the chief of the United Nations’ mission to Afghanistan criticized air operations that led to the 

deaths of hundreds of civilians.6

Although airpower’s capacity to cause long-lasting and possibly irreversible damage to the environment has added a new dimension, 

reports—some of them apparently apocryphal—of war-related environmental damage began long before the development of aircra. A 

frequently cited example is from the ird Punic War (second century BC): the Romans are said to have salted the elds of Carthage 

aer they conquered it.7

 A century later, Calgacus, a Caledonian 

chieain, inspired his troops to ght by warning them that their Roman 

enemy used “robbery, butchery and rapine.” He added, “ey create a 

desolation and call it a peace.”8

Closely related are the ways in which military forces attempted 

(long before the development of airpower) to cause indiscriminate 

damage to health. In 1347 Mongols attacking the walled city of Caa 

in what is now the Ukraine catapulted the corpses of those who had 

died of the plague into the city. In North America in 1763, Lord 

Jeffery Amherst, commander in chief of British forces, suggested to 

the besieged commander of Fort Pitt that blankets in which smallpox 

victims had slept be given to the enemy. A delegation of Delaware 
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 3

Indians visiting the fort seeking its surrender received “two blankets 

and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital.”

In recent years, protecting our planet from long-lasting and possibly irreversible change has become an important issue, producing 

attempts to reorder priorities and practices in many sectors of human 

life, including the use of energy for production and transportation 

and the ways we act in our daily lives. A new term, ecological damage, 

describes eects that are longer lasting and more severe than environmental damage. One result of the concern about ecological damage is the protection of endangered species and the negotiation of the 

Convention on Biological Diversity, which has now been ratied by 

more than 175 countries. e convention commits ratifying countries to the protection of ecosystems, which it denes as a “dynamic 

complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their 

non-living environment interacting as a functional unit.”9

 In other 

words, an ecosystem is a group of interdependent organisms which 

share the same habitat. Damage to ecosystems from cumulative 

causes, such as environmental pollution, threatens the existence not 

only of species dened as “endangered,” but ultimately of Homo sapiens

as well.

Environmental changes, in contrast to ecological changes, generally 

are changes to physical structures such as air, water, and soil, which 

may be reversible. Environmental damage can also refer, more broadly, 

to social, economic, and cultural changes. Such changes, when limited 

in duration and scope, can indeed be survivable or even benecial to a 

species in the short run, but care must be taken that the intensity or 

duration of these changes does not result in irreversible damage.

e advent of airpower during the twentieth century provided a 

series of terrible but probably reversible examples of damage to human 

beings and to the environment. Examples include the Nazi bombing 

of Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Coventry, followed by 

the Allied bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and other cities in Germany. e Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was followed by the 

United States using incendiary bombs to destroy much of Kyoto and 

Tokyo. In my assessment, which is not universally embraced,10 these 

responses were roughly proportional to the provocation and, although terribly damaging, for the most part followed the guidelines 

that dene conduct during a just war.

e capabilities of airpower to cause long-lasting environmental 

and ecological damage intensied dramatically at the end of World 
4 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

War II. e most striking examples are the use of nuclear weapons on 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the testing of thermonuclear weapons 

of far greater yield in the 1950s and following decades. ese weapons, 

whose consequences included long-lasting, ionizing radiation, appeared to cross a threshold for destructiveness and ecological damage. Some of those who developed the weapons recognized the crossing of a moral threshold. J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the 

Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”11

Other instances of environmental and ecological damage caused 

by airpower followed. One example is the use of depleted uranium 

(DU) in missiles and shells. DU is a waste product mainly from the 

production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. British and US 

armed forces have used it in the Middle East and in the former Yugoslavia.12

Another example is the use of vast quantities of petroleum products in military training and in war, which depletes nonrenewable 

natural resources and undoubtedly contributes to global warming. 

American service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years 

have used about 3.5 million gallons per day. Over the course of a year 

that amounts to 1.3 billion gallons. For every serviceperson stationed 

in these theatres, two others are in training or transit, and the Department of Defense (DOD) must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship. e 

DOD is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, and an April 

2007 estimate suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 

14 billion gallons every day, greater than the daily total consumption 

of Sweden or Switzerland. It is impossible to identify how much of 

this total is due to consumption by military aircra, but since one 

F-15 using full aerburner power consumes 60,000 pounds of fuel 

per hour per engine, military aircra use is surely a signicant part of 

the total consumption.13

Airpower can also cause ecological damage when aircra are used 

to destroy nuclear power plants, spreading plutonium-239 with a 

half-life of 24,100 years. Aircra that spray herbicides such as Agent 

Orange may not only spread cancer-causing contaminants such as 

dioxin, but also cause damage to complex ecological systems such as 

mangroves.14 e production of bomb craters may lead to standing 

pools of water that in some climatic regions are breeding grounds for 

mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases. Even limited use 

of nuclear weapons, some have predicted, could result in widespread 
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 5

cooling, agricultural failure, famine, and infectious disease. Such uses 

of airpower not only cause individual instances of human and environmental damage, but may irreversibly damage ecosystems when 

they happen repeatedly and widely.

Another less discussed way airpower can inict potentially irreversible and widespread environmental damage is as a weapon of terrorism. Nation-states, individuals, and groups have long used other 

forms of indiscriminate attack to create fear. But the use of aircra 

creates what might be called an “ecological” level of fear. e “shock 

and awe” at the start of the attack on Iraq is one example. Others include using fuel-laden commercial aircra in the attacks on the 

World Trade Center and the Pentagon or aircra dropping napalm 

(jellied gasoline) in Vietnam, dropping white phosphorus in crowded 

urban areas in Gaza, and dropping cluster bombs. Ninety-ve nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008, but the United States, which used cluster bombs in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, has not yet signed. ese 

attacks not only kill and maim people, but may lead to long-lasting 

and perhaps irreversible conditions in which people carry their distrust of other individuals and nations into their social relationships.

Unmanned drone aircra present another way airpower can create 

fear, adding another element to warfare. When drone aircra are operated directly by human beings, some element of human responsibility for consequences may be present. When controllers far from 

the scene of battle operate them, human responsibility for consequences may be lacking.15

Drones have been used in Afghanistan to target individual human 

beings. is practice is ethically troubling and may be counterproductive in a “war against terrorism.” Not only can targets be misidentied, but by international law there must be no reasonable alternative, such as capture, to killing a targeted civilian. To warrant 

execution the target must be actively participating in an attack on 

others. e use of lethal force must be proportionate to the immediate threat. In this case, too, the use of aircra brings a warring nation 

closer to the borderline of illegal and unethical activities.16

What can be done to keep the changes brought by the use of aircra in war from causing irreversible damage to the environment, 

health, and natural resources? Other chapters in this book deal with 

legal responsibilities, reparations, and responsibility for repairing the 

reversible environmental damage. But, as in other areas of public 
6 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

health, the answer must lie in prevention of adverse health consequences that cannot be eectively reversed. Prevention of the environmental and ecological consequences of war, whether caused by 

airpower or not, ultimately lies in preventing human conicts from 

becoming armed conicts. Indeed, some have wondered whether the 

damage war causes to people and to the environment is making war 

as an extension of foreign policy obsolete. A just war, as enumerated 

over the centuries and recently restated by the Roman Catholic 

Church, must meet the following criteria:

•   the damage inflicted by an aggressor on the nation or

community of nations must be lasting, grave, and

certain;

• all other means of putting an end to it must have been 

shown to be impractical or ineective;

• there must be serious prospects of success; and

• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders 

graver than the evil to be eliminated.17

e power of modern warfare means of destruction, particularly 

through airpower, should weigh heavily in evaluating actions against 

the last of these criteria for a just war.

Orville Wright, commenting in 1917 on his invention, said, “When 

my brother and I built the rst man-carrying ying machine we 

thought that we were introducing into the world an invention which 

would make further wars practically impossible.”18 e damage that 

airpower makes possible also led to a prediction by Winston Churchill 

in the House of Commons in 1933 that “Air power may either end 

war or end civilisation.”19

Wright and Churchill were not the rst to predict an end to war 

based on technological destructiveness. As Alfred Nobel wrote to 

Bertha von Sutner, recipient of the rst Nobel Peace Prize, “Perhaps 

my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your Congresses; 

on the day when two army corps will be able to annihilate each other 

in a second, all civilised nations will recoil with horror and disband 

their troops.”20 But such technological xes have not succeeded in 

preventing war. e problem is moral. To end war, military forces, in 

this case those who y and support air forces, would need to refuse to 

conduct operations that would violate the principles of jus in bello
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 7

(justice in war). Perhaps books like this and others will help point the 

way to moral constraints on the role of these forces in war.21

Notes

(All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in 

the bibliography.)

1. Churchill, speech, 20 August 1940.

2. Lawson, irty Seconds over Tokyo.

3. Craven and Cate, eds., Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5: Pacic: Matterhorn to Nagasaki June 1944 to August 1945, 614–17.

4. Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 599.

5. Owen and Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia.”

6. Hewitt, “Place Annihilation,” 257–84.

7. Susan Stevens, “Legend of the Destruction of Carthage,” 39–41.

8. Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, as translated by William Peterson 

quoted in Bromwich, “Euphemism and American Violence.”

9. United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, available at http://www.cbd.int/.

10. See Grayling, Among the Dead Cities.

11. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, ix.

12. Fairlie, “Depleted Uranium.” [Editor’s note: see Joel Hayward’s chapter 11 in 

this volume for a dierent perspective on DU.]

13. Frumkin, Hess, and Vindigni, “Energy and Public Health”; and Klare, “Pentagon 

v. Peak Oil.”

14. Grotto and Jones, “Agent Orange’s Lethal Legacy.” 

15. “60 Drone Hits Kill 14 Al-Qaeda Men, 687 Civilians,” News (Pakistan).

16. Mayer, “Predator War”; and Shane, “C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones.”

17. “Just War Doctrine.”

18. McFarland, ed., Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 76.

19. Churchill, debate, 14 March 1933.

20. Tagil, “Alfred Nobel’s oughts about War and Peace.”

21. See Hayward’s essay in this volume, “Airpower and the Environment: Some 

Ecological Implications of Modern Warfare.” Also see Byman, Waxman, and Larson, 

Air Power as a Coercive Instrument; Wrage, ed., Immaculate Warfare; Sidel, Levy, and 

Slutzman, “Prevention of War and Its Environmental Consequences”; Leaning, 

“Tracking the Four Horsemen”; and Sidel, “Impact of Military Preparedness.”

Chapter 2

“Very Large Secondary Effects” 

Environmental Considerations in the Planning of 

the British Strategic Bombing Offensive 

against Germany, 1939–1945

Toby Thacker

While environmental damage is a common consequence of 

war, it should never be a deliberate aim.

—Kofi Annan

Between September 1939 and May 1945 the Royal Air Force (RAF) 

carried out a sustained bombing offensive against Germany, starting 

with tentative raids using small numbers of aircraft to attack German 

warships. The offensive grew to a furious crescendo in early 1945, 

when fleets of four-engine bombers carrying huge loads of incendiary 

and high-explosive bombs were dispatched almost nightly, and sometimes by day, to a wide range of targets in Germany. Since the inception of this campaign, and particularly with the turn to “area bombing” in 1941, debate has focused on the military effects of the bombing 

offensive and its ethical dimensions.

Until very recently, the environmental consequences of the British 

bombing may have been considered, if at all, only as an unfortunate 

side effect of a campaign directed against military objectives or 

against “morale,” that intangible factor which so preoccupied British 

theorists and practitioners of bombing.1

 When German writers, after 

a long silence, turned their attention to the bombing of their country, 

they have been in the forefront of those who have included damage to 

the environment in the indictment drawn up against the architects of 

the British bombing. In the essay, On the Natural History of Destruction, W. G. Sebald singled out Marshal of the RAF, Sir Arthur Harris, 

arguing that he “liked destruction for its own sake, and was thus in 

perfect sympathy with the innermost principle of every war, which is 

to aim for as wholesale an annihilation of the enemy with his 
10 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

dwellings, his history, and his natural environment as can possibly 

be achieved.”2

is chapter asks if environmental considerations were a factor in 

the planning of the British strategic bombing oensive of the Second 

World War. It then oers some reections on why environmental 

considerations were not more prominent in the extensive and unfolding debates about the purposes of that oensive.

From the relatively safe vantage point of the early twenty-rst century, 

it is clear that in addition to injuries and deaths and the destruction 

caused to the neighborhoods in Germany by the British bombing, 

there was an environmental cost, as yet not measured. Four main areas 

can be isolated: (1) e burning of huge quantities of aviation fuel, 

the explosion of thousands of tons of ordnance, and, above all, the 

deliberate creation of huge res in German cities had as one consequence the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the 

atmosphere.3

 (2) e RAF’s focus on trying to destroy German oil 

supplies and oil production facilities released numerous other toxins 

into the atmosphere, the land, and the water around “oil targets.” (3) e 

deliberate attacks on the German chemical industry, and the lessfocused attacks on large and small industrial centers, inevitably 

caused the release of dangerous chemicals onto nearby land and into 

the atmosphere, rivers and lakes, and groundwater supplies. (4) ere 

was incalculable damage to all kinds of wildlife and to wildlife habitats.

Since the 1961 publication of the four-volume ocial history of 

the British bombing oensive and the earlier publication of memoirs 

by key gures (most notably Winston Churchill and Arthur Harris) 

in the evolution of British bombing policy, historians have scrutinized the debates surrounding the development of bombing from the 

air since 1914 and the evolution of British policy before and during 

World War II.4

 A number of recent histories have examined—with 

varying degrees of objectivity—the wartime debates about the best 

use of Britain’s growing bomber force in the changing circumstances 

of the Second World War and the heated arguments over whether 

aircra were best employed attacking specic “military objectives” or 

in “area bombing” intended to damage German morale. Most commentators also noted the concern of politicians, airmen, and bombing campaign critics for the potential damage to Germany’s architectural and cultural heritage and the destruction of churches, museums, 

art galleries, libraries, archives, and their contents.5

 None have explored the extent to which “environmental” considerations were a 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 11

part of the wartime debates. To explore this we need to return to the 

primary documents.

Britain declared war on Germany with a specic plan to attack the 

natural environment. e “Western Air Plans” of 1 September 1939 

detailed various options open to the RAF in the event of war with 

Germany. One of these, Plan W. A. 11, was for “attack on forests.”6

e RAF did not immediately exercise this option, as all the armed 

forces were restricted to attacking only “purely military objectives in 

the narrowest sense of the word” to avoid provoking the Germans 

into starting “unrestricted air warfare.”7

 Once the Germans attacked 

the Low Countries and France in May 1940, Britain revised this policy and, as the situation worsened in June 1940, revived its plan to 

attack the natural environment in Germany. By this time, many prewar assumptions about bombing had been revealed as unfounded. 

e war entered a critical phase with the collapse of the French Army 

and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. 

Pressure on the RAF’s Bomber Command to help alleviate the crisis 

and a spell of exceptionally dry summer weather on the continent 

combined to provoke a directive from the deputy chief of the Air Sta 

to Air Marshal Charles Portal (then in charge of the Bomber Command) which included a section on “Destruction of Crops and Forests.” Portal was instructed:

e time to attack crops in Germany is within the next two or three weeks, 

and the new “pellet” incendiary will be available in quantity early in July. 

You should be prepared to distribute the “pellets” over selected areas in 

Germany immediately aer the current moon phase and a separate directif 

[sic], forwarding a map of the suggested areas, will be sent to you in the 

near future.

e directive continued:

As you are aware, there are extensive areas of coniferous forests in Germany which are believed to be extremely vulnerable to incendiarism at 

this time of year. Some of these are in the vicinity of important military 

objectives and aerodromes, where a forest re might have valuable results 

in dislocating German military and industrial activities apart from the 

moral eect.

“Crops and forests” were one of ve separate objectives specied in 

this directive. e aircra industry, communications, mine-laying in 

German coastal waters, and oil preceded it and were given greater 

priority.8

 e situation was very uid. A new 4 July 1940 directive 

instructed Portal that attacks on forests should be “discontinued,” but 
12 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

that he should still prepare to use the incendiary “pellet” against 

crops. On 24 July, Portal was told that

When suitable weather conditions obtain, attacks may be resumed against 

forest areas in Germany in accordance with the directives forwarded to 

your headquarters in Air Ministry letters dated 24th and 26th June, 1940. 

Among the areas suggested in the attachments to those letters, it is felt that 

the Harz Mountains would provide a valuable focus for a concentrated attack both from the material and psychological standpoints.

In this connection, I am to say that consideration has been given to the 

possibility of utilising the existing stocks of incendiary “pellets” in conjunction with normal bombing operations in order to take advantage of 

the diversions and alarms which may be caused through these potential 

sources of re scattered over a wide area. It is considered that, when the 

weather is dry, there is a reasonable chance of a number of “pellets” starting res on the extensive stretches of heath land and similar ground which 

is widespread throughout Western Germany, and thus adding to the demoralising and psychological eect of our operations. Authority is being 

sought for the employment of the “pellets” in this way and you will be noti-

ed immediately this is obtained.9

One wonders what the Air Sta imagined the “demoralising and 

psychological eect” of causing extensive heath and forest res in 

Germany might have been. Was there a sense that the Germans were 

particularly sensitive to nature and proud of their landscape and, as a 

result, would have been particularly troubled by its destruction? We 

will probably never know.

Although these plans came to naught, they are, when combined 

with other statements made at this time, very revealing. A “Committee on Preventing Oil from Reaching Germany” was established, making 

its Fourth Report to the government on 4 June 1940, as the evacuation at Dunkirk came to an end. It stated:

Oil targets are, from the Royal Air Force point of view, highly desirable 

objectives, particularly because they are vulnerable to air attack because 

attack upon them gives rise to very large secondary eects by way of re 

and explosions. e majority of the chief oil plants in Germany are remote 

from centres of civil population. erefore attack on oil plants is likely to 

cause fewer casualties among civilians than other targets.10

e chiefs of sta, in a report to the War Cabinet on 25 May 1940, 

urged bombing attacks on German oil targets.11 Unlike the proposed 

attacks on forests and crops, Bomber Command from 16 May had 

already started night attacks on oil targets in Germany. It is clear that 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 13

in the desperate circumstances of the summer of 1940, as RAF leaders 

realized that existing Bomber Command forces were not able to seriously impact any of the numerous targets being attacked, the British 

had few scruples about creating extensive res in German forests, on 

farmlands, and on heaths, nor about causing huge res and explosions in oil plants, with “very large secondary eects.” Indeed, they 

clearly thought this a preferable alternative to causing death or injury 

among the civilian population.

e broader idea of inuencing people by attacking their crops 

and other means of sustenance was indeed well established in British 

aerial doctrine, although it had only previously been used on “primitive peoples” and “recalcitrant tribes” in outlying areas of the British 

Empire as part of what in the 1920s and 1930s was termed “Air Control.” Charles Townshend documented how a 1922 Air Sta memorandum listed, under the heading “Forms of Frightfulness,” methods 

for breaking the morale of a colonial tribe. One method was to poison 

the water supplies with crude oil.12 roughout the 1920s and 1930s, 

the cattle and other livestock of “recalcitrant tribes” in outlying areas 

of the empire, notably in Africa, were targeted in “air policing” 

operations—typically in preference to the actual members of the 

tribe.13 As late as 1937, the RAF’s “Manual of Air Tactics” contained a 

rationale for setting crops and forests on re, noting that this had 

been used in “outlying areas as a punishment against primitive peoples.”14 Underlying these forms of attack within the broader doctrine 

of “Air Control” was a concern to nd ways of coercing people while 

restricting casualties to a minimum. e same concern was transferred into emerging plans for bombing Germany in the rst year of 

World War II.

Between the dry summer of 1940 and the appointment of Arthur 

Harris to lead Bomber Command in February 1942, there appears to 

have been no resurrection of the idea of attacking crops, forests, or 

heaths in Germany. ese ideas never appealed to Harris, who, despite his background in the practical application of “Air Control” in 

India and in Iraq, was committed to “the policy of destroying industrial cities” in the ght against Germany.15 e prolonged debate in 

Britain over the merits of “area bombing,” which followed the presentation of the Butt Report in August 1941 and the “Area Bombing Directive” in February 1942, did not engage with environmental considerations. e debate was mainly about the most eective ways of 
14 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

waging war against Germany, and to a lesser extent, the ethical legitimacy of directing attacks on working-class housing in German cities.16

Another prewar plan with potentially signicant environmental 

implications was resurrected—initially against Harris’s wishes—and 

constitutes a unique case for this study: the attack on the Ruhr dams 

in May 1943. In a recent book, which has attracted wide attention in 

Germany, Jörg Friedrich states:

e questionable method in the battle of the Ruhr belongs to the yet barely 

explored genre of environmental war. . . . e researchers for the operation 

had encountered the question of what would happen if a lightning strike 

with weapons was directed against two dams in the Ruhr; in all likelihood 

a modern biblical ood, which would work in two ways: rstly through the 

tidal wave released, and secondly through the resulting shortage of water 

in the whole Ruhr area.17

Friedrich produces no evidence from British sources to support 

these assertions, but gives a graphic description of the ooding in the 

Möhne-Ruhr valley and in the Eder valley following the successful 

attack on the dams by Lancasters of 617 Squadron. He focuses on the 

civilian deaths and injuries, but also notes the drowning of livestock, 

and states, “the whole sh population was exterminated” in the 

Möhne-Ruhr valley. Aer describing how the two dams were rapidly 

repaired, he states, “e potential of the environmental attack was 

not plumbed any further aer this.” He suggests that the British maintained their focus on re raids on cities aer May 1943 because they 

were was more protable to them than attacks on the environment, 

such as the “Dambusters Raid.”18

Friedrich is replicating a view that was widespread in Germany in 

the aermath of the Dambuster Raid. is raid appeared, to the survivors of ooded areas lying immediately below the dams, as an attempt to drown them and their livestock en masse and to cause huge 

environmental damage to carefully managed agricultural land. A report sent to Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who was charged with responsibility for coordinating the German response to the British bombing offensive, stressed these aspects of the “catastrophe” visited upon the 

people in the Möhne and Ruhr valleys. It highlighted the deaths of 

thousands of people and the destruction of animals of all kinds as 

well as houses, industrial premises, and agricultural land. Describing 

how people living on both sides of the Ruhr had lost everything they 

possessed, the report stated that the “work of a few hours made deserts 

of sand and shingle from land which has been fertilised and culti-
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 15

vated for years.” Describing eects further down the valley, the report 

continued: “Agriculture and industrial facilities have been for the 

most part exterminated.”19

is focus on the immediate damage caused by ooding was also 

present in the public opinion report prepared immediately aer the 

Dambusters Raid by the security forces of the SS (Schutzstael). e 

report listed the “devastation caused by masses of water” as the main 

consequence of the attack and the rst of the proofs understood by 

“wide parts of the population” that there was “a cold-blooded planning of the air war in the enemy camp.”20

In contrast, most British policy makers and historians argue that 

the primary intention of the attacks was to cause a shortage of water 

in the industrial cities downstream, thus restricting armaments production. Harris said that a secondary consequence of breaching the 

dams would be to cause widespread ooding and consequent damage. e breach of the Möhne Dam released a ood of 130 million 

gallons, but the destruction caused by ooding was not, and was 

never expected to be, as serious as the subsequent shortage of water 

for industrial purposes.21

e argument that the dams raid was primarily intended as an attack on German industry is restated by the author of an oral history 

explaining the genesis of the raid: “Barnes Wallis was essentially a 

peace-loving man, but he felt strongly that the right way forward was 

to destroy the dams, and thereby the Ruhr’s industrial power source.”22

Wallis explained the attack as “an engineer’s way of stopping the war. 

. . . If we rob them of all their water supply, they couldn’t produce steel 

and the war would come to an end.”23

According to Guy Gibson, Wallis provided a more dierentiated 

rationale for the attack when rst explaining the mission to him:

Between them they [the Möhne and Sorpe dams] hold back about 75% of 

the total water available in the Ruhr Valley. If they were both to be 

breached, the consequent shortage of water for both drinking and industrial purposes might be disastrous. Of course, the damage caused by oods 

if they were breached quickly would result in more damage to everything 

than has ever happened in this war.24

is is similar to the version presented on the National Archive 

website, which presents a number of ocial documents on the raid. 

Part of the introductory preamble to these reads,
16 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

In February 1943, the Assistant Chief Designer at Vickers Armstrong, 

Barnes Wallis, revealed his idea for “air attacks on dams” which would 

deprive the German arms industry of its vital water supply and cause a 

“disaster of the rst magnitude.”25

Charles Webster and Noble Frankland stated in 1961, perhaps a 

little defensively, “e sudden catastrophe which inundated the areas 

lying below the two dams was local, temporary, and largely agricultural.”26 In their appraisal of the raid, Webster and Frankland put as 

the last of a list of results “a considerable area of agricultural land 

ooded.”27 is view is undermined by the way British propaganda 

aer the Dambusters Raid represented the whole event. Photographs 

showing extensive ooding were published in Britain and in pamphlets 

dropped over occupied Europe, with captions celebrating the damage 

caused by the inundations. is was of course, far more visible as an 

eect of the attack than the notional damage to war production.

In 1953 Denis Richards and Hilary Saunders presented a view 

which was closer to that of Friedrich’s, who notes how the British, in 

their bombing, sought to harness the power of natural forces, like re 

and water. Richards and Saunders wrote:

It had long been determined to add water as well as re and high explosive 

to the list of plagues scourging the Ruhr. . . . To breach the [Möhne] dam 

meant the release of this water, which, gushing through the valley of the 

Ruhr would not only cause widespread, possibly disastrous, ooding, but 

would also aect electricity supplies in the most highly industrialised area 

possessed by the enemy.28

Robin Neillands presented a similar view in 2001, writing that in 

1940 Barnes Wallis believed that if the dams were blown up this 

would “let out a tidal wave of water to swamp the surrounding 

countryside.”29 In the end, the British planners and executors of the 

raid knew that if they were successful, they would cause incalculable 

damage and loss of life through ooding, as well as creating a shortage of water for power and for drinking. One of the pilots involved, 

Flt Lt David Shannon, bluntly expressed how the combined eects of 

the attacks on the dams were intended: “We were to strike a blow 

against the Hun.”30

ere was a steady intensication of the British bombing oensive 

against Germany through the remainder of 1943 and into 1944. 

Whether measured in sorties own or in the tonnage of bombs 

dropped, there was a huge increase in the destructive power of 

Bomber Command’s attacks.31 e diversion of Harris’s force in the 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 17

spring and summer of 1944 to support the Normandy invasion and 

to destroy V-1 and V-2 missile launch sites brought some relief to the 

German population but not to the environment. e focus on German oil targets in the autumn and winter of 1944 inevitably caused 

great environmental damage. In the last months of the war, as the 

German armies conducted a dogged resistance, the bombing campaign reached a furious climax. More sorties were own and more 

bombs were dropped in these nal months than in the whole previous 

campaign.32 Some of the most destructive raids of the war, including 

the notorious attack on Dresden, were carried out in this nal phase 

of the oensive.

e British government received information about the eects of 

the bombing by reports and photographs regularly presented to the 

War Cabinet by Bomber Command. Many of these photographs 

showed enormous res burning aer attacks on individual targets, 

and others displayed great devastation to landscapes surrounding 

targets. The annotations to some of these photographs appear—

unfortunately if not actually—to rejoice in the destruction and to 

celebrate a job well done, and in so doing, demonstrate a horrifying 

complacency. Some captions refer specically to the environmental 

damage. e caption to a photograph taken aer the attack on the 

Dortmund-Ems Canal on 21 and 22 November 1944 pointed out “the 

river has overowed and ooded the surrounding countryside.”33

e “Weekly Résumé” of the military situation presented to the 

War Cabinet on 15 February 1945, while noting that one million tons 

of bombs had been dropped on Germany and Austria since the beginning of the war, referred specically to the attack on Dresden 

where “1,471 tons of H. E. [high explosives] and 1,175 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped, leaving the town well ablaze with smoke 

rising to 15,000 feet.”34 This echoed details in the “Summary of 

Operations Night 13/14 February” sent to Bomber Command Headquarters, which had stated, “smoke was reported up to 15,000 Ft and 

all crews report an excellent attack with res visible for 100 miles.”35

e “Weekly Résumé” for 22 February 1945 referred to the renewed 

attacks on Dresden, noting, “On the 15th, 685 Fortresses . . . attacked 

Dresden and Cottbus, following the heavy attack on the former city 

on the previous day and night.”36 Harris, when asked a few days later 

by one of Churchill’s secretaries about the eect of the raid on Dresden, 

replied, “Dresden? ere is no such place as Dresden.”37
18 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

Misgivings about the consequences of the bombing also grew in 

these nal months, but those concerns—raised by both opponents 

and supporters of the bombing—were almost exclusively focused on 

the deaths and injuries of civilians and on the destruction of the manmade environment in Germany. It remains to ask why there was so 

little consideration given at a high level to the environmental consequences of the bombing campaign. ree strands to the answer are 

presented here.

First, we must bear in mind the understanding the British planners had of the environmental damage that they might be causing. It 

would be foolishly anachronistic to imagine that politicians and airmen in the 1930s and 1940s had anything like the appreciation they 

might have today of the environmental consequences of their actions. 

To give one example, the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were a cause of global warming, so closely connected in the public mind today with the burning of aviation fuel, 

had indeed been put forward by the British scientist Guy Callendar in 

1938.38 ere is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Churchill, 

Harris, Portal, or even scientic advisers like Solomon “Solly” Zuckerman or Frederick Lindemann knew before 1945 that the release of 

carbon dioxide into the atmosphere threatened to change the earth’s 

climate irreversibly. It was not until aer the dropping of the atom 

bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that people became aware that 

environmental damage on a really huge scale might transcend national 

boundaries. e notion that attackers might hurt themselves as much 

as their enemies by causing environmental damage simply did not exist 

before 1945.

Of course the British planners knew that individual consequences of 

the bombing, such as the release of oil or other contaminants into water 

supplies, would damage the environment, but they could reasonably assume that these consequences would be local and temporary. It is striking that even the most articulate opponents of the bombing during the 

war, and indeed in the half-century aer the war, focused their criticism 

on precisely those consequences of the bombing which were discussed 

by the planners—the death and injury of civilians and the destruction of 

Germany’s cultural heritage. Even that most vociferous of critics, F. J. P. 

Veale, made no mention of environmental considerations when he renewed his polemic against “terror bombing” in 1968.39

e whole idea of “ecological damage” and the discourse of “environmentalism” have emerged since the Vietnam War. It is only in the 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 19

last 20 years that scholars and diplomats have really engaged with the 

broader topic of war and the natural environment. A protocol was 

added in 1977 to the Geneva conventions of 1949 stating in part, “It 

is prohibited to employ methods of warfare which are intended, or 

may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage 

to the natural environment.”40 One will search in vain for the terms 

Friedrich uses in 2002—environmental war and environmental attack—

in documents from before May 1945.

is shi in perceptions about warfare, and about the natural world, 

may be illuminated with reference to the concept of mentalités, an idea 

that has been developed largely by French and German historians. 

eir concerns were not merely with the temporary outlook of any 

given group or individual, but with deeper, underlying, sometimes 

inaccessible attitudes, which shape collective approaches to a given 

situation. Typically, they see these attitudes as formations, which develop 

and change very slowly over the course of decades and even centuries. 

In the words of German historian Klaus Hatchel,

Such collective dispositions channel notions, attitudes, and ideas in two 

ways: positively by guiding individuals within the group in a particular direction, without there being any outright coordination or explicit agreement among them; or negatively by blocking out or repressing other conceivable options that would appear astonishingly self-evident to uninitiated 

outsiders.41

is approach can help us understand many aspects of the British 

bombing oensive planning, but it is particularly relevant to the idea 

of the environment, which is so markedly absent from virtually all of 

the extensive written records of this process. What appears obvious to 

us today was not necessarily so in the 1940s.

It is perhaps ironic that, among the politicians, airmen, and scientists who planned the British bombing, it was that most maligned 

gure, Arthur Harris, who commented most explicitly on what we 

would now call “environmental” consequences of their actions. In 

most cases—for example, when Harris commented on the “prolonged 

and bitter opposition” met by the RAF from bird lovers to its plans to 

use various places in Britain as bombing ranges—he was utterly contemptuous of these objections.42 What is relevant is that he, and presumably others, were aware of environmental considerations. ey 

simply did not treat them with anything like the signicance we 

would anticipate today.
20 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

Second, there was a common assumption among the planners that 

if there were damaging side eects of the bombing, insofar as these 

were visited upon the Germans, it was a fate they richly deserved. 

Another remark in Harris’s memoirs is illuminating in this regard. 

Referring to the deliberate ooding of Walcheren Island in October 

1944 by bombing and breaching its seawalls, Harris reveals again that 

he was aware of the environmental consequences of this action:

e ooding of the fertile soil of Walcheren, which it was believed could 

not be restored to its original condition within many years, was a most 

unfortunate necessity of war, but access to the port of Antwerp was essential for all future operations by land on the Western front. And, in any case, 

the wholesale destruction of property is, in my view, always justied if it is 

calculated to save casualties.43

Harris restates his concern to minimize casualties, but what is also 

revealing is that he comments in such specic detail about the environmental consequences of this particular action. Nowhere else in 

his memoir does he demonstrate anything like this; we may reasonably presume that he was not equally concerned with the destruction 

of the environment in Germany. His concern for the “fertile soil” of 

Walcheren—in the Netherlands—is not, for example, paralleled by 

any similar concern for the agricultural land devastated by the Dambusters Raid in May 1943. It would be a mistake, in discussing any 

consequence of the British bombing of Germany, not to take into 

consideration the feelings about Germany provoked by its own record since the very start of the war.

ird, and most important, we need to understand the nature of 

the war the British fought between 1939 and 1945. is is a consideration which feeds into any future debate about the environmental 

consequences of the deployment of airpower. e politicians and 

airmen—and their scientic advisers—who directed the British strategic 

bombing campaign believed that they were ghting for their national 

survival. Many had personal experience of the grim struggle between 

1914 and 1918 to draw upon and knew that in Germany they faced an 

utterly ruthless, resourceful, and determined enemy. is straightforward sense of duty is evident in Barnes Wallis, the kindly, sensitive 

man who designed the most destructive weapons used by Bomber 

Command. It will be remembered that Wallis had recognized that, 

for example, destroying the Ruhr dams would cause damage to 

“everything” below them, not just to German industrial production. 

A colleague commented, “Barnes Wallis was a Victorian, and a great 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 21

‘Empire’ man, and the country meant an awful lot to him, so anything 

he could do which he thought would help the country, that’s what he 

felt he was put upon this earth to do.”44

Zuckerman serves as another example of an inuential scientist 

who devoted his intellect to the perfection of weapons of war. For 

example, he tried to maximize the blast eect of British bombs, without apparent environmental scruples.45

If we are to understand the evolution of British aerial strategy, we 

need to take full account of the precise context in which it emerged. 

e British decision not to bombard “fuel and oil producing plants, 

reneries, and storage installations” in September 1939 was not 

motivated by environmental or humanitarian concern, but by a 

desperate hope of avoiding German aerial attacks on Britain. e 

turn toward area bombing and the decision to concentrate resources 

on the development of a huge bomber force took place against a 

backdrop of sustained German bombing of British cities at a time 

when Britain and its empire stood alone. Note that the German 

bombing of Britain, and indeed its conduct of war in all theaters outside Germany between 1939 and 1945, was not, for all the later trumpeting of the allegedly “green” credentials of National Socialism, in 

any way tempered by environmental sensitivities.46

Even late in the war, when Britain’s bomber force had become a 

weapon of terrible destructive force, its planning took place against a 

background of sustained attack on British civilians by ying bombs 

and rockets and of extraordinarily dicult ghting on land in northwestern Europe. e idea that attacks on German oil or transportation targets should be called o because of potential damage to the 

environment would have appeared utterly ludicrous to the British 

planners, even in the late stages of the war.47 Briey consider the application of a similar concern to other aspects of the war. When the 

Bismarck le Gdynia in May 1941 bound for the North Atlantic, 

should the government have directed British submarines and aircra 

not to attack it lest thousands of tons of fuel oil from the ship’s bunkers 

be released to contaminate the sea?

It could be that in the circumstances of a limited war, a government, and its air force, can aord to consider the environmental implications of any proposed deployment of airpower. Few would disagree that this ought to have been a factor in the minds of NATO 

strategists during the aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999. Since 

the 1977 addition of Article 35.3 to the Geneva conventions, this is a 
22 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

binding obligation for signatories to those conventions. On 5 November 

2001 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 56/4 declaring 6 November annually an International Day for Prevention of 

the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conict.48

is has added international weight to the obligation to have regard 

for the natural environment in war. It was not a luxury that Churchill, 

Harris, and others responsible for the planning of British strategic 

bombing felt they enjoyed between 1939 and 1945.

Notes

1. A rare exception was geographer Kenneth Hewitt, who, in developing his theory 

of “place destruction,” argued that “area bombing . . . became a form of extermination 

aimed at the whole spectrum of human, or more exactly, civil ecology.” Hewitt, “Place 

Annihilation,” 260.

2. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 19.

3. It is signicant in this context that the title of a recent German study of the 

British bombing is titled simply (in English) e Fire. Friedrich, Der Brand.

4. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany; Churchill, 

Second World War; and Harris, Bomber Oensive.

5. For a balanced summary, see Hastings, Bomber Command, 201–10, 417–25.

6. Appendix 6, “Western Air Plans 1st September 1939,” in Webster and Frankland, 

Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 99–102.

7. “Bombardment Policy,” CAB/66/8/16, e National Archives (United Kingdom), 

Kew (hereaer TNA), which contains the instructions issued just before the start of 

the war.

8. “Air Vice-Marshal W. S. Douglas (deputy chief of the Air Sta) to Air Marshal 

Sir Charles Portal,” in Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 

115–17.

9. Ibid., 118–19. e wording of the directive suggests that there had already been 

some attacks on forests. I have found no other reference to these attacks actually taking 

place. e Air Ministry pamphlet Bomber Command provides considerable detail 

about attacks on the rst four objectives specied in the directives of 20 June and 4 July 

1940, but makes no reference to attacks on crops, forests, or heathlands in Germany. 

Ibid., 121–23.

10. Fourth Report of Lord Hankey’s Committee on Preventing Oil from Reaching Germany Committee, 4 June 1940, TNA CAB/66/8/21.

11. Report by the Chiefs of Sta Committee, 25 May 1940, TNA CAB/66/7/48: 

Report by the Chiefs of Sta Committee.

12. Townshend, “Civilization and ‘Frightfulness,’ ” 142–62.

13. Killingray, “‘A Swi Agent of Government,’ ” 429–44. I am grateful to Neil 

Fleming for alerting me to this reference.

14. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, note 1.

15. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 88.
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 23

16. It is not the purpose of this chapter to revisit these debates. For an important 

example of a wartime contribution which does not consider environmental considerations, but focuses entirely on the eectiveness of bombing, see the “Memorandum by 

O. L. Lawrence,” in Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 

vol. 4, 214–19.

17. Friedrich, Der Brand, 102. All translations from German here are my own 

unless otherwise indicated. 

18. Ibid., 104–5.

19. “Die Katastrophe an der Möhnetalsperre und Ruhr, Bericht 2,” 27 August 

1943, R 55/20738, Bundesarchiv, Außenstelle, Berlin, Germany.

20. “Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr. 385, 24 May 1943,” in Boberach ed., Meldungen 

aus dem Reich, Band 13, 5277–85.

21. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 159.

22. Arthur, Dambusters, 39.

23. Ibid., 43.

24. Ibid., 57.

25. TNA, “e Idea,” http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/dambusters/idea.htm.

26. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 2, 168.

27. Ibid., 291.

28. Richards and Saunders, Royal Air Force 1939–1945, vol. 2, 291–92.

29. Neillands, Bomber War, 229–30.

30. Arthur, Dambusters, 150.

31. Although it is not the subject of this chapter, we should note in passing that the 

daylight bombing of Germany by the American Eighth Air Force, which commenced 

in January 1943 and intensied thereaer, was conducted with a similar disregard for 

environmental consequences.

32. For a statistical overview of sorties own and tonnage of bombs dropped, see 

Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 4, appendices 

40 and 41.

33. “Summary of Operations of Bomber Command,” TNA CAB/66/59/39.

34. “Weekly Résumé (no. 285) of the Naval, Military, and Air Situation,” 15 February 

1945, TNA CAB/66/62/3.

35. “Summary of Operations Night 13/14 February.” 

36. TNA CAB/66/62/11: “Weekly Résumé (no. 286) of the Naval, Military, and 

Air Situation,” TNA AIR 14/3080.

37. Colville, Fringes of Power, 562.

38. Weart, Discovery of Global Warming.

39. Veale, Advance to Barbarism, 180–85. Veale’s critique was rst advanced in 1948.

40. Article 35.3 of the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva conventions of 

1949, in Reichberg and Syse, “Protecting the Natural Environment in Wartime.”

41. Hentschel, Mental Aermath, 2.

42. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 26–27.

43. Ibid., 237. e Walcheren operation was conducted outside of Germany, in 

support of Allied ground forces, and therefore lies outside the scope of this study. I 

refer to it here insofar as it illustrates Harris’s thinking.

44. Ibid., 43, citing Norman Boorer.
24 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

45. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords. Zuckerman makes no reference to what 

we would now call environmental concerns in his record of his wartime service.

46. For an introduction to this topic, see “e Nature of German Environmental History.”

47. Arthur Harris defended the continuing oensive in the aermath of the raid on 

Dresden in characteristically forthright manner, stating, “I do not personally regard the 

whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier.” 

Harris to Air Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley, 29 March 1945, in Hastings, Bomber 

Command, 450–53.

48. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 56/4, also available online at 

http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/r56.htm.
Chapter 3

The Environmental Impact of the US Army 

Air Forces’ Production and Training 

Infrastructure on the Great Plains

Christopher M. Rein

In the twentieth century, aerial conflict demonstrated its potential 

to inflict devastating damage on the environment, as evidenced by 

the wholesale destruction of German and Japanese cities during 

World War II (WWII), the widespread defoliation in Southeast Asia 

during the Vietnam War, and the targeting of petroleum infrastructure during the conflicts in Southwest Asia. However, airpower’s most 

lasting environmental damage may often be inflicted long before the 

first sortie is launched. The industrial production, training, and 

maintenance infrastructure required to equip and prepare air forces 

for combat requires a substantial contribution of natural resources 

and, if not properly managed, can have long-term detrimental effects 

on the environment.

Today, current and former US Department of Defense (DOD) and 

Department of Energy (DOE) facilities across the country have soil 

and groundwater contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, persistent heavy metals, and even radioactive materials that will remain for 

hundreds, if not thousands of years. To make matters worse, the 

agency charged with assessing damage and initiating remediation 

and restoration, the US Army Corps of Engineers, has at times been 

overwhelmed with the scope of the contamination and the high costs 

of containment and restoration. This category of damage must be included when assessing the environmental impact of the employment 

of air forces.

In the early stages of the Second World War, the US Army Air 

Forces (USAAF) embarked on a massive production and training 

program that would convert it from a token force with few modern 

aircraft to the world’s largest and arguably most advanced air force by 

1945. The rapid expansion of the force and successful employment in 

theaters around the globe were remarkable accomplishments and 

critically contributed to the eventual Allied victory. While this re-
26 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

markable story of American industrial capacity, organization, and 

deployment is well known, oen a chapter is omitted. e production 

facilities for both munitions and aircra, as well as the training and 

maintenance facilities established to meet the wartime emergency, 

le a toxic legacy that continues to plague the communities that 

hosted and supported these facilities. e purpose of this chapter is to 

examine that legacy and explore the repercussions for modern practitioners of airpower.

e Great Plains

e American Great Plains formed an attractive locale for government and defense ocials charged with expanding the USAAF’s production and training infrastructure. e region boasted a variety of 

factors that made it ideal for wartime planners.1

 First, the Great Plains 

encompass the geographical center of the lower 48 states. Locations 

there oered the maximum distance from either coast, increasing 

protection from aerial attack and sabotage. Because of these geographic advantages, the Air Force would later place the majority of its 

Cold War–era strategic assets, including intercontinental ballistic 

missile (ICBM) sites, bomber bases, and even its command and control facilities in the region. Today, all of the Air Force’s bomber and 

strategic communications aircra and ICBM silos remain on or near 

the Great Plains.

Aside from its strategic geographic location, the region oered 

several other features that made it attractive for a large aerial infrastructure. First, it was, and remains today, one of the most sparsely 

populated areas of the country. Given the low population densities, 

the USAAF would not signicantly endanger lives with accidents and 

would have little diculty locating vast expanses for training and 

weapons ranges.2

 e low population densities recently had been exacerbated by a man-made ecological disaster, commonly known as 

the Dust Bowl. Encouraged by cheap land and liberal homesteading 

laws, settlers had expanded into the more arid regions and plowed up 

the hardy prairie grasses that kept the topsoil in place. Drought returned to the region in the early 1930s, causing crops to fail and leaving no vegetation to anchor the topsoil. When windstorms moved 

across the largely treeless region, the topsoil was stripped and, in 

some cases, transported as far away as the east coast. ese storms, 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 27

known as dusters, plagued the region throughout the Great Depression and further contributed to low population densities as many 

residents abandoned failed farms in search of relief.3

e Dust Bowl and resulting depopulation of rural areas had the 

ironic result of facilitating the establishment of wartime production 

facilities across the plains. Some farmers and their families le the 

land and congregated in cities, looking for work or relief programs. 

Others remained on their farms but had become disenchanted with 

their prospects and were quick to embrace other opportunities when 

they arrived. By 1940 the plains held an underutilized population 

that could be quickly employed in the new armaments and aircra 

production facilities. A 1942 survey found that 50 percent of the 

workers at Boeing-Wichita had farm backgrounds. Further, a rural 

upbringing oen translated well into war industries work. Craig 

Miner, in his history of Kansas, relates the observations of the personnel director at the Boeing-Wichita factory who believed that “persons from modern farm backgrounds did especially well in aircra 

manufacturing jobs. . . . Nearly all Kansas farms are highly mechanized and Kansas farmers have learned the use of power machinery 

as well as hand tools.”4

Cities such as Wichita, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth owe much 

of their remarkable wartime growth to a combination of these factors. Wichita’s population increased from 114,634 in 1940 to 176,316 

in 1944.5

 While much of the available labor was unfamiliar with modern manufacturing techniques, a technical background combined 

with training and relief programs initiated during Pres. Franklin 

Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to provide the necessary expertise. As a result, production facilities in these cities and others, such as Omaha, 

Kansas City, and Tulsa, had little diculty nding workers to sta 

aircra production centers. Oen the limiting factor was not available labor, but a shortage of housing and public utilities to shelter the 

new employees. In one newly constructed housing area near Wichita, 

untreated sewage was discharged directly into the Arkansas River, 

presenting a public health hazard for residents downstream.6

Weather was another factor that made the Great Plains region an 

attractive location for training bases. Portions of the area average 

over 300 days of sunshine per year, as the Rocky Mountains to the 

west wring out the moisture of east-moving storms. With a prevalence of excellent visual ying conditions, low precipitation, and brief 

periods of poor weather, the region remains popular for military 
28 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

ight training. Even today, over half of the Air Force’s undergraduate 

pilot training (UPT) bases are located on the plains, including the 

only combined Euro-NATO joint jet-ghter training facility at Sheppard AFB, Texas. Other UPT bases include Vance AFB, Oklahoma, 

and Laughlin AFB, Texas. Only Columbus AFB, Mississippi, and 

Moody AFB, Georgia are located outside the Great Plains region. Unfortunately, the scarcity of rainfall in the region oen exacerbated environmental damage. Low rainfall rates resulted in comparatively few 

owing rivers. Within the more than 2,000 miles between the Mexican and Canadian borders, only four major river systems—the Rio 

Grande, Arkansas, Platte, and Missouri—travel all the way from their 

source in the Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the region west 

of the 100th meridian averages less than 20 inches (50 centimeters) of 

rain annually, making residents highly dependent upon subterranean 

groundwater, a source especially vulnerable to contamination. In addition, the relatively low ow rate in some of these rivers makes it 

dicult to adequately dilute pollutants discharged into them. All of 

these factors worsened environmental damage, especially the pollution of surface and groundwater.

Production Facilities

In May 1940, President Roosevelt, in response to events overseas 

and lobbying by Army Air Corps leaders, ordered the expansion of 

the aircra industry to permit production of 50,000 planes per year.7

Military production had totaled only 2,195 planes in 1939.8

 To 

achieve this incredible increase in production, owners of existing factories in Baltimore, Long Island, Bualo, Long Beach, and Seattle had 

to expand their facilities. But it soon became clear that the increased 

capacity at existing sites would be insucient. e War Department 

began to contract with manufacturers to operate new production facilities that the government would build and then lease to them. e 

War Department decided to locate many of these new facilities on or 

near the Great Plains. ese new factories eventually contributed a 

substantial portion of many of the more common types of aircra 

employed by US and Allied air forces during the war (table 1).

It is dicult to assess the environmental impact of many of these 

facilities. In most cases the plants ceased production aer the war but 

were occupied by other activities under war reutilization programs. 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 29

Type Facility Number 

Produced

Percent of Total 

Production

Heavy Bombers

B-24

Consolidated–Fort Worth

Douglas–Tulsa

North American–Dallas

 Total

2,743

 964

 966

4,673 24.3 percent 

(4,673/19,204) 

B-29

Martin–Omaha

Boeing–Wichita

 Total

 515

1,595

2,110 54.1 percent 

(2,110/3,898)

Medium Bombers

B-25

North American–Kansas 

City

B-26

Martin–Omaha

6,608

1,585

67.3 percent 

(6,608/9,816)

30.7 percent

 (1,585/5,157)

Transport Aircraft

C-47

Douglas–Oklahoma City 5,319 51.3 percent 

(5,319/10,368)

Pursuit Aircraft

P-51

North American–Dallas 4,552 31.0 percent 

(4,552/14,686)

Trainer Aircraft (All Types)

Boeing, Beech, and 

Cessna–Wichita 20,628 37.0 percent 

(20,628/55,712)

For example, the Douglas plant in Oklahoma City is currently occupied by Tinker AFB. Omaha’s Martin plant became the site of Outt 

AFB, home to Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters during 

the Cold War. In 1948 the US government sold the North American 

plant in Kansas City to General Motors to produce automobiles for 

their Chevrolet and Pontiac lines.

Table 1: Aircraft types produced on the Great Plains

Adapted from Irving Holley, Jr., Buying Aircra: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces (Washington, 

DC: Oce of the Chief of Military History, 1964), appendix B, 576–79.
30 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Of all the new production facilities erected on the plains, only one 

has remained in continuous production. e Lockheed-Martin facility 

near Fort Worth, known as “Air Force Plant 4,” is also the only WWIIera plant to be listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 

(EPA) National Priority List (NPL). e NPL, or “Superfund” list, is a 

collection of the most heavily contaminated sites in the country. Listing a site allows the EPA to establish and implement appropriate 

cleanup plans.9

 At the Fort Worth plant, aggressive programs to pump 

groundwater contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), a known 

carcinogen, through ltration plants have, according to the EPA, 

reduced the threat to 13,000 residents, including those nearby at the 

former Carswell AFB. However, the EPA has detected contaminants 

in several underground aquifers above the main aquifer used for 

drinking water in the area.10 e facility produced over 2,000 B-24s 

during WWII and has been in continuous use since, producing B-36, 

B-58, F-111, and F-16 aircra and components for F-22 aircra types. 

e similarity of pollutants used during these various periods makes 

it dicult to determine exactly when the most serious damage occurred.

Airframe production is only one of the required steps in a successful sortie launch. e completed airframe must be fueled and armed 

before it is ready for a crew. While it is beyond the scope of this study 

to examine the signicant environmental repercussions of petroleum 

extraction and renement in the United States, it is sucient to note 

that a large percentage of Allied petroleum resources, including 90 

percent of all 100-octane aviation fuels, came from US wells and 

reneries, some of which were located on the southern plains. 

rough the Defense Plant Corporation, the US government built 

and leased reneries across the nation, including several in the region. 

By 1945 American reneries were producing 514,000 barrels a day of 

100-octane aviation fuel, up from 40,000 barrels per day in 1940.11

e Army Ordnance Corps established and operated munitions 

production plants in several Great Plains states. A number of these 

facilities are now on the EPA’s Superfund list, including the Rocky 

Mountain Arsenal, near Denver; the Kansas Army Ammunition 

Plant (AAP); Cornhusker AAP in Nebraska; and the Lone Star and 

Longhorn AAPs in Texas. All of these facilities opened during WWII, 

and several remained in operation during subsequent conicts. All 

eventually le their mark on the environment.

e Cornhusker AAP, near Grand Island, Nebraska, is a classic 

case of the unintended consequences of wartime production methods. 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 31

Built in 1942, the facility produced 330,562 1,000-pound bombs, 

20,698 2,000-pound bombs, and 1.5 million 260-pound fragmentation 

bombs, in addition to 11,476,545 105-millimeter artillery shells during 

the war.12 e DOD inactivated the facility aer the war but reactivated 

it during the conicts in Korea and Vietnam before nally closing it 

permanently. In preparing the site for sale, the Army “did extensive 

clean up on the plant itself, but a trail of contaminated water outside 

the boundaries complicated eorts to transfer the facility.”13

e Cornhusker AAP oers a stark reminder of the lingering costs 

to communities that hosted production and training facilities during 

WWII. Toxic chemicals from the facility were held in 56 dierent 

earthen impoundments across the 19-square-mile site, the EPA said. 

“Releases from the surface impoundments have contaminated approximately 500 private wells,” and “polluted groundwater has migrated o the site and has been detected as far as 7 miles beyond the 

plant’s border.”14 Perhaps encouraged by the potential sale of the site, 

the Army Corps of Engineers has embarked on an aggressive cleanup 

program, excavating and incinerating contaminated soil and extracting and pumping contaminated groundwater through a ltration system 

before returning it to the ground. e EPA estimates that this action 

has shrunk the osite contamination plume and that it will be “below 

cleanup levels” in three to ve years.15

e remediation programs came too late for one Grand Island 

resident. In 1978 Chuck Carpenter, a junior high school science 

teacher, bought a home in the Le Heights section of Grand Island. In 

1982 the Grand Island Independent reported that the Army had detected a highly toxic explosive compound known as “RDX” in the 

facility’s groundwater but assured residents that it would take “over a 

century” for the contaminants to reach the town. RDX is a unique 

compound used exclusively in the manufacture of military explosives, linking it denitively to the ammunition plant. Later investigations revealed that the plume of contaminants was moving at a rate of 

“three meters per day” and would reach the town in “just four years.”16

As early as 1980, the Army became aware of the contamination and 

that it was migrating across the installation boundary. e Army 

released no information to the public for four years, while conducting 

tests and collecting information. In 1984 Army ocials nally acknowledged that “more than half of the 467 private wells” in sections 

of Grand Island, including Le Heights, had “extremely elevated levels 

of RDX.”17 Concerned about his family’s health but unable to sell a 
32 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

home that had lost two-thirds of its value, Carpenter abandoned his 

home and declared bankruptcy. e Army refused to provide any 

compensation, alleging that the chemicals were released prior to the 

Korean War, when dumping was “legally permissible.”18 e Army 

eventually agreed to pay to connect residents to a city water supply 

but has not addressed the collapse in property value as a result of pollutants discharged from the facility.

e Air Force’s primary mission during the Cold War was not delivery of conventional munitions in case of a conict with the Soviet 

Union. Air Force bombers, missiles crews, and tactical ghters sat on 

nuclear alert, ready to launch atomic weapons at a moment’s notice. 

But in his analysis of environmental damage in Japan during WWII, 

William Tsutsui noted that “plant and animal life seem to have been 

relatively unaected by the bombs.” Further, “the atomic bombs—

like the incendiary attacks—were tremendously and tragically destructive for one species: Homo sapiens. When viewed from a less 

anthropocentric viewpoint, however, the environmental implications 

of direct combat in Japan during World War II are far more ambiguous.”19 Even so, production and testing of these weapons le an 

enormous scar on the American landscape.

In 1992, Michele Gerber detailed the eects of radiological contamination that will linger for millennia at the Hanford Site in Washington State.20 While this and other nuclear production facilities were 

operated by the DOE, the DOD was a primary customer. e damage 

inicted at these sites must be included in the cost of waging aerial 

warfare, even in a deterrence role, during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Bombing and Gunnery Ranges

In addition to manufacturing facilities, which le behind a toxic 

legacy, the military impacted the environment by locating large numbers 

of training facilities across the plains. Kansas supported 16 dierent 

Army airelds, up from only two during the prewar period.21 ese 

elds were used for training, from primary ight training to processing crews for overseas movement. Four of the bases—Great Bend, 

Pratt, Smoky Hill, and Walker—were dedicated to training B-29 

crews. e new bomber required large ranges for both gunnery and 

bombardment training. Fortunately for the USAAF, sparsely popu-
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 33

lated areas of western Kansas were ideally suited for this purpose. e 

Army established three gunnery ranges in Ellis, Ness, and Gove 

Counties and three bomb ranges in Trego and Graham Counties. e 

Gove County range covered 218,880 acres and displaced 150 farm 

families. Local farmers were not always happy with the compensation 

provided and petitioned their elected ocials in an unsuccessful attempt to seek redress.22

In addition to the hazard from aircra straying o the range, training exercises occasionally set prairie res that quickly spread to 

neighboring ranches, threatening livestock and buildings.23 One west 

Kansas resident, E. J. Montgomery, wrote his senator to complain. 

“e planes do not stay in their range, the bullets pass over my place 

and I live four miles from the range.”24 e Oakley newspaper rationalized: “It is unpleasant that many people will be temporarily ejected 

from their homes, especially aer the struggle of the dust years to 

regain nancial independence, but such conditions exist when a nation is at war.”25

e re risk and loss of productive agricultural and grazing lands 

may have been responsible for the adoption of an area that did not 

require anyone to relocate. Farmers near Great Bend petitioned the 

Army to use Cheyenne Bottoms, a nearby 41,000-acre wetland, as a 

bombing and gunnery range during the war.26 Cheyenne Bottoms has 

been described as the single most important wetland for migrating 

waterfowl and shorebirds between the Arctic tundra and the Gulf of 

Mexico.27 Fortunately, the USAAF’s use appears to have had little 

long-term negative eect. Despite the presence of spent projectiles 

and shell casings, a 1984 comprehensive survey of the wetlands found 

no excessive levels of heavy metals. e few areas with noticeable 

concentrations of lead in surface water had been heavily used by waterfowl hunters for years, and the appreciably lower levels in adjacent 

areas closed to hunting suggest that spent lead shotgun pellets were a 

far likelier source of contamination.28

Aer World War II, the newly independent Air Force sought to 

maintain bombing and gunnery ranges in Kansas to support the 

bases that remained open. e Army had operated Camp Phillips, an 

infantry training camp, on a 42,000-acre site near Salina and the 

Smoky Hill Army Aireld (AAF).29 Recognizing the site’s potential as 

a range, the Army retained control aer the war rather than returning 

it to the original landowners, eventually transferring Camp Phillips 

to the Air Force. Aer Smoky Hill AAF closed in the 1960s, the Kan-
34 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

sas Air National Guard assumed control of the range and operates it 

as the Great Plains Joint Regional Training Center.30 e range is covered by large expanses of native prairie grasses that are carefully managed by the range operators. Spraying for invasive species and controlled burns make it one of the most intensively managed tracts of 

native tallgrass prairies in the state. A 2007 study found that “the size 

and generally good condition of this largely unfragmented tallgrass 

prairie makes it a valuable reservoir of biological diversity for the 

Great Plains.”31 While the threat for contamination from unexploded 

ordnance remains, the intensive management demonstrates the potential for modern air forces to be good stewards of environmental 

resources. Had the military not retained control of Smoky Hill aer 

WWII, it likely would have returned to agricultural production and 

become signicantly less useful to many species of wildlife.32

Ranges in other areas are not as free from environmental damage 

as the Smoky Hill Range. e former Lowry AFB, located southeast 

of Denver, served as an aircrew-training center during WWII. e 

USAAF operated a 100-square-mile range in Arapahoe County 

southeast of Denver to support aircrew training for B-17, B-24, and 

B-29 crews. e range remained in operation through the Korean 

conict before being closed in 1962. e DOD transferred large portions of the range to the state of Colorado and private landowners, 

but the presence of unexploded munitions required the Army Corps 

of Engineers to conduct an extensive site cleanup.33 However, the 

most signicant environmental damage on the range occurred on a 

portion transferred to the city of Denver in 1965 and used as a landll 

for toxic chemicals. e “Lowry Landll” has been designated as an 

EPA Superfund site due to the presence of metal plating wastes, industrial solvents, and radioactive wastes.34

So far I have focused only on USAAF production and training facilities. e US Navy also operated a number of facilities on the Great 

Plains, including a naval ammunition plant at Hastings, Nebraska, 

and primary ight training facilities in Olathe and Hutchinson, Kansas, and Norman, Oklahoma. However, the vast majority of naval 

aviation training occurred in coastal and marine environments, 

which oen contain far more sensitive ecosystems. e more recent 

disputes over environmental damage at naval bombing and gunnery 

ranges on the islands of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Kaho’olawe, Hawaii, demonstrate that the USAAF was comparatively fortunate to 

have a number of inland sites available for training. Some of those 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 35

sites may have even beneted from military use. As Edmund Russell 

and Richard Tucker have noted, “military bases have oen been de 

facto nature preserves. By building up small areas while leaving most 

of the bases open for training and maneuvers, bases have sometimes 

created well-guarded sanctuaries for species.” Russell and Tucker do 

not “argue that one should create bases and bombing ranges to preserve wildlife,” but they note the “complex, surprising and oen ironic 

ways in which war and nature interact.”35

Operational and Maintenance Bases

In comparison with production and training facilities, the permanent bases established on the Great Plains proved to be the most intrusive and environmentally damaging facilities. While most lasted 

only as long as the war, those that remained released substantial 

quantities of toxic materials into the ground. Air bases in particular 

may be slightly more susceptible to this type of contamination than 

other facilities for several reasons. First, they require large quantities 

of potentially toxic liquids, most notably jet fuels, to accomplish their 

missions. ese compounds are oen stored in underground storage 

tanks (UST) to protect them from fragmenting explosives in case of 

attack and to reduce vertical obstructions in the aireld environment. 

Aboveground storage tanks could potentially intrude into the ight 

paths of landing and departing aircra and also block instrument 

landing signals. Unfortunately, the burial of storage tanks makes it 

more dicult to detect leakage and failure, exacerbating the potential 

for release of toxic substances into the soil and groundwater.

Two Air Force facilities on the Great Plains have had signicant 

issues with chemical release and groundwater contamination. Smoky 

Hill, later Schilling AFB, near Salina, Kansas, and Tinker AFB, near 

Oklahoma City, have released sucient quantities of chemicals into 

the ground over the years to seriously threaten the water supplies of 

nearby residents. e most common pollutant is TCE, a persistent 

chemical. When rst introduced as an industrial solvent, TCE quickly 

gained favor among maintenance specialists for its highly eective 

degreasing properties. Unfortunately, TCE is persistent in the environment and is a known carcinogen.36 Even as early as 1942, the 

USAAF’s eld service section reminded users “the toxicity of this material and of all halogenated hydrocarbons generally is well known.”37
36 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Schilling and Tinker discharged sucient quantities of TCE into the 

ground to pollute local aquifers, threatening drinking water supplies 

for on- and o-base residents. While current regulations prohibit the 

reckless discharge of TCE and other chemicals into the environment, 

decades of abuse have le a toxic legacy of varying severity at both sites.

Smoky Hill AAF was established in 1942 and served as a B-29 

training, processing, and staging base during WWII. It remained in 

service aer the war and in 1957 was renamed in honor of Col David 

C. Schilling, a native of Leavenworth, Kansas, who was killed in an 

auto accident in England. As a member of the 56th Fighter Group 

(Zemke’s Wolfpack), Schilling amassed 33 “kills” during WWII. e 

SAC base hosted two bomb wings composed of B-47 bombers and 

KC-97 tankers.38 In 1960 an Atlas-F missile wing was also headquartered at the base, with the actual missiles located at 12 dispersed sites 

across central Kansas. In November 1964 Air Force ocials elected 

to close the base, surprising local ocials who scrambled to nd 

new occupants for the facility.39 Today, the Salina Airport Authority 

operates the aireld as a municipal facility, while a number of commercial and educational enterprises also occupy the site, including 

the Salina Area Technical School and the campus of Kansas State 

University at Salina.

When the base closed, local ocials were absorbed with preparing 

the site for new occupants. e thought of potential contamination 

was not a major consideration, despite a provision in the deed, which 

apparently absolved the US government of any liability for restoration or other damages.40 Fortunately for the city, the Comprehensive 

Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, passed 

by Congress in December 1980 and later amended by the Superfund 

Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1981, required the DOD to 

comply with all EPA guidelines, even at sites already transferred to 

the private sector. In 1986 the DOD established the Formerly Used 

Defense Sites program and placed it under the authority of the Army 

Corps of Engineers to assess environmental damage and engage in 

remediation activities. e corps has spent $3.9 billion on the program as of 2006 and estimates that it will take a total of $18.7 billion 

to complete remediation at the more than 4,600 sites in the program.41

Later estimates raise this total to as high as $35 billion.

One of the main problems in addressing the issue is the number of 

new sites that continue to be added to the list. is was the case when 

the extent of Schilling AFB’s contamination was rst discovered in 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 37

the early 1990s. In 1993 the corps hired a contractor to complete a 

site investigation. Based on the results, the corps agreed to “remove 

or abandon in place” 107 USTs. Even this action required the Salina 

Airport Authority’s cooperation, as the corps dug in its heels, stating 

that since “non-DOD parties used petroleum products at the former 

Air Force Base property following DOD ownership, the Corps does 

not intend to clean up petroleum in soils or groundwater as a separate contaminant unless it imposes imminent and substantial risk 

and has been identied as the sole responsibility of DOD.”42

Discoveries of contaminated areas outside those originally tested 

in 1993 resulted in the corps conducting a second site investigation in 

1998. e city of Salina disputed some of the ndings in the second 

survey, only to be told that they “had no formal role in the process.”43

e city engaged with the EPA, which conducted an “expanded site 

investigation” that rmly tied source areas to DOD activities. In January 2006 the corps released a study of the TCE plume extending from 

under the base and determined that it would not reach the city’s water wells for 75 years. Four months later, the corps was forced to admit it had made a mistake in its calculations and that the plume 

would reach the water wells serving the town’s 45,679 residents in less 

than 10 years.44

Unlike Schilling, Tinker AFB continues as an active base today, 

despite its status as an EPA Superfund site. Established in 1942 at a 

cost of over $21 million, the base employed nearly 15,000 workers 

and served as a repair and modication center for the B-29 bomber.45

It remained in active service aer the war as one of ve air logistics 

centers in the Air Force. As the Cold War began, the Air Force attempted to curtail some of the worst wartime excesses and address 

the pollution released from its facilities. By 1950 regulations required 

that “military authorities in the Continental United States will cooperate with civil authorities in preventing the pollution of surface or 

underground waters by sewage or industrial wastes from Air Force 

installations and activities.”46 Yet as late as 1984, Tinker was still discharging industrial waste into storm drains. In congressional testimony, the chief of the Water Quality Division of the Oklahoma Water 

Resources Board noted that “when the base was built, storm drains 

oen legally carried industrial wastes. However, this practice is no 

longer acceptable.”47 Unfortunately, not all lines had been rerouted to 

collection tanks, and hazardous waste was still being discharged directly into local creeks. By December 1990 some local wells were so 
38 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

badly contaminated that the base began supplying nearby residents 

with bottled water until they could be connected to municipal water 

supplies, which took place between September 1993 and May 1994.48

Conclusion

It is clear that the Air Force’s infrastructure has inicted considerable environmental damage on the Great Plains. In almost every case, 

the US government has acknowledged its role in the contamination. 

Legislation passed in the early 1980s has forced the DOD to participate in cleanup eorts, even at facilities no longer under DOD control. Aer a slow start, the Army Corps of Engineers now spends considerable time and eort in assessment and remediation programs, 

both at facilities on the plains and across the country. However, the 

impact will linger long aer nal cleanup eorts are complete. In 

most cases, the corps will be unable to remove all the pollutants, and 

some cleanup eorts will cease when testing reveals concentrations 

have dropped below levels considered dangerous to human health. 

Yet, the fact remains that the Air Force inicted serious damage on 

the environment.

It should be noted that the environmental philosophy that permeated the service during the earlier period was not unique. Many private industries followed equally callous disposal policies during that 

era, and many have not been as engaged as the DOD in remediation 

eorts. e Army Air Forces had a vital mission during World War II, 

and the increases in eciency and time must be weighed against the 

millions who suered under despotic regimes that were toppled only 

by force. Some might argue that the Cold War presented an equal 

threat. e costs must be weighed against the benets.

Still, the Army and the Air Force colluded in activities that threatened the health of residents near their bases. e question of acceptable endangerment leads down a path toward determining which 

lives are most worth protecting, with a consideration of both immediate and longer-term threats and orders of magnitude. Military 

forces have long operated under the concept of acceptable “casualty 

rates” and “collateral damage” and seem to be more comfortable with 

the idea that some must suer so that many survive. Today, the service’s tolerance for collateral and environmental damage is well below 

where it was 75 years ago. For example, current Air Force hazardous 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 39

materials regulations emphasize that individuals and commanders 

can be held personally liable for the release of pollutants at their 

bases. Yet, the legacy of years of reckless discharge will linger and 

continue to aect relations with host communities.

Having once clamored for military facilities as engines of economic development, the public is now far more wary of their presence. A recent attempt by the Army to expand its Pinyon Canyon 

maneuver area on the high plains of Colorado met widespread opposition from an odd coalition of antimilitary groups and moreconservative ranchers and landowners. Eorts to expand existing 

military facilities are oen met with suspicion by local residents, 

whose trust has been compromised by eorts to disguise or delay 

notication of previous environmental threats. e current period of 

nancial retrenchment and a shrinking share of the defense budget 

magnify the billions spent to remediate previous environmental 

damage. Perhaps there is no truer example that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Already, there is evidence that the current operating requirements reduce DOD cleanup expenditures and 

make it more dicult for state and federal regulatory agencies to 

compel compliance.49 All of these factors impact current and future 

readiness and the Air Force’s ability to accomplish its mission.

In this century, aerial weapons have demonstrated the ability to in-

ict devastating damage on remote battleelds. Yet, as William Cronon 

has observed in his work on nineteenth-century Chicago, “the ecological place of production (grows) ever more remote from the economic 

point of consumption, making it harder and harder to keep track of the 

true costs and consequences of any particular product.”50

Certainly this is true for airpower. As the sites of employment expand further from the points of production, it is easy to lose sight of 

the true costs of developing and employing weapons from the sky. 

However, in any accounting of the impact of aerial warfare on the 

environment, these production costs, which sometimes far exceed 

those resulting from the weapon employment, must be included in 

the nal tally.

Notes

1. White, It’s Your Misfortune, 497. He notes that factors that had initially stalled 

development in the American West (remoteness, aridity, and low populations) all 

worked in its favor to attract defense activities during the war.
40 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

2. “Hundreds Mourn Family Killed in Marine Jet Crash,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 

11 December 2008. e utility of locating air bases away from population centers was 

recently demonstrated by a mishap involving a Marine F/A-18 aircra that killed a family 

of four near MCAS Miramar.

3. Worster, Dust Bowl.

4. Miner, Kansas, 312.

5. Ibid., 312–13.

6. Hurt, Great Plains during World War II, 56.

7. Simonson, History of the American Aircra Industry, 119.

8. Bilstein, Enterprise of Flight, 77.

9. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “What Is Superfund?”

10. EPA, “Current Status, Air Force Plant 4.”

11. Yergin, Prize, 365.

12. Wit, “Social and Economic Impact,” 153.

13. Ibid., 162.

14. EPA, “Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant.”

15. Ibid.

16. Shulman, reat at Home, 74, 77.

17. Ibid., 78.

18. Ibid., 81.

19. Tsutsui, “Landscapes in the Dark Valley,” 199.

20. Gerber, On the Home Front.

21. “US Army and Air Force Wings over Kansas,” 129–57, 334–60. e prewar 

elds were the post airelds at Forts Leavenworth and Riley.

22. R. A. Fouts to Sen. Arthur Capper, letters, 20 July and 30 October 1943, 

“Gove County Gunnery Range” folder, Box 11, Arthur Capper Papers.

23. Hurt, Great Plains, 276.

24. E. J. Montgomery to Sen. Arthur Capper, letter. Capper Papers.

25. Undated, unidentied newspaper clipping, “Gove County Gunnery Range” 

folder, Box 11, Capper Papers. 

26. McMullen to Sen. Arthur Capper, telegram, 13 November 1943, “Air Bases-Hays” 

folder, Box 1, Capper Papers. 

27. Zimmerman, Cheyenne Bottoms.

28. Biological Survey, “Cheyenne Bottoms,” 52.

29. 184th Bomb Group, Cultural Legacy of the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Range.

30. “Kansas Governor Hosts Ribbon Cutting,” news release. 

31. Busby et al. Natural Features Inventory, ix.

32. Ibid., 7, 253.

33. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Former Lowry 

Bombing and Gunnery Range.”

34. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Lowry Landll Site.” 

35. Tucker and Russell, Natural Enemy, 11.

36. US Department of Health and Human Services, “Fact Sheet.”

37. US Army Air Forces, Field Service Section, Technical Bulletin, 25 March 1942, 

Schilling AFB Files, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Topeka, KS.

38. “US Army and Air Force Wings over Kansas,” 348–49.

39. Olson, “Salina’s Response.”
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 41

40. “Quitclaim Deed for Schilling Air Force Base,” 465. 

41. US Army Corps of Engineers, “Formerly Used Defense Sites Program.”

42. “Fact Sheet,” Kansas Department of Health and Environment. 

43. “Schilling Air Force Base Project,” 2.

44. “2000 Census: Corps Admits Miscalculation,” Salina Journal, 5 May 2006.

45. Hurt, Great Plains, 243.

46. US Air Force Regulation 91–9.

47. US House, “Review of Hazardous Waste Cleanup,” 89.

48. US Department of Health and Human Services, “Public Health Assessment, 

Tinker.”

49. One source claims that between 2001 and 2004, the DOD cut its cleanup 

budget by 57 percent. “Cleanup Fights Stall,” USA Today.

50. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 340.

Chapter 4

Airpower and the Targeting of a 

Nation’s Energy Infrastructure

Mark A. Olinger

As the last Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft departed Pearl Harbor, 

a majority of the US Pacific Fleet lay in ruins. Despite the tremendous 

success of the surprise attack, Japanese naval leaders and air planners 

had committed a strategic error. Despite their vulnerability to aerial 

attack, storage tanks holding more than four million barrels of fuel 

critical to the US military remained intact in what would become the 

Pacific theater of operations. The strategic implications of the Japanese attack are obvious—to protect or attack an energy infrastructure, one must understand its purposes, how it is constructed, and its 

vulnerabilities. On 7 December 1941, the energy-based sector of a 

nation’s economy was a viable target requiring critical analysis, particularly during large, fast-paced, high-intensity operations. In the 

last half of the twentieth century, the majority of these targets were 

attacked using airpower.

When considering energy infrastructure as a potential target, 

one thinks of World War II. Prior to that war, much thought had 

been given as to how one might actually go about destroying the 

petroleum-based sector of a nation’s economic infrastructure. As the 

war progressed, it became evident that strategic centers of gravity 

were not always within reach. The US experience in Vietnam serves 

as an example of the inappropriate employment of airpower due to 

ignoring enemy requirements and the availability of sanctuaries inside North Vietnam and neighboring countries. The Gulf War and 

Iraq in 2003 saw the integration of Iraq’s energy infrastructure into 

the overall campaign plan. The core issue: by attacking a nation’s energy 

infrastructure in either an unlimited or limited war, were strategic objectives obtained at the expense of that nation’s economic future and 

civilian population? In shifting the focus to current and future trends, 

the energy-based sector of a nation’s economy offers a wide and dispersed target set to air planners. At question is whether targeting energy 

infrastructures might be useful, and if so, when and what should be 
44 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

attacked; and what are the collateral eects, the impact on the environment, and the law of war implications.

Modern warfare is destructive and has a signicant impact on a 

nation. It requires not only balanced military forces that are organized, trained, and equipped to defend a state’s national interests, but 

also economic infrastructures capable of supporting those forces. 

Economic infrastructures provide large, vulnerable targets susceptible 

to various types of enemy attacks. While some targets have little 

value, this is not the case with energy. Petroleum-based products will 

remain a viable world energy source for the foreseeable future. As of 

1 January 2009, known global crude oil reserves were estimated between 

1,184.2 and 1,342.2 billion barrels. World oil consumption has 

dropped sharply since the middle of 2008 in response to the global 

economic downturn and higher prices.1

Airpower eory and Interwar Planning

Between the two world wars, military theorists from several nations 

advocated what they called “strategic” bombing as the logical and 

obvious way to employ aircra. To the thinkers who emerged from 

the Great War and believed in the future of airpower, the strategic 

employment of its capabilities was considered the panacea that would 

avoid future senseless slaughters. A number of men arrived at these 

conclusions more or less independently. In Great Britain, Hugh 

Trenchard (“father of the Royal Air Force”) was less of a theorist than 

the others, with his ideas limited in scope. Pierre Vauthier of France 

was the principal protagonist in that country, and the United States 

had Billy Mitchell.2

e rst theoretical “prophet” of airpower was an Italian named 

Giulio Douhet, who published Command of the Air in 1921. e book 

was a fully developed theory of airpower and its potential. Douhet 

saw the airplane as the perfect oensive weapon with none of the 

limitations of ground or naval power. Based on his own positive and 

negative experiences in World War I, he concluded that the airplane 

was capable of inicting overwhelming destruction. With the proper 

amount of airplanes appearing over an enemy’s capital and industrial 

centers, chaos would occur and cause the immediate collapse of the 

enemy’s government and industrial base. e bomber would always 

get through, because there was no eective defense against it. Douhet 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 45

stated empathically that “the fundamental principle of aerial warfare 

is this: to resign oneself to endure enemy aerial oensives in order to 

inict the greatest possible oensives on the enemy.”3

 He pointed out 

that his theory of war and employment of airpower, brutally conducted but concluded quickly, was far more humane than what had 

occurred in the world war. His proposals were hugely inuential 

among airpower advocates, arguing that the air arm was the most 

important, powerful, and invulnerable part of any military. With 

Douhet, airpower had its rst coherent theory. Air forces would no 

longer be considered auxiliaries and should be a nation’s primary instrument of war.

In 1922 Douhet met the like-minded American airpower theorist 

Billy Mitchell on a visit to Europe, and soon an excerpted translation 

of Douhet’s Command of the Air began to circulate in the US Air Service. 

Mitchell’s book Winged Defense was published in 1925. In it he argues 

that airpower had become a main force in war instead of an auxiliary 

to the other services and would continue to be a dominating factor. In 

hindsight, Mitchell was more of a propagandist than a theorist, and 

his ideas were more limited in scope than those of others. As a result 

of Douhet’s proposals, air forces allocated greater resources to their 

bomber squadrons than to their ghters. Prewar planners, on the 

whole, vastly overestimated the damage bombers could do and 

equally underestimated the resilience of civilian populations. Given 

the technological advances made during the 1920s and 1930s, the 

possibility of unlimited war continued to expand. During this period, 

little practical experience existed when it came to targeting national 

economic infrastructure. Serious thought on the subject was not considered until the late 1930s when the US Army Air Corps Tactical 

School (ACTS) and the British Air Ministry began to study the utility 

of targeting a nation’s energy infrastructure, specically the petroleumbased sector. e ACTS laid the foundation for economic analysis 

and industrial targeting while advocating a strategic airpower doctrine. Believing that a nation’s ability to wage war was directly related 

to its ability to convert raw materials into weapons, strategic bombing 

of a nation’s industrial base or economic infrastructure became the 

American approach. 

At the same time, the British were also busy analyzing how best to 

destroy an adversary with airpower.4

 Aer a series of studies conducted during 1936, the British Industrial Intelligence Center recognized that targeting the oil industry was key. erefore, the British 
46 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

prioritized oil industry targets along with various other target sets in 

a series of 13 war plans known as the Western Area Plans (WAP), 

published on 1 October 1937. Particularly, WAPs 5 and 6 dealt with 

the oil industry. e latter was the basic plan to destroy the core of 

German fuel production and supply: 14 synthetic oil plants and as 

many major oil reneries. In 1939, the British Air Ministry directed a 

series of studies to locate the key points within critical sectors of the 

German economy.5

 British leaders sought target sets containing only 

a few targets whose destruction would have an immediate eect on 

the enemy’s will to resist. To qualify, a target set had to be of major 

importance to a nation’s military, be concentrated in a few locations, 

have no appreciable redundant capacity in or out of the country, and 

be incapable of quick repair or replacement or quick dispersal without loss of production.

At the heart of US doctrine as it entered World War II was the idea 

that the ultimate aim in war was to destroy the morale of the people. 

Planners believed that this objective could best be met by destroying 

vital links in the industrial economic structure that was already 

strained by the requirements of war. is approach assumed that adequate intelligence would be available on the location of these vital 

links and once attacked that they would not be restored for many 

months. Likewise, unescorted mass bomber formations would penetrate enemy defenses and destroy assigned targets.6

 Energy infrastructure was a prime target—specically the petroleum industry. 

e rise of airpower made possible unprecedented violence on population centers, factories, and economic infrastructures.

Unlimited Warfare: World War II

During the course of World War II the petroleum-based sector 

was the primary target in a variety of warfare. On 22 February 1940, 

Sir Cyril Newall, chief of the British Air Sta, agreed that the Royal 

Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command should attack targets in accordance with WAP 6 if Germany invaded the Low Countries. By mid 

April 1940, the British became convinced that German rened petroleum stocks were desperately low and that any further reduction 

would force Germany into a crisis situation. Five days aer the German invasion of the Low Countries in May 1940, Bomber Command 

began ying missions against Germany’s petroleum-based energy 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 47

sector in the Ruhr Valley using WAP W. A. 4(c).7 Great Britain’s air 

oensive strategy continued to target the petroleum-based sector 

throughout most of 1940. In September 1940, the overly optimistic 

British chiefs of sta believed that Germany’s rened oil stocks might 

be exhausted by June 1941.

In October 1940 a signicant change occurred within the Air Ministry 

and Bomber Command. Bomber Command’s Charles Portal replaced Newall as chief of the British Air Sta, and Sir Richard Peirse, 

an advocate of precision bombing, replaced Portal at Bomber Command. is had a massive impact upon the future of the bombing 

policy. Unlike Newall, Portal had rsthand experience in Bomber 

Command and knew its limitations far better. His views on its use 

were directly translated into an Air Ministry directive. e two principal objectives were now the oil plan and destruction of enemy morale.8

Competing target sets and a lack of suitable long-range aircra prevented realization of campaign objectives. Competing target sets in 

1941 included German U-boats, U-boat construction yards and 

maintenance facilities, bombers, aircra factories, and airelds. ese 

target sets reected the demands of the Battle of the Atlantic with 

German submarines and the Battle of Britain with the Luwae.

e US Army War Plans Division submitted the rst of the major 

target studies on 11 August 1941. Entitled Munitions Requirements of 

the Army Air Forces, it was commonly referred to as Air War Plans 

Division-1 (AWPD-1). is plan reected ACTS doctrine that an air 

force should conduct precision aerial attacks against critical targets in 

an enemy’s national economic structure to eliminate the ability to 

resist. Critical to the planning introduced in AWPD-1 was the disruption of German electrical power and transportation systems, destruction of petroleum systems, and, if necessary, the undermining of 

morale.9

 In the case of the petroleum-based sector, AWPD-1 planners identied German synthetic oil plants as high value or essential 

targets. At the time, synthetic oil plants were responsible for 60 percent of the German aviation gasoline (AVGAS) production. Eighty 

percent of the AVGAS was produced by 27 reneries located in western 

and central Germany about 1,000 miles from bases in England. ese 

27 reneries became the primary petroleum-based-sector targets for 

US bombers. Two minor plans—AWPD-4, Air Estimate of the Situation and Recommendations for the Conduct of War, and the Plan for 

the Initiation of Air Force Bombardment in the British Isles—listed 

oil as a priority target before the next major war plan, AWPD-42, 
48 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Requirements for Air Ascendancy, 1942, set responsibilities and revised targeting priorities.10 AWPD-42, developed in the late summer 

of 1942, set forth the planning requirements for the number of combat aircra required to achieve complete air superiority in Europe 

combined with the results of bombing eorts to date. e plan served 

as the basis for US Army Air Forces (USAAF) strategic planning. 

AWPD-42 also established a division of labor between the USAAF 

and the RAF bomber forces. e US Eighth Air Force pursued a precision daylight bombing campaign against critical elements of Germany’s war economy. At night the RAF would continue its areabombing oensive in an eort to break enemy morale.

Operation Chastise was the ocial name given the aerial attacks 

on German dams in the Ruhr Valley on 16 and 17 May 1943. Prior to 

the war, the industrial base of Germany had been identied by the 

British Air Ministry as an important strategic target, and the dams in 

that area were considered as particular targets. Besides electrical 

power, the dams provided water into the canal transport system. 

ere were three primary targets for Operation Chastise—the 

Möhne, Sorpe, and Eder Dams—and three alternative targets—the 

Lister, Ennerpe, and Diemel Dams. e Möhne and Sorpe Dams controlled about 75 percent of the water supplied to the Ruhr basin. e 

Eder Dam regulated the ow of the Eder River, the principal tributary of the Weser River. It also provided electrical generating stations 

and a pumped storage station for power load equalization.11 e tactics to attack the dams had been carefully considered, and analysis 

indicated that repeated strikes with large bombs would be eective in 

breaching them. RAF 617 Squadron, using a specially developed 

“bouncing bomb”, carried out the raid. Nineteen Lancaster bombers 

took o to attack the targets. e raid was a success, despite the loss 

of eight aircra and crews; the Möhne and Eder Dams were breached, 

causing a catastrophic ooding of the Ruhr Valley, while the Sorpe 

Dam sustained only minor damage.12 Bomber Command conducted a 

bomb damage assessment as soon as possible using a photographic reconnaissance Spitre from 542 Squadron, arriving over the Ruhr just 

aer rst light. e pilot, Flying Ocer Frank Fray, described the 

experience:

When I was about 150 miles from the Möhne Dam I could see the industrial 

haze over the Ruhr area and what appeared to be a cloud to the east. On ying 

closer I saw that what had seemed to be cloud was the sun shining on the 

oodwaters. I looked down into the deep valley which had seemed so peaceful 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 49

three days before but now it was a wide torrent. e whole valley of the river 

was inundated with only patches of high ground and the tops of trees and 

church steeples showing above the ood. I was overcome by the immensity of it.13

Photographs taken of the breached dams showed oodwaters sweeping through the Ruhr valley, damaging factories, houses, and power 

stations; railway and road bridges disappeared. e raid disrupted 

water and electricity supplies in a key German war munitions manufacturing area. Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, called 

the raid “a trenchant blow for victory.”14

e Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) directed that the strategic 

bombardment of Germany receive top priority, with the US Eighth 

Air Force ying from air bases in England, the US Fieenth Air Force 

ying from air bases in the Mediterranean and Italy, and the RAF 

Bomber Command teamed to conduct the combined bomber oensive. Rened oil products became the h priority target set behind 

Germany’s aircra industry, submarine yards, transportation networks, and electrical power. e plan specied the complete destruction 

of 23 of 27 synthetic oil reneries and crude oil reneries in Romania, 

including Ploesti; the overall goal was a 47 percent reduction in re-

ned oil products. To achieve these goals required accurate and current strategic intelligence. e CCS direction rearmed that requirement in support of air targeting, and the London-based Economic 

Objectives Unit of the US Oce of Strategic Services provided part of 

the solution. Political considerations prevented formal prioritizing of 

the list of potential targets, but the top three target sets were ghter 

aircra, ball bearings, and petroleum.15

e Ploesti reneries were targeted, beginning with a daring and 

costly low-level attack in August 1943. ese attacks had only limited 

eects; oil deliveries increased until April 1944 when the attacks were 

resumed by the Fieenth Air Force.16 e Fieenth Air Force was 

directed to execute four broad air campaigns against the Axis target 

sets: oil capabilities, air forces, communications, and ground forces. 

Most critical of the oil target sets were the reneries in Ploesti, which 

contributed about 30 percent of the entire Axis supply of oil and gasoline. One hundred and y German and Romanian ghters in addition to 250 heavy antiaircra guns defended Ploesti. e Fieenth 

Air Force, with the cooperation of RAF 205 Group bombers, began a 

series of raids on 5 April 1944, attacking the Ploesti reneries 19 

times before the campaign ended on 19 August. USAAF and RAF 

bombers ew 5,287 sorties and dropped 12,870 tons of bombs. Ten 
50 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

dive bombers, 39 escort ghters, and 237 heavy bombers—15 from 

the RAF—were lost; the results were good despite the losses.17 At the 

end of the campaign the reneries were reduced to only 10 percent of 

their normal rate of activity. e average production rate was reduced 

by 60 percent from April to August.

In late August 1944, the Russian occupation eliminated this source 

of supply; dependence on the synthetic plants became even greater. 

Following the Ploesti raids, the USAAF and RAF dropped 10,000 

tons of bombs on three synthetic oil plants in Silesia and one in 

Poland. By February 1945, their combined production was reduced 

to 20 percent of what it had been in June 1944.18

e petroleum-based energy sector did not receive signicant attention from the Allied planners until May 1944. Previously, only 

about 1 percent of all Allied bombs dropped had targeted this sector. 

With the reduction of German airpower, oil became the priority target 

in the German economy. A preliminary attack was launched on 12 

May 1944, with another on 28 May; the main blow was not struck 

until aer D-day. e Germans viewed the attacks as catastrophic. 

Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production for the 

ird Reich, said,

On that day the technological war was decided. Until then we had managed to 

produce approximately as many weapons as the armed forces needed, in spite 

of their considerable losses. But with the attack of nine hundred and thirty-

ve daylight bombers of the American Eighth Air Force upon several fuel 

plants in central and eastern Germany, a new era in the air war began. It 

meant the end of German armaments production.19

Synthetic oil production declined steadily, and by July 1944 every 

major plant had been hit. When the attacks began, these plants produced an average of 316,000 tons per month, but production fell to 

107,000 tons in June and 17,000 tons in September. Output of AVGAS 

from synthetic plants dropped from 175,000 tons in April to 30,000 

tons in July and 5,000 tons in September. Production recovered in 

November and December but was a fraction of pre-attack output for 

the rest of the war. e Germans took steps to repair and reconstruct 

the reneries, but synthetic oil reneries were vast, complex structures and could not be easily dispersed. Consumption of oil exceeded 

production from May 1944 until the end of the war. Accumulated 

stocks were rapidly used up and in six months were almost exhausted. 

e German armed forces sharply felt the loss of oil production.20
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 51

Programs of dispersal and underground construction were incomplete 

when the war ended.

Synthetic oil reneries returned to partial production in a remarkably short time but were attacked again. e IG Farben factory at 

Leuna, Germany’s second-largest synthetic oil plant and second-biggest 

chemical operation, serves as an example of repetitive targeting. 

Leuna was protected by a highly eective smoke screen and the heaviest 

antiaircra concentration in Europe. Aircrews viewed the Farben 

Leuna synthetic renery as the most dangerous and dicult mission 

of the air campaign. Although it was attacked on 12 May and put out 

of production, postwar investigation of plant records and interrogation of Farben Leuna’s ocials established that several thousand men 

restored partial operation in about 10 days. e renery was attacked 

again on 28 May but resumed partial production on 3 June and 

reached 75 percent of capacity in early July. e renery resumed 

production two days aer an attack on 7 July, reaching 53 percent of 

capacity on 19 July. An attack on 20 July shut the plant down again 

but only for three days; by 27 July production was back to 35 percent 

of capacity. Attacks throughout July, August, and September halted 

production, but it resumed on 14 October. e Farben facility at 

Leuna reached 28 percent of capacity by 20 November. Six more attacks in November and December were largely ineective because of 

adverse weather. Production increased to 15 percent of capacity in 

January and remained at that level until near the end of the war. 

From the rst attack to the war’s end, production at Leuna averaged 

9 percent of capacity.21

ere were 22 attacks on Leuna—20 by the Eighth Air Force and 

two by the RAF. Due to the urgency of keeping this plant out of production, many missions were own in dicult bombing weather. 

Consequently, bombing accuracy was not high compared with other 

targets. On clear days, only 29 percent of the bombs landed inside 

Farben Leuna’s gates; on radar raids the number dropped to just over 

5 percent. Allied crews ew a total of 6,552 bomber sorties against the 

plant and dropped 18,328 tons of bombs over an entire year.22

Except for isolated raids, the German power grid was not a priority 

target set during the war. is was partly due to the belief that it was 

highly developed and that losses in one area could be compensated 

by switching power from another. is assumption proved false in a 

postwar investigation conducted by the US Strategic Bombing Survey.23

e German power grid was in a precarious condition from the outset 
52 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

and became more unstable as the war progressed, as conrmed by 

statements of a large number of German ocials, condential memoranda of the National Load Dispatcher, and secret minutes of the Central Planning Committee. e destruction of ve large generating stations in Germany would have caused a loss of 8 percent of the total 

capacity, both public and private. Destruction of 45 plants would have 

caused a capacity loss of almost 40 percent, and the destruction of 95 

plants would have eliminated over 50 percent of the entire generating 

capacity of the country. e shortage was suciently critical that any 

signicant loss of output would have directly aected essential war 

production. Generating and distribution facilities were relatively vulnerable, and their recuperation was dicult and time consuming.24

Postwar evidence indicates that, had the power grid—electric generating plants and substations—been made a priority target set as soon as 

it became within range of Allied air attacks, the destruction would 

have had serious eects on Germany’s war production.

Energy infrastructure was a vital target during World War II, and 

the eort’s benet was signicant. Allied airpower was able to gain and 

maintain air superiority as Allied armies drove across Europe, overrunning the German war machine. Ultimately, the war offered 

numerous lessons that are still applicable today: the need for strategic 

intelligence; realization that doctrine is not a synonym for targeting; 

recognition that centers of gravity are not necessarily subject to attack; 

the need to anticipate the collateral eects of air attacks; and recognition that gaining air superiority is critical. e US Air Force exited 

World War II with the continued belief that the strategic bombing mission was the decisive military instrument of war.25

Limited Warfare: Vietnam

Whereas World War II was an unlimited war, Vietnam was a limited 

one. Four major characteristics of limited wars include (1) what is 

limited for one party may be total for another, (2) they may be costly 

and prolonged, (3) prolonged limited wars generally enjoy much less 

public support than other types of war, and (4) the duration and cost 

of war generally increases when limitations are imposed. As warfare 

becomes limited, the role of the energy-based sector and its associated products must change as well.26 In true Clausewitzian fashion, it 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 53

was political and not military objectives that drove the air campaign 

against North Vietnam.

Air planners and strategists sought to weaken North Vietnam’s will 

to resist by destroying its capability to ght. As a result, they chose 

what they thought to be key sources of military and economic power 

as primary targets. In an operation code-named Rolling under, 

they used three targeting criteria: reduce North Vietnamese assistance from external sources; destroy war resources already in North 

Vietnam; and harass, disrupt, and impede the movement of men and 

materials to Laos and South Vietnam.27 When Operation Rolling 

under began on 2 March 1965, a majority of the energy-sector targets were o limits due to geographical constraints imposed by Pres. 

Lyndon Johnson on the Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS) and air planners. 

When President Johnson expanded the war in the summer of 1965, 

the JCS sought to increase the use of airpower.28

In August 1965 a revised air campaign plan was submitted that 

called for attacks against military installations in Haiphong and Hon 

Gay, the mining of ports, and raids on transportation networks north 

of Hanoi. e plan encompassed further attacks on airelds, air defense sites, other military facilities in Hanoi, petroleum storage areas, 

electrical power stations, and the remaining industrial targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. e JCS’s intent in targeting the petroleum infrastructure was to reduce North Vietnam’s capability to provide transportation to the general population, impact the economy, and 

interdict the movement of supplies and troops south.29 Due to con-

icting political objectives, such as the need to end the war quickly 

and to prevent Russian involvement, senior Johnson administration 

policy makers did not back the JCS. As a result, US aircrews attacked only 126 of the 240 proposed targets by the end of October 

1965. Of the remaining 114 targets, 104 were in areas that were geographically constrained.30

e following month, senior US defense ocials recommended an 

evolving ve-month air campaign that would conclude with attacks 

on the petroleum infrastructure and the mining of Haiphong harbor. 

e JCS called for an immediate acceleration in scale, scope, and intensity of the bombing, beginning with airstrikes against the petroleum target sets. ey assumed that if the supply of petroleum 

products could be eliminated, the ow of supplies, materiel, and 

troops would slow, or stop, causing the insurgency in South Vietnam 

to wither away.31
54 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

e fact that North Vietnam possessed no oil elds or reneries 

and imported 170,000 metric tons of fuel in 1965, mostly through 

Haiphong, supported the JCS case. e Haiphong tank farms, apparently the critical link in the system, held about 72,000 metric tons. 

Ninety-seven percent of North Vietnam’s petroleum storage capacity 

could be found in 13 sites, of which four had already been destroyed. 

e JCS believed that destruction of the Haiphong tank farm, combined with eight other major storage areas, would cause more damage than an attack on any other single target set.32 However, intelligence indicated that numerous small petroleum storage sites and 

drum storage capabilities were beginning to appear. If the energy sector were to be a suitable target, timing was critical to interdict the 

supply system.33

It was not until the winter of 1965–66 that support for airstrikes 

began to grow. President Johnson authorized attacks against six small 

petroleum storage facilities in lightly populated areas at the end of 

May 1966. By mid June, the president’s advisors convinced him to 

authorize airstrikes against the remaining energy-sector targets, including the storage facilities in Hanoi and Haiphong. Resumption of 

the airstrikes began on 29 June 1966 and continued through August. 

While 70 percent of their petroleum bulk storage had been destroyed, 

the North Vietnamese still possessed a signicant amount of reserve 

storage, mostly in areas that were o limits inside of North Vietnam.34

As the summer wore on, North Vietnam continued to import petroleum products that were dispersed at small storage sites in quantities 

sucient to meet wartime requirements.

According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the invulnerability 

of the dispersed petroleum infrastructure meant an increased cost in 

munitions, fuel, and loss of aircra and aircrew. e end of airstrikes 

against the petroleum infrastructure came on 30 August 1966 when 

the Jason Summer Study was released; 47 top US scientists stated that 

North Vietnam was a subsistence agricultural economy that presented a dicult, challenging, and unrewarding array of target sets to 

be attacked by airpower. is study estimated that only 5 percent of 

North Vietnam’s fuel requirements were required for logistics ow to 

the South, suggesting the air campaign could not possibly achieve its 

goal.35 By the fall of 1966, US military and civilian leaders had given 

up any expectation of the North Vietnamese energy infrastructure 

being the critical link in maintaining its military and economy. Subsequently, they shied their attention to other industries. Six years 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 55

later, a short but intense air campaign ended US participation in this 

limited war.

Overall, the US attempt to destroy North Vietnam’s energy infrastructure can be dened as a strategic failure. Planners had overestimated the North’s dependence on the port facilities at Haiphong. After airstrikes destroyed the dock facilities, tankers simply ooaded 

their cargoes into waiting barges, which dispersed the petroleum 

products among concealed storage sites along waterways. When bulk 

distribution became a challenge, the North Vietnamese simply 

switched to drums, making distribution easier, faster, and more e-

cient. Simple innovation reduced their reliance upon vulnerable storage and distribution facilities.36

Why did air planners target the energy infrastructure—speci-

cally, the petroleum sector—if it was not essential? e answer is 

simple: they were guilty of mirror imaging. What worked in World 

War II was expected to work in Vietnam. Even if the air planners 

were able to overcome mirror imaging, they lacked accurate and 

timely strategic intelligence to support targeting.37 e US intelligence community was focused on the Soviet Union, basically ignoring the rest of the world. Furthermore, the air planners were unprepared for limited warfare, failed to analyze properly the enemy, and 

had to deal with the issue of sanctuary.

By denition, a sanctuary is a “place of refuge or protection for 

someone who is being chased or hunted” and is a self-imposed restraint.38 North Vietnam enjoyed the benets of sanctuary in China. 

e United States also recognized certain areas within North Vietnam as being o limits in an eort to keep hostilities from escalating 

into unlimited warfare. Communist forces, lines of communication, 

and the limited petroleum industry were able to operate in a safe environment, while the targeting and destruction of the energy-based 

sector became more dicult and less ecient. e only way to have 

eliminated or marginalized the petroleum industrial base would have 

been to interdict it before it arrived for end use.39

e Gulf War

e bombing of Iraq during the Gulf War, described at the time as 

an air campaign against Iraq’s oensive military capabilities, was 

broader in its intent and target selection. During the 43-day air cam-
56 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

paign, the United States and its allies sought to achieve some of their 

strategic objectives by targeting the Iraqi society. e air campaign 

was not aimed solely at Iraq’s military, but included targets that were 

bombed primarily to create a potential postwar leverage over the 

Iraqi leadership rather than to inuence the course of the war itself. 

e planners sought to damage or destroy key infrastructure that 

could not be repaired or rebuilt without foreign assistance. ey selected a number of targets with the expectation that bombing them 

would amplify the impact of international economic sanctions on the 

Iraqi society, compelling Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi forces 

from Kuwait to avoid a ground campaign.

Preliminary planning for an air campaign based on 27 strategic 

Iraqi targets in a notional “Southwest Asia contingency” plan began 

ve days aer Iraq invaded Kuwait. Revisions added additional targets, and when the air campaign began on 17 January 1991, the list 

included slightly more than 400 targets concentrated in an area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Additional intelligence gathered aer the war began and additional bombing capabilities expanded the target list to over 700 targets. e targets were divided 

into 12 sets: leadership; command, control, and communications; air 

defense; airelds; nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; railroads and bridges; Scud missiles; conventional military production 

and storage facilities; oil facilities; electricity; naval ports; and Republican Guard forces.40 e majority of these target sets directly linked 

to Iraqi oensive military capabilities, but two categories—electrical 

and oil facilities—had a long-term impact on the Iraqi populace.

Of the more than 700 targets on the expanded list, 28 were identi-

ed as key nodes of the electrical power grid. e United States and 

its allies ew 215 sorties against the electrical infrastructure using 

unguided bombs, cruise missiles, and laser-guided bombs. At least 

nine targets were transformers, each estimated to take a year to repair. Other targets included main generator halls, with an estimated 

ve-year repair time. Between the sixth and seventh days of the air 

campaign, the Iraqis shut down what remained of their national electrical power grid. By the end of the war, 17 of 20 Iraqi generating 

plants were damaged or destroyed; 11 were determined to be total 

losses. Within four months of the war’s end, Iraq’s electrical power 

grid had reached only 20 to 25 percent of its prewar capacity of 9,000 

to 9,500 megawatts, roughly its 1920 generating capacity before reliance on refrigeration and sewage treatment became widespread.41
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 57

Bombing some of the electrical facilities did reinforce other strategic 

goals while weakening air defenses and communications between 

Baghdad and its eld army.

Attacks on Iraqi oil facilities resulted in a similar combination of 

military and civilian eects. Coalition air forces dropped an estimated 1,200 tons of explosives in 518 sorties own against 28 oil infrastructure targets.42 e planners intended to obtain complete cessation of rening capability without damaging or destroying most of 

Iraq’s crude oil industrial base. ey believed the lack of rened petroleum products would deprive the Iraqi military of its ability to maneuver. Among the oil facilities targeted were major storage tanks, 

gas and oil separators, distilling towers, and pipelines. e target set 

included the major K2 pipeline junction near Baiji connecting the 

northern Iraq oil elds, an export pipeline to Turkey, and a reversible 

north-south pipeline inside Iraq.43 All three of Iraq’s large, modern 

reneries—the 110,000 barrel-a-day Daura facility outside Baghdad, 

the 150,000 barrel-a-day Basrah renery, and the 300,000 barrel-aday Baiji facility in northern Iraq—were attacked.44 e Daura and 

Basra reneries were badly damaged early in the air campaign; the 

Baiji renery was not bombed until its nal days.

In a potentially protracted war, destroying Iraq’s ability to rene oil 

and produce ammunition, as well as its stockpiled reserves, made 

sense. At the same time, US Air Force planners sought only to damage temporarily Iraq’s economic infrastructure by precisely targeting 

easy-to-replace elements of key facilities rather than destroying those 

facilities outright. ese plans were thwarted by the military community’s deeply ingrained standard operating procedures. Wary of 

underestimating Iraq, air planners inicted massive damage on the 

country’s economic infrastructure. e Gulf War also highlighted the 

unforeseen consequences of disrupting the highly interconnected 

critical infrastructure of a modern industrialized country. Attacks on 

dual-use power facilities caused cascading damage throughout the 

water purication and sanitation systems, exacerbating a public 

health crisis.45

e United States and its allies, using unguided bombs, cruise missiles, and precision-guided munitions, hit the targets they intended 

to hit: electrical facilities, oil reneries, and the sustaining distribution networks. For the US Air Force, the Gulf War demonstrated 

what airpower strategists and proponents had argued since Billy 

Mitchell published Winged Defense in 1925: airplanes could defeat an 
58 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

enemy by ying over its defensive perimeter and directly attacking its 

economic, energy, and military cores. is war also showed why the 

indirect eects of airpower must be planned in the same level of detail as the direct ones.

In the years following the Gulf War, these lessons were rapidly incorporated into targeting policy. During the four-day Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, air planners focused strikes on command, 

control, and intelligence targets rather than on dual-use infrastructure. ey destroyed numerous Ba’ath security, intelligence, and military targets while sparing power and telephone systems. e sole energy infrastructure target, authorized aer hard bargaining by 

planners, was an oil renery linked to smuggling. It was temporarily 

crippled in a strike that disabled the site for six months while minimizing pollution. US Army attack helicopters played an important 

role in the plan for Desert Fox and the deployments and contingency 

plans that preceded it, such as Desert under in January 1998. Five 

months aer Desert Fox, new types of munitions were used during 

Operation Allied Force to disable Serbian electrical networks, greatly 

reducing permanent damage.46

Iraq in 2003

e Iraqi military had been greatly reduced by early 2003. e operational problem was how to overcome quickly a static Iraqi defense 

to support a high-intensity ground war beginning almost simultaneously with an air campaign. In such a situation, slowly maturing attacks on Iraqi dual-use industrial infrastructure would not be particularly useful from a military point of view.47 US leaders, policy 

makers, strategists, and planners recognized that targeting certain 

forms of economic and energy infrastructure causes more disruption 

to civilians than to the enemy military and reduces the risk to allied 

forces. Moreover, such attacks may cause collateral damage, a particularly sensitive issue given the uncertain US mandate for war. Air 

attacks against dual-use facilities were automatically assumed to 

cause collateral damage and required special authorization to be included in the target sets.

When Saddam refused to abdicate power and leave Iraq in 2003, 

US and coalition forces launched an attack on the morning of 20 

March. US aircra dropped several precision-guided bombs on a 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 59

bunker complex where the Iraqi president was believed to be meeting 

with senior sta. is was followed by a series of air and cruise missile strikes directed against government and military installations. US 

and coalition forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait in the south and from 

the sea. In southern Iraq, US forces advancing northward faced the 

greatest resistance from irregular groups of Ba’ath Party supporters 

known as Saddam’s Fedayeen. British forces, deployed around the 

southern city of Al-Basrah, faced similar resistance from paramilitary and irregular ghters. Despite fears that Iraqi forces would engage in a scorched-earth policy, destroying bridges, dams, critical 

infrastructure, and setting re to Iraq’s southern oil wells, retreating 

Iraqi forces did little damage. In fact, large numbers of Iraqi troops 

simply chose not to resist the advance of coalition forces. Securing 

the oil infrastructure was very important to mitigate damage done at 

the end of the Gulf War. While retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqi army 

set numerous oil wells on re in an attempt to disguise troop movements and distract coalition forces. Prior to the 2003 invasion, Iraqi 

forces mined some 400 oil wells around Basrah and the Al-Faw peninsula with explosives.

Coalition forces launched an air and amphibious assault on the 

Al-Faw peninsula on 20 March to secure the oil elds. Warships of 

the UK Royal Navy, Navy of the Republic of Poland, and Royal Australian Navy supported the amphibious assault. e US 15th Marine 

Expeditionary Unit, a special forces unit of the Republic of Poland, 

and the UK Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade attacked and captured the port facilities of Umm Qasr and Az Zubayr to destroy Iraqi 

resistance and enable follow-on humanitarian assistance. ey encountered heavy resistance by Iraqi troops. Meanwhile the British 

Army’s 16 Air Assault Brigade secured the oil elds in southern Iraq 

while Polish commandos and Navy SEALs captured oshore oil platforms, preventing their destruction. Despite the rapid advance of the 

invasion ground forces, about 44 oil wells were destroyed and set 

ablaze by Iraqi explosives or by incidental re.48 Coalition forces 

quickly capped the wells and extinguished the res, preventing the 

ecological damage and loss of oil production capacity that occurred 

at the end of the rst Gulf War. e swi invasion led to collapse of 

the Iraqi government and its military forces in about three weeks, allowing coalition forces to seize and secure the Iraqi oil infrastructure 

with only limited damage.
60 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Final Analysis and a Look to the Future

When ghting an unlimited war requiring years of combat to defeat an enemy, destroying the enemy’s energy infrastructure makes 

sense. Such targeting may be inappropriate in a limited war against a 

nation where the populace is not free to alter its leadership. In either 

type of warfare, the energy infrastructure is targeted because the nation 

and its citizens heavily depend on it. Strategists and planners will 

continue to see the energy target sets as leveraged. From a military 

perspective, electricity is indispensable and impossible to stockpile. 

Damaging or destroying removes the supply immediately, and backup 

sources are neither powerful nor reliable enough to replace the lost 

facilities. Targeting lessons learned during previous wars are still being applied and include the need to 

• ask if energy is always a primary target,

• question if only certain aircra or platforms can attack certain 

targets, 

• obtain eective and actionable intelligence at both the tactical 

and strategic levels, 

• consider the potential postwar impacts or ramications of targeting energy infrastructure, 

• and prepare to plan around or address the presence of sanctuaries.

In planning for the future, one logically seeks to use past experience combined with current intelligence. is study of targeting energy infrastructure is no dierent. is strategy is probably recognized as useful in an unlimited war but one may question its 

eectiveness during a limited war.

Petroleum-based energy is not likely to be replaced by any alternative energy sources for military use in the short term. Cost will not 

be the limiting factor, but rather the lack of a developed industrial 

base to sustain the alternative energy sources. Given the varying utility of targeting energy in past conicts, will it remain a valid target in 

the future? e answer is an overwhelming yes. As the Gulf War and 

Iraq in 2003 have demonstrated, energy will remain a critical target 

in future conicts. Since time is of the essence in limited warfare, it 

makes sense to target selected energy infrastructure. However, leaders 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 61

and planners must not overlook the possibility of a protracted war 

that becomes unlimited. To meet these conditions, a exible targeting 

methodology must be used to achieve immediate or long-term eects 

as required. at methodology would be to rst strike military tactical targets for immediate eect and then strike critical elements of the 

energy supply chain. e sources for energy products should only be 

struck last, should the need arise. Retired US Army colonel Douglas 

A. Macgregor sums up the implications for future policy makers, 

commanders, strategists, and planners:

Senior ocers on the operational level are central to the drama that translates 

strategic goals into tactical action. ey must not only constantly link the strategic and tactical levels but comprehend the actions of their opponents in a 

similar context. How they interpret missions and employ their forces dominates operations.49

When discussing warfare, most people tend to think of force on 

force, soldier against soldier. Employing airpower against multiple 

target sets that include the energy infrastructure attacks everything 

that allows a nation to sustain itself. Understanding historical precedents is important in the success of any future targeting strategy, including that of a nation’s energy infrastructure. While a number of 

conicts are available for study, World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War, 

and Iraq in 2003 oer the best perspectives. In World War II, the Allies fought an unlimited war against Germany and Japan. In Vietnam, 

limited warfare had become the practice with the goal of avoiding 

unlimited warfare. Energy targeting in past wars has taught many lessons that are applicable today. 

• Strategic intelligence is a must.

• Doctrine is not a synonym for targeting.

• e risk of mirror imaging is a constant threat.

• e ability to gain air superiority is critical.

• Centers of gravity are not necessarily subject to attack.

• e indirect eects of airpower must be planned in the same 

level of detail as the direct ones.

• A plan must be developed to attenuate sanctuaries.

e fact remains that a nation’s energy sector is an extremely suitable target set today and in the future. Given current and future technological developments, it is possible to identify, target, interdict, seize, 
62 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

and, when required, destroy the critical components of a nation’s 

energy infrastructure, greatly enhancing the probability of victory.

Notes

1. US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Short-Term Energy Outlook.

2. Stokesbury, Short History of Air Power, 126.

3. Ibid., 172.

4. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 3–4.

5. Ibid., 4.

6. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 16.

7. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 4.

8. University of Leeds, British Strategic Bombing, 39.

9. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 4–5.

10. Ibid., 5.

11. T. Jones, 617 Squadron Operational Record Book 1943–1945, AIR 8/1238: Air 

Chief Marshall Charles Portal to Gen Sir Alan Brooke, letter, 27 March 1943, 11–14.

12. Ibid., AIR 27/2128, 20–21.

13. Foggo and Burke, “I Captured Proof.”

14. British Broadcasting Corporation, “1943: RAF Raid Smashes German Dams.” 

15. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 5–6.

16. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 21. 

17. Skelly, “References to Ploesti.”

18. Ibid.

19. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 26.

20. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 21–23. 

21. Ibid., 22.

22. Ibid., 22–23.

23. Ibid., 33.

24. Ibid., 33–34.

25. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 41.

26. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 11.

27. Ibid., 33–34.

28. Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 85.

29. Ibid., 88.

30. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 12.

31. Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 90.

32. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 4, 60.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 109.

35. Ibid., 109–20.

36. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 3, 111.

37. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 4, 109–11.

38. American Heritage Dictionary.

39. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 15–16.

40. Gellman, “Allied Air War.”
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 63

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. EIA, Iraq Energy Data.

45. Knights, “Infrastructure Targeting.”

46. Ibid.; and Mason, “US Army Apache Helicopters,” 7.

47. Knights, “Infrastructure Targeting.”

48. Dao, “Nation at War: Commandos”; Dao, “Nation at War: Navy Special Warfare 

Group”; Klare, “Oil War”; and “Battle for Al Faw.”

49. Macgregor, “Command and Control,” 32.

Chapter 5

The Forest and the Trees

Aerial Eradication in South Vietnam and Afghanistan

Evelyn Krache Morris

One of the many challenges in Afghanistan is the prevalence of 

poppy cultivation. Poppies thrive in the hot, dry climate of southern 

Afghanistan, but are hardy enough to grow throughout the country. 

Besides this environmental affinity, there are other compelling reasons why the crop has become the country’s major export. Poppy 

resin is refined into raw opium and then transformed into purer 

opium and heroin; it is durable and easy to transport, and it becomes 

more lucrative at every step. The revenues from poppies fund not 

only the Taliban insurgency but assorted other strongmen, militias, 

and criminals, all of whom have an interest in keeping the central 

government weak and ineffectual. Stopping the flow of opium, and 

the money it generates, is an important part of stabilizing the country.

Aerial eradication is one method proposed to disrupt the opium 

trade. Poppy fields are sprayed with herbicide, killing the plants and 

reducing the resin supply available for processing and resale. The 

plan sounds straightforward but is fraught with obstacles. The United 

States already stumbled on some of these obstacles during a similar 

effort in South Vietnam. There, the targets were food crops, but the 

challenge was similar: to destroy the resources available to insurgents 

with minimal investment of manpower and money.

Proposed aerial eradication in Afghanistan shares some of the 

same challenges the United States encountered when conducting 

eradication operations in South Vietnam. These include a taxing and 

poorly understood environment, chemical herbicides that are potentially damaging to already fragile ecosystems, and the public perceptions of herbicide use. However, the obstacles to aerial eradication in 

Afghanistan are more difficult than those in South Vietnam.1

Afghanistan has been torn by almost 30 years of war. The damage 

has been not only political, but economic and environmental. The 

Soviet Union, in its attempt to conquer the country, waged economic 

war. Soviet policy was to starve the mujahedeen resistance by destroying 
66 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

the country’s agriculture. en, aer the Soviet defeat, the Taliban’s 

“fundamental neglect of economic development” caused further 

damage.2

 e Afghan environment was also badly injured during 

these years. Environmental degradation is a serious problem because 

of Afghanistan’s reliance on agriculture. About 70 percent of Afghans’ 

foodstu and most of the country’s licit gross domestic product 

comes from agriculture despite having only 12 percent arable land.3

Environmental Problems

e two most signicant environmental problems are an enormous 

number of landmines and a pervasive water shortage. e Soviet invaders mined orchards and elds, eectively closing fertile land to cultivation and considerably reducing the amount of arable land.4

 Author 

and international development consultant Joel Hafvenstein noted, 

“Afghanistan as a whole was one of the most heavily mined countries 

on earth. e United Nations guessed it would take a decade just to 

clear the most dangerous areas.”5

 Mine removal has proceeded slowly. 

Many main roads are not yet cleared; rural elds are even less safe. e 

presence of so many landmines sharply reduces not only the amount 

of land available for cultivation, but also the ability of farmers to get 

products to market.

Lack of water also handicaps Afghanistan’s licit agriculture. e 

Soviet war, combined with a devastating multiyear drought, wreaked 

havoc. Many irrigation systems destroyed during the war have not 

been rebuilt. Much of the land is too dry for crops such as cotton and 

wheat. ese stresses on the soil helped start a cycle of desiccation 

and soil loss. Fruit trees that had not been shattered during the war 

died from lack of water, either because of the ruined irrigation systems or because of the drought itself. is die-o, in turn, led to erosion of the remaining soil.6

 For an economy dependent on agriculture, the extent of environmental damage from mines and lack of 

water has been an enormous handicap.

In the midst of these economic and environmental diculties, one 

crop has ourished: the opium poppy (Papaver somniforum). In some 

ways, opium is the best of all environmental and economic crops. Being easy to grow, transport, store, and monetize makes it an attractive 

crop for farmers and buyers. Hafvenstein asks, not entirely rhetorically, “How do you convince a farmer to give up the perfect crop?”7
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 67

is question needs to be answered to eradicate or even signicantly 

reduce the poppy trade in Afghanistan.

Poppy Cultivation

e environment of Afghanistan is very hospitable for poppies, 

making them relatively easy to grow and highly productive. “Afghanistan’s soils, climate, and altitude have also made its poppy cultivation 

more productive than is cultivation in other major opium-producing 

regions.”8

 Poppies do not require much fertile soil or irrigation, which 

makes them well suited for present-day Afghanistan. With so much 

soil o limits because of mines, and the remaining land oen arid, a 

plant that is not particularly nicky can become very attractive.

To grow poppies, farmers need almost no initial investment. Fertilizer may improve yields, but only a supply of seeds is necessary for 

a poppy eld. In contrast, “legal agriculture necessitates substantial 

prenancing, as irrigation and fertilizer are quite costly.”9

 Afghani 

farmers oen cannot aord products such as fertilizer, even if they 

have access to them. Poppies do not require such luxuries and do not 

require much time investment. Fruit trees may require years to produce marketable crops; poppies need just several months, from spring 

planting to fall harvest. Given the uncertainties of life in Afghanistan, 

this is no small advantage.

Labor is the main constraint in poppy cultivation. Labor requirements, however, are not much of a burden. Given the lack of other 

jobs, there is plenty of available labor. Furthermore, because poppies 

are grown at home, women can contribute their labor.10 Women are 

forbidden from working outside of the home under strict interpretations of Islam; poppy cultivation taps into this underused labor pool. 

Harvesting the resin is particularly labor-intensive. Itinerant workers 

score each seedpod individually, and very carefully, to extract all of 

the resin produced by each poppy ower. Once the resin is drawn 

from the poppies, it must be transported to local reneries for transformation into raw opium.

Transporting the resin is easier than transporting other agricultural products. Again, poppies show their suitability for Afghanistan. 

Many agricultural commodities would not survive the trip to market; 

poppy resin is a highly protable exception. e transportation network in Afghanistan is badly frayed. “Eighty percent of Afghanistan’s 
68 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

population lives in rural communities which are only thinly connected by roads.”11 Light, packable poppy resin need not travel over 

the roads. If the roads are impassable, farmers and trackers can 

load resin or raw opium onto all-terrain vehicles or even camels.

ere are few easy ways to get legal products to market, and the 

surcharges levied by those controlling the roads make many crops 

economically unattractive. Opium, however, always has access to the 

market since many people have great interest in getting the resin to 

where it needs to go. us, farmers are better able to monetize their 

crop of opium than, for example, their almonds. Trackers help 

them do this, “occasionally pick[ing] up raw opium directly from 

farmers, relieving them of the need to undertake an expensive trip to 

regional markets on a poor road system.”12

e resin’s durability is an advantage in storage as well. Raw opium 

requires no refrigeration, a major advantage in a country where even 

the capital city does not have reliable electricity. Only about 15 percent 

of the country has access to electricity; the percentage with 24-hour 

refrigeration is smaller still.13

Opium can be stored for many years.14 is durability allows suppliers to manipulate perceptions of availability. Huge stockpiles of 

opium may be little more than legends, but given opium’s durability, 

they are plausible.15

e ease of opium storage changes the economics of poppy production. is durability allows producers, or their agents, to manage 

carefully the amount of resin and opium coming to market to stabilize the price. is is similar to how the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) manages the world oil supply. Hermann 

Kreutzmann, among others, believes that the Taliban’s dramatic cuts 

in Afghan poppy cultivation in 2001, so loudly announced in the 

press, may be an economically rational response to a glut rather than 

a religiously motivated prohibition. Prices quickly rose “tenfold the 

following year,” allowing opium dealers to make substantially more 

money than they would have before the ban.16 Year-by-year trends 

mean little given that the supply coming to market can be carefully 

managed; only steady, multiyear declines might indicate that total 

supply is decreasing.

e ease of growing, transporting, and storing resin does not alone 

make opium attractive. e nal and most important advantage that 

poppies have over other agricultural crops is that they are easy to 

monetize. Resin nds willing buyers; farmers benet economically 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 69

from selling the produce from their poppy elds. Disagreements exist 

about whether farmers are coerced into growing poppies, but even 

analysts who believe that cultivation is largely imposed admit that “at 

the same time, it holds true that poppy is a valuable cash crop which 

oers about ten times higher returns than wheat crops.”17 Furthermore, poppy cultivation is not limited to farmers trying to stave o 

destitution. “Growing poppies is . . . not simply about survival in the 

face of grinding poverty, but also upward mobility.”18 Even more af-

uent farmers nd the returns from poppies attractive.

Debt is another reason why some in Afghanistan grow poppies. e 

ease with which buyers can resell opium gum, the unprocessed harvest of the pods, has entrenched a sharecropping system in Afghanistan. Many farmers do not own their own land; some landlords pay 

well for poppy, and even forbid the growth of other crops.19

A cycle of indebtedness, known as the salaam system, traps even 

more farmers. ey presell their poppy crops before the growing season at below-market prices, receiving money and supplies to sustain 

them through the growth and harvest of a new crop, which the lender 

takes as payment.20 When the lender takes the crop, it can be resold at 

a substantial prot; there are always willing buyers. is structure has 

helped keep many small growers in the poppy business. Having many 

smaller suppliers gives purchasers a good deal more leverage; if one 

farmer balks at a price, plenty of others will agree to it. Many small 

producers mean that few poppy farmers can achieve any kind of 

leverage over the opium producers or exporters.

e bulk of the money does not accrue to the farmers but to the 

reners and trackers. “Narcotics tracking is regarded by some as 

[sic] core impediment to the US mission in Afghanistan, generating 

what US commanders estimate to be about $100 million per year for 

the Taliban.”21 is approximate number does not include money going to other subversives or criminals that are not part of the Taliban.

Aerial Interdiction

e poppy economy is only one aspect of an extremely complicated foreign policy problem for the United States: how to stabilize 

Afghanistan under a benign central government with a limited 

investment of money and manpower. e revenue from opium production ows to the Taliban, other antigovernment groups, and various 
70 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

criminals, all having dierent interests than those of the United 

States. Cutting o this funding source, given the limited US resources 

in Afghanistan, is a dicult problem. One proposal, seemingly 

straightforward, is to kill the poppies. Aerial eradication appears to 

be an attractive solution.

But one also has to consider the demands of a casualty-averse public. 

Aerial eradication ts this consideration. Manual eradication in rural 

Afghanistan is an extremely risky method for drug control. Even Afghanistan’s own soldiers have met resistance. “Predictably, the Afghan government eradication teams that actually attempted to carry 

out their orders, rather than simply accepting bribes, have frequently 

met with armed resistance from peasants, even in the restricted and 

relatively safe areas where they have been deployed.”22 US troops 

would face similar, if not more acute, resistance. Should casualties 

result from these operations, the political fallout could handicap US 

eorts in Afghanistan. Awkward questions about mission creep could 

arise. Even if there were no US casualties, the number of adversarial 

interactions between US troops and Afghani civilians could increase. 

is increase is, presumably, something the United States would 

rather avoid.

Finally, aerial eradication is very easy to explain and publicize. 

Charts and PowerPoint slides showing the number of acres sprayed, 

sorties own, and the gallons of chemical sprayed are clear, persuasive, and reassuring. Pictures of sprayed elds and dead plants seem 

to prove progress in the ght against the Taliban and illegal drugs.

Although aerial eradication might seem a plausible option for reducing the amount of poppy, the decision to spray herbicidal chemicals should be made cautiously. e United States has an unhappy 

history with aerial eradication and counterinsurgency (COIN). In 

early 1962, as part of Operation Ranch Hand, Pres. John F. Kennedy 

authorized the use of chemicals, primarily the arsenical Agent Blue, 

to destroy rice, manioc, and other food crops in South Vietnam.23 e 

rationale for this decision, supported by South Vietnamese president 

Ngo Dinh Diem was that aerial eradication would prevent crops from 

falling into the hands of National Liberation Front soldiers. e 

North Vietnamese forces would thus fail in their eorts to overthrow 

the South Vietnam government, in part because of lack of food.

e United States brought herbicides into South Vietnam in violation of the 1954 Geneva Agreements, which partitioned Vietnam 

along the 17th parallel and forbade foreign intervention in the country’s 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 71

war. e United States did not sign the agreement but pledged to uphold it. Since providing military equipment to either the North or the 

South was prohibited, the United States transported the chemicals in 

anonymous barrels, distinguished only by the colored bands around 

them. e South Vietnamese air force conducted the spraying missions, but the equipment, advisors, and chemicals were all American.

e scheme did not work. North Vietnamese soldiers and allies in 

the South got the food they required to wage war against the Diem 

government. Furthermore, the rural South Vietnamese whose lands 

were sprayed saw their elds die o, losing the produce from those 

elds. Understandably, these people resented the spray campaign.24

e United States was unable to hide its involvement in the operation, despite concerted eorts to do so.25 e perception that the 

United States was making war on Vietnamese peasants was very dif-

cult to counteract. It also undermined the legitimacy of the South 

Vietnam government at a time when that government was increasingly under threat.

Aerial eradication eorts in South Vietnam and in Afghanistan 

have some striking similarities. A sense of control over an unfamiliar 

and dangerous environment may be part of the attraction of an aerial 

spray campaign. ere are signicant environmental challenges to 

aerial spraying in each country—each has climate and weather extremes, and both environments are very dierent from those found 

in the United States. Spraying also entails using herbicides, which are 

powerful chemicals. Finally, in each case, aerial spraying makes up 

only one piece of a complicated COIN puzzle.

e United States has a long history of attempting to control frightening new lands. e Homestead Act of 1862 is the best-known example, 

but historians have documented others beginning from the earliest 

settlements.26 ese eorts have included settlement, forced migrations, and deforestation. e themes of reclamation and cleansing 

pervaded discussions of the South Vietnamese landscape. “Plans call 

for burning over the defoliated areas where they have dried out suf-

ciently. is will drive out any Viet Cong still taking cover there, and 

will facilitate later planned reclamation of much of the area for 

crops.”27 National Security Council member Robert Komer was 

blunter than most: “Aer Laos, and with Berlin on the horizon, we 

cannot aord to go less than all-out in cleaning up South Vietnam.”28

e same is true for Afghanistan. As in South Vietnam, the environmental and logistical challenges t within this larger narrative 
72 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

of American history: taking action to civilize a wilderness. In working with an Afghan ocer on an eradication campaign, a US contractor dismissed claims that it was too late in the growing season 

for eradication.29

Battling the environments in South Vietnam and Afghanistan has 

proved formidable because they are both so extreme and dierent 

from any found in the United States. e United States has no ecosystems like those found in South Vietnam. e US Air Force tested 

its spray equipment at Eglin AFB on the North Florida coast; however, the tropical plants and the extreme heat, rain, and humidity of 

South Vietnam are not found in Florida or anywhere else in the 

United States.

e punishing climate of southern Afghanistan, with blistering 

hot days and freezing nights, is found only in the western US deserts; 

this area does not share Afghanistan’s challenging terrain. One senior 

Defense Department ocial observed that

Getting into Afghanistan, which we need to do as quickly as we can possibly 

do it, is very dicult because . . . next to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably 

the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to 

ght a war. . . . It’s landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, 

much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, dierent geography.30

A more prosaic diculty with spraying in South Vietnam or Afghanistan is the climate’s eects on equipment. In South Vietnam, the US 

Air Force was initially unprepared for the demands of triple-digit 

heat and torrential rains on its spraying equipment. e equipment 

soon malfunctioned under the strain. e climate in Afghanistan, although obviously very dierent, is also wearing. Extremes of heat and 

cold, combined with dust that works its way into all machinery, take 

a toll on aircra and equipment. Furthermore, because Afghanistan 

is landlocked, access to fuel and spare parts is very limited.

Locating poppy elds is not dicult. ey can “[stretch] as far as 

the eye could see: intense fuchsia blossoms in brilliant seas of green.”31

Rice paddies are an almost surreal green; they, too, are easy to spot. 

Precise application of herbicide, however, is considerably more di-

cult than just locating the elds. Temperature, wind patterns, and local 

ecology are only three of the factors that can determine where exactly 

the sprayed chemicals land.32 In the southern United States, a region 

Americans understood better than South Vietnam, controlling forest 

growth through spraying proved almost prohibitively dicult. In 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 73

South Vietnam, the herbicides’ instability became apparent even before they were loaded onto the planes. Fumes from chemicals stored 

at Tan Son Nhut Air Base killed surrounding vegetation, including 

two ame trees. Even empty barrels were unsafe; about 1 percent of 

the chemical remained aer the contents were emptied, and this 

small percentage was enough to kill plants near the barrel.33

Perhaps the most important similarity is that, in each case, aerial 

eradication makes up only part of a larger COIN eort. In addition to 

evaluating the ecacy and practicality of aerial interdiction by itself, 

decision makers had to grapple with how this tactic might aect the 

achievement of broader goals. To complicate matters further, decisions about interdiction competed with decisions not just about other 

COIN tactics, but also with choices about broad COIN strategies—as 

well as with policy decisions in other parts of the world. A decision to 

use aerial herbicides is complicated, but it is only one piece of a 

complex problem, which in turn is embedded in challenges. is 

was true for the United States in South Vietnam and is also true for 

eorts in Afghanistan.

Within this context, aerial eradication can imply a level of US 

commitment that does not exist. Spraying can send misleading messages about what the United States is willing to do. e public images 

of spraying suggest that nothing is o limits. e starkness of sprayed 

rice paddies or a bare eld may imply that the United States is prepared to go as far as needed in its COIN eorts. is was not the case 

in South Vietnam and is not the case in Afghanistan. e illusion that 

these chemicals signify some sort of commitment aects US allies 

and adversaries. One proponent of spraying wrote in the New York 

Times that US allies should “help in [an aerial eradication] eort or 

stand down and let us do the job.”34 Given the self-imposed limits on 

the US eorts in Afghanistan, this stance may lead to a role that the 

United States is not willing to play.

Even a relatively limited commitment may prove dicult. e ostensible goal in both countries is to change the behavior of the local populace through eradication. In South Vietnam, the goal was that rural 

Vietnamese would not supply the insurgents; in Afghanistan, the goal 

is that farmers will not grow poppies. According to some proponents, 

total eradication may not be needed to lead to changes in behavior. 

Douglas Wankel, a former Drug Enforcement Agency ocial who is 

now a private US government contractor, led an eradication campaign in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province. He notes,
74 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

We’re not able to destroy all the poppy—that’s not the point. What we’re trying 

to do is lend an element of threat and risk to the farmers’ calculations, so they 

won’t plant next year. . . . It’s like robbing a bank. If people see there’s more 

money to be had by robbing a bank than by working in one, they’re going to 

rob it, until they learn there’s a price to pay.35

In South Vietnam, the United States was equally condent in predictions about the eects of spraying. At a high-level conference on Vietnam on 23 July 1962,

[Gen Paul D.] Harkins outlined for the conferees the plan developed in Saigon 

and explained that elds abandoned by Montagnards as they moved to strategic 

hamlets needed to be sprayed in order to keep those crops from falling into 

guerrilla hands. . . . e Secretary inquired of Ambassador Nolting as to 

whether crop destruction would cause negative propaganda inside South 

Vietnam. Nolting responded that destroying crops abandoned by Montagnards should cause no problem.36

Nolting was wrong. A later RAND Corporation study indicated 

that defoliation and crop destruction had built widespread and lasting antipathy toward the United States. As far as many rural Vietnamese were concerned, outsiders, who previously did not intervene 

for good or bad, were suddenly deeply involved in their day-to-day 

aairs, determining what and where they could farm. Not surprisingly, many resented this sudden and heavy intrusion. A RAND study 

noted, “e reaction to spraying operations which destroy civilian 

crops is almost unanimously hostile.”37 Aerial spraying did inuence 

the local population but perhaps not always in the direction the United 

States preferred.

e same dynamic may hold true in Afghanistan. Rural South Vietnam and rural Afghanistan have long-standing traditions of local governance and a tenuous, if not hostile, relationship with their national 

government, a relationship that aerial spraying further erodes. Should 

spraying become widespread, many rural farmers, otherwise largely 

disconnected from the capital, would have their most direct contact 

with Kabul and Washington through the spray of a crop duster. is 

has already led to increased hostility toward the US and Afghan governments in sprayed areas.38 Estrangement from the central government provides opportunities for extra-governmental forces to build 

inuence and power. ese local actors have their own agendas, which 

may or may not match those of the Karzai government or the United 

States. Many are also deeply, and very protably, involved in the 

opium trade.39
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 75

Although the national government may be remote to rural dwellers, 

its survival is an important motive for aerial eradication. Internal 

forces threatened Diem’s regime in the early 1960s and the Karzai 

government currently. Crops targeted for eradication fund groups 

that undermine the stability and the very existence of the US-backed 

regime. Depriving the communists and their allies of food was clearly 

in the interest of the Diem government if the communists conquered 

South Vietnam. Pres. Hamid Karzai must cope with insurgencies and 

opponents that receive considerable revenue from the drug trade and 

are working to destroy his government.

Environmental Damage

Environmental damage is another potential consequence of aerial 

eradication. While most ocials in the early 1960s dismissed environmental safety, the issue receives a great deal more attention today. 

However, when discussing eradication in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, the public message is that herbicidal chemicals are perfectly safe. In the case of Vietnam, it is now quite clear that the United 

States sprayed poorly understood chemicals. Despite pronouncements that these agents were safe, insurance companies, environmental activists, and scientists all had questions (and reservations). 

As Rachel Carson warned of widespread damage from defoliants, 

Illinois insurance companies tightened underwriting standards for 

farmers who used these chemicals.40 e academic and corporate 

scientic communities also had persistent concerns.41

In the debate over eradication in Afghanistan, the Bush administration expressed condence that poppies could be killed with no unanticipated environmental consequences. omas Schweich, a senior 

counternarcotics ocial in the administration, dismissed concerns: 

“Drug lords use [glyphosate] in their gardens in Kabul. . . . My assistant at the time was a Georgia farmer, and he told me that his father 

mixed glyphosate with his hands before applying it to their orchards.” 

Others, however, are not so sanguine. Studies indicate that various 

formulations of glyphosate can persist in the soil and have been 

linked to cell damage.42 e impact of glyphosate on an environment 

as degraded as Afghanistan’s can only be guessed.

e eradication dilemma in Afghanistan diers from the one in 

South Vietnam because the situation in Afghanistan is geometrically 
76 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

more complicated. Opium interdiction is a problem aecting US policies regarding not only Afghanistan, but also Pakistan and Iran (two 

major transit points for Afghani opium) and Great Britain, the NATO 

ally responsible for counternarcotics in Afghanistan under the 2001 

Bonn Agreement.43 e phrase “ghting the Taliban” simplies the 

problem to meaninglessness. e Taliban are involved in the drug 

trade, but to what extent has been disputed for years. In addition, 

other people and organizations are proting from illegal opium; some 

are aliated with the Taliban, and some are not.

Karzai’s position in Afghanistan is even more compromised than 

was Diem’s. Karzai has active political opposition; by 1961, Diem had 

neutralized most of his. Karzai’s vulnerability may obviate his willingness to allow aerial spraying. Any negative eects may be blamed 

on his government, weakening it still further. Antigovernment forces, 

in their eorts to show the Karzai government as uncaring and a 

Western puppet, can use consequences that may be tangentially 

linked to spray campaigns. Should there be a bad harvest or another 

drought, opponents might plausibly argue that the United States, 

aided and abetted by the Afghan government, caused it.

e depth of the Karzai family’s involvement in the drug trade also 

poses problems. ere are swirling rumors about the complicity of 

the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, in the illegal drug trade. 

Another brother has substantial investments in property and car 

dealerships in areas rife with illegal drug activity.44 e vast majority 

of Afghan poppy cultivation takes place in the southern provinces, 

especially Helmand, which are the base of Karzai’s support. Spraying 

poisonous chemicals on the elds of his Pashtun countrymen may 

not be a high priority for Karzai.

e United States would have to be visibly and publicly responsible for spraying, unlike in Vietnam. Aerial spraying in Afghanistan 

would have to occur without the comforting ction that it was an 

activity performed and controlled by Afghanistan’s own sovereign 

government. In Vietnam, the United States kept its national ngerprints o of the spraying operations to the greatest extent possible. 

e US Embassy in Saigon, the US Information Agency, and the State 

Department made elaborate plans to deect responsibility for defoliation and crop destruction onto the government of South Vietnam.45

Even this pretence would be impossible in Afghanistan; the US role 

in spraying would be enormous and obvious. is would forestall 

charges of duplicity but make conclusions about meddling and war 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 77

making on the Afghan people quite easy to draw. One author observed that “even if a private company such as DynCorp, which has 

experience spraying in Colombia, carried out such an operation secretly and both the Kabul government and the international community denied any knowledge or authorization, the United States, which 

controls Afghanistan’s air space, would inevitably receive the blame 

as a bully sentencing poor Afghan Muslims to starvation.”46

Instead of evading the Geneva Agreements’ restrictions, as it did 

in South Vietnam, the United States would have to manage its allies’ 

prohibitions on defoliant and herbicide use to undertake an aerial 

eradication program in Afghanistan. is is a big disadvantage, given 

the importance of allied troops in Afghanistan. John Lee Anderson in 

e New Yorker observed, “e Europeans are adamantly opposed [to 

chemical spraying]—just look at the whole genetically-modied-crop 

debate in Europe. If they decided to spray over the next few months, 

we would need to have an information campaign on spraying, telling 

the Afghans they’re not going to have two-headed babies, but also 

telling them so in Europe, in e Hague, and in Rome.”47 e United 

States dropped leaets during Operation Ranch Hand, but there was 

still lasting public relations damage. In the case of spraying poppies, 

public backlash and a reduction or withdrawal of coalition troops 

could hamper the overall eort in Afghanistan.

A saying commonly attributed to the Taliban is, “e Americans 

have watches, but we have time.”48 is may describe the COIN campaign in general, but it is almost certainly true in the case of aerial 

eradication. In South Vietnam, spraying a rice paddy could kill the 

plants and reduce the insurgents’ supply of rice for that season. In 

Afghanistan, the time horizons of a spray campaign, focused on immediate and visible results, versus those of a tracker are very dierent. 

Killing poppies is an ambiguous achievement. Even if an entire eld 

is eradicated, the supply-and-demand dynamics of opiates make this 

almost irrelevant. If the supply of resin goes down materially, then 

middlemen should be able to rebalance the market by processing and 

selling the previously stored product. If the supply of illegal drugs 

declines, then the dominant suppliers and dealers would pick up 

market share at the expense of less powerful ones, as happens in legal 

and illegal industries alike. e rice elds of Vietnam lled a very different economic role, one that did not generate extraordinary revenues 

or prots and did not attract numerous competing buyers or sellers.
78 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

To reduce poppy cultivation in the near and far term will take a 

multiyear eort and have steep environmental costs. Because poppies 

are an annual crop and their resin so easy to store, spray campaigns 

would have to happen every year to kill that year’s crop and force existing stockpiles into the market to meet demand. e repeated application of powerful chemicals could have a serious impact on the Afghan environment, making it even more dicult to replace poppies 

with other crops. In the worst case, as occurred in parts of South Vietnam, the landscape becomes sterilized.49 Under these conditions, crop 

substitution becomes impossible. e damage from herbicides on Afghanistan’s soil, already taxed by decades of war, could be considerable. 

Whatever eects glyphosate or other herbicides might have on elds in 

the southern United States, those eects may not remain the same in 

such a radically dierent, and compromised, environment.

e role of money is the biggest dierence in the cases of Afghanistan and South Vietnam. In Afghanistan, the money the crops generate 

nances crime and corruption throughout the Middle East and 

Central Asia. e targeted crops in South Vietnam were not as valuable, did not have as wide a market, and easily reached consumers. 

Rice required relatively little processing aer harvest, and manioc 

required none. Communist troops could seize harvests, or even 

elds, and gain a food supply that did not require much further eort.

Poppies, on the other hand, do not have much value when still in 

the eld. e real money is made and the largest benets accrue once 

the resin is harvested and rened. Each step in the process adds value 

and generates revenue for the growers, harvesters, or reners. e 

poppies are not moneymakers. ese funds go, if only in part, to fund 

the Taliban.50

e amount of money generated by poppies severely distorts the 

Afghan economy because it makes up so much of the country’s total 

revenue. As Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books described 

the situation: “ere is almost no economic activity in the country, 

aside from international aid and the production of illegal narcotics.”51

To complicate matters further, a signicant percentage of that international aid comes into Afghanistan to ght the illegal drug trade. 

Alternate sources of income would need to make up the shortfall 

from aid reduction as well as from poppy reduction.

Aerial eradication would aect rural citizens before it aected 

nongovernmental organizations. Money is why farmers grow poppies, and for some, the loss of a poppy crop might drive them more 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 79

deeply into debt.52 Gretchen Peters, a journalist who has worked extensively to understand and document the problem, puts it bluntly: 

“Wide-scale spraying would play into the hands of trackers and terrorists. If implemented, this policy would drive up opium prices, thus 

increasing prots for drug dealers and the Taliban, and make life 

even harder for already debt-ridden Afghan farmers—exactly the results the US government and NATO don’t want.”53

All of this is not to say that eradicating the poppies and damming 

the ow of money and illegal drugs are not worthwhile goals. However, depending on how this goal is dened, aerial eradication may 

not be an eective route toward achieving it. e rst question that 

must be asked is what does success look like? is question has 

dogged US eorts in Afghanistan, and not just in the context of 

poppies or spraying.

If the goal is stability, depending on how that word is dened, poppies may help rather than hinder. A certain level of safety and predictability is necessary for economic transactions to occur, whether 

legal or illegal. Hafvenstein implies that poppies may not be the force 

for anarchy they seem to be. “Our target area was Helmand province, 

which was both an oasis of relative calm in the heart of the Taliban 

resistance and the foremost drug-producing region in the country.”

Poppies provide jobs, and jobs foster stability. As a rule, farmers 

are active, vigorous men. Insurgents target farmers who have no 

crops and few job prospects. If the insurgency has a ready supply of 

cash, perhaps from the illegal drug trade, it becomes even more attractive to a disaected and unemployed man. In rural Afghanistan, 

nonagricultural jobs are in short supply. Even in the few urban areas, 

jobs are limited, particularly for the majority of potential workers 

who are illiterate and unskilled.54

It is also unclear what the farmers would do with non-poppy crops. 

In order to monetize them, as they do poppies, they have to sell them. 

Other countries would need to open their markets to agricultural imports, a politically formidable goal given the power of the farm lobbies in the United States and Western Europe. Even getting agricultural crops to market within Afghanistan is a nearly insurmountable 

problem because of the lack of secure roads. Journeys are too dangerous 

and take too long to make economic sense.

Various local militias have taken root along with the poppies, promoting a sort of stability. ere remains a strong bias toward local 

governance, but not because local leaders have political legitimacy or 
80 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

local support. Rather, leaders may gain and hold their positions 

through the buildup of private militias, paid for through drug revenues. Furthermore, these same leaders, because of their inuence, 

may be particularly attractive to foreign intelligence services. An informer among their ranks could prove useful enough to justify, if not 

blindness, some myopia toward the ongoing production and sale of 

illegal drugs.

Aerial eradication is an imperfect solution to a dicult problem. 

e hurdles that the United States encountered in the early 1960s 

during another eradication campaign give some indication of just 

how challenging an Afghanistan campaign might be. In fact, spraying 

the poppy elds in Afghanistan would be an even more complicated 

campaign than crop destruction in South Vietnam.

is is not to say that aerial spraying could not play a role in 

breaking the cycle of indebtedness, unemployment, and violence 

that has taken hold. However, considerations about the appropriateness of spraying would have to include the potential economic 

and environmental eects of a successful campaign, however dened. 

If herbicides further damage the Afghanistan environment and 

farmers are le with even fewer choices of how to support themselves and their families, the results for Afghanistan and the United 

States could be devastating.

Notes

1. Because of the complexity and opaqueness of the illegal drug trade, this chapter 

does not rely on statistics about drug production, pricing, or use. David MacDonald, 

an advisor to the United Nations, rightly warns that “certainly all ocial estimates and 

gures emanating from Afghanistan, right up to the present day and whether collected 

by government or international agencies, are subject to wide variation and should be 

treated with caution.” MacDonald, Drugs in Afghanistan, xxii.

2. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 56.

3. Glaze, Opium and Afghanistan, 2.

4. Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 188.

5. Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 47.

6. Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 149–50.

7. Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 10.

8. Clemens, “Opium in Afghanistan,” 409.

9. Aras and Toktas, “Afghanistan’s Security,” 46.

10. Clemens, “Opium in Afghanistan,” 409.

11. Robichaud, “Buying Time in Afghanistan,” 8.

12. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 57.
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 81

13. Katzman, Afghanistan, 4.

14. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 57.

15. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 237.

16. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 613. Other authors who assert 

this include Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 215; Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 85; and 

Blanchard, Afghanistan, 8.

17. Kreutzmann cites the World Drug Report 2006 (Vienna: United Nations Oce 

on Drugs and Crime, 2006), 212. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 609.

18. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 59.

19. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

20. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 617; and Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

21. Katzman, Afghanistan, 20.

22. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 62.

23. Stellman et al., “Extent and Patterns of Usage,” 682. 

24. Betts and Denton, Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction, xi–xii.

25. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 23.

26. See, for example, Cronon, Changes in the Land; Nye, America as Second Creation; 

and E. Morgan, American Slavery.

27. National Security Files, Countries—Vietnam, Box 203, Subjects—Summary 

of Suggested Courses of Action (1961), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (JFKL).

28. US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 236.

29. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.”

30. Mufson and Pincus, “Major Challenges for Pentagon.”

31. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 2.

32. Burns, “Use of Aircra for Foliar Applications,” 92.

33. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 39; and Stellman et al., “Extent and 

Patterns of Usage,” 685.

34. Schweich, “Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?”

35. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.”

36. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 72.

37. Betts and Denton, “An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction,” 13.

38. Van Ham and Kamminga, “Poppies for Peace,” 72.

39. Giustozzi, “War and Peace Economies,” 82.

40. Carson, Silent Spring, 60–61; and “14th Custom Spray School.” 

41. For examples, see McDermid, ed., Use of Chemicals; and Mullison, “Volatility 

of Several Salts,” 287.

42. Albers et al, “Inuence of Organic Matter”; and Benachour and Séralini, 

“Glyphosate Formulations.”

43. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 8.

44. Katzman, Afghanistan, 10.

45. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 28–29; Telegram #235, Edward Murrow to 

Frederick Nolting, 11 March 1963, National Security Files, Countries, Vietnam, General, 

3/1/62–3/17/63, Box 197, Document 12, 1, 2, JFKL; and Telegram #497 from Rusk to 

Nolting, 14 November 1962, National Security Files, Countries, Vietnam, General, 

11/11/62–11/25/62, Box 197, Doc 1, JFKL.

46. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 63.

47. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.” 
82 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

48. Robichaud, “Buying Time in Afghanistan,” 1. 

49. David Biggs (professor of Southeast Asian and environmental history, University 

of California, Riverside), personal communication, 11 September 2009.

50. Katzman, Afghanistan, 20.

51. Stewart, “Irresistible Illusion,” 3.

52. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

53. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 7.

54. Katzman, Afghanistan, 52.
Chapter 6

Airpower and the Environment

Applications in Developing Countries

Dan Henk

The early twenty-first century marked one of those pivotal times in 

world affairs when relationships between individuals and between 

societies seemed to be in flux. Remote parts of the globe became visible to a worldwide audience, national boundaries posed increasingly 

little obstacle to the flow of information and ideas, and people in 

many societies subscribed to broad new notions of security. The comfortable paradigmata of the past no longer satisfied the yearnings of 

the present and increasingly appeared inadequate to the challenges of 

the future. Human relationships seemed to be changing, and this was 

not the sum of it all. Passions were energized by many contending 

ideas, including those concerning our connection to the cosmos and 

our relationship to the natural environment.

Environmental angst, once a preoccupation of eccentrics and radicals, went “mainstream” to the point of becoming cliché. Yet an increasing worldwide awareness of environmental issues produced little global consensus; the world’s citizens held widely divergent views 

on threats to (or from) the environment, environmental stewardship, 

sustainability, and rights of access to natural resources. By the early 

twenty-first century it was also increasingly evident that the world’s 

climate was changing, partly due to man’s activities, and that the results (while not clearly foreseeable) would likely be more harmful 

than helpful to human life on the planet. These and other environmental topics stimulated intense debates among scholars, policy 

makers, and activists. Almost every “environmental” issue ultimately 

devolved into contentious disagreements over public policy.

As the new century began, the scattered public sector responses to 

environmental challenges begged at least two questions: (1) whether 

or not military establishments could be allocated significant environmental roles without endangering delicate relationships between 

government and civil society or compromising traditional military 
84 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

functions, and (2) whether or not there are meaningful environmentally relevant roles these security establishments could eectively 

play. In the rst decade, neither question was denitively answered by 

existing theory or practice.

is chapter proposes partial answers to the second question. It 

does not delve deeply into the topic of evolving military roles and 

missions. It avoids a treatment of civil-military relations and oers no 

conclusions as to the propriety of employing military institutions in 

pursuit of society’s environmental ends. Instead, it identies some 

roles that militaries could play if asked to do so.

Military establishments are not homogeneous in composition or 

in function. e assessment taken here is much more enlightening if 

focused on the capabilities of particular organizational actors. Hence 

the chapter spotlights the potential role of airpower—and the contribution that a relatively sophisticated air force could make—to environmental ends. Likewise, environmental activities do not occur in a 

vacuum but in particular places. Application of airpower is meaningful only if contextualized to the political realities of a natural and cultural environment. Some of the world’s most trenchant environmental dilemmas—and some of the most hopeful prospects for progress 

on environmental issues—can be found in developing countries in 

southern Africa. at region is the geographic focus for this chapter, 

with the implication that at least some of what is true for southern 

Africa will apply elsewhere (with appropriate contextual adjustment).

Security Sector not Spared

Since the mid 1980s, a substantial worldwide discourse has 

emerged on the security implications of environmental issues.1

 Some 

scholars have challenged the notion that security and the environment should be linked, but those scholars represent a minority view 

that does not generate much current traction.2

 Rather, the world’s 

leaders now recognize that environment plays a role in virtually all 

national and international eorts to promote long-term development, reduce destabilizing want, and attenuate violent conict.3

Security agencies have not been exempt from this international environmental conversation. Many governments have looked to the security sector for some environmentally related activity. National intelligence organizations increasingly are asked to assess the political and 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 85

security implications of environmental trends. Police agencies and 

judiciaries enforce growing bodies of environmental law. Defense 

establishments are held to ever-stricter standards of environmental 

accountability, as are broader international military coalitions. Both 

the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now publish environmental policy guidance for military operations.4

 Some governments have harnessed their militaries 

to environmental ends, as evident in the antipoaching operations of 

countries like Botswana, Brazil, and Mozambique.

What has not emerged to date is any substantial advocacy for the 

targeting of military establishments at wide-ranging environmental 

ends. No military constituency has made a strong public case for its 

greater involvement in environmental issues.5

 With a handful of exceptions, national governments have not assigned prominent environmental roles and missions to armed forces.6

 In fact, it is easy to 

anticipate the complaints of military leaders if their organizations suddenly were saddled with such responsibilities, as well as the complaints 

of environmental activists worried about militarizing the environment.

Yet the fact that militaries have not engaged in sophisticated environmental roles does not suggest that they are incapable of performing them. At various times in human history military establishments 

undertook signicant shis in function and ethos to successfully address the peculiar needs of sovereign or society. Twenty-rst-century 

airmen would do likewise if directed. However, airpower and the 

environment probably do not give an initial impression of signi-

cant overlap. Making the case that they could requires a brief excursion into the nature of airpower and contemporary thinking about 

the environment.

Implications of Airpower

Western military scholarship still respects the dicta of nineteenthcentury Prussian thinker Carl von Clausewitz, and none of his writing is more oen quoted than “war is . . . a true political instrument, 

a continuation of political activity by other means.”7

 In this line of 

reasoning, neither military establishments nor their capabilities are 

ends in themselves, but means to larger political ends. e same is 

true of more narrowly delimited military capabilities like airpower. 

No matter how that capability may be dened, a Clausewitzian paradigm 
86 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

would classify it simply as one among many military capacities employed by a nation-state within a range of policy instruments available to pursue its national interests.

A standardized international denition of airpower is somewhat 

problematic. Each nation maintains a unique inventory of interests 

and parcels military roles and responsibilities rather dierently. Military establishments exhibit distinctive national traditions, structures, 

and doctrine, so a denition is partially dependent on peculiar historical and cultural circumstances. However, a universally acceptable 

and minimalist denition of airpower would identify its one key feature: an ability to use the atmosphere as the peculiar medium in 

which a security-related end is pursued (or the atmosphere as a medium 

that is leveraged to apply a military capacity). Western militaries add 

the dimension of space to the notion of airpower, inferring a concern 

for missiles, satellites, and other space vehicles (and the protection 

from threats posed by such vehicles).8

e notion of airpower itself has certainly not been static, generating a continuing spate of controversies. Aerial reconnaissance of the 

battleeld dates back to manned balloons. But the advent of powered 

ight in the early twentieth century shied the focus to the packaging 

and delivery of coercive power. Early airpower debates centered on 

emphasizing the priorities for delivering that coercion: whether priority should be given to the direct support of ground forces, defense 

from adversary use of the air, or attack on the adversary heartland. 

World War I experiences contributed to erce controversies on these 

issues, propelled by men like Giulio Douhet in Italy, Hugh Trenchard 

in the United Kingdom, and Billy Mitchell in the United States.9

World War II intensied the earlier obsession with delivery of coercive 

power—US airpower ultimately delivered the most lethal technology 

of that era—but also sowed the seeds of other important roles, including strategic aerial reconnaissance and the airli of men and materiel.

ese new airpower roles matured during the Cold War. Delivery 

of coercive power at the tactical, theater, and strategic levels remained 

a key concern, although airmen per se were not always in charge of 

this function.10 In America, and elsewhere, airmen typically bore 

much of the responsibility for protecting the heartland from aerial 

attack, though responsibilities for air defense were scattered among 

ground, air, and sea services. Despite some dispersion of tactical aerial 

surveillance responsibilities, airmen and airpower continue to play a 

large and growing role in surveillance and reconnaissance. For its 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 87

part, strategic surveillance in the developed countries tends to be an 

airpower function shared with—and overseen by—national intelligence services. Short-range tactical air transport (emphasizing rotarywing aircra) is oen a ground forces function, while airmen ying 

xed-wing aircra continue to dominate the longer-range airli and 

continue to control strategic aerial transport, along with the logistics 

and communications to support it.11

Evolving new roles endow airpower with attributes most relevant to 

this discussion. During the Cold War, the worldwide scope of strategic 

attack, strategic li, and strategic surveillance pushed American Airmen to develop broad, global perspectives. In the wake of the Cold 

War, a proliferation of international interventions in complex humanitarian emergencies around the world almost inevitably resorted 

to US strategic airpower. is placed demands not only on the technological and managerial prowess of US Airmen, but also upon their 

ability to work eectively with coalition partners, international humanitarian organizations, and host-nation civil societies.

Along with the interventions by international coalitions in complex humanitarian emergencies came an increasing emphasis on taking care of people—human populations traumatized by violence or 

natural disaster. ose activities included at least some concern for 

conict management along with the provision of materiel for basic 

human needs and delivery of emergency health care. By 2010 the US 

Air Force had developed a well-rened and tested tactical capability 

to quickly install the management of such functions “on the ground” 

through activation and deployment of a contingency response group.

Aer 2001 US involvement in conicts in Iraq and Afghanistan 

brought an expansion of US military roles into activities which may 

loosely be characterized as national reconstruction. Airmen, along 

with other military personnel, were heavily involved with the details 

of local government and civil society, assisting in providing both the 

physical and economic security required to rebuild the shattered lives 

of local communities and reestablishing the capability of security 

forces and the legitimacy of host-nation political authorities. 

America’s Airmen had acquired some responsibility for managing social 

change within civil societies.

Meanwhile, airpower’s location within the dimensions of air and 

space brought some interesting corollaries. By the early twenty-rst 

century, the ability to conduct military operations within these dimensions inferred considerable technological sophistication. e 
88 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

associated equipment was some of the most advanced ever produced. is equipment required intensive education for its operators as well as organizational and individual sophistication in the 

processes of production, elding, and maintenance. Twenty-rst 

century air operations demanded substantial management skill to 

oversee even the most routine activities.12

Airpower in developed nations also required a long-term focus. 

Technology was developed and applied in costly, long-term acquisition 

programs, generating sophisticated equipment which then remained 

in use for decades. Egregious acquisition errors inevitably squandered 

scarce resources and posed substantial security risks. ese factors dictated a clear requirement for higher-ranking airmen to see a future 

with some clarity and manage the risks with some dexterity.

Military leadership, whether in airpower or any other domain of 

military endeavor, heavily focuses on solving problems and overcoming obstacles—typically in circumstances of adversity, ambiguity, and 

intercultural complexity. Such roles demand a capacity to establish 

coherence and order in inherently disordered surroundings, along 

with signicant technological and management capabilities to overcome the problems. But the successful accomplishment of these roles 

also requires prociency in “people skills”: building teams, harmonizing eorts, and motivating diverse individuals and groups to work 

together towards common goals. Because of the unique technological 

demands and the unforgiving lethality of error, airpower demands a 

substantial inventory of all these skills. When brought into nonmilitary activities, the men and women in uniform who managed America’s 

air operations in peace and war generally have proven to be competent leaders, good organizers, and eective technical experts.13

When it comes to airpower per se, the managerial oversight and 

many of the actual operations are similar to other public sector activities. For instance, the same kind of expertise and equipment required for contingency planning and military airli is regularly applied to natural disaster response or to the surge capabilities of 

commercial mail carriers. Strategic air operations require robust, reliable, 

long-range logistics and communications capabilities which have obvious utility for rapid, long-range movement of any commodity. Air 

and space surveillance provides rapid warning of dangerous military 

adversaries but could also be used to track natural environment 

changes. For responsive reporting on atmospheric conditions, some 

air forces maintain their own weather services. In short, airpower 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 89

carries within it the seeds of many nonmilitary public and private 

sector functions.

Airpower’s unique, inherent capabilities also make it in many cases 

the military capability most suited to extending the reach of the state 

and enhancing its capabilities. Particularly in circumstances where 

infrastructure is underdeveloped or deteriorated (an all too common 

characteristic of the developing world), airpower provides national 

leaders with otherwise unequalled options for exible, rapid response 

to the remotest reaches of the state and beyond. In cases of dire national emergency, few institutions can equal a reasonably competent 

and well-equipped air force in supporting the symbolic and redistributive mandates of state power. e qualities required for typical 

roles in military management and leadership, along with the scientic and technical expertise required for eective deployment of airpower, suggest that senior airmen may be uniquely equipped among 

their public sector colleagues to assist in addressing a nation’s environmental priorities.

Dening Environment, Connecting Dots

e discussion earlier noted a lack of global consensus on environmental issues. Diculty in achieving that consensus may be due 

in large part to the loose conceptual boundaries of the domain itself.14 “Environmental” issues comprise an amorphous mass of assorted topics that do not always appear closely connected or even 

inherently related, and the issues elide easily into other domains 

such as health and livelihood. Although the boundaries of the eld 

are ambiguous, it is useful to identify several of the broader categories of environmental concerns before turning to a discussion of 

possible roles for airpower.

Natural resources comprise one area of environmental concern 

and are also subject to substantial controversy. (e resources themselves may range from minerals, to water, to ora and fauna in the 

natural environment, to soils, air, and other natural features.) Here, 

societies exhibit a variety of apprehensions. One is centered on rights 

to access—questions of legitimacy in exploiting the resources and the 

propriety of methods employed in that exploitation. is calls attention to some of the most dicult yet important roles played by political authorities—establishing societal consensus on rights of access 
90 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

to natural resources, achieving transparency and accountability in 

administering those rights, and distributing the associated benets so 

that the issues do not become politically destabilizing. A related question is how to preclude exploitation of natural resources by unauthorized actors. Another relates to conservation and sustainability—how 

to exploit natural resources in a responsible way that avoids, attenuates, or otherwise manages the problem of resource depletion.

An associated environmental concern is “biodiversity”—an interest in preserving and protecting the various forms of life on the 

planet. is is now increasingly based on a conviction that mankind 

is impoverished by the extinction of any form of life and by regret at 

the loss of potential contributions to human well-being. (A smaller 

but vocal ecocentric community argues for the criticality of biodiversity out of a conviction that all forms of life have an equal right to 

coexist with humankind.15) By the mid 1990s, biodiversity had become a mainstream concern within an attentive Western public sensitized to poaching of megafauna in Asia and Africa—with the very 

real prospect that wildlife species like the Siberian tiger and rhinoceros faced imminent extinction.16

Another topic overlapping “natural resources” is the natural environment’s capability to sustain human health and well-being—or to 

threaten it. As noted earlier, overuse depletes resources. e more 

immediate threat is the contamination of air, soils, and water resources which compromises their use for human livelihoods—imperiling human health or menacing food chains upon which humans 

are dependent. African environmental threats, such as drought, 

ooding, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and euence of toxic volcanic gasses, range widely.

Some environmental problems attack human populations directly. 

For instance, the natural environment in tropical zones incubates 

diseases that can take a devastating toll on the life or health of human 

populations, sometimes (as with the hemorrhagic fevers of central 

Africa) appearing with terrifying suddenness and lethality. Such diseases 

can also be quickly borne by human hosts along modern transportation 

routes directly into the population centers of the developed world. 

Some environmental threats emanate from unwise economic development practices, whether these are the toxic chemicals le over 

from mineral extraction, waste from electricity generation plants, or 

soils contaminated beyond use from accumulated salts in poorly 

managed irrigation schemes. Many threats arise from complicated 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 91

interactions of multiple factors, such as the depletion of atmospheric 

ozone and the resulting dangerous increases in ultraviolet radiation 

on the earth’s surface. Some environmental threats are stimulated by 

human activity; others are not.

Climate impacts many other environmental variables, and climate 

change has unsurprisingly become an issue of great concern as well as 

great controversy. In recent years the issue became entangled with 

global political wrangling over causality and responsibility. Greenhouse gasses, thought to be a primary cause, result mainly from the 

combustion of fossil fuels that powers the conveniences and industries of the world. International eorts to contain and reverse that 

combustion had proven relatively ineectual until 2010, but the issue 

had the attention of world leaders and an attentive international public. It was nonetheless apparent that real progress on this issue would 

require painful and politically fraught choices, where long-term benet demanded short and midterm sacrice.

Even a supercial overview of these various environmental domains and issues points to complex interconnectedness. Many of the 

categories signicantly overlap each other and also extend into other 

domains of human endeavor, whether economic development, subsistence, or quality of life. A satisfactory solution to virtually any single environmental dilemma requires a simultaneous resolution of 

problems stemming from the second- and third-order eects of that 

solution. Put another way, real progress in addressing environmental 

concerns almost inherently requires holistic “systems thinking” about 

all the impacted elds along with the capacity to achieve “buy-in” 

across aected communities of human actors. It also requires approaches that do not sacrice the future for the political convenience 

of the present. Here, the unique skills and understandings of military 

leaders may give them an advantage as contributors to the management of a society’s environmental equities. Military leaders (and particularly airmen) have a unique preparation among the professions 

for connecting scientic with technical expertise, people skills, and 

holistic long-range thinking to address problems that are partly 

anchored in the material universe and partly in the world of ideas 

and culture.
92 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

e Southern African Environmental Scene

e thought of Africa conjures up interesting and contrasting environmental stereotypes in the developed West. On one hand, the 

continent enjoys a quaint reputation for the richness of its fauna—

particularly the spectacular megafauna. On the other hand are images of catastrophe, environmental disaster, conict over resources, 

scarcity, disease, and human suering.17

Perhaps two-thirds of Africa’s people depend wholly or in part on 

subsistence agriculture. For populations whose livelihoods—and 

lives—are at the mercy of an unpredictable natural environment, the 

factors of precipitation, soils, predatory insects, and disease loom 

very large. African dependence on subsistence agriculture is compounded by the inadequacies of weak states that oer little safety in 

times of diculty. While the ramications of climate change are debated by scholars and policy makers in developed countries, African 

farmers and herders experience its eects every day, having seen precipitous declines in precipitation in some areas, more frequent 

droughts (with increasing severity), and decreasing predictability of 

weather patterns in general since the mid twentieth century.18 e 

impact of climate change is compounded by (in some respects perhaps caused by) expanding human populations and human activities, 

such as deforestation and the overplanting or overgrazing of marginal land, leading to desertication and decreased carrying capacity 

of the land.19

Subsistence agriculture is by no means the only focus of environmental concern. For millions of residents of Africa’s urban and periurban environments, access to clean air and clean water is problematic at best. Given the limitations of fresh water resources in some 

areas, access to any water may be a signicant problem for some African urban areas in the intermediate future.20 Rapid, uncontrolled 

urbanization has imposed severe challenges on city authorities, 

whose capacity to extend urban sanitation infrastructure into growing squatter communities is almost uniformly limited, resulting in 

heavy use of scarce distribution resources and the inadequate processing of waste. e continent’s escalating deforestation is kindled in 

large part by a demand for charcoal—the only fuel aordable for 

cooking and heating in much of urban Africa. On winter days, African cities oen are enveloped in palls of carcinogenic charcoal smog.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 93

African conict has its own unfortunate connections to Africa’s 

environmental problems. Some of the continent’s conict has been 

stimulated or prolonged by struggles over mineral resources such as 

diamonds and coltan. ese struggles deny environmental benets 

to local societies and empower exploitative and sociopathic warlords 

while encouraging egregious human rights abuses. In regions of 

conict, African states have diculty maintaining control of natural 

resources, including precious minerals and wildlife, resulting in 

wanton and unsustainable exploitation.21 African conict typically 

results in ows of refugees and displaced persons, with concomitant 

fouling of water resources, deforestation, poaching, destruction of 

wildlife habitat, and epidemic human diseases. In some areas, legacies of past conict include huge swaths of rural land seeded with 

chemical contaminants or landmines that continue to kill or maim 

humans and animals.22

Economic development in Africa also has not been kind to the 

environment.23 e emphasis on mineral exploitation since the colonial era has le in its wake the toxic environments of environmentally unfriendly extraction and rening. An expansion of the transportation infrastructure has enabled illegal harvesting and poaching 

of ora and fauna in once inaccessible areas. Like livestock ranchers 

everywhere, African herders are not sympathetic to wildlife that 

competes for grazing and water, preys on their cattle, or transmits 

disease—and they oen use modern technology to eliminate such 

threats, with unfortunate second- and third-order eects for the rest 

of the environment. e fossil fuels that generate electricity for 

growing populations of African consumers tend to be “dirty,” contributing to high levels of unhealthy atmospheric particulates, as do 

mineral and petroleum reneries and other industries weakly restrained by environmental regulations. Particulates enter the air 

from eets of urban vehicles whose exhaust systems go largely unregulated. e environment is further plagued by the all too frequent 

unfortunate accidents—such as contamination of a critically important aquifer in water-poor Botswana by nitrates leaching out of local 

commercial chicken farms.

Africa’s ability to deal with its many environmental problems is 

limited. African leaders—faced with a host of urgent problems and 

pressures from constituents and international actors and constrained 

by woefully inadequate resources—are obliged to make dicult 

choices. Environmental issues are rarely the most immediate and 
94 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

pressing of their concerns, and oen are deferred in favor of more 

urgent priorities. In fact, African leaders and common citizens pay 

attention to environmental issues mainly when these signicantly 

overlap other areas of greater concern such as human health and economic development. en, too, African environmental concerns can 

be signicantly at odds with those of their external partners. Africans 

are skeptical of the agendas of Western environmental activists who 

prioritize conservation and the well-being of wildlife over the wellbeing of people.

Although Africans face dicult environmental dilemmas, they 

have demonstrated a willingness and ability to nd solutions, particularly in the southern region. Several southern African countries 

have made explicit national commitments to the environment in 

published policy statements. e region as a whole (in the form of the 

Southern African Development Community) has committed itself to 

commendable environmental objectives.24 Southern African countries have demonstrated an impressive commitment to work together 

on environmental issues through such initiatives as the three-nation 

Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission or the ambitious Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the latter a 

project to tie the national park systems of ve countries together in 

an enormous human development and environmental conservation 

scheme.25 Of particular interest to this discussion is the fact that several southern African countries have assigned environmental roles to 

their military establishments. While there is currently no regionwide consensus on such roles, a local precedent is rmly established.

Two broad and somewhat overlapping categories dene southern 

African public-sector environmental programs. e broadest is natural 

resources management, which breaks down into several divergent 

streams. A second category may be described as mitigation of threats 

to human health and well-being that emanate from the natural environment, a category that also diverges into a variety of dierent programs and approaches. ese two broad streams are not particularly 

connected in public policy—either at the national level or in the region as a whole. If both categories and all their various divergent 

streams were eectively integrated into a synergistic, overarching environmental program, the region could probably achieve signicant 

eciencies, along with a better capability to partner with internal and 

external allies and a greater eectiveness in pursuing the particulars. 

Regrettably, the present situation lacks that unity of approach.26
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 95

e Regional Embrace of Human Security

By 2010 most southern African countries subscribed to the broad 

new conceptualizations of security generally categorized under the 

rubric of “human security.”27 e term was popularized by the UN in 

the early 1990s and, by the turn of the century, was thoroughly embedded in UN agencies and approaches.28 e UN portrayed its new 

security model as “people-centered” (rather than state-centered); the 

most basic components were freedom from fear and want. e formula consisted of various constituent parts, prominently including 

“environmental security” that protected people from the short- and 

long-term ravages of nature, man-made threats in nature, and deterioration of the natural environment.

e broader denitions of security did not resonate everywhere, 

and some scholars challenged the human security paradigm as a 

whole, while others rejected the notion that the environment and security should be linked.29 Not all the world’s scholars are equally enthusiastic about the government embrace of environmental agendas. 

Some are naturally suspicious of any governmental interest in the environment and are worried that “securitizing environmental issues 

[risks] state co-option, colonization and emptying of the environmental agenda.”30 Such dierences are also evident in arguments over 

the meaning and implications of environmental security, a construct 

that continues to elude a widely accepted denition.31 Early on, African 

scholars supported the new “security” thinking and tended to endorse the broader denition exemplied in the UN conceptualization. As early as the 1990s, human security themes were prominent in 

the thinking of African ocials and academics.32 Interestingly, environment appeared in most of the new African denitions of security, 

either in terms of a human right to a healthful environment or in 

terms of rights by common citizens to environmental resources.33

Initially, the broader models of security le little room for the coercive agencies of the state and seemed to deny security-sector o-

cials any exclusive right to dene the subject. e new thinking questioned the relevance of the traditional military establishments 

themselves. However, a few countries bravely endeavored to adapt 

the broader models of security to military roles and missions. One of 

the most remarkable was post-apartheid South Africa. Aer 1994 

that country made a very concerted eort to realign its military to its 

new national priorities and commitment to human security.34 South 
96 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

Africa’s foundational document for its new military establishment articulated a whole new philosophy of national defense, capturing one 

of the most expansive denitions of security on record and oering a 

clear environmental dimension:

National security is no longer viewed as a predominantly military and police 

problem. It has broadened to incorporate political, economic, social, and environmental matters . . . security is an all-encompassing condition in which 

individual citizens . . . inhabit an environment which is not detrimental to their 

health and well-being [emphasis added].35

e linkages in the South African white paper were not foreign to 

ocials in other African countries. By the twenty-rstcentury, southern Africans had established a conceptual relationship between militaries and environmental security in their region, though they were 

far from a full exploration of its possibilities and a long way from 

unanimous endorsement of the notion of employing militaries in 

such roles.36 However, two southern African countries have pursued 

environmental security through resort to military force, Botswana 

and Mozambique.

By the mid 1980s, Africa’s megafauna were severely threatened, 

particularly elephants and rhinos. Networks of well-armed criminals 

with links to the Persian Gulf and Far East sponsored much of the 

slaughter.37 In Botswana, as in other parts of Africa, commercial 

poachers threatened the wildlife, along with the closely associated 

tourist industry, and assaulted local citizens living near the national 

conservancies. Botswana deployed its defense force into those conservancies in 1987, initiating a successful, long-term eort to halt 

egregious, commercial megafauna poaching. National park protection continues to be an important military mission for Botswana.38

In the mid 1990s, the southern African country of Mozambique 

elected to use part of its military in an environmental security role. 

Here, its navy was recruited into an innovative partnership sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international environmental advocacy group. Within this partnership, the Mozambican 

navy works closely with the Ministry of Fisheries and local civil 

society groups to protect natural resources and enforce environmental law on the country’s inland waterways.39

Two African countries’ successful use of military force in an environmental security role does not validate that usage as a universal 

norm. Nor does it prove that military deployment is the best solution 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 97

to the commercial poaching problem. However, it does suggest that 

African security agencies can play useful environmental securityniche roles in carefully dened circumstances.

Beyond Botswana and Mozambique, in 2010 South Africa was the 

only southern African country with a serious military involvement in 

environmental security. It maintained a small environmental oce 

within its National Defense Force headquarters and was concerned 

with a broad range of environmental issues, although its focus was 

limited almost exclusively to military installations and their immediate environs. South Africa employed its air force in routine coastal 

patrolling to secure its maritime resources, drawing aircra from a 

Cape Town squadron and linking that to coastal law enforcement. 

Just as signicantly, it served as a bridge to military environmental 

activities in other African countries, hosting consultations on environmental issues among military ocials. ese initiatives suggested 

that senior leaders in African militaries were open to possible roles in 

regional environmental initiatives.40

Since the activation of the Africa Union (AU) in 2002, Africans 

have engaged in productive consultations with each other to address 

their regional security dilemmas. ese years have witnessed the initial outlines of a continent-wide security architecture conceived and 

created by Africans, involving a system of regional standby brigades 

for peace support operations and a centralized early-warning crisis 

tracking center.41 is new security architecture potentially can attenuate many security-related problems, including those connected 

to the environment. Many of Africa’s crises have profound environmental ramications, and it is inevitable that any intervention in 

complex humanitarian emergencies deal with at least some environmental aspects of human security.

With the end of the Cold War, Africans engaged with external security 

actors, among them the United States and the EU, in fundamentally 

new ways. One of the novel features of these post–Cold War relationships has been a growing commitment to mutual partnerships intended to reduce instability and insecurity while promoting human 

rights along with sustainable human and economic development. 

African connections with the United States since 2007 have been 

troubled by the activation of a new military command—the US Africa Command—to oversee US security interests in the region. However, despite African suspicion of American intentions, the new US 

military entity is fundamentally oriented towards partnership, coop-
98 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

eration, and multisector/whole of government relationships.42 e 

same is true of the deeper though less visible relationship emerging 

between the AU and the EU.43 While environmental security has not 

been a strong feature of these security partnerships to date, a good 

potential and an excellent forum now exist.

Airpower: A Potentially Useful Contributor

e bottom-line concern here is the role that airpower could play 

in eorts by southern Africans to deal with their environmentally 

related problems and issues. e challenge now is to speculate on 

how all this might tie together, leading to observations on the applicability of airpower at three dierent levels: (1) the technical characteristics of airpower; (2) contemporary airpower roles; and (3) the 

unique skills of airmen.

An argument was oered earlier that airpower provides the state 

with unmatched capacity to extend its physical reach through rapid, 

agile airli. is applies to any state priority, including reaction to 

environmentally related crises. Perhaps just as important is the potential of modern airpower to provide state authorities with timely 

all-source surveillance. Currently elded technology allows aircra—

both manned and unmanned—to collect information from radar, 

video imagery, and electronic signals.

At least one southern African country—Botswana—uses airpower 

in combined-arms military operations against armed criminals targeting its wildlife resources. In this case, airpower provides both tactical surveillance and airli. While these technical capabilities of airpower are applicable to environmentally related national and regional 

issues, their full potential has not been maximized anywhere (including southern Africa). For instance, space-based sensors could be particularly useful in providing analysts and policy makers with timely 

environmental information. It is not hard to envision air force analysts charged with responsibilities for collecting, analyzing, and reporting that kind of information.

Existing airpower missions hold the seeds of potential environmental roles. One of the most obvious is the airpower obsession with 

weather—environmental factors that impact the safety and capacity 

of aerial vehicles. e same military expertise that tracks weather 

conditions for ight could facilitate similar weather-related roles: 

providing warning of dangerous weather conditions, tracking longer-
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 99

range environmental trends for policy makers, and assessing impacts 

of weather phenomena on human safety, human livelihoods, and 

national infrastructure. Airpower also oers prospects for employing 

technology such as satellites and manned or remotely piloted aircra 

to conduct scientic surveillance of the environment, ranging from 

measuring atmospheric particulates and ambient radiation to tracking levels of desertication and deforestation.

e contemporary connection of military airpower to human 

need (to address complex humanitarian emergencies) also has implications for helping human populations cope with environmental 

threats. For instance, air forces now routinely deliver medical care to 

populations traumatized by deadly epidemic disease. It is not dicult 

to picture air force analysts following trends in human and livestock 

disease (typically having climatological ramications) and advising on 

quick responses to disease outbreaks. e same may be true of similar 

environmental threats, such as crop disease and damaging insects.

e technological characteristics of airpower oer potential environmental applications, but the most important contribution may be 

a purely human factor—the capabilities of airmen themselves. Given 

the ambiguous, interrelated, and complex nature of environmental 

issues, the capacity of the nation-state to address them requires analysts and planners that think scientically, holistically, and longrange. ose managing these eorts must establish priorities and 

chart a clear path to identied ends. Contemporary military leaders 

excel at these roles. Most military education now emphasizes problem analysis and eective planning, and the military profession has a 

well-deserved reputation for skills in these areas.

Airmen bring both a particular depth in harnessing sophisticated 

technology to a wide range of requirements and a profound institutional understanding of the man-machine interface. Since airmen 

must understand both the science of the technology they use and the 

natural environment (particularly the atmosphere) in which it is 

used, they are uniquely suited among the military services to connect the dots between the development of environmental policy, the 

planning for its implementation, and at least some of the implementing programs.
100 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

A Partnership Angle

Military leaders in southern Africa and elsewhere are unlikely advocates for expanded environmentally related roles, and neither they nor 

the policy makers they serve are inclined to endow military establishments with primary responsibility for environmental issues in the near 

future. Military involvement in a society’s environmental equities, if 

any, will probably always involve a subordinate and supporting role to 

other government and civil society actors. However, military personnel 

and military technology could make important contributions in a variety of such roles, whether in data collection and analysis, provision of 

logistic support to other state and civil society actors, natural disaster 

and health threat mitigation, or strategic and operational planning. e 

state should also require military organizations to model environmental stewardship and assure that military planning deliberately considers 

environmental factors in all operations. is is as true for airpower as 

for any other military engagement.

e environment is important in its own right, but it also is a logical candidate for transnational partnerships and relationship building. Many environmental problems are regional and transnational 

and can serve eectively as relatively benign “bridging issues” (similar to coal and transportation infrastructure in post–World War II 

Europe), connecting partners that are signicantly at odds with each 

other over other concerns. is is true within southern Africa and 

true between southern Africans and external parties.44 Southern Africans should be most receptive to such partnerships if the ultimate 

mutual objective is enhanced human security. Cooperation to mitigate environmental threats and promote health, well-being, and economic development will resonate with Africans. A narrow, exclusive 

focus on biodiversity (e.g., protecting wildlife) probably will not.

Southern Africans may elect to task their militaries with substantially greater environmental roles, but it is unlikely they will do so 

without encouragement, resourcing, and perhaps some modeling 

from external military partners. As discussed in the unique airpower 

roles, that probably would include at a minimum oers of education 

and training specically targeted at environmental management, 

environmental analysis, and use of technology for collection of scientic information.

e relationship could conceivably involve far more. If the AU 

implements its ambitious vision of a robust continental security in-
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 101

frastructure, including a crisis tracking center, environmental security should take its rightful place among the other components of 

human security—and environmental threats could be as carefully 

monitored as any other menace to human well-being. is may particularly be a domain in which EU countries could oer resources 

and expertise. It may also be an opportunity for both developed 

Western countries and their African partners to think about the use 

of military human and technical resources to address the burgeoning 

environmental threats of the twenty-rst century.

e time is ripe for the kinds of partnerships that could make 

southern Africa a showcase of international cooperation on issues of 

environmental security, with enormous potential benets to Africans 

and to humanity as a whole. If airmen and airpower were asked to 

play a productive part, they could make a signicant contribution.

Notes

1. Ullman, “Redening Security,” 129–53; Matthews, “Redening Security,” 162–

77; Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 76–116; Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcity and Global Security, 5–40; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity and Violence; 

Homer-Dixon and Blitt, Ecoviolence; akur, “United Nations and Human Security,” 52; 

Kaplan, “Coming Anarchy,” 44–77; Stoet, Human and Global Security; HomerDixon, “Debating Violent Environments,” 89–96; and Brauer, War and Nature.

2. Dalby, “Contesting an Essential Concept,” 3–32; Levy, “Is the Environment a 

National Security Issue?” 35–62; Kakonen, Green Security; Deudney, “Case against 

Linking Environmental Degradation,” 461–76; and Deudney, “Environment and 

Security,” 23–28. For a useful overview of contemporary approaches to environment and security, see Brown, “Environment and Peace,” 3. For interesting discussions 

of the controversies surrounding the concept of environmental security, see Foster, “Environmental Security,” 373–95; and Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology,” 95–134.

3. As an example, note the assertion of former UN secretary general Ko Annan 

that “our eorts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain 

if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated,” 

quoted in Dodds and Pippard, Human and Environmental Security, xvi.

4. United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, “Environmental 

Policy for UN Field Missions”; and NATO STANAG 7141. 

5. A case has been made by others. Singh, “Role of the Military”; Henk, Botswana 

Defence Force; and Mosher et al., “Green Warriors.”

6. It is important to note that some military establishments have assumed signicant environmental responsibilities, perhaps best exemplied by the US Army 

Corps of Engineers, which historically has been heavily involved in domestic US 

river basin and wetland management, applying that expertise on a limited basis in 

contingency operations overseas. Note also that the US Army Environmental Policy 

Institute was created to assist Army leadership in policy formulation and implemen-
102 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

tation related to the environment. However, military involvements in environmental 

issues almost inevitably are limited and typically focused on one environmental domain while neither holistic nor comprehensive.

7. Clausewitz, On War, 87.

8. A useful discussion is oered by Lambeth, Transformation of American Airpower, 233–59. e publication is a RAND Corporation study, suggesting a close 

connection to the thinking of senior US Air Force thinkers and leaders.

9. For Douhet’s ideas, see Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 71–105. For Trenchard, 

see Meilinger, “Trenchard and Morale Bombing,” 243–70. For Mitchell, see Clodfelter, 

“Molding Airpower Convictions,” 79–114. For current implications, see Lambeth, 

Transformation of American Airpower, 260–96.

10. For example, attack on the adversary’s heartland from the air tended to be the 

unique prerogative of airmen until the advent of strategic missiles. At that point, 

America’s newly independent Air Force assumed this role without much controversy, while the Soviet Union opted to create an entirely new ground-based service 

(the Strategic Rocket Forces) to conduct intercontinental attack from space.

11. An interesting overview of the evolution of these airpower roles is provided 

by Mets, Reections of a Middling Cold Warrior.

12. Organizing and supervising a space vehicle launch were epitomes of this expertise. Yet the normal air operations of ight planning and air trac control, oen taken for 

granted by common citizens enjoying the benets, were no activities for amateurs.

13. In the late 1950s, the eminent Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington 

made a compelling case for regarding military ocership as a profession in the 

United States. According to the model he oered, a profession required (among 

other attributes) a unique expertise gained through intensive, specialized education. 

He argued that the professional expertise of the military ocer was “the management of violence” on behalf of the state. Not surprisingly, Huntington’s model became quite popular with military professionals, but by the early twenty-rst century 

the conclusions he reached in the 1950s no longer did full justice to the expertise he 

had sought to describe. Had Huntington written his book in 2010 he might well have 

described the unique expertise of the military ocer as simply “management,” or 

even better, “leadership.” Huntington, Soldier and the State.

14. For commentary on domain boundaries, see Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 88; Sills et al., Environmental Security, xi; Speth, Red Sky at Morning, 30–33; and 

Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 100.

15. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 99–100.

16. Blaike, Blaike, and Blaike, “Elephants, People, Parks and Development,” 735–51; 

Martin, “Yemeni Rhino Horn Trade,” 13–16; Martin, “Report on the Trade in Rhino 

Products,” 13–20; Vigne and Martin, “Taiwan,” 23–25; Western, “Undetected Trade 

in Rhino Horn,” 26–28; Barbier et al., Elephants, Economics and Ivory; Balfour and 

Balfour, Rhino; Douglas-Hamilton and Douglas-Hamilton, Battle for the Elephants; 

Leader-Williams, World Trade in Rhino Horn; Bonner, At the Hand of Man; Ricciuti, 

“Elephant Wars,” 14–35; Ellis, “Of Elephants and Men,” 53–69; Sas-Rolfes, Rhinos; 

and du Bois, “Illegal Trade in Endangered Species,” 28–41.

17. Regrettably, a half century of dramatic population growth, urbanization, and 

economic development, as well as the devastations of armed conict, has severely 

threatened Africa’s once rich wildlife. Biodiversity is far from the most signicant 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 103

environmental issue in the minds of either most African citizens or their political 

leaders. For the issues of global economic disaster (including African implications), 

see Kaplan, “Coming Anarchy,” 44–77; Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 76–116; 

Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcity and Global Security; “Environmental Scarcities 

and Violent Conict,” 5–40; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity and Violence; 

Homer-Dixon, “Debating Violent Environments,” 89–96; Homer-Dixon and Blitt, 

Ecoviolence; Bannon and Collier, Natural Resources and Violent Conict; Berdal and 

Malone, Greed and Grievance; Kansteiner and Morrison, Rising U.S. Stakes in Africa, 

88–103; and Lake et al., More than Humanitarianism, 28–76.

18. Ackerman, “Most Vulnerable Continent,” 141–66. For the southern African 

region, see Tyson, “Climatic Change in Southern Africa,” 241–58; Chenje and Johnson, 

State of the Environment in Southern Africa; and Tsheko, “Rainfall Reliability.”

19. Burgess, “Environment and Human Security,” 36–41.

20. Schwartz and Singh, Environmental Conditions; Godschalk, “Waging War 

over Water,” 110–33; Klare, Resource Wars; and Swatuk, “Environmental Cooperation in Southern Africa,” 143–45.

21. Feleke, “From Greed to Grievance,” 185–99; and Smilie, Gberie, and Hazleton, 

Heart of the Matter.

22. A useful overview is provided in Austin and Brunch, Environmental Consequences of War. For another broad overview that touches on many of the issues, see 

Purkitt, African Environmental and Human Security.

23. For fascinating insights by an African scholar who has paid a high personal 

price for his courage in calling attention to these issues, see Turton, “Resource Allocation and Xenophobic Violence,” 111–23.

24. Esty et al., 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index; South African Department of Environmental Aairs and Tourism, “Overview of Integrated Environmental Management”; Republic of Botswana, Vision 2016, 6–7; Southern African Development Community; and Swatuk, “Power and Water,” 210–47.

25. For an excellent overview of southern African cooperation on river basin 

development and conservation, see Turton, Ashton and Cloete, eds., Transboundary 

Rivers. For historical detail on the Permanent Okavango River Basin Commission, 

see Pinheiro, Gabaake, and Heyns, “Cooperation in the Okavango River Basin,” 105–18. 

For a description of the Kavango-Zambezi initiative, see Henk, “Human and Environmental Security in Southern Africa.”

26. For a more detailed discussion of the southern African environmental scene, 

see Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 98–117.

27. For a brief overview of the debate, see Matthews, “Redening Security,” 162–77; 

Baldwin, “Concept of Security,” 5–26; Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde, Security; Smith, 

“Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies,” 72–101; Zacarias, “Redening Security,” 

31–52; and Cilliers, Human Security in Africa.

28. Human Development Report, 1993; and Human Development Report, 1994.

29. Deudney, “Case against Linking Environmental Degradation,” 461–76; 

Deudney, “Environment and Security,” 23–28; Kakonen, Green Security; Levy, “Is the 

Environment a National Security Issue?” 35–62; and Dalby, “Contesting an Essential 

Concept,” 3–32.

30. Barnett, Meaning of Environmental Security, 157; and Dalby, Environmental 

Security.
104 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

31. Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology,” 95–134; Foster, “Environmental Security,” 373–95; and Swatuk, “Environmental Security,” 203–36. 

32. Solomon and van Aardt, eds., Caring Security in Africa; Swatuk and Vale, 

“Why Democracy Is Not Enough,” 361–89; Muloongo, Kibasomba, and Kariri, Many 

Faces of Human Security; and Hendricks, From State Security to Human Security.

33. Okoth, “New East African Community,”158–59. Two years before the UN 

endorsed “human security,” the celebrated Kampala Document published by the African Leadership Forum (and supported by the Organization of African Unity and 

the United Nations) oered a denition of security very close to the later UN conceptualization. Kampala Document, 9. By the early twenty-rst century, African 

scholars in seven nongovernmental research organizations across the continent had 

come together to form the African Human Security Initiative with a specic agenda 

of measuring the performance of African governments in promoting human security, insisting on accountability to human security principles (www.africanreview.

org). By that point, the new African Union had agreed on a Common African Defence and Security Policy with a particularly nuanced and robust articulation of its 

human security foundations. See Cilliers, Human Security in Africa.

34. Ferreira and Henk, “ ‘Operationalizing’ Human Security,” 501–25; and R. Williams, 

“Defence in a Democracy,” 205–23.

35. South African White Paper, 1.

36. African militaries in general have a relatively unsavory reputation in Africa, in 

many cases well deserved. is reputation undermines eective communication 

within African public sectors and compromises the willingness of ocials outside 

the security sector to communicate with their military counterparts. For further discussion of these issues, see Howe, Ambiguous Order, 27–72.

37. Blaike, Blaike, and Blaike, “Elephants, People, Parks and Development,” 735–

51; Martin, “Yemeni Rhino Horn Trade”; Martin, “Report on the Trade in Rhino 

Products”; Vigne and Martin, “Taiwan”; Western, “Undetected Trade in Rhino 

Horn”; Barbier et al., Elephants, Economics and Ivory; Balfour and Balfour, Rhino; 

Douglas-Hamilton and Douglas-Hamilton, Battle for the Elephants; Leader-Williams, 

World Trade in Rhino Horn; Bonner, At the Hand of Man; Ricciuti, “Elephant Wars,” 

14–35; Ellis, “Of Elephants and Men,” 53–69; Sas-Rolfes, Rhinos; and du Bois, “Illegal 

Trade in Endangered Species.”

38. Henk, “Botswana Defence Force,” 170–91; Henk, “Biodiversity and the Military”; and Henk, Botswana Defense Force.

39. “Strategic Partnership.” For additional details, see http://wwf.panda.org

/who_we_are/wwf_oces/mozambique/.

40. omas Schultheis (US European Command environmental ocer, StuttgartVaihingen, Germany), personal communication with author, 24 February 2005; Lt 

Col Brian P. Smith (US Air Force, chief of the Oce of Defense Cooperation), interview by the author, 11 June 2005, Pretoria, South Africa; and Col Seakle Godschalk 

(director of the Environmental Oce in the Headquarters, South African National 

Defence Force), communications with the author, 2004–2006, Pretoria, South Africa. 

See also Godschalk, “Protecting Our Environment,” 24–27.

41. Cilliers, African Standby Force. 

42. “Symposium,” 1–99; and Ploch, Africa Command. For some African concerns, see Malan, “AFRICOM.”
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 105

43. For illustrative detail, see e Africa-EU Strategy Partnership; and Toth, “Historical Duty or Pragmatic Interest?”

44. For the European analogy, see Haas, Beyond the Nation-State. Signicantly, at 

a time when military-to-military relations between the United States and two countries in southern Africa were fraught by political disagreement, amicable military 

cooperation and communication continued over issues of the environment. Henk, 

“Environment, the US Military,” 107–10.

Chapter 7

Airpower and Collateral Damage

Theory, Practice, and Challenges

Phillip S. Meilinger

One of modern history’s scandalous myths is that countries at war 

attempt to limit casualties among civilians. Although true for some 

countries in some circumstances, the past century clearly demonstrates that huge numbers of civilians were killed in war. At times, this 

slaughter was deliberate and a matter of government policy. The genocidal policies of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong come readily to mind.

In addition, one expert on war casualties states that “technology” 

killed 46 million civilians during twentieth century wars. Of these, 24 

million were killed by small arms, 18 million by artillery and naval 

gunfire, three million as a result of “demographic violence,” and a 

further one million due to air attack. He noted that the figure of one 

million dead from air attack might be higher, but certainly less than 

two million.1

 Despite this relatively low figure for the number killed 

due to air attack, airpower acquired a questionable reputation that 

lingered for years. Often, air bombardment was associated with the 

city attacks of World War II—Dresden, Tokyo, and Hiroshima. Horrible as these incidents were, the numbers dying due to air attacks 

were a small percentage of the total number of noncombatants killed 

throughout the war (around 5 percent). Moreover, since World War 

II the numbers killed by air strikes have declined dramatically. The 

conflicts of the past two decades have demonstrated a new capability 

to fight effectively with airpower while at the same time limiting risk 

to those on the ground.

This chapter focuses on four areas: (1) the theory of air warfare as it 

applies to collateral damage; (2) the practice of airpower, which at first 

did not live up to the promises of the theorists, but whose effectiveness 

increased dramatically with the use of precision-guided munitions; 

(3) current perceptions of airpower; and (4) challenges ahead.

Air warfare over the past three-plus decades has significantly lowered collateral damage. The increasing use of precision weapons and 
108 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

improvements in intelligence gathering tools have made it easier to 

discriminate between military and civilian targets and to strike only 

those of a military nature. Moreover, this capability greatly reduces 

the attacker’s risk. Modern air warfare reduces casualties among both 

the attackers and the attacked, making it an increasingly ecient, effective, and humane tool of US foreign policy. Unfortunately, ground 

war remains extremely deadly, and the use of weapons such as landmines and cluster munitions continues to exact a high toll on civilians. International law, ostensibly designed to limit the suering of 

civilian noncombatants in war, falls short in important areas. Deadly 

activities and weapons—largely policy weapons such as sieges and 

economic sanctions—continue to kill civilians and cause untold suffering. ese horric weapons should now become our focus.

e eory

e Law of Armed Conict governs whether or not a war is just as 

well as what actions are permissible in it. Some laws have been agreed 

to by international treaty, as in the Geneva conventions of 1949. In 

the absence of codied law, nations turn to customary usage or the 

just war tradition that has developed over several centuries and has, 

seemingly, consistently stressed the immunity of noncombatants.2

e inauguration of balloon ight during the nineteenth century 

presented potentially new dangers to civilians, so in 1899 delegates 

from 26 nations met at e Hague to discuss limitations on the use of 

airships as weapons. Attendees agreed to a prohibition on the dropping of explosives from balloons to remain in eect for ve years. 

When the stricture lapsed in 1904, an attempt was made to reinstate 

it. e prohibition was not renewed since only Britain and the United 

States supported an extension.3

 is was the only international attempt to limit air war prior to 1914. World War I saw strategic bombing conducted by all major belligerents. ese attacks were highly 

inaccurate due to the primitive navigation and bombing equipment 

of the day.4

 Even so, bombing claimed only a small number of noncombatants—1,413 dead in Britain and perhaps a few thousand more 

scattered throughout the rest of Europe.5

In contrast, nearly 15 million died in the war, and this carnage had 

a profound impact on survivors. Aer the armistice the great powers 

began discussing disarmament, and a commission of jurists met at 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 109

e Hague in 1922–23 to draw up guidelines for regulating air warfare. Rules were draed, but political and military leaders rejected the 

restrictive and impractical language. As a result, no country ratied 

the treaty.6

 More talks at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 

1932 also proved fruitless.7

As war approached in 1938, the League of Nations passed a nonbinding resolution prohibiting the intentional bombing of civilian 

populations, bombing of other than military objectives, and attacks 

that negligently imperiled the civilian population.8

 is was a meager 

eort, and in 1938 British jurist J. M. Spaight wrote, “e law of bombardment is very far from being clear. . . . It is indeed in a state of 

baing chaos and confusion that makes it almost impossible to say 

what in any situation the rule really is. . . . From one point of view one 

might say, indeed, that there is no law at all, for air bombardment.”9

Military commanders attempted to modify the existing rules regarding war on land and sea but were not successful. For example, 

armies could bombard a defended fortress even if it contained civilians—Atlanta in 1864, Paris in 1871, Alexandria in 1882, and Port 

Arthur in 1904. Using these precedents, Airmen later reasoned that 

when Allied bombers ew over German-occupied Europe and were 

shot at by tens of thousands of antiaircra guns and intercepted by 

hundreds of enemy ghters, all of Nazi-occupied Europe was, in eect, 

a “defended fortress.” Of greater relevance (and confusion), international law permitted navies to shell undefended fortresses and cities 

to destroy the military stores and facilities—Canton in 1856, Tripoli 

in 1911, Beirut in 1912, and German coastal raids against England in 

1914 and 1916. Sailors were given wider latitude in shelling civilians 

because navies could not occupy a port as an army could. Aircra, 

like ships, could not occupy a city, defended or otherwise, so the permissive rules of sea warfare were more applicable to air war.10 Debates 

continued, but limitation attempts failed because the airplane oered 

an escape from the hecatomb of the world war. No one wished to return to the trenches, so military and civilian leaders were reluctant to 

emasculate a weapon oering relief from that nightmare.

Political and military leaders’ ambivalence in addressing the legal 

issues regarding air warfare was also present among those devising a 

doctrine for employing the new weapon that oered both great hope 

and great uncertainties. eorists and practitioners believed the airplane revolutionized warfare by allowing dierent strategies, doctrine, and organization. Novelists such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells 
110 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

imagined aerial navies raining bombs and terror on urban populations, causing panic and pressure for peace. Some early military theorists took a similar approach. Italian general Giulio Douhet described 

airpower’s destructive potential and paradoxical peaceful intent in 

terms that echoed the dire predictions of the novelists:

Who could keep all those lost, panic-stricken people from eeing to the open 

countryside to escape this terror from the air? A complete breakdown of the 

social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of 

merciless pounding from the air. e time would soon come when, to put an 

end to horror and suering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of 

self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war—before their 

army and navy had time to mobilize at all!11

Air leaders in Britain and the United States rejected such apocalyptic visions and instead argued that airpower would shorten wars 

and make them less bloody. ey theorized that it was possible, in 

principle, to shoot the gun out of the enemy’s hand—to disarm by 

disrupting the enemy’s industrial war production.

e British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the US Army Air Forces 

(USAAF) entered World War II with doctrines stressing precision 

bombing of enemy industrial centers. e RAF operations manual 

stated that the civilian populace was not, as such, a legitimate target. 

Area bombing was rejected—“all air bombardment aims to hit a particular target,” and in every case “the bombing crew must be given an 

exact target and it must be impressed upon them that it is their task 

to hit and cause material damage to that target.”12 In August 1939, the 

month before Germany invaded Poland, the chief of the Air Sta 

(CAS) sent a message to the head of Bomber Command stating RAF 

policy in clear terms: “we should not initiate air action against other 

than purely military objectives in the narrowest sense of the word, 

i.e., Navy, Army and Air Forces and establishments, and that as far as 

possible we should conne it to objectives on which attack will not 

involve loss of civil life.”13 During the campaign in France the following 

year, the CAS reiterated this policy in a message to RAF commanders—

the intentional bombing of civilian populations was illegal; commanders should identify objectives struck in advance; attacks must 

be made with “reasonable care” to avoid undue loss of civilian lives; 

and the provisions of international law must be observed.14 War’s realities would soon put these idealistic goals to the test.

Bombing doctrine in the United States was similar. Ocers at the 

Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, believed that a 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 111

country’s economy was complex but fragile. Key nodes within that 

economy—the transportation system or specic factories that manufactured crucial industrial components—were disproportionately vital 

to smooth operation. If this “industrial web” were disrupted, the entire system would suer debilitating shock waves.15 e USAAF war 

doctrine manual listed several potential target systems: raw materials, 

rail and motor transport, power plants, factories, steel mills, oil reneries, and other similar establishments. ere was no mention of targeting population centers or popular will.16 As in Britain, Douhet’s 

city-busting theories were rejected for a focus on the industrial infrastructure that made a nation’s war economy operate.

Although humane standards were important, military eciency 

also played a role. An enemy country contained thousands of potential targets—things of value or of importance—but only nite numbers 

of bombs, planes, and crews were available. Which targets were more 

vital than others? Prioritization was necessary to separate the critical 

from the trivial, and industrial strength seemed a logical top candidate.

In addition, airpower strategists in Britain and the United States 

believed that the precision bombing of military targets would not 

only disrupt the war economy, but would cause revulsion among the 

populace who would then clamor for peace. In other words, an air 

war was so potent that it would deter war, but if war broke out, it 

would be over quickly, and the number of people killed would be 

fairly small—especially as compared to the 15 million that died in the 

Great War. Airpower would humanize war.17

Although this notion seems peculiar today, such thinking underpins the nuclear deterrence doctrine operating since the early 1950s. 

Nuclear war would be so awful as to be unthinkable; therefore, it will 

not occur (that is, as long as one is prepared to wage it). It was no 

coincidence that the motto of the Strategic Air Command—the custodian of US nuclear-armed bombers and missiles throughout the 

Cold War—was Peace Is Our Profession. e nuclear deterrent posture, backed by thousands of nuclear weapons among a number of 

countries, remains in place today.

e Practice

World War II proved to be far dierent than predicted. Airpower 

did not deter armed conict as had been hoped—although neither 
112 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

did land power, sea power, or the policy of appeasement. Nor did 

airpower ensure a short war, although it did make the war shorter—

especially in the Pacic.

Germany had bombed urban centers in the Spanish Civil War 

(Guernica) and in the opening stages of World War II (Warsaw and 

Rotterdam). In 1940 it was England’s turn. In the summer of 1940 

Hitler gleefully predicted to Albert Speer:

Have you ever seen a map of London? It is so densely built that one re alone 

would be enough to destroy the whole city, just as it did over two hundred years 

ago. Göring will start res all over London, res everywhere, with countless 

incendiary bombs of an entirely new type: thousands of res. ey will unite in 

one huge blaze over the whole area. Göring has the right idea: high explosives 

don’t work, but we can do it with incendiaries; we can destroy London completely. What will their remen be able to do once it’s really burning?18

France’s fall in June 1940 le Britain alone against Germany, and 

the ensuing blitz against British cities le the country reeling. Tens of 

thousands of civilians died under German bombs, but surrender was 

unthinkable. Yet, Britain could not retaliate with its army—that had 

been thrown o the continent at Dunkirk—or with an overstretched 

navy ghting for its life against German submarines and land-based 

aircra. e only hope of hitting back at Germany and eventually 

winning the war lay with Bomber Command, but operations quickly 

demonstrated that prewar doctrine had been unrealistic. British 

bombers were too small, too slow, too vulnerable, and too few. German ghters and antiaircra guns decimated the attackers, so Bomber 

Command retreated to the safety of night, something for which it was 

neither trained nor equipped. (e Luwae also suered problems 

when bombing Britain in daylight, so the blitz was carried out at 

night.) Worse, dismal winter weather adversely aected navigation, 

target acquisition, and bombing accuracy. e Butt Report of 1941 

revealed that only 33 percent of bombs dropped during British night 

attacks fell within ve miles of the intended targets; strike accuracy 

on moonless nights was even more inaccurate.19 Although Britain’s 

intent was precision bombing, in practice, it became area bombing. 

Aircrew survival dictated night area attacks, and there was little alternative other than not to attack at all.20 Moral constraints bowed to 

military necessity, and this led air leaders down a precarious path.

By early 1942 the RAF’s night oensive was targeting German cities, 

partly out of frustration over abysmal bombing accuracy and partly 

in retaliation for similar attacks on British cities by the Luwae. e 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 113

November 1940 German raid on Coventry had been a turning 

point—Prime Minister Winston Churchill then directed the RAF to 

aim for city centers on missions over Germany. “Our plans are to 

bomb, burn, and ruthlessly destroy in every way available to us the 

people responsible for creating this war,” Churchill said.21 Air Marshal 

Arthur Harris, who took over Bomber Command in February 1942, 

agreed with his civilian superiors about the concept of area attacks.

Philosopher Michael Walzer has examined the moral implications 

of area attacks.22 Early in the war British leaders argued that a combination of reprisal, revenge, and military necessity made city bombing 

both necessary and acceptable. Although rejecting the motivations of 

reprisal or revenge—in my view far too summarily—Walzer looked 

closely at the rationale of military necessity. Arguing that the triumph 

of the Nazi state was too terrible to contemplate, he conceded that in 

the dark days of 1941, before the Soviet Union and the United States 

entered the war, Britain’s future looked bleak. Britain’s only hope of 

hurting Germany and ultimately achieving victory was through strategic 

bombing. Given the inaccuracy of the night strikes, it was obvious 

that thousands of civilians would die if such a strategy were employed. Viewing this strategy as a “supreme emergency,” Walzer 

concluded that although distasteful, it was morally acceptable. However, he then argued that this justication evaporated when the Allies 

began winning the war. With the specter of defeat no longer looming, 

Allied armies closing in on the Reich, and bombing accuracy greatly 

enhanced, city busting lost its necessity and acceptability. At least that 

is the position of a philosopher writing several decades aer the event.

At the time, ultimate victory was not obvious, and J. M. Spaight, 

the British jurist who had complained of air war’s lack of legal guidelines, argued in 1944 that total war meant factory workers and transportation systems were “warriors,” not noncombatants. An attacker 

was therefore “fully entitled to put them out of action.” In addition, 

German cities were all “battle-making towns” and thus legitimate 

military targets.23 A more recent study echoes this view. “e cities of 

Europe and their inhabitants represented not merely another target 

among many. ey stood at the epicenter of modern warfare. ey 

were sites of production; they delivered essential economic and demographic resources to battle.” e urban populations “were more 

than passive victims.”24 War in practice was considerably dierent 

from war in theory, and people of intellect and integrity could disagree even on the most basic premises.
114 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

US air doctrine also evolved during the war. e USAAF’s losses 

during daylight strikes were severe, culminating in the Schweinfurt 

mission of 14 October 1943, when 60 B-17s and more than 600 crewmen were lost—over 20 percent of the attacking force. Nonetheless, 

American air leaders clung tenaciously to their daylight precision 

bombing doctrine, convinced that only a daylight precision campaign made sense. An invasion of France oered no hope of success 

before mid 1944, and something had to be done to take the war into 

Germany and relieve pressure on the Soviets, who were already talking about a separate peace—the route they had taken in 1917. Britain 

and the United States could not allow that to happen.

e Pacic air campaign also posed problems for the USAAF. 

Bombing accuracy was worse than in Europe because of the greater 

distances involved and the unexpected 200 mile-per-hour jet stream 

at 35,000 feet where the B-29s generally ew. In addition, Allied intelligence concerning Japan’s economy was inadequate, due to the closed 

nature of Japanese society.25 Japanese industry was less centralized 

than in Europe—rather than located in large factories near towns, 

numerous small shops were spread throughout the cities. To destroy 

an aircra assembly complex, the Allies had to identify and strike 

several dozen “cottage factories” or destroy a large section of the city, 

eliminating the dozens of small factories it contained. Area bombing 

could be done at night with less risk to the attackers, but it crumpled 

the idea of not targeting the population that had been US doctrine for 

two decades.

e war had to be won, however, and Japan was a particularly tenacious opponent—more than 20,000 Americans died at Iwo Jima 

and Okinawa; the Japanese defenders suered nearly 150,000 fatalities. Moreover, on Okinawa over 160,000 civilians died—caught in 

the crossre between the opposing armies.26 One can debate the 

numbers of projected casualties that would have resulted in the 

planned Allied invasions of the home islands, but such landings 

would likely have cost millions of American and Japanese lives. Air 

attacks, culminating in the two atomic strikes, seemed an expedient 

alternative and no less inhumane than starvation of the civilian populace through the slowly tightening naval blockade or the vicious and 

bloody land campaigns already scheduled.27

An important issue oen overlooked regarding strategic bombing 

attacks concerned eorts taken by defenders to thwart the bomber 

crews. Germany and Japan were trying to decrease the accuracy of 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 115

Allied attacks. Indeed, the RAF’s move to night operations in 1940 

was a result of successful German air defenses. But at night, the Germans blacked out city lights and jammed radio navigation signals 

designed to help the bombers pinpoint their targets. To fool the 

USAAF bombers in daylight, the Germans and Japanese built fake 

factories, camouaged real ones, and built smoke generators to deliberately obscure targets. ey launched hundreds of interceptor planes 

and thousands of artillery shells to shoot down the bombers. ese 

activities greatly distracted the bomber crews, making their aim less 

accurate. Consequently, they oen missed the intended targets and 

bombed something else, resulting in civilian casualties.28 Who was 

responsible for this collateral damage—the crews that dropped the 

bombs or the defenders that deliberately worked to make those 

bombs hit something else, usually innocent people? Unquestionably, 

many noncombatants were killed in the Allied air attacks of World 

War II, but relative to the total number of deaths in the war, air attack—as had been predicted by prewar air theorists—was a surprisingly discriminate weapon.

Perhaps 40 million civilians died during World War II. Of those, 

the US Strategic Bombing Survey states that 635,000 died in Germany and Japan due to Allied air attacks.29 e Germans and Japanese claim the number is higher. Hans Rumpf, Germany’s general 

inspector for re services during the war, estimates that over 600,000 

died in Germany alone. He states that a further 182,000 civilians died 

in other European countries as a result of air attack, including 60,000 

in Britain killed by German bombs, rockets, and missiles.30 Even so, 

these numbers are a fraction of the total war dead. For example, over 

six million people died at the hands of the Japanese; however, less 

than 600,000 of those died via air attack. Indeed, the Japanese murdered over 100,000 Chinese at Nanjing using small arms and swords.31 

us, even if using the maximum of two million dead due to air attack, 95 percent of the civilians killed in World War II were claimed 

by genocide or traditional means of land and sea warfare; they were 

shot, shelled, or starved to death or succumbed to disease.

e plight of civilians subjected to air attack—at least as practiced 

by the West—improved aer 1945. Many noncombatants died in 

both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but statistics for the Korean War 

are unreliable.32 Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of political science 

at the University of Massachusetts, provides plausible gures for 

Vietnam. According to his research, around 587,000 North and South 
116 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Vietnamese civilians were killed in the ghting. Of those, the Vietcong assassinated 39,000 South Vietnamese people, and another 

65,000 civilians died in US bombing operations over North Vietnam. 

e bulk of the Vietnamese noncombatant dead, 483,000, were killed 

in South Vietnam. Based on admissions to South Vietnamese hospitals between 1967 and 1970, Lewy estimates that 66.5 percent of all 

injuries resulted from mines, mortars, guns, or grenades. Shelling or 

bombing injured the other 33.5 percent. If these percentages are used 

for the entire war, if we assume that the number of those injured by 

shelling or bombing are equal (Lewy does not break this category 

down), and if we assume that those killed met their fates in the same 

percentages as did those who were wounded—and these are big ifs—

then of the 587,000 Vietnamese civilians that Lewy states were killed 

during the war, around 146,000 (25 percent) died from air attacks. 

e other 75 percent, over 440,000 people, were killed by ground or 

naval action.33

e number of civilian casualties in conicts involving the United 

States has dropped dramatically since Vietnam. Greenpeace estimated that 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by air attack in the 1991 

Gulf War, but other researchers put the gure at less than 1,000.34

Although thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on Iraqi targets 

during Desert Storm, damage to the civilian population was minor, 

which amazed Western observers. Milton Viorst wrote, “Oddly, it 

seemed, there was no Second World War–style urban destruction, 

despite the tons of explosives that had fallen. Instead, with meticulous care—one might almost call it artistry—American aircra had 

taken out telecommunications facilities, transportation links, key 

government oces, and, most painful of all, electrical generating 

plants.”35 Another visitor, Erika Munk, wrote in similar terms, “We 

expected to nd enormous unreported destruction. . . . Instead we 

found a city whose homes and oces were almost entirely intact, where 

the electricity was coming back on and the water was running. . . . I 

think the reason we didn’t see more destruction was that it wasn’t 

there.” Munk estimated that the maximum number of civilians killed 

during the six-week air campaign was 3,000.36 is is a sizeable gure, 

but not in comparison to the estimated one million plus Iraqis (most 

of them children) who, according to the United Nations Children’s 

Fund and the World Health Organization, died as a result of UN 

sanctions put in place before the war but not lied until aer the 

second Gulf War of 2003.37
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 117

e next sizable conict involving the United States was in 1995 

when force was used to halt the ghting in Bosnia. According to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, perhaps 25 civilians died from 

NATO’s three-week air campaign. To stop the ethnic cleansing by the 

Serbs in Kosovo, NATO launched Operation Allied Force in 1999. 

Aer a 78-day air campaign, Milosevic capitulated. Despite the duration and intensity of this air campaign, Human Rights Watch estimated that fewer than 500 civilians were killed.38

Statistics for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are inconsistent, 

running from 500 to 1,300 dead in Afghanistan through 2002, and 

from 3,000 to 7,000 dead for the rst six months of the Iraq campaign.39 Human Rights Watch states that “the ground war caused the 

vast majority of deaths,” noting that ground-launched cluster bomb 

munitions caused 90 percent of all civilian casualties at al-Hilla.40

e Iraq Body Count (IBC) provides another account of civilian 

casualties in Iraq. is organization has determined that through 

2008, about 85,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the war. Of these, 

about 9,500 were the result of air strikes (11.3 percent of the total). 

Signicantly, not only have the numbers of civilian deaths decreased 

since 2005, but the percentage of deaths attributable to air attack has 

also decreased to 2.6. In other words, the IBC calculates that over 97 

percent of the 60,922 Iraqi civilians killed since 2005 have been the 

victims of ground warfare.41

e Israelis went through a similar trend in their military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas. Prior to 2004 the ratio of noncombatants to terrorists killed was around 1:1. At that point the Israeli Air Force changed its rules of engagement, tactics, ordnance, 

and intelligence procedures. e ratio improved to 1:12 in 2004, 1:28 

in 2005, and 1:24 in the rst half of 2007. In the second half of 2007 

the ratio was a remarkable 1:100. However, the Israelis note that operations in densely populated areas in southern Lebanon and Gaza, 

where signicant Israeli ground forces were employed and which required extensive air support, once again pushed the ratio down to 

around 1:1.42

e low numbers of deaths due to airstrikes are remarkable, especially when compared to the alternatives of sanctions or a traditional 

land campaign. In the ambush and subsequent reght between US 

Army Soldiers and Somalis in Mogadishu in October 1993, for example, 

18 Americans were killed and another 82 wounded, but between 500 

and 1,000 Somali civilians were gunned down in that 24-hour period.43
118 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

What has caused the remarkable drop in casualties in air warfare? 

Largely, it is a result of precision-guided munitions (PGM). Although 

PGMs were used in the Vietnam War, Desert Storm was the rst con-

ict where they played a major role. ere are various types of PGMs: 

electro-optical, infrared, cruise missiles using ground-tracking radar, 

and laser-guided bombs. e laser-guided bomb was the most widely 

heralded “new” weapon of Desert Storm. Because of cockpit videos 

necessary to track laser bombs, the world saw memorable lm clips 

of bombs ying down airshas and through bunker doors. Nonetheless, of the more than 200,000 bombs dropped during Desert 

Storm, fewer than 17,000, or slightly more than 7 percent, were 

PGMs.44 Only a small percentage of aircra in the US inventory were 

equipped to drop such weapons.

Following Desert Storm the numbers and types of PGMs increased. PGM use increased to 35 percent over Kosovo in 1999. In 

Afghanistan the number jumped to 56 percent, and in Operation 

Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 70 percent of all bombs dropped were PGMs. 

All US strike aircra can now deliver these munitions.45 e types of 

PGMs available have also expanded and been improved to allow 

greater accuracy and exibility. e global positioning system–aided 

joint direct attack munition (JDAM), which can bomb through 

clouds or sandstorms, made its debut over Kosovo. A laser-guided 

JDAM, rst employed in Iraq in August 2008, allows precision strike 

against moving targets.46 e standard gure given for JDAM accuracy is ve meters, but those who employed the weapons in OIF say 

accuracy was far better than advertised.47

Yet, PGMs are only as good as the intelligence used to guide them. If 

it is now possible to put a bomb through a specic window of a particular 

building, then it is essential to ensure that it is the correct window. Sensors 

have grown in number and resolution capability over the past two decades. 

Space-based cameras and radar can produce resolutions of a few feet. 

Airborne sensors have a similar performance, and spotters on the 

ground have sophisticated Global Positioning System (GPS) rangenders and laser designators to accurately locate and mark potential targets.

e impact of increased PGM use has been profound. One PGM is 

equivalent to dozens if not hundreds of unguided bombs in the effects that it achieves—neutralizing the target. Besides lowering the 

risk to the attacking aircrew (fewer aircra/sorties are needed, thus 

putting fewer crewmembers at risk), PGM use dramatically reduces 

the amount of collateral damage.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 119

Perceptions of Air War and the Use of Force

Yet the negative reputation that airpower had been saddled with 

aer World War II was dicult to shake. Strategic bombing brought 

to mind Dresden or Hiroshima.48 ose events were certainly horrible, but it is important to remember that far more civilians died in the 

siege of Leningrad (over one million) than died in all of the bombing 

raids on Germany and Japan combined.49

Why did airpower get such bad press through the end of the Cold 

War? Several possible explanations exist. First, the psychological 

trauma produced by aerial destruction can be profound: it can occur 

with little or no warning and in a greatly compressed period of time. 

Land and sea warfare eects are generally felt only over the long term. 

e Romans destroyed Carthage as totally as the United States did 

Hiroshima, but it took the Roman legions several years; it took one 

B-29 two minutes. It was the conquest of time, not of matter, that so 

shocked the world.

Second, airpower is violent and graphic, whereas a blockade is 

seen as nonviolent and bloodless. A RAND study refers to airpower, 

and especially any collateral damage caused by it, as being “mediagenic.” e study notes that collateral damage incidents are four times 

more likely to be reported on television than in the print media.50

ird, some view airpower as less noble than close combat and 

question the “morality of distance.” A Marine Corps general recently 

commented: “ere comes a point when a country puts young folks 

at risk because it becomes important for them to defend a certain way 

of life. . . . From a Marine point of view, we can’t lose our honor by 

failing to put our own skin on the line.”51 To those of such ilk, it is only 

honorable to kill if there is a good chance you will be killed in return. 

Such thinking is, to me, astonishingly foolish. Airpower oers a far 

more intelligent and humane alternative.

Dramatic advances in weapons technology permitting previously 

impossible accuracy have been crucial to limiting collateral damage; 

yet a tension remains between risk to friendly forces and accuracy 

seeking to limit collateral damage, and sometimes this issue is misunderstood. For example, during the 1999 Kosovo air campaign allied 

aircra were directed to remain above 15,000 feet to avoid enemy 

ground re. Some have argued that this policy was immoral or illegal 

because it induced inaccurate bombing, thus increasing collateral 

damage and civilian casualties.52
120 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

In truth, a PGM is most accurate when dropped from medium to 

high altitude, because that allows time for the weapon to correct itself 

in ight. If dropped from a lower altitude, the weapon will have less 

kinetic energy, and its steering ns will have less time to correct the 

aim; the weapon will usually hit short. From the pilot’s perspective, 

higher altitude also allows time to identify the target at sucient distance, designate it (if laser guided), and launch the weapon. e optimum altitude to ensure accuracy is above 15,000 feet for PGMs 

against a xed target.

In contrast, the optimum drop altitude to ensure accuracy for nonguided munitions is lower than for a PGM. Even so, target acquisition 

by the aircrew remains a limiting factor; coming in too low at 500 

knots makes it nearly impossible to acquire the target, line up, and 

drop the bomb accurately. As a result, the best altitude for delivering 

unguided weapons is around 5,000 feet. However, this places the aircra right in the thick of re from ground defenses. Air commanders 

resolved this dilemma by keeping aircra at medium altitudes but restricting the use of non-PGMs to areas where there was little or no 

chance there would be civilian casualties or collateral damage.

A diculty arises when attacking mobile targets, where the key 

factor becomes identication. Is the column below comprised of military or civilian vehicles; if both, which are which? At medium altitudes 

it is dicult to make such a distinction. On 14 April 1999, near 

Djakovica, Kosovo, NATO pilots attacked what intelligence sources 

had identied as—and which indeed appeared to be—a military column. It is now known the column also contained refugees—the Serbs 

illegally commingled military and civilian vehicles. As a result, several dozen civilians were killed in the airstrikes.53 Could this accident 

have been avoided if the aircra had own at a lower altitude? Perhaps. Indeed, NATO then changed the rules, allowing aircra in certain circumstances to y lower to ensure target identication. ere 

is a tradeo in such instances: if ying lower increases the risk to 

aircrews, at what point does the risk of misidentifying a target override the risk of losing a plane and its crew? If incurring friendly losses 

meant the shattering of the alliance, was that preferable to Milosevic 

continuing his atrocities unchecked?

e drive to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage has generated great scrutiny among military planners. Since the air campaign in Kosovo, a special soware program has been used, appropriately termed “Bugsplat,” which predicts the amount of damage that 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 121

could occur for a given airstrike. Planners examine a computergenerated map of the target area that contains details regarding the 

size, construction materials, and function of surrounding buildings. 

Planners can specify the type of bomb used, warhead size, attack 

path, fuse setting, and other factors for a specic target. e computer program then estimates how much damage, if any, would occur 

to nearby buildings if a munition hit on target or if it missed. Based 

on the results, planners can then modify the size of the warhead, 

weapon type, attack path, and other variables to drive the anticipated 

damage results lower.54 In some cases, the target might be avoided 

altogether if Bugsplat indicates that signicant collateral damage 

would occur.

Even so, mobile targets pose special problems. Because of their nature, aircrews have less time to determine their identity. For example, if 

a suspected Scud missile launcher is seen headed for a tunnel, the 

pilot must quickly decide to either hit it—and risk that it is actually a 

civilian fuel truck—or hold up, allowing the vehicle to escape. If it is 

a Scud, it could reemerge an hour later, aer the aircra is gone, and 

launch, perhaps against civilian targets. Finding the means to accelerate the decision making for hitting mobile/eeting targets to enhance 

military eectiveness, while still assuring the protection of civilians, 

will not be an easy task.

e Challenges Ahead

Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are dierent but related concepts: 

the rst refers to reasons for going to war, and the second relates to 

actions during the war itself. ere is a separation between these concepts because military actions in war should not be judged according 

to the validity of the reasons politicians chose to prosecute the war. 

Combatants may not exceed the law just to remove a particularly 

nasty opponent. is is not the case in Islamic law where a just cause 

allows “any means to further that cause.”55 Indeed, Osama bin Laden 

argued that since the United States is evil and makes war on Muslims, 

all Americans are likewise guilty and deserve to die—making no distinction between military and civilians.56

Regardless, for a variety of reasons, the separation between jus in 

bello and jus ad bellum is breaking down. Internationally sanctioned 

interventions are more prevalent, being justied as humanitarian. In 
122 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

some cases, like Kosovo and Afghanistan, the West partly justied 

intervention to prevent genocide and other war crimes committed in 

civil wars (thereby setting controversial precedents). Since intervention was justied in moral terms (jus in bello), the application of force 

had to be above reproach (jus ad bellum). e world expected much 

higher standards of conduct from coalition forces in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq than were required of those they were ghting.

Part of the problem is that military planners are tied to an archaic, 

Clausewitzian view of war that emphasizes the destruction of the 

enemy’s armed forces.57 Targeting is therefore considered legal because it is applied to military forces and those things that support 

them.58 For example, a factory making military equipment is a legitimate military target. A factory making women’s dresses might be attacked because it is owned by the enemy dictator’s brother and striking it increases pressure on the dictator to make peace. Many lawyers 

would argue that striking that target would be illegal since the target 

was not “military” per se. Such a view stems from an outdated view of 

warfare. Airpower makes coercive strategies increasingly possible—

with less loss of life and damage to both sides. e law must catch up 

to airpower’s increasingly eective coercive capacity.59

Another dilemma concerns the requirement that military commanders protect the lives of their own forces and not put them at 

undue risk, while simultaneously limiting noncombatant casualties 

and property damage. Deliberate commingling military targets with 

civilians has aggravated this dilemma. Examples include placing 

surface-to-air missile sites on or near hospitals and schools, installing a military communications center in the basement of Baghdad’s 

al-Rashid Hotel, or simply using civilian refugees as shields, as the 

Serbs did in a military encampment in the woods near Korisa, and as 

the “Fedayeen” did south of Baghdad.60

ose activities were illegal, but what response is appropriate? Allowing these practices to go unpunished is rewarding bad behavior, 

but is there an alternative to turning the other cheek, especially when 

the price for doing so could be increased military casualties?

is is a contentious issue that centers on an interpretation of the 

rules of discrimination and proportionality. Tactically, the United 

States generally responds by using more PGMs, more accurate PGMs, 

nonlethal weapons, and restrictive rules of engagement. Examples include coalition aircra at times using concrete-lled bombs to limit 

collateral damage and certain types of military targets, like bridges, 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 123

being struck only at night to minimize the possibility of injury to

civilians. But what if these eorts at mitigation are insucient?

Targeting lies at the heart of this. Some targets are considered “preplanned” while others are not. e problem of “pop-up” or eeting 

targets has already been noted: what if a target presents itself and 

there is little time to analyze it? en what if the enemy ground forces 

are attacking friendly troops? is situation, termed “troops in contact,” has proved an especially thorny problem. Ordinarily, preplanned targets are thoroughly vetted in advance of an airstrike to 

ensure that intelligence has identied the correct target and that collateral damage will be held to a minimum—the Bugsplat process 

noted above. e degree of collateral damage expected determines 

the necessary level of authority—the air commander, the theater 

commander, or even the president—required to authorize the airstrike. In a troops-in-contact situation, this process is bypassed. 

Forces under attack on the ground oen call in airstrikes to assist 

them. e strike location provided might be GPS coordinates or 

might just be a rough description of a building the enemy is ring 

from. Pilots then do their best to identify the enemy location and 

deploy their weapons to eectively strike that location. It is in this 

situation where most mistakes occur.

Human Rights Watch completed a study of collateral damage incidents in Afghanistan and determined that the vast majority of cases 

where air-delivered weapons caused civilian casualties were troopsin-contact situations. e statistics are compelling. Of 35 airstrikes 

involving collateral damage during 2006 and 2007, only two were 

preplanned strikes. Over 95 percent those airstrikes involved troops 

in contact—instances when the rigorous safeguards taken to avoid 

collateral damage were necessarily bypassed.61 Out of 5,342 airstrikes 

own by coalition air forces that dropped “major munitions” during 

2006 and 2007, a mere 0.66 percent of that total caused collateral 

damage.62 Yes, any mistake is deplorable, but that is still a remarkably 

small number.

It should thus not come as a surprise when the US death toll in 

Afghanistan began building toward a new high in 2009 that an Army 

spokesman stated bluntly, “It is what we expected. We anticipated 

that with forces going in, increased number of troops, increased engagement, you are going to have increased casualties.”63 e solution 

to lowering casualties, on both sides, seems apparent: avoid putting 

in ground forces.
124 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

e priceless ruins of ancient Babylon have suered grievously at 

American hands. e US Army actually turned these ruins into a 

military base, Camp Alpha, causing “major damage” according to the 

United Nations Educational, Scientic, and Cultural Organization. 

e report of the UN’s cultural agency stated that “foreign troops and 

contractors bulldozed hilltops and then covered them with gravel to 

serve as parking lots. . . . ey drove heavy vehicles over the fragile 

paving of once-sacred highways.” When fortifying this new base, the 

Soldiers “built barriers and embankments . . . pulverizing ancient 

pottery and bricks that were engraved with cuneiform characters.” 

Among the structures suering most was the famed Ishtar Gate; the 

damage will be extremely dicult if not impossible to repair.64

It is of more than passing interest that the former Russian Federation ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, believes that the 

United States has repeated all the major mistakes that the Soviet 

Union made aer invading Afghanistan nearly 30 years ago. He 

stated, “Aer we changed the regime, we should have handed over 

and said goodbye. But we didn’t. And the Americans haven’t either.” 

Kabulov is especially critical of President Obama’s plan to send in 

more ground troops—the same strategy that backred on Moscow: 

“e more foreign troops you have roaming the country, the more 

the irritative allergy toward them is going to be provoked.” e Taliban 

seem to agree with that assessment, as they stated in an interview 

conducted by a British reporter. e subsequent article’s title says it 

all: “e More Troops ey Send, e More Targets We Have.”65 is 

is a depressing prophecy.

It is alarming, but should not be surprising, that recent polls show 

that Afghanis blame the United States and NATO more than the Taliban 

for their country’s travails: only 47 percent have a favorable opinion 

of the United States, and 25 percent actually hold that attacks on US/

NATO forces are justied.66

Such animosity appears to be mutual. A US Army report on the 

mental health of Soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq contained 

some remarkable ndings. When asked, 62 percent of Marines and 

53 percent of Soldiers responded that they felt noncombatants need 

not be treated with dignity and respect. Worse, 60 percent of all 

Marines surveyed and 45 percent of all Soldiers stated that they 

would not report a unit member that they saw killing an innocent 

noncombatant. ese are astounding ndings, reported by the military itself, which cast an ominous cloud on ground operations.67
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 125

Aircra were rst used in war in 1911 when Italy fought the Ottoman Empire in Libya. When an Italian aircra bombed Turkish infantry positions, the Turks claimed, falsely, that it had struck a hospital and killed several civilians.68 It would seem that the propaganda 

value of collateral damage caused by air attack, both real and imagined, was recognized nearly as quickly as the importance of bombing 

itself. Given the seriousness of collateral damage incidents, it is surprising that the US military has not been more proactive in investigating incidents and then releasing ndings. When asked about this, 

one high-ranking military public aairs ocer responded that such 

activities “were not command essential.”69 is is shortsighted. e 

military’s access to numerous sensors, videos, pilot reports, and reports from personnel on the ground means that no one is better able 

to determine the facts.70 If this responsibility is abdicated, then someone else will ll the information vacuum with reports, probably inaccurate and fragmentary, that will be accepted as true. e Israelis 

have formed special teams that accompany all ground units into action with the mission to conduct “operational verication.” Armed 

with video cameras and tape recorders, they “document the story in 

real time” to counteract the tales spread by terrorists.71

e “war on terror” highlights many of the challenges noted above. 

Terrorists oen use illegal methods and weapons to achieve their 

goals; yet they are oen shielded from the consequences of their illegal 

acts. Terrorists oen operate in urban areas, deliberately commingling with civilians and occupying protected structures such as 

mosques and schools. ey are well aware that the United States and 

other Western countries will be loath to strike—which they would be 

legally entitled to do—for fear of collateral damage and international 

censure. Terrorists are capable of blending into the civilian populace, 

making it extremely dicult to track them, much less strike them.72

ese are all formidable challenges for any type of military force to 

address, including airpower.

Conclusions

We must confront what one could cynically call “the myth of noncombatant immunity.” e noble attempts to reduce the suering of 

noncombatants during war only paste a g leaf on the problem. In 

reality, civilians have always suered the most in war. is was never 
126 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

truer than in the twentieth century, when estimates of those who died 

in war ranged as high as 175 million, the majority of whom were noncombatants. Worse, the number of civilians dying in war as a percentage of total deaths has increased dramatically over the past century. 

ese statistics indicate that the principle of noncombatant immunity 

is at best a goal we have tried unsuccessfully to achieve, but at worst a 

myth that hides the truth. Innocent people have always suered the 

most in war, especially in the traditional forms of land and sea warfare. 

roughout the past century, indiscriminate killers included unrestricted submarine warfare, landmines, blockades, sanctions, 

sieges, artillery barrages, starvation, and genocide—as well as some 

bombing operations in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Centuries of evidence show that blockades, sanctions, and sieges 

have a percolating eect: they start killing at the bottom levels of society 

and slowly work their way upwards. Over one million civilians died at 

Leningrad during World War II, while more than 20,000 civilians died at 

Sarajevo in 1993; yet sieges are still legal under international law.73 Regarding blockades, the more than 800,000 German civilians who died 

as a result of the Allied starvation blockade in World War I were not 

soldiers, politicians, or even factory workers.74 Instead, the rst to die 

were the old, the young, and the sick. Eventually, and only very slowly, 

did the eects reach the upper levels of society. Such odious results 

also were the norm in Iraq during the 1990s as a result of sanctions 

imposed by the UN to pressure Saddam Hussein, sanctions that killed 

over one million civilians; it was not Saddam Hussein and his generals 

who went to bed without their supper.

e sanctions imposed on Haiti between 1991 and 1993 in an 

attempt to push out the military junta in power were similarly egregious. During those two years the Haitian economy was devastated: 

unemployment soared to 70 percent, ination doubled, GDP 

dropped 15 percent, and 1,000 children died each month as a direct 

result of the legally levied sanctions.75 Small wonder that two observers 

wrote a critical and cynical article on the matter titled “Sanctions of 

Mass Destruction.”76

Some have argued that such suering is the fault of the country’s 

leaders, who refuse to give in or who hoard food and medicine for 

themselves—and not the responsibility of those who impose these 

deadly sanctions. History shows, however, that countries usually react to attacks in war by accepting casualties to achieve their objectives, and they will protect whatever allows them to continue the 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 127

ght. ey will sacrice the weakest segments of society so that the 

strong can ght on. Nations at war for their survival (or at least the 

survival of their leaders) cannot aord to take a “women and children 

to the lifeboats rst” stance. us, dozens of cases over several centuries demonstrate what should have been anticipated aer the US and 

UN leaders imposed sanctions on Iraq and Haiti. It is disingenuous to 

claim aerwards that they did not know the gun was loaded. In truth, 

blockades and sanctions are deliberately genocidal policies that must 

be outlawed.

It is time to return to the basics. If the intent of international law is 

to limit civilian deaths in war, then we should look at the past century 

to see what methods of war and which weapons have been most destructive and move for legislation to limit them. e arithmetic is 

clear. e biggest killers have been blockades, sanctions, sieges, landmines, artillery, small arms, genocide, starvation, and despotic rulers 

who murdered their own people to consolidate power. ese are the 

areas that the law should examine, rather than concern itself with 

putting further restrictions on airpower, which has proven to be, as 

Marc Garlasco from Human Rights Watch has stated, “probably the 

most discriminate weapon that exists.”77 To continue to put additional 

restrictions on what targets can be attacked from the air, with what 

weapons, and in what manner, makes little sense. It may reduce the 

number of civilians killed in war by a hundred people here or there, 

but it will ignore the hundreds of thousands who die in traditional 

forms of war. Focusing on airpower, as if it were the real problem, is 

akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It must be our goal and the main focus of the law to employ weapons 

and strategies that limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. 

Clearly, the events of the past two decades have revealed the stark 

contrast between the discriminate and precise nature of air warfare—

especially as conducted by the United States and its allies—and that 

of land warfare. But even more to the point, the appalling slaughter of 

one million Iraqi civilians as the consequence of UN-imposed sanctions must become the primary focus of the legal community. ere 

is a gaping hole here that must be lled; yet it is barely even acknowledged. War is indeed hell. People suer in war, innocent people, and 

this is precisely why countries try to avoid war and why they decide 

to end it. e challenge is to ght only when it is necessary and then 

to exercise forbearance in war, while also achieving the stated political 

objectives. Airpower now oers the greatest possibility of achieving 
128 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

these diverse goals, which means international law must turn its focus 

to the far more prevalent and deadly threats.

Notes

1. Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, 154, 161. According to Elliot, “demographic violence” is when government forces re on protestors.

2. For historical background on the just war tradition, see James Turner, Just War 

Tradition. For an update, see his Morality and Contemporary Warfare. It is an ironic 

paradox that at the same time international eorts to put legal restrictions on war 

have increased over the past century, so have the number of noncombatants killed.

3. Royse, Aerial Bombardment; and Watt, “Restraints on War,” 57–65.

4. Kennett, First Air War; and Fredette, Sky on Fire.

5. Royse, Aerial Bombardment, 181. Of note, 10 times as many British noncombatants were killed on ships attacked by German submarines or that struck German mines 

than were killed by German air raids (13,333 and 1,620 dead, respectively). Micheal 

Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 427.

6. Wyman, “First Rules of Air Warfare”; Brune, “Eort to Regulate,” 183–85; and 

P. Williams, “Legitimate Targets in Aerial Bombardment,” 574–76.

7. For an overview of the attempt to put limits on war, and especially airpower, 

see Meilinger, “Clipping the Bomber’s Wings,” 306–30.

8. Leroy, “Limitations on Air Warfare,” 27. For the text of the resolution, see 

Schindler and Toman, Laws of Armed Conict, 221–22.

9. Spaight, “Chaotic State of the International Law,” 25. Spaight had been a British 

delegate to e Hague Commission of Jurists in 1922–23.

10. For a discussion of the attempt to shoehorn air operations into laws designed 

for war on land and at sea, see Parks, “Air War”; and Spaight, Air Power and the Cities. 

Of interest, more than three decades aer World War II, the US Air Force published a 

manual on the legal aspects of air warfare in which it dened cities located behind enemy 

lines as “defended fortresses.” US Air Force Pamphlet 110–31, International Law.

11. Douhet, Command of the Air, 58. e book was written in 1921 and revised 

in 1927, but the rst English translation did not appear until 1942.

12. Royal Air Force, War Manual, I/10. is reasoning was the same as that espoused 

by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain before the House of Commons in June 1938. 

Meyer, “Tearing Down the Façade,” 152.

13. Air Chief Marshall Newell to Air Chief Marshall Ludlow-Hewitt, message, 23 

August 1939, e National Archives, Kew, UK (TNA): AIR 75/8.

14. Chief of the Air Service to all Air Ocers Commanding, message, 4 June 

1940, TNA: AIR 8/283.

15. For the best overviews of US air doctrine prior to World War II, see McFarland, 

America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing; and Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare. 

For typical examples of Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) lectures on the subject of 

strategic bombing of an industrial web, see “ACTS: Bombardment Text” and “ACTS: 

Bombardment Aviation.”

16. US Army Field Manual 1-5, Employment of Aviation, 36.

17. Ader, Military Aviation, 27.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 129

18. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 103–4. At the time, Albert 

Speer was Hitler’s chief architect; later he would become the minister of armaments 

production. Reichsmarschall Herman Göring commanded the Luwae.

19. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 4, 205–13. 

Due to improvements in radar/radio navigation and bombing aids, accuracy improved 

throughout the war. By the end of 1944, more than 80 percent of RAF bombs were falling 

within three miles of the aim point. US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), “Description 

of RAF Bombing.”

20. Britain attempted a starvation blockade of Germany, like it had imposed in World 

War I, but Hitler had overrun so much of Europe that the blockade had only a minor 

eect. Nevertheless, there were local shortages and hardship, especially in Greece, where 

starvation threatened the populace with “decimation” in 1942. Medlicott, European 

Blockade, vol. 2, 272. See also Beaumont, “Starving for Democracy,” 57–82.

21. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 2, 215; 

and Batchelder, Irreversible Decision, 175.

22. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 253–63. A similar argument is made in Cohen, 

Arms and Judgment, 129–44.

23. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated, 76–77, 112.

24. Funck and Chickering, Endangered Cities, 5.

25. Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5, 3–175, 507–756.

26. Feifer, Tennozan, 533.

27. For projected Allied casualty gures, see Giangreco, “Casualty Projections,” 

521–82. For the Japanese decision to surrender, see Asada, “Shock of the Atomic 

Bomb,” 477–512. e invasion of Kyushu, set for 1 November 1945, envisioned 767,000 

Allied troops, and that of Honshu, planned for February 1946, projected the use of 

more than one million Allied troops. ere were at least three million armed Japanese 

defenders throughout the home islands. On average, the United States suered 35 percent casualties when attacking Japanese positions throughout the war (about 30 percent of which were deaths); Japanese losses were far higher: 95 percent dead (very few 

Japanese surrendered or were captured). us, if these averages would have held true 

for the projected invasions of the home islands, the Allies could have expected around 

180,000 dead, while the Japanese would have lost nearly three million military dead. 

Civilian deaths (based on the Okinawa campaign) would have been horrendous.

28. Note that the same was true for the Germans. British air defenses forced 

them to attack at night, and British defenses also included blackouts and electronic 

warfare to bae German bombers. See R. V. Jones, Wizard War.

29. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 36, 92.

30. Rumpf, Bombing of Germany, 164–65. He gives no sources for his estimates. M. 

Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 490, 526–27, 543–44, gives lower estimates.

31. Rummell, Death by Government, 4, 148, 152; and Katsuichi, Nanjing Massacre, xiii. 

32. M. Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 234. He states that 129,000 South 

Korean civilians were murdered by the communists, with another 115,000 killed in the 

ghting (the cause of death is not given). In addition, up to one million civilians died in 

the North, most due to famine and disease. Close to one million combatants also died 

during the war.

33. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 442–51. e math: 587,000 – 39,000 (Vietcong murders) = 548,000; 548,000 – 65,000 (bombing of North) = 483,000; 483,000 x 16.75 percent 
130 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

(percentage of civilians presumed killed by air in South) = 80,902; 80,902 + 65,000 = 145,902 

total dead to air attacks; 145,902 ÷ 587,000 = 24.8 percent.

34. Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni, On Impact, 46; and Heidenrich, “Gulf War,” 108–25. 

Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni also note on page 15 that at least 50,000 Kurds and Shiites 

were killed by Saddam in the abortive uprisings of summer 1991.

35. Viorst, “Report from Baghdad,” 58.

36. Munk, “New Face of Techno-War,” 583.

37. United Nations Children’s Fund, “Child and Maternal Mortality,” 10; and 

Gareld, “Morbidity and Mortality.”

38. Owen, Deliberate Force, 161. For Kosovo, see Human Rights Watch, Civilian 

Deaths, 5.

39. e Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) estimates that between 1,000 and 1,300 

civilians died in Afghanistan as a result of air attack. Conetta Strange Victory, 6. Perhaps 

3,750 civilians died in Iraq. Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead,” 1, 3. e Iraq Body Count 

(IBC) organization gives the higher gures. IBC, “Dossier of Civilian Casualties.”

40. Human Rights Watch, O Target, 13.

41. e IBC website contains a number of studies dealing with Iraqi civilian deaths. 

For the early period see IBC, “Dossier of Civilian Casualties.” e IBC continues to update its gures at www.iraqbodycount.org. e highest casualty gures are given by a 

Johns Hopkins University study; its estimates are more than six times greater than other 

agencies. Even so, the percentage of deaths it cites as caused by air attacks through 2006 

(13 percent) is similar to the percentage provided by the IBC. Burnham et al., “Human 

Cost of the War.” is study has been severely criticised due to its methodology; see “Author 

of Shocking Iraq Study,” 1. A recent study gives a slightly smaller number for total deaths, 

but the percentage of civilians killed by air attack remains the same. Hicks et al., “Weapons 

at Kill Civilians.”

42. ese statistics were provided to the author in July 2009 by Lt Col Roni Amir 

of the Israeli Air Force.

43. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, 333.

44. Cordesman, “ ‘Instant Lessons’ of the Iraq War,” 88.

45. Ibid.

46. Schanz, “Focused Lethality.”

47. Wall and Barrie, “US, UK Eye Upgrades.” e article gives an average accuracy 

gure of 2.4 meters for the JDAM.

48. Carlino, “Moral Limits,” 15–29; and Crane, “Sky High.”

49. Glantz, Battle of Leningrad, 543, 547. e primary causes of civilian deaths in 

Leningrad were starvation, artillery re, and small arms re.

50. Larson and Savych, Misfortunes of War, 2–3.

51. “Panel Touts Robots’ Future,” Virginian-Pilot.

52. Former president Jimmy Carter termed Operation Allied Force “excessively 

brutal.” See Washington Post, 27 May 1999, A-33; and novelist Norman Mailer said it 

was “obscene.” See Washington Times, 24 May 1999, A-27.

53. Human Rights Watch, NATO Deaths, 9–10.

54. Graham, “Military Turns to Soware.” e name derives from the colorcoded products that depict splotches where dierent degrees of damage are likely to 

occur upon weapon impact.

55. Rauert, “Inuence of Just War,” 75.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 131

56. Laden “Letter to the American People.”

57. Clausewitz, On War, 258. e book contains several statements such as, “permit 

us to make the following unequivocal statement: 1. Destruction of the enemy forces is the 

overriding principle of war, and, so far as positive action is concerned, the principal way 

to achieve our object.”

58. For an interesting discussion of targeting civilian leaders, see Lotrionte, 

“When to Target Leaders.”

59. For an excellent discussion, see Meyer, “Tearing Down the Façade,” 152.

60. Human Rights Watch, NATO Deaths, 19–22. For a detailed account, see Central 

Intelligence Agency, Putting Noncombatants at Risk.

61. Human Rights Watch, “ ‘Troops in Contact,’ ” 2–5.

62. Air Forces Central Combined Air and Space Operations Center, “2004–2008 Combined Forces Air Component Commander.” ese statistics include only those on which 

“major munitions” were dropped. is term does not include sorties that expended 20 or 

30 millimeter cannon re or rockets. Obviously, if those sorties were included (the number 

is unknown), then the percentage that caused collateral damage would be even lower.

63. King and Barnes, “Deadly Afghan Day Signals,” 12. In mid 2009, new procedures were instituted that restricted ground troops from calling in air strikes, and 

this lowered collateral damage. See “Air Strike Rules,” 11.

64. Bakri, “Babylon’s Ancient Wonder.”

65. Abdul-Ahad, “More Troops ey Send.”

66. Cohen and Agiesta, “Poll of Afghans Shows Drop.” e British Parliament’s 

report on Afghanistan also refers to the “cultural insensitivity” of US troops and the 

“scandal-ridden matter of treatment of detainees.” See United Kingdom Parliament, 

“Eighth Report,” sect. 2, para. 28 and 30.

67. Oce of the Surgeon, “Mental Health Advisory Team,” 35–37. Curiously, 

these questions were not asked in the Army’s follow-up report released in March 

2008. It is because of these disturbing facts that the Army has formed a Center of 

Excellence for the Professional Military Ethic at West Point in a belated attempt to 

heighten moral, ethical, and legal standards among Soldiers. It does not appear the 

Marine Corps has taken a similar step.

68. Boyne, Inuence of Air Power, 8.

69. For example, see “5,558 Iraqis Killed since Occupation,” Dallas Morning 

News. In 2004 a two-star admiral in charge of US Central Command public aairs 

used these words in speaking to me.

70. It took over four months for US Central Command (CENTCOM) to release 

its ndings regarding the 8 April 2003 ring of a US tank round into the Palestine 

Hotel, killing two journalists and wounding several others. It is dicult to understand why this report could not have been completed and released within days of the 

shooting. Human Rights Watch has called for the military to establish an agency to 

investigate quickly all incidents of alleged collateral damage and then report their 

ndings to the world. See Human Right Watch, “Troops in Contact,” 8.

71. Dunlap, “Lawfare,” 36–37.

72. e magnitude of this problem is increasing as women and children are now 

being used in suicide attacks. “Insurgents Using Teens,” Chicago Tribune; and S. 

Carter, “Taliban Buying Children.”

73. M. Waxman, “Siegecra and Surrender,” 402.
132 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

74. Bell, History of the Blockade, 672. Bell states that 762,736 German civilians 

starved to death during the war due to the Allied blockade, and another 66,466 died 

of tuberculosis and other lung diseases caused by the lack of fat, oils, and milk in 

their diets (the absence of which were also due to the blockade).

75. D. Waxman, “Sanctions,” 40.

76. Mueller and Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction.”

77. Dunlap, “Lawfare,” 36.
Chapter 8

Environmental Degradation 

and Conflict in Africa 

How AFRICOM Can Help Africans

John T. Ackerman

Environmental degradation is a global challenge. Several studies 

of the environmental impact of human activities on the planet have 

identified significant negative, unsustainable, and potentially irreversible trends.1

 Water, land, and air quality in some regions has become significantly degraded, and biodiversity, renewable natural resources, and ecosystem services have been deleteriously impacted 

around the globe. Environmental degradation can also generate serious regional security repercussions. These security implications are 

most obvious on the African continent, because a majority of Africans rely very heavily on subsistence farming/fishing, ground water/

precipitation, and hand processing of natural resources, and consequently are directly dependent on the natural environment for basic 

subsistence. The increasing dependency of a rapidly growing African 

population on a shrinking natural resource base has and continues to 

create conflict. For example, “Environmental degradation can exacerbate conflict, which causes further environmental degradation, creating a vicious cycle of environmental decline, tense competition for 

diminishing resources, increased hostility, intercommunal fighting, 

and ultimately social and political breakdown.”2

The linkages between environmental degradation and conflict are 

complex and underexamined, but they should be a concern for the 

leaders of US Africa Command (AFRICOM). AFRICOM’s primary 

objective is “building African security capacity so our partners can 

prevent future conflict and address current or emerging security and 

stability challenges.”3

 This mission will not be obtainable or sustainable unless AFRICOM personnel understand the criticality of natural 

resources and take a proactive approach to reduce environmental 

degradation, protect and sustain natural resources, and mitigate conflict over the environment. AFRICOM, in conjunction with other US 
134 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

government agencies, can bring the knowledge, expertise, and resources needed to make Africa more stable and secure by making its 

environment more stable and secure.

Environmental Degradation and Conict in Africa

Environmental degradation in Africa can be explored from several 

perspectives. To analyze this issue comprehensively, we can dissect it 

into ve major subheadings: land, water, climate, plants and animals, 

and people.4

 Each topic can be viewed as to how degradation is or is not 

aecting it. Some background information about Africa and environmental degradation there should also help illuminate key challenges.

At present, the rich and diverse African biodiversity is threatened 

by a conuence of climate change, habitat destruction, poaching, and 

surging populations.5

 Rapidly increasing populations are modifying 

land-use patterns, demanding more clean water, and stressing animal 

and plant communities throughout Africa. All these environmental 

changes are occurring across an ecologically diverse continent populated by equally diverse people.

Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent 

behind Asia. It contains a vast variety of natural resources including 

approximately 30 percent of all of the earth’s minerals.6

 Forty percent of the world’s gold, 60 percent of the cobalt, and 90 percent of 

the planet’s platinum are found in Africa.7

 e continent is also 

home of the Nile, the longest river in the world; the Sahara, the biggest 

desert in the world; the Namib, the oldest desert; and the shortest continental coastline.

Land

Environmental degradation of land results from processes that reduce the capacity of the land to produce sustenance or resources. 

ese can include desertication, deforestation, soil erosion, salinization, and other natural and anthropogenic processes. Comprehensive review of public information and peer-reviewed reports indicates 

that Africans in 32 countries consider land degradation a preeminent 

environmental challenge.8

e geography of Africa is quite interesting and diverse. African 

land is mostly arid (60 percent), and most of the land (65 percent) is 

degraded either naturally or anthropogenically. irty-one percent of 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 135

African pasture lands and 19 percent of forests are degraded in some 

form or another—while only 10 percent of all African land is considered prime farmland and another 25 percent is rated as having low to 

moderate potential for sustainable agriculture. While 20 percent of 

Africa’s overall land area is forested, an average of 40,000 square kilometers (0.6 per cent) are deforested every year. e areas that are vulnerable to desertication and home to over 20 million Africans are 

expanding, increasing pressure on land natural resources. In 1950, 

the hypothetical individual share of the land could be calculated at 

13.5 hectares/person; in 2005 it had dropped to 3.2 hectares/person 

and is predicted to be 1.5 hectares/person in 2050.9

 Land degradation 

is obviously increasing, although restoration eorts have been successful in a few areas with reforestation, soil enhancement, and erosion control programs.

Water

Water is another environmental resource that is oen the focus of 

intense competition and conict. “Changes in water quality and 

quantity—in freshwater environments (lakes and rivers) and in 

coastal and marine environments—rank among the most challenging environmental and social issues that Africa currently faces.” Water 

pollution and water scarcity were specically identied in several African states as critical environmental issues.10 Land and water conditions are aected by ongoing changes in Africa’s varied and unique 

climate zones. e recent and rapid increases in global average temperatures are driving a variety of transformations to Africa’s climate, 

increasing environmental degradation. Rainfall patterns and growing 

seasons are changing, sea levels are rising, water stress is spreading, 

ecosystems are being transformed, and disease vector ranges are being altered.11

Africa is the second driest continent aer Australia; therefore, 75 

percent of Africans rely upon groundwater as their major source of 

drinking water. Water resources are unevenly distributed in Africa 

with some areas having abundance while other areas suer from scarcity. Scientists estimate that more than 300 million of Africa’s almost 

one billion people face water scarcity and stress challenges. Africa 

contains approximately 3,930 cubic kilometersof renewable water resources, representing less than nine percent of the global total, while 

per capita consumption of water is 31 cubic meters per year for its 
136 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

almost a billion people.12 Scientists estimate that an additional 250 

million Africans will face water scarcity challenges as a result of 

global climate change.13 Pressures on water resources are clearly increasing. For example, Lake Chad in northern Africa has been 

shrinking as a result of climate change and increasing agricultural 

demand.14 In other areas, cooperation and water management processes are preserving vital watersheds. e Okavango Delta presents 

a spectacular case of how coordinated wetland management is preserving the world’s largest inland delta.15

Climate

Not only is Africa the second driest continent, it is also the world’s 

hottest. It has six climatic zones: tropical wet, tropical summer rainfall, semiarid, arid, highland, and Mediterranean. Some of these 

zones contain spectacular biodiversity. e Fynbos region in the 

Cape Province of South Africa, for example, has the highest rate of 

general endemism in the world. e seasonal and diurnal variation in 

some of Africa’s climatic zones is amazing. For instance, the temperature variation seasonally in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 

only 1.4°C, while temperature swings between the coldest and hottest 

month in the Sahara Desert can exceed 20°C. One interesting fact is 

that Africa is the lightning center of the planet and has more lightning ashes per square kilometer that anywhere else.16 Africa’s variation in climate also enables enormous continental biodiversity.

Plants and Animals

Africa’s plants and animals are varied, plentiful in some regions 

and endangered in others. e world’s largest bird (ostrich) and largest 

land mammal (African elephant) both reside in Africa. Large populations of mammals, such as wildebeests and zebras, migrate across 

African savannahs by the thousands. Additionally, 98 percent of 

Madagascar’s land mammals, 92 percent of its reptiles, 68 percent of 

its plants, and 41 percent of its bird species are found only on this island. e Congo basin contains the second largest area of intact rain 

forests aer the Amazon basin. e rich African biodiversity includes 

eight of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Nevertheless, African 

biodiversity is declining steadily, as more than 120 plant species have 

become extinct and another 1,771 are threatened with extinction.17
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 137

e critical factor in reversing the decline of biodiversity and environmental degradation in general involves human activities.

People

Africa is home to 965 million people and is considered by many to 

be the birthplace of mankind. It is the second most populous continent, with a population density of 32.6 people per square kilometer. 

e population is unevenly distributed, with some areas—for example 

in the Sahara—with very few permanent towns or villages, while areas 

such as the Nile River Delta are extremely densely populated. In 2005, 

over 60 percent of Africans still lived in rural areas, but the number 

moving to urban areas is rapidly increasing. While approximately 57 

percent of all Africans are still employed in agricultural activities, 

urban growth in Africa is the highest in the world. Africa’s overall 

population growth rate of 2.32 percent annually (almost double the 

1.24 percent global rate) is the highest in the world, and 20 of the 30 

fastest growing countries are African states.18 is places enormous 

pressure on agriculture to feed the growing populations, which in 

turn places even more pressure on natural habitats and environmental resources.

Wars on the African continent have also had serious and lasting 

eects on the natural environment and on Africa’s human populations. For example,

e social dislocation caused by war is a further cause of environmental damage. Floods of refugees in particular can threaten natural resources such as water 

and forests. e Rwandan conict and the events that it triggered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, ex-Zaire) became a major cause of deforestation in central Africa. One casualty was Africa’s rst national park, the Virunga 

National Park, on the border between the DRC and Rwanda. e World Conservation Union [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (IUCN) reported that in six months, the Rwandan refugees and Hutu soldiers from camps 

around the town of Goma in the DRC had deforested some 300 square kilometers of Virunga National Park in their search for food and wood. At the height 

of the crisis, the IUCN estimated that some 850,000 refugees were living within 

or close to the park and took between 410 and 770 tons of forest products out of 

the park daily. In the confusion, Zairian soldiers were raiding the park for timber to sell to refugees and relief organizations. Similar destruction became a 

feature of civil and cross-border conicts across much of Africa in the 1990s.19

Roving bands of guerrilla and other unconventional forces can do 

great harm to natural resources and entire ecosystems when they live 

o the land or plunder resources to buy arms and food. e recent 
138 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

conict in Rwanda resulted in the mass slaughter of the mountain 

gorillas in the Virunga National Park. e widespread loss of centralized or sovereign control over natural resources throughout Africa as 

a byproduct of civil war or violent conict continues to lead to extensive environmental degradation.

Reactions of state and regional governmental organizations to 

growing environmental degradation vary throughout Africa. Some 

countries have been unable to nd the means to reduce conict while 

others have adapted and mitigated environmental degradation, 

thereby reducing conict and insecurity. Two contrasting cases where 

state reactions to environmental degradation challenges were dissimilar and consequent stability and security outcomes were also 

vastly dierent, the Sudan and Niger, are discussed below. Examination of these two cases can yield potential lessons for AFRICOM 

leaders that may help eorts to increase their capacity to enhance 

Africa’s stability and security in the future.

Case Studies: Degradation and Conict

e relationship between conict and environmental degradation in 

Africa is oen complex and multicausal. Case studies of environmental 

degradation in the Sudan and Niger—analyzed within the ve domains 

of land, water, climate, plants and animals, and people—reveal some of 

the specic pressures and challenges, which can then become focal 

points for AFRICOM eorts to help Africans help themselves.

Sudan

A case study of the Sudan by the United Nations Environment 

Program (UNEP) identied environmental degradation as a major 

factor contributing to violent conict. Years of ethnic conict; population displacement; weak, corrupt, and biased governance; uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources; and little or no investment 

in sustainable development signicantly contributed to instability 

and insecurity as well.20 In the Darfur region of Sudan, years of 

drought exacerbated by desertication and population growth led 

nomadic pastoralists to move herds of cattle and goats into land occupied primarily by subsistence farmers. A vicious conict ensued, 

with as many as 450,000 people killed by ghting and disease and approximately 2.4 million people displaced from their homes.21
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 139

Nile

Blue

Red

Sea

Nile

SUDAN

ERITREA

UGANDA

CENTRAL AFRICAN

REPUBLIC

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

OF THE CONGO

CHAD

LIBYA

EGYPT SAUDIA

ARABIA

Khartoum

Juba

Omdurman

WhiteNile

KENYA

ETHIOPIA

SOUTH SUDAN

e UNEP’s analysis indicates a very strong link between land 

degradation, desertification, and conflict in Darfur. Northern 

Darfur—where exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conicts to be triggered 

and sustained by political, tribal, or ethnic dierences—can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from 

ecological collapse. Long-term peace in the region will not be possible 

unless these underlying and closely linked environmental and livelihood issues are resolved.22

Environmental issues have been and continue to be contributing 

causes of conict. Competition over oil and gas reserves, Nile waters 

and timber, as well as land use issues related to agricultural land are 

important causative factors in the instigation and perpetuation of 

conict in Sudan. Confrontations over rangeland and rain-fed agricultural land in the drier parts of the country are a particularly 

striking manifestation of the connection between natural resource 

scarcity and violent conict. In all cases, however, environmental 
140 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

factors are intertwined with a range of other social, political, and 

economic issues.23

Land degradation, competition for scarce water supplies, changing 

precipitation patterns contributing to drought and desertication, 

widespread destruction of forested ecosystems by refugees, and large, 

uncontrolled population movements all contributed to instability 

and insecurity in this troubled region. While Sudan presents a clear 

example of environmental degradation intertwined in a circular relationship with violent conict, Niger oers an opposing case study 

where environmental degradation initiated innovative, proactive 

processes that improved ecological conditions and contributed to enhanced security and stability.

Niger

During the 1970s, Niger was in the grip of an enormous drought. 

e Sahel region, already characterized as an arid region of variable 

rainfall and low-fertility soils, is home to most of Niger’s people. 

reats of desertication and land degradation forced the rural farmers 

in this enormous dry land to change their relationships with the land 

and with each other. Systematic ecosystem management processes 

designed to restore environmental conditions and agricultural productivity were adopted throughout the region. Specically, farmers 

adopted simple, low-cost environmental management techniques 

that enabled natural regeneration of trees and shrubs. e techniques, 

collectively known as farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), 

involved uncomplicated forest, soil, and water conservation programs.24 e results have been spectacular. US Geological Service 

(USGS) scientists compared aerial photographs from the 1970s to 

photos taken in 2005 and were astonished by the widespread environmental transformations. Over ve million hectares of land in Niger 

now show regeneration of vegetation.

Today, agricultural parklands replace the windswept elds of the 

1970s. On-farm tree densities have increased ten- to twentyfold. Village sizes have also dramatically increased in the area, generally by a 

factor of three—a direct indicator of rural population growth. e 

changes were equally surprising on the rocky slopes and plateaus east 

of Tahoua, almost totally denuded in 1975. A patchwork of terraces 

and rock bunds constructed to stem soil erosion, trap precious rainfall, and create micro catchments for planting and nurturing trees 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 141

now extends throughout the region. Trees now occur on most plateaus, and farmers have taken advantage of the new environment to 

plant elds of millet and sorghum between the ribbons of trees. 

Windbreaks of mature trees crisscross the wide Maggia Valley and its 

tributaries. Many of the valleys now have dikes and low dams to create 

ephemeral lakes. As their waters recede in the dry season, farmers 

plant vegetables. A vibrant dry season market gardening economy 

has developed. Large tracts of valley lands are now green with produce, 

including onions, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and peppers. Many 

interviews with villagers at all sites conrm that there has been notable environmental improvement since the 1970s. Farmers point to 

the increase in woody cover, the diversity of high-value trees, and the 

rehabilitation of the productive capacity of tens of thousands of hectares of degraded land. e projects of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated what could be done, giving villagers options. Since then, there 

has been a huge spread eect, particularly in farmer-managed natural 

regeneration—a signicant change in the way farmers maintain their 

elds, allowing high-value trees to grow in their elds.25

NIGER

Agadez

Arlit

Zinder Niamey

Kano

Niger

Maradi

Tahoua

LIBYA

ALGERIA

MALI

NIGERIA

CHAD
142 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

Changes in ecosystem management have improved the environment across all ve domains in Niger. Degradation of the land is been 

markedly reduced, erosion decreased, fertility enhanced, and agricultural productivity dramatically improved. Even though rainfall levels 

are still below historic levels before the 1970s drought, farmers have 

learned to capture scarce rainfall, and groundwater levels have risen 

in some areas. Niger has been experiencing many of the climatic 

changes that aect the Sudan, and yet its farmers are adapting to the 

changing conditions without the violence and instability seen in the 

Sudan. In addition, the biodiversity of the area has been greatly increased by expansive terracing and planting of trees. Scientists assert, 

“Farmers have reacted proactively to the large-scale land degradation 

that occurred during the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, and have 

begun protecting their resources on a massive scale, encouraging 

natural regeneration, rebuilding their soils, and harvesting scarce 

rainfall.” Even though the population of Niger has doubled since the 

1970s, Niger’s rural farmers have decentralized control over natural 

resources, increased land/food security, and empowered local people 

to care for their own resources.26 Importantly, for other “Sahelian 

countries facing the triple challenges of population growth, deserti-

cation, and climate change, FMNR also oers a cheap and eective 

model to improve farm productivity and reclaim precious land from 

the dunes.” Conict still occurs over property rights and access to 

natural resources but large-scale violence and population displacements have not been a consequence of environmental degradation 

and change in Niger.27

e dramatic dierences in how people in the Sudan and Niger 

reacted to environmental degradation and change illustrate the need 

for more study into the intricate relationships between environmental 

degradation and conict. e lessons learned from these two disparate outcomes also oer opportunities for AFRICOM to learn from 

the processes and measures applied successfully and unsuccessfully 

and provide focused, proactive, constructive assistance to Africans as 

they learn to help themselves.

Overall Recommendations

AFRICOM has the potential to contribute signicantly to stability 

and security in Africa. By building positive relationships with African 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 143

militaries and governments, AFRICOM personnel can build Africa’s 

capacity to adapt to and mitigate environmental change. e following recommendations are oered for AFRICOM consideration.

1. “Help Africans operationalize their knowledge of the relationships between the environment and security—Prepare and provide training/education material on environmental security.”28

Exemplied by the Sudan and Niger, environmental degradation is 

a threat to the environmental and national security of all African 

states. Degradation contributes to conict, both violent and nonviolent, across Africa. AFRICOM can employ focused environmental 

security curricula to help increase the awareness of individual African states and select regions to the impending challenges to their stability and security created by continued environmental degradation.

AFRICOM should work toward establishing centers of excellence 

that address environmental security issues. ese centers could prepare environmental security training and education curricula that 

investigate and provide responses to local, state, and regional linkages between environmental degradation and conict.29

2. “Share environmental information/data with African states in 

an easily accessible manner.”30

African states on the whole lack access to up-to-date, advanced, 

and comprehensive environmental information/data. When simple, 

scientically based ecosystem management processes were implemented in Niger, stability and security increased. In the Sudan, where 

these processes and other good governance procedures were not applied, violence and instability erupted. Without accurate and current 

environmental information, African states cannot make informed security decisions for the future.

AFRICOM can either provide environmental information directly 

to selected states or assist in the creation of environmental information databases that are transparent, easily used, and accessible to as 

many citizens as possible. Additional environmental information can 

be obtained from “aer action reports” from various agencies (Department of State, USAID, World Food Program, Peace Corp, etc.) to 

see how they support environmental activities in Africa. Reports 

from the USGS have been crucial in determining what went right in 

Niger. Information also can be acquired from contractors and from 
144 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

allies such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and France who provide environmental support in Africa.31

3. “Assist African militaries to facilitate, inculcate, and disseminate an African environmental ethic—focused on mission, 

community, and environment—understanding ecosystem services 

and causal relationships.”32

US military forces are currently struggling to develop a comprehensive environmental ethic that extends to contingency and peacekeeping operations.33 Progress includes the US Army’s environmental sustainability ethic of “mission, community, and environment,” 

which could provide a template upon which African states and AFRICOM can begin a dialogue with military professionals on the relationships between ecosystem services, environmental security, and 

conict.34 An African environmental ethic can prevent degradation 

and augment security. Perhaps African Contingency Operations 

Training and Assistance funds could be used to initiate the process of 

instilling an environmental ethic in interested African militaries.35

4. “Expand the use of state partnership programs (SPP) and US 

National Guard personnel to train African militaries for natural 

disaster and environmental mitigation responses.”36

Many SPP personnel and US National Guard units are experts at 

responding to natural and environmental disasters. African militaries can benet from this expertise through training on how to respond to environmental disasters like oods, droughts, and disease 

pandemics. SPP personnel and US Guardsmen also understand the 

importance of environmental mitigation procedures and could share 

their extensive knowledge with African military professionals with 

AFRICOM assistance.

5. “Help African militaries purchase and utilize available environmental monitoring and early warning devices.”37

Many African states lack a proactive solution to the natural and 

environmental disasters that oen weaken and disable state security. 

AFRICOM professionals can assist acquisition of early warning and 

natural disaster monitoring devices by selected African militaries. If 

African militaries, and in particular air forces, can increase their 

monitoring and response capabilities to natural and environmental 

disasters, they will enhance their security competencies, public image, and professionalism.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 145

One concept to consider is “fractional ownership,” where African 

states or regional organizations can lease expensive environmental 

monitoring equipment. Fractional ownership or leasing “could be a 

concept explored by US Foreign Military Sales” and/or international 

corporations and the overall process “could foster growth of real African regional capability” to respond to environmental crises and disasters even if the process started bilaterally or unilaterally.38

6. “Assist African environmental security specialists to train others.”39

Establishing a core cadre of African environmental security specialists will have multiple benets. ese specialists can create targeted programs that address African environmental security challenges and responses and help professionalize African militaries. 

AFRICOM can provide training, expertise, and a curriculum that 

will make this eort possible.

7. “Assist Africans to mitigate environmental degradation by 

migrants and refugees.”40

Environmental refugees and migrants eeing environmental degradation and conict challenge every African state’s limited security 

and economic resources. Mass movements of displaced individuals 

and families place a huge burden on the refugee camps and on the 

local environment. AFRICOM can help African militaries locate refugee camps in sustainable locations, construct camps that reduce environmental and security challenges, and proactively prevent environmental degradation from happening in the rst place.

8. “Inform African militaries of US environmental security expertise and capabilities.”41

A specialized segment of US military and governmental professionals have extensive expertise in environmental security, degradation, and mitigation issues. e in-depth and practical knowledge of 

these professionals can be used to reduce environmental degradation 

and conict in Africa. AFRICOM should provide African military 

leaders with information on these capabilities and opportunities for 

US environmental security professionals to share their prociencies 

with their African counterparts.

One method to share information could involve building “social 

networks” between AFRICOM sta members, African environmentalists, African environmental security experts, and other agencies, 

components, and even nongovernmental environmental agencies. 
146 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

An environmental security social network could enhance sustainable 

environmental practices and processes and augment stability and security operations. In addition, personal handheld communication 

devices could improve communications reliability, speed, and access 

in all of Africa without an expensive supporting land infrastructure. 

Social networks and personal handheld devices would be invaluable 

as tools for strategic environmental security communications.42 Nevertheless, local environmental knowledge should not be discounted; 

simple word-of-mouth, low-tech communication can be very eective, and inclusion of oen marginalized groups (women and young 

men) should be a focal point of all communication and environmental security strategies.43

9. “AFRICOM should concentrate on those environmental security projects that provide visible results measured against realistic milestones.”

AFRICOM must hold engagement partners accountable and continually move those partners toward becoming self-sucient contributors.44 Various studies have shown that when individuals and 

groups become accountable and responsible for managing environmental assets and have the capacity to manage ecosystems eectively, 

then cooperation, ownership and stewardship values, and sustainability of the resources increase visibly.45

10. “Assist Africans in building aviation capacity or air domain 

development (ADD).”46

AFRICOM can help African states build ADD, which will enhance 

air safety, expand trade, promote security/stability, and improve surveillance, control, and protection of natural resources by developing 

civil-military partnerships between AFRICOM aviation organizations and African states. ADD will enable African states to overcome 

transportation infrastructure limitations that plague many states 

throughout the continent.47

Conclusions

AFRICOM can become a positive, proactive force on the African 

continent helping Africans help themselves. US military forces, environmental organizations, and government agencies have enormous 

expertise and knowledge on environmental change and the challenges 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 147

and opportunities it can create. AFRICOM must help Africans build 

environmental, economic, and social capital to ensure stability and 

security. e processes AFRICOM supports should ensure Africans 

are provided with expert, current, and relevant environmental 

management information; gain secure and equitable control over 

their natural resources; and are empowered to make communitybased decisions concerning these resources. e frameworks and 

institutions that enable the supporting processes all have working 

antecedents in the United States and other developed states, and 

AFRICOM can assist process adaption by Africans for Africans.48

Information, expertise, secure resource ownership, frameworks, 

and institutions can give Africans the tools to protect the land, water, 

climate, biodiversity, and people from further environmental degradation and the added devastation of linked violent conict. e 

goals of these eorts are to help Africans reduce environmental 

degradation, protect and sustain natural resources, and mitigate 

conict over the environment. AFRICOM’s charge is to become a 

strategic, operational, and tactical enabler.

Notes

1. See United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), GEO-4; 2008 Living Planet 

Report; and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystem and Human Well-Being.

2. UNEP, Africa, 57.

3. Ward, United States Africa Command, 11.

4. UNEP, Africa, chap. 1, PowerPoint presentation, slide 5.

5. Ibid, xi.

6. Ibid., chap. 1: PowerPoint slide 4.

7. Ibid., x.

8. Ibid., 19, xii.

9. Ibid., xi, 19, 13.

10. Ibid., 20, xii.

11. Ibid., 14; and Boko, “Africa,” 435.

12. Ibid., xi, 6.

13. Boko et al., “Africa,” 435.

14. UNEP, Africa, 52–55.

15. Henk, Botswana Defense Force.

16. UNEP, Africa, 9, 11, 8, 29.

17. Ibid., 220, 23.

18. Ibid., 14, x, 13.

19. Pearce, “From Viet Nam to Rwanda.

20. UNEP, Sudan, 6.

21. UNEP, Africa, 60.
148 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

22. UNEP, Sudan, 7.

23. Ibid., 6.

24. World Resources Report, 143–45.

25. UNEP, Africa, 16–17; and Tappan, “RE: Extent of Natural Regeneration.”

26. UNEP, Africa, 17.

27. World Resources Report, 155, 157.

28. Burgess, ed., Air Force Symposium 2009, 8.

29. Ibid., 6.

30. Ibid., 8.

31. Ibid., 4.

32. Ibid., 8.

33. Mosher et al., Green Warriors.

34. Schoomaker and Brownlee, Army Strategy for the Environment, 2.

35. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009, 5.

36. Ibid., 8.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 31–32.

39. Ibid., 8.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., 9.

42. Ibid., 28–29.

43. World Resources Report, 156.

44. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009, 5.

45. World Resources Report.

46. Peltier and omas, “Air Domain Development in Africa.”

47. Ibid., 111.

48. Ibid., 111–57.
Chapter 9

Toward a Stable African Continent

The Role of AFRICOM and the USAF in Building 

Partnerships through Environmental Security

Robert R. Sands

Environmental security is no longer a concept in fringe discussions of environmentalists and others interested in conservation or 

applied ecology. Recently it has entered into the broader context of 

human security and thus becomes integral to the human endeavor 

to maintain and survive—including conflict resolution, protection 

and sustainment of natural resources, mediation and perhaps acceleration of globalization, and the quality of life of indigenous/

marginalized peoples.

Environmental security is a fundamental component of longterm stability and progress in Africa. It is essential in developing 

lasting peaceful relationships among local indigenous peoples and 

between public and private sectors under fledging local and oftentimes unstable national governments. Environmental security also 

offers opportunities for developing and sustaining partnerships 

between various US agencies and other organizations, including the 

US Department of Defense (DOD) and those of African partner nations 

and their populaces.

In Africa, the development of conservation zones—lands set aside 

for national parks and wildlife refuges; community-based conservation (CBC) projects, including community-based natural resources 

management (CBNRM) programs; and transfrontier conservation 

areas (TFCA)—promotes environmental security and has offered a 

means to attenuate and resolve some conflicts. At the same time, conservation zones promote biodiversity, enhance environmental and 

natural resource management, and offer economic development for 

indigenous and/or marginalized peoples.

Human security in general and environmental security specifically— 

concerns keenly shared by many African nations and individual 

Africans—represent potential opportunities for the United States 
150 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

to build partnerships that could signicantly increase the inuence of 

US African Command (AFRICOM), the newest combatant command within the DOD.

A 2009 AFRICOM/Air University symposium featured a track on 

environmental security, which identied ways AFRICOM could engage in partnering for lasting and meaningful inuence. One workshop featured discussion of conservation zones, such as TFCAs and 

peace parks (PP).1

 e workshop proposed several initiatives and 

roles where AFRICOM, and specically the US Air Force (USAF), 

could promote environmental security in Africa.

is chapter oers analysis of the mutual benets to US national 

security interests, African governments, and marginalized populations accruing from promotion of environmental security by building partnerships. Utilizing airpower as an engagement capacity, partnership building can aid in the development and sustainment of 

conservation zones in Africa. 

• is chapter proposes that promoting environmental security is 

both an end in itself and a critical component of human security. As such it will aid in legitimizing nation-states and ultimately promote stability in Africa. Application of the concept of 

“conservation zones” can be eective in promoting environmental and human security.

• It proposes that US foreign policy should include environmental security programs as means for building partnerships for stability in foreign nation-states. AFRICOM, and specically the 

Seventeenth Air Force, can play a vital role in the success of environmental security programs.

• It denes the various types of conservation zones in Africa and 

explores three primary benets—sustainment of biodiversity, 

an engine for economic development, and a means of conict 

management—that can result from successful conservation 

zones. One specic type of conservation zone, CBC programs, 

oers unique partnership opportunities to address human and 

environmental security at a local community level. Eective 

partnership building should not just be at national levels.

• It oers a specic case study of a successful CBC program, the 

Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT) in Kenya, with a brief illustration of how AFRICOM could engage an array of aviation and 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 151

USAF resources to benet the development and sustainment of 

the NRT, thereby promoting lasting and eective partnerships 

with local and ultimately national governments.

Use of the NRT as a partnership-building model would also provide 

an example of how such engagements would occur and identify elements, like education and training in cross-cultural competence, necessary for success.

Human (and Environmental) Security: 

e New Security Strategy

Stability in Africa and elsewhere requires human security; the 

guarantee of human rights is necessary for lasting sovereign governments. e concept of human security was established by the United 

Nations (UN) beginning in the 1990s.2

 e notion of human security 

has been redened to mean that state security requires the safety of 

individuals and the well-being of local communities rather than national 

military power.3

 “is kind of security redirected attention away 

from the nation-state and toward individuals and local communities. 

In addition to protection from physical violence, it oered safety 

from chronic threats like hunger, disease, severe economic deprivation, or political repression.”4

Crucial to human security is environmental security—protecting 

people from the short- and long-term ravages of nature, deterioration 

of the natural environment, and man-made threats to the environment, while guaranteeing access to and preserving natural resources. 

e concept of environmental security has grown beyond the concern of species and habitat protection to a concern for survivability of 

the planet. Developing and sustaining environmental security in Africa 

oers military and nonmilitary organizations an opportunity to engage in mutually benecial partnerships with African partner nations 

and their local populations, thereby promoting stability and ultimately beneting US national security.

Building Partnerships

Arguably, the most important military component of the 

struggle against violent extremists is not the ghting we do 
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ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves.

—National Defense Strategy, June 2008

A government’s legitimacy requires an ability to provide human 

security. Building partnerships has become an important instrument 

of the DOD and US foreign policy in promoting stability in partner 

nations. It is dened as “Airmen interacting with international airmen and other relevant actors to develop, guide, and sustain relationships for mutual benet and security.”5

e USAF is developing partnership-building doctrine predicated 

on the continued and increasing importance of establishing and sustaining partnerships that will evolve into long-term alliances. Partnership building includes the following concepts important to the USAF:

1. Security assistance can encompass a variety of interactions 

ranging from passing conversations to formalized agreements. 

Partnership-building activities include humanitarian assistance, medical readiness exchanges, exchange programs with 

military members and civilians in professional military education and topical education/training in specic areas (civil engineering, environmental management, technological schools, 

etc.), and the more traditional military-to-military programs 

such as collaboration in exercises and weapons programs.

2. Actors involved in partnership building include those from local 

to international authorities and nongovernmental organizations 

(NGO). Partnerships develop across a spectrum of methods and 

relationships. Collaboration and strong, vital relationships are 

the currency involved.

3. Successful partnerships are built on courses of action and resources that can bring immediate and longer-term benets. e 

focus of the partnership is its sustainability over the long term. 

However, the most successful partnerships see a gradual drawdown in US resources and involvement.

4. Aviation and airpower can promote the prosperity of all nations, 

especially those that work toward human security. Some policy 

makers might recognize that aviation can provide a wide range 

of benets, but few fully comprehend airpower as a strategic 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 153

investment in national and human security. It can catalyze legitimacy, project national sovereignty, and accelerate internal stability and regional security. Airpower can also be an engine for economic, technological, and intellectual development, generating 

infrastructure essential to the internal and external strength of a 

nation. Connecting aviation to local leaders/communities could 

promote the development and sustainment of human security 

and result in successful partnership building.6

Environmental Security and Conict

We live in a world of ongoing conict, rapidly increasing population, and dwindling resources. Recently, the eect of kinetic operations has become increasingly relevant. Current US military strategy 

and doctrine have recognized environmental security concerns in 

tactical and operational planning and policies.7

 It is understood, 

however, that military stability operations—that is, kinetic operations, 

including conict and postconict operations, staged domestically 

and from foreign bases—impact the environment greatly. Understanding the ecological footprint of conict and postconict operations to human/environmental security and managing this footprint 

to minimize the eect on the natural resources and human populations are necessary for the success of postconict physical, social, and 

cultural reconstruction and long-term sustainability. Along these 

lines, environmental security “best practices” for military operations 

outside the continental United States (CONUS) have developed from 

the environmental programs found at all military installations inside 

CONUS, including a suite of processes (environmental baseline surveys, environmental impact statements, etc.).

AFRICOM, Partnership Building, 

and Environmental Security

is chapter argues that militaries can also be engaged to promote 

and sustain environmental security in many areas of the developing 

world, or in areas that are caught in the pincers of human and/or 

environmental crises, in addition to being deployed into conict situations. Militaries oer unique command and support structures that 

include capabilities, technologies, and a “military culture” that can 
154 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

develop and sustain environmental security in the entire continent of 

Africa as well as conict areas such as the Middle East, Southwest and 

Southeast Asia, South America, and elsewhere. Providing resources 

to nations and local communities needing environmental security 

support in terms of mutual benets and cooperation can minimize 

perceptions of militarization or military colonialism.

e standing up of AFRICOM represents a departure from traditional forms of US military engagement, growing from a desire to 

create a combatant command that could engineer a “whole of government approach” for positive inuence by engaging in collaborative relationships with partner nations and other organizations across 

the African continent. 

USAFRICOM better enables the Department of Defense to work with other 

elements of the U.S. government and others to achieve a more stable environment where political and economic growth can take place. USAFRICOM is 

committed to supporting U.S. government objectives through the delivery 

and sustainment of eective security cooperation programs that assist African 

nations build their security capacity to enable them to better provide for their 

own defense.8

e leadership of ARFICOM includes representation from the Department of State (DOS), the DOD, the US Agency of International 

Development (USAID), and other government agencies involved in 

Africa. AFRICOM also seeks to engage humanitarian organizations 

involved in Africa issues and common concerns.

is paradigm shi in US military-civilian relations reects the 

changing face of foreign relations in an increasingly “globalized” 

twenty-rst century. e end result of US involvement in a continent 

as diverse as Africa, and with many countries still struggling from the 

aermath of colonialism, points toward reconstruction and stability 

operations as primary concerns for US foreign policy and a potential 

DOD opportunity in building partnerships with African nations. 

Dr. Dan Henk observed that historic patterns of foreign policy initiatives in African environmental security indicate that interagency dysfunction and stove piping would exist in stability operations projects 

undertaken within the traditional combatant command approach.9

AFRICOM exists as a means of harnessing the eorts and strengths of 

several agencies to engage in a range of programs—including militaryto-military, military-to-civilian, and civilian-to-civilian—to promote 

a “stable and secure” African environment and to promote human security.
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 155

A host of African, non-African governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and funding will be necessary to develop and 

sustain environmental security programs in local, regional, and international partnerships. Both non-African and African militaries 

can and will need to play critical roles in providing support. In Africa, 

where most nation-states are in their infancy and human security is 

constrained by a host of factors—little or no infrastructure, ethnic 

conict, and environmental crises, both man-made and natural, resulting in natural resource loss, disease, and famine—the notion of 

“security” cannot be tied to the traditional concept of defending national 

integrity but should reect a more human-centric perspective. Historically, militaries in Africa supported dictatorships and juntas 

whose social, cultural, and economic policies undermined human/

environmental security. Many African countries have resisted or at 

least approached AFRICOM with trepidation due to this history. In 

the past, colonial powers protected Africa from the Africans. Resources owed out—diamonds, minerals, oil—even Africans, up to 

the nineteenth century—and many of those resources still continue 

to leave, with benets accruing only to a tiny percentage of Africans. 

With independence rolling across the continent in the mid-to-late 

twentieth century and new governments unable to govern eectively, 

human life and natural resources were and are victims of civil wars, 

terrorism, and cross-border conicts. In many parts of Africa, the 

militaries have contributed to destabilizing countries and to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and marginalization of ethnic and cultural 

groups not in power. is perception of militaries, past and present, 

has led to the concept of “militarization” and has initially stained the 

eorts of AFRICOM. Dealing with the perception of militarization 

and thus abating resistance to stability operations will be the burden 

of organizations such as AFRICOM.

AFRICOM, and thereby the USAF, can bring to bear unique capabilities and technologies through building partnerships, particularly 

in the development and sustainment of national and international 

conservation zones, TFCAs, PPs, and CBC programs. e conservation zone can be understood in terms of three primary benets: sustainment of biodiversity, development and sustainment of economic 

development, and a vehicle for conict management and resolution.10

ere are several types of conservation zones, including TFCAs, PPs, 

and CBC programs. Each oers opportunities for developing and 

sustaining partnerships with Africans.
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e CBC programs oer opportunities for developing lasting partnerships with African communities that can promote the development of human security beyond what national government organizations can provide.11 One CBC program in northern Kenya suggests 

how the USAF through partnership building can develop and promote sustained partnerships at the level of local communities—considered critical in promoting stability in developing and conictprone nation-states.

Conservation Zones

e environment, as we have discussed, is a critical component to 

guaranteeing human security for Africans. e development and 

implementation of conservation zones that incorporate local communities and governmental organizations in managing land for multiple purposes can promote stability. e development of ecological 

areas/conservation zones to promote sustainability and stability has a 

long history. e birth of national parks and forests in the United 

States is just one example of such use. More recently, the use of conservation zones in Africa and other areas, such as North/South Korea, 

the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and nations in and around the former 

Soviet Union, has been promoted as a means of conict resolution.

Conservation zones are based on three general benets or pillars 

of sustainability:

1. sustainability of biodiversity through conservation [conservation and management of natural resources, including water 

(hydroelectric) and land resources such as forests and wildlife] 

and preservation of the “commons” to reduce conict over depletion of resources; 12

2. management and sustainability of economic development both 

locally and regionally through the engines of ecotourism and 

community-based land use programs; and

3. sustainability of regional peace and stability through conict 

resolution to include bilateral and multilateral relations between nations.13

Conservation zones refer to ecologically protected areas whose 

boundaries and land use have been agreed upon by local, national, 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 157

and/or consortia of national governments and NGOs. At the local 

community level, conservation zones can create governance that is 

oen far more inuential and benecial to local populations than national governments, especially where the national government lacks 

a strong presence in areas more rural and distant from the government centers.

ere are three basic types of conservation zones in Africa. e 

rst, transnational, has borders established by national governments 

and maintained by a consortium of governments. ese not only engage indigenous and local populations, but also depend on successful 

international cooperation to create, sustain, and protect natural and 

human resources in and around the conservation areas. A second 

type includes areas within national borders (e.g., wildlife refuges and 

national parks). e third type engages local populations in establishing and managing natural resources areas for sustaining wildlife and 

promoting local economic development. Community-based natural 

resources management (CBNRM) programs in southern Africa, 

originating in the 1980s and piloted in Kenya, Tanzania, and other 

countries, exemplify these.14 Rural communities that live in nontenable or marginal agricultural lands in and around wildlife- or gamerich habitats or migratory routes are empowered to manage the natural resources for economical benet through ecotourism. Management 

of these community-based areas creates local governance that oen 

becomes the de facto decision maker in community issues and a tie to 

the national government.

Environmental stress rarely respects national boundaries, and it 

may be benecial for countries and regions to cooperate to alleviate 

similar or mutual problems.15 Concentrating on environmental 

peacekeeping instead of environmental problems and environmental 

security entails interactions that can be building blocks for future cooperation.16 Protected areas—transfrontier protected areas, transboundary protected areas, or transfrontier conservation areas 

(TFCA) that straddle national or regional boundaries—are oen 

called peace parks.17 Peace parks are found primarily in past conict, 

postconict, or potential conict regions.

Generally, TFCAs are ecological “protected areas” developed between nation-states sharing a political boundary. ere is usually 

some regular communication and information sharing between 

TFCA partners. TFCAs may or may not have contiguous boundaries 

and/or contain human use land areas.18 e development of TFCAs 
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in Africa has been especially successful in facilitating the resolution 

of territorial conict and promotion of environmental sustainability. 

TFCAs have also become “important symbols and outright manifestations of the peace process.”19 For conservationists, TFCAs are an 

enforceable means for protecting biodiversity. For national militaries, 

they become an area without human population encroachment. Recently, however, TFCAs have become refuge areas or staging platforms for rebels. TFCAs also represent economic development for 

local indigenous groups or privately sponsored ecotourism companies. ey oer pharmaceutical companies or NGOs interested in 

preserving agricultural biodiversity a genetic “warehouse” of potential natural resources or information.

Ecotourism is an engine that can drive both funding and livelihoods for those who live in and around the TFCA.20 TFCAs such as 

the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) that straddles the 

boundaries of Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe oer places 

to live within and adjacent to park boundaries

Peace parks date from 1932 and the development of the WatertonGlacier International Peace Park on the border between the United 

States and Canada.21 Organizations such as the World Commission 

on Protected Areas of the International Union for Conservation of Nature

(IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the United Nations 

University for Peace have worked in some way to further the concept 

of promoting peace through building peace parks. According to the 

IUCN, a PP must promote a “clear biodiversity objective, a clear 

peace objective and cooperation between two countries or subnational jurisdiction.” e UN University for Peace denes PPs as protected areas where “there is a signicant conictive past.”22 Others 

have dened “Parks for Peace” as “transboundary protected areas that 

are formally dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and to 

the promotion of peace and cooperation.”23 Clearly, PPs focus on sustaining peaceful relations between nations, promoting environmental sustainability, and preserving access to natural resources.

Peace parks provide a collaborative alternate solution to barricaded borders, thereby mitigating tensions. ey have been used successfully in regional areas either prone to conict or in a postconict 

condition, such as the border between Kuwait and Iraq.24 e Korean 

demilitarized zone is a nature corridor untouched for 50 years and an 

opportunity for engagement in collaborative eorts to maintain habitats 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 159

and reintroduce species, promote novel cooperation in international 

relations, and symbolize peace.25 e Siachen Glacier region has been 

and continues to be a region of conict between India and Pakistan;

“combat over a barren, uninhabited nether world of questionable 

strategic value is a forbidding symbol of their lingering irreconcilability.”26 A “Transboundary Peace Park,” to be bilaterally managed by 

both India and Pakistan, has been proposed that could end the ongoing “low-intensity border war between the two nations.”27 A frontier 

peace park in the Mesopotamian marshlands between Iran and Iraq 

is in the preliminary stages. e goal is to bring Shia and Sunni together and to restore sensitive marshlands necessary for biodiversity 

and agriculture damaged by decades of conict.28 e boundary land 

between Afghanistan and Pakistan also has been proposed for a series of TFCAs.29

e development of TFCAs featured peace parks in early 1990s 

Africa.30 Peace parks came into being through discussions of common interests, rst between South African WWF president Anton 

Rupert and Mozambique’s president Joachim Chissano in 1990, with 

later support of the newly elected South African president, Nelson 

Mandela. e Peace Parks Foundation was established in 1997. e 

foundation was a collaboration of the governments of Mozambique, 

Zimbabwe, and South Africa and NGOs such as the WWF of South 

Africa and the World Bank.

ere are several successful peace parks in southern Africa, including the GLTP, Kibira National Park, Virunga National Park, and 

the Volcanoes National Park, which make up the Great Lakes TFCAs 

of Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. e ambitious Kavango–Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Peace Parks Initiative 

includes ve African countries—South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Angola.31 e KAZA has remained in the 

planning stage for several years due to the political instability of some 

members leading to internal conict. e implementation of such an 

initiative only underscores the potential benets of TFCAs to nations 

and their neighbors. While analysis is ongoing, organizations such as 

the Peace Parks Foundation in South Africa continue to promote 

peace parks, leaving the potential for engagement in partnership 

building open.32
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Community-Based Conservation Programs—A Unique 

Opportunity for Building Partnerships 

Community-based conservation programs represent a new conservation ethic in Africa as elsewhere in the last two decades.33 e colonial conservation ethic, “protectionist (fortress) conservation,” was 

state-controlled, “top-down” management and has given way to a management approach based on “inclusive, participatory, communitybased endeavors.”34 Initially labeled as CBNRM projects when rst developed in Africa in the 1980s, programs were established in countries 

under dierent acronyms but with the common goals of community 

participation leading to natural resources management, recovery and 

sustainment of at-risk wildlife, and community development. In 

Namibia, the CBNRM program was labeled “LIFE” (Living in a Finite 

Environment), and in Zimbabwe it was labeled “CAMPFIRE” (the 

Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources).35

Today these programs are found in many African countries and are 

subject to growing pains specic to local, national, and international 

governments. Also, the national and international NGOs that represent powerful and competing interests may or may not promote con-

ict resolution, attenuation, and management.

Top-down approaches of national and state governments in the 

development and sustainment of national parks now create diculty 

in adapting to the community-based conservation ethic and translation of that ethic into successful community development and sustainment of local natural resources to the benet of community residents.36 e heart of making CBC programs successful requires 

allying the twin goals of conservation (including biodiversity) and 

economic development (socioeconomic benets to local communities). Likewise, these goals must be reconciled with those of all stakeholders. Eorts of NGOs such as the WWF and e Nature Conservancy can promote conservation through limited land use that 

marginalizes the benets to the local communities.37

Other diculties lie in articulation between the eorts and management of government organizations and the participation of the 

local communities. is is apparent in the operation of national parks 

and refuge areas where the needs of indigenous peoples are not considered. Lately, national governments in countries such as Kenya and 

Tanzania have promoted the development of conservation areas that 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 161

have incorporated those indigenous traditional land users in the 

management and sustainment of parks.

e Ngorongono Conservation Area (NCA) in Tanzania oers indigenous populations residence within and adjacent to park boundaries. Even though limiting their traditional subsistence strategies—

for example, pastoralism for the Masai—the NCA park development 

and sustainment can oer employment, experience, and training/

education.38 Yet there is also evidence that the Masai culture and specically its relationship to wildlife have dramatically been altered, 

and the local indigenous cultures and life ways—herding and grazing 

cattle—fragmented. Even though local Masai have been included in 

park management in some capacities, they are not active or meaningful participants. In addition, Masai ecological knowledge, including 

“geographical understanding of the landscape . . . to ecological 

knowledge and resource management process” honed over centuries 

of local subsistence, is not taken into consideration in the discourse 

shaped by the hegemony of Western conservation approaches. is 

local knowledge is based on a continuing ecological repository of 

orally compiled observation and interaction with natural resources 

that lies beyond the “science” of conservation and must be integrated 

into CBC to be an eective program.39

In Tanzania, as elsewhere (South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, 

and outside of Africa), there is a problematic dialogue between the 

more “ocial” entities of government, NGOs and donor agencies/

organizations that represent the power brokers, and the local communities themselves. Oentimes there is a lack of adequate representation to establish or reconcile an eective management that considers 

both goals of conservation and economic development. An eective 

CBC program requires that the resource brokers consider “how to 

reshape their own institution and agendas to really t communities—

with their diverse needs, knowledge, and complex social and ecological structures—into conservation” (emphasis in the original).40

e Western notion of “community” may also bias the application 

of CBC. Western notions of geopolitical boundaries, such as villages, 

applied to seasonal transhumance subsistence, mobile agricultural, 

or food forager cultures (these strategies are most likely those practiced by indigenous populations in and around CBC lands) constrain 

the consideration of conservation approaches and limit the application of natural resources for economic development. Conservation 

zones oer a multitude of engagement points that could be utilized in 
162 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

developing partnerships through promotion of human and environmental security. At the same time, AFRICOM, other DOD, or DOS 

eorts to frame the activity and the relationships in terms of promoting sustainable African success in conservation zones must apply 

caution to partnership activity.

Contemporary CBC Programs: Land Trusts and 

the Kenya Land Conservation Trust

In 2005, the Kenyan government incorporated the Kenya Land 

Conservation Trust (KLCT). e trust encompasses CBC programs 

that “extend beyond protected areas” and the acquisition of critical 

pieces of land integral to national conservation eorts.41 Protected 

areas in Kenya account for only 8 percent of its land. is leaves large 

parcels of wildlife habitat outside the protection of governmental 

agencies such as the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Ministry 

of Lands and Housing when it comes to protecting against “incompatible” land use practices “emanating from population increases . . . 

and the consequent conversion of land for agriculture, subdivision, 

settlements and livestock loss” and potential use by criminal or terrorist organizations.42 Leaders from national and local private sectors, civil 

society, and landowners join a diverse trust board featuring African 

Wildlife Foundation (AWF), KWS, and the Ministry of Lands and 

Housing. is provides a venue for “active” participation in communities where the KLCT will be operating. Various mechanisms are 

used to ensure conservation, to include land purchases, easements, 

leases, and management agreements.

Besides facilitating the KLCT, the AWF has initiated the African 

Heartlands Program that emphasizes conservation of African wildlife through protection of “large, cohesive conservation landscapes.”43

As indicated above, many of the critical ecological “corridors” that 

help sustain wildlife through migratory routes as well as necessary 

tracts of habitat are not under protection aorded by national governmental agencies. Local communities or even state agents without 

means to protect or sustain conservation of natural resources falling 

within individual or community boundaries or designated land tenures mostly own these corridors. e development of land trusts has 

brought private lands under conservation and facilitated development of natural resources management plans that promote synchroni-
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 163

zation of multiple land uses that benet both biodiversity and human 

livelihood. e African Heartlands Programs as of 2005 had initiated 

CBC programs to benet communities in Mozambique, Tanzania, 

and Botswana.

CBC programs oer a unique partnership-building opportunity at 

community levels to address environmental and, in general, human 

security at the ground level. e partnerships are developed in a complex coalition that would include national government agencies; the 

more grounded the community, the more viable the relationship between community and national government. Strengthening this frequently tenuous relationship between government and communities 

in many African nations promotes stability.

Another example of a CBC program in Kenya is the Northern 

Rangeland Trust (NRT). e NRT was prompted by support from the 

Lewa Conservancy, a private land trust in northern Kenya. e success of the NRT suggests a potential model of CBC that could be exported to other areas of Africa, and AFRICOM could be a means to 

assist in the development and sustainment of these programs.

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and 

Northern Rangeland Trust

A Case Study

Arguably one of the most successful CBC programs in Kenya, perhaps on the continent, is the partnership between the nonprot Lewa 

Wildlife Conservancy (LWC), a 62,000-acre former privately owned 

cattle ranch, and the Northern Rangeland Trust, a collection of local 

communities north of the conservancy that have designated communal land for wildlife preservation. e former owners of Lewa Downs, 

now the LWC, primarily herded cattle until 1983 but also operated a 

successful wildlife “ecotourist” program fueled by the now-endangered 

black rhino and Grévy’s zebra, as well as elephant, lion, leopard, and 

African bualo. With the black rhino approaching extinction due to 

poaching in the early 1980s, the owners set aside and fenced part of 

the ranch as a rhino sanctuary. A decade later the sanctuary was expanded and converted to a general wildlife sanctuary to include the 

entire ranch and adjoining Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve.
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e LWC has also addressed social and health issues within local 

communities as well as those adjacent to its boundaries. It has created 

a very ecient wildlife “security” force that cooperates with the Kenya 

Wildlife Service and features a variety of security technologies to 

maintain an eective deterrent to poaching. Occasionally, the LWC 

security partners with the KWS and community conservation programs in antipoaching missions.

e northern rangelands contain a precarious environmental situation; “the long-term conservation of wildlife in Kenya’s northern 

rangelands is inextricably linked to the fate of the local pastoralist 

communities.”44 e LWC has taken an active role in northern Kenya, 

fostering a conservation and wildlife preservation ethic to combat the 

negative eects of human intervention from overgrazing and livestock, poaching, and ethnic violence. ere is a connection between 

the conservation of wildlife and preservation of biodiversity in northern 

Kenya with the development of the local pastoralist communities. 

CBC initiatives in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, rest on the development of wildlife and habitat, with ecotourism as a driver of economic 

development. e eorts and resources supplied by governments and 

NGOs are crucial to these initiatives. e drive for economic sustainability oen overshadows the absolute need to involve the local community at every step of the developmental process. e evolution of 

the NRT is an example of a CBC initiative that weaves into its expression the critical piece of community governance and management.

Land ownership is a dening attribute of the NRT and supports 

the notion of conservancy independence. Ownership empowers 

communities to make informed decisions that relate to community 

needs. However, the majority of Kenya’s CBC initiatives tend to focus 

on generating economic benets for the community through ecotourism. e real needs—to establish a solid foundation for local governance and sustainability of that initiative—come second. As a result, community participation from the outset is largely passive and 

tends to become overly dependent on long-term support from the 

government and NGOs. e NRT has approached development with 

goals customized to each conservancy and based on the needs of local 

communities. is approach promotes a solid and accountable foundation for investment from a variety of sources into the conservancies and cultivates independence from the specic interests of each of 

the organizations. Investment is applied to directly support conservation and to community institutions that may indirectly support 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 165

conservation and the development of the community. In others 

words, success of the conservancy fosters community development.

In 2004, LWC personnel collaborated with national and local governments and conservation groups to establish the NRT. e main 

problems and their solutions in development of the NRT followed the 

three pillars of conservation zones discussed earlier: sustainability of 

biodiversity, economic development, and conict resolution. e NRT 

encompasses 1.5 million acres and is home to “approximately 60,000 

pastoralists of dierent ethnic origin including Samburu, Rendille, Laikipiak Maasai and Meru.”45 e trust stretches across a large swath of 

traditional African megafauna habitat, yet each of the trust’s conservancies contains a unique constellation of animal and plant species that 

require specic conservation and local economic development.

 Goals of the NRT are to

• ensure the conservation, management, and sustainable use of 

the natural resources within the trust area;

• promote and develop tourism and all other environmentally 

sustainable income-generating projects within the trust area;

• promote culture, education, and sports of the residents of the 

trust area;

• promote better health of the residents of the trust area through 

the provision of better health services and facilities;

• alleviate poverty of the inhabitants of the trust area through improved social services, provision of employment, and establishment of community-based enterprises; and

• promote and support trusts, corporations, NGOs, and other charitable organizations with similar objects to those of the trust.46

e NRT has organized around a governance structure that relies 

on representation of individual conservancies through a democratically elected council of elders and a board of trustees with a set tenure 

of service. An executive director coordinates trust operations by funneling decisions through the community development department, 

the research and monitoring department, the livestock and rangelands manager, and the business and enterprise manager. Individual 

conservancies allocate almost 50 percent of their ecotourism income 

toward an annual operating budget, with the remainder going to 
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community institutions and services for community development 

(e.g., education, social services, health care, etc.).47

Individual conservancies follow a similar administrative structure, 

with the traditional community leadership empowering a community conservancy board that directs operations through the four departments similar to those mentioned above. Conict resolution 

teams reconcile resource use when grazing and other disputes arise. 

e teams consist of respected elders led by a retired chief who 

“maintain peace through mediation, dialogue and advice.” Team 

members receive formal training in an array of conict resolution 

techniques as well.48

e northern rangelands are unique in Kenya, perhaps in all of 

Africa. ere are no physical boundaries or fencing that would impede the natural movement of wildlife. e NRT acts to secure this 

area through individual conservancies that work locally in concert 

with other conservancies to maintain wildlife and a broader ecological mosaic strategy that guarantees the necessary wildlife migration 

through the rangelands.

e success of the individual conservancies depends on eective 

management of the NRT and external support from a variety of organizations. is also depends on eective ecological monitoring and a 

sound security program that support the wildlife, habitat, and communities. Tools necessary for ecological monitoring and a viable security program include “radio communications equipment, a direct communication channel, weapons (dependent on government policy), uniforms, 

binoculars, GPS units, camping equipment for mobile security teams, 

computer and oce resources, airstrips, and other infrastructure.”49

A sound ecological strategy can rely on the resources of the conservancy managers, governmental organizations, and nonprot ecological conservation organizations for evaluation of the ecological 

management program to provide exibility in adapting to changing 

conditions and to coordinate management strategies with developmental potential. Inherent in the NRT and its individual conservancies is a community “participation” monitoring program that combines both quantitative ecological monitoring and localized 

participatory qualitative monitoring. is prioritizes species monitoring, promotion of trust and individual conservancy collected data, 

and initial analysis by NRT technicians. Satellite remote sensing and 

aerial survey data complement the conservancy-collected data.50

Monitoring programs consist of ground and aerial monitoring and 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 167

surveys of wildlife species, habitat vegetation, rangeland conditions, 

and game bird species to promote sustainable management practices. 

is straightforward approach provides communities with information for critical decision making on conservation and development activities.

e northern Kenyan rangelands have struggled with the eects of 

political instability in neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia in the form 

of terrorism. e Kenyan government and local communities have 

resolved some of the human insecurity; however, activities such as 

poaching continue to plague the ecological security and success of 

the NRT itself. e trust engages a security network that spans the 

entire range, including an active, well-trained, and well-resourced security team. e operations of the security program are also closely 

allied with organizations such as the KWS and Kenyan police. For 

security operations that require additional support, resources such as 

aerial reconnaissance, dogs, and armed forces are available from the 

Lewa Conservancy.

e NRT and AFRICOM/USAF: 

A Model for Building Successful Partnerships

Air and space capabilities can aid in meeting human security needs 

through eective governance, promoting national and local security, 

and meeting the sociocultural needs of the people. e modern standards that ensure safe and eective air and space operations require 

infrastructure development that benets both civil and military use. 

Aiding the development of air and space capabilities can include a 

range of activities that includes military-to-military, military-tocivilian, and civilian-to-civilian contacts. Activities could include 

civil (human security) operations through civil aviation training, humanitarian response activities, promotion of medical assistance in 

rural and marginalized communities, assistance in building the necessary infrastructure to support both civil and military aviation, development of training exchange programs for personnel in both civil 

and military aviation, peacekeeping, and other activities. USAF partnership building could involve robust application of air and space 

assistance in the development and sustainment of aviation capability 

to both partner nation governments and local communities.
168 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

AFRICOM could provide support in seven specic areas to TFCAs 

and peace parks to promote partnership building. ese areas directly 

support environmental security in those conservation areas developed 

and supported primarily by governmental and NGO agencies:

1. Provide environmental security education/training and regional cooperation training to African militaries.

2. Assist African governments and militaries in creating security 

for TFCA (e.g. the Botswana Defense Force).51

3. Assist with knowledge sharing related to piracy, poaching, traf-

cking, terrorism, and other illicit transboundary activities.

4. Assist with knowledge sharing to identify and maintain areas 

suitable for designation as a TFCA.

5. Facilitate the TFCA programs with the assistance of DOD environmental and natural resource managers.

6. Assist Africans in environmental remediation programs to mitigate and return natural environments to sustainability following 

human impact such as post-demining environmental mitigation.

7. Provide cross-cultural education/training programs to all involved stakeholders. Develop program assessment measures to 

include short- and long-term ethnographic studies to ensure 

that development and sustainment of conservation zones is 

both eective and sensitive to the local peoples and culture in 

and around the conservation zones.52

e NRT oers opportunities where AFRICOM could apply support to localized and community-based conservation programs. 

AFRICOM support would allow individual communities/conservancies 

to be primary stewards of the ecological and human security. As has 

been argued, environmental security can promote human security 

for those far from the eective reach of their national government. 

e NRT conducts partnership-building activities at low levels of security assistance or civil-military operations, and standard interagency coordination at the country–team level should be adequate. 

is does not minimize the eectiveness of such activity. e populations aected may not be large or sophisticated in the means of economic development, but the vast area in the NRT and the need to 

guarantee “ownership” of that land as a barrier/buer to the violence 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 169

from bordering nation-states and organized criminal activities such as 

poaching are critical for human security in Kenya. For this security to 

be realized, the local populations need to be fully engaged in control 

of the land and be able to make a living o the land.

Aviation and USAF Support

Aviation and aviation support infrastructure are key to many of 

the operations, development of the NRT, and the individual conservancy programs. Northern Kenya, like so many other rural areas on 

the continent, lacks the infrastructure of basic local roads as well as 

national or international highways. Aviation becomes a necessary 

means of travel and transport connecting local communities, such as 

the community conservancies of the NRT, and also connecting them 

to services from national agencies and organizations. ere are several areas where AFRICOM/USAF could provide assistance.

Security Assistance

Aerial support would be critical for developing and maintaining 

an eective security program for wildlife, residents, and visitors. Aviation enables reconnaissance for identifying poachers and other 

criminal and terrorist activities. e Lewa Conservancy has developed this capability, and aerial reconnaissance support over the vast 

area of the NRT would be very benecial. Transport of security forces 

can be done more eectively and rapidly through aviation resources. 

Providing equipment such as light aircra, maintenance programs 

and parts, and training for security forces to develop and maintain 

human and technological resources would also be benecial. Local 

security forces could benet from programs along the lines of International Military Education and Training through DOD professional 

military education programs across the services and, for aviation, 

through Air University.

Ecological Management

Ecological monitoring programs would also benet from an increased use of aviation and space. Aerial surveys of wildlife (speci-

cally the migration routes), of grassland usage, and of the maintenance of livestock-free zones are essential to sustaining viable 
170 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

populations. Since the NRT’s ecological monitoring is done through 

the local conservancies, land “truthing” wildlife populations requires 

coverage on foot. Aviation can provide transportation to and from 

monitoring areas. e use of satellite remote sensing can provide survey data across the entire NRT that will complement monitoring at 

an individual conservancy level.

Economic Development

Aviation would promote economic development of the NRT and 

individual conservancies through wildlife-based enterprises that 

would include transportation of tourists and resources to and from 

wildlife areas and transport into facilities that support tourism.

Humanitarian and Emergency Care

Localized humanitarian crises as well as emergency care and medical response capability can also benet from aviation resources. 

Transport of medical personnel and supplies and patients would be 

more eective with aviation.

Technology and Research Transfer

e USAF, through its environmental management programs and 

adherence to sound stewardship principles and application of innovative science, can also provide cutting-edge technology to apply to 

trust and individual conservancy programs. Providing educational 

opportunities/internships to NRT and conservancy employees 

through exchange programs with environmental management programs and/or partnership programs with academic programs would 

be useful to sustaining the success of conservancies.

Conditions for Success

ere is ample opportunity for partnership building to assist local 

communities in stabilizing their own human security needs, which 

ultimately will allow the solidication of a sovereign government to 

meet and sustain human security over the long term. For environmental security based and directed at local communities’ partnership 

programs to be successful, certain conditions need to be met. ese 

include cultural awareness of the African people and education/
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 171

training of US/DOD personnel in cross-cultural competence.53

Cross-cultural competence would facilitate mapping the necessary 

relationships to engage a pilot project like the NRT; identifying the 

human, technological, and material resources that might be useful to 

the NRT; and producing the “lessons learned” for future projects 

similar to the NRT.

Cross-Cultural Competence

Implicit in developing and sustaining partnerships with African 

nations and the many ethnic and tribal groups that make up the cultural landscape of the continent is successful cross-cultural interactions. e USAF promotes cross-cultural competence as an applied 

suite of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that prepare Airmen to operate successfully in culturally complex situations without an extensive 

regional or culturally specic experience and linguistic competency.54

Knowledge of the foundational concepts and domains of culture and 

enhancing behaviors such as cultural relativism will promote and 

sustain communicating, relating, and negotiating skills necessary to 

work across cultural barriers.

Mapping the Relationships

AFRICOM continues to dene its scope and nature of operations 

on the African continent as well as develop an internal “rhythm” for its 

three components, DOS, DOD, and USAID, to work together to build 

partnerships. Identifying and mapping the necessary organizations/

agencies critical for success of an NRT partnership are necessary prior 

to the planning phase of such an endeavor. Initially, those departments within AFRICOM that would play a role in planning and implementation would need to coordinate their eorts through the ambassador and the country team. e country team would initiate the 

outreach necessary to Kenyan governmental organizations and agencies responsible for contacting local community/conservancy ocials 

to query on initial in-country visits that would begin to explore the 

potential for applying human and other resources to the NRT. Clearly, 

the sensitivity of the role of AFRICOM in supporting such projects 

would best be facilitated by a coordinated eort worked through the 

country team.
172 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

Modeling CBC Programs

CBC programs like the NRT oer a means for developing and sustaining human security in large areas with relatively low population 

density. Community conservation programs promote stewardship by 

local communities with a dual benet of promoting biodiversity and a 

sustainable local economy in areas that are usually marginal in both 

agricultural value and economic development. In the case of the NRT, 

the benets accrued by individual conservancies are magnied by the 

relationships each has with the larger trust and with the Lewa Conservancy. More land, especially more contiguous land, is brought under 

community control, while human and material resources needed by 

individual conservancies can be pooled to minimize cost. AFRICOM 

could then play a pivotal role in helping identify and develop CBC programs in other areas of Kenya and the rest of the continent.

Further Study

e complexity of agencies and organizations that would be instrumental in brokering a successful program of assistance to the 

NRT is indeed a labyrinth and must be mapped to nd the most effective pathway. is study has established the foundation for considering an approach to partnership building through the need for environmental security in Africa. It has examined conservation zones as 

a possible avenue toward partnership building, specically a recently 

established CBC program that might aord a pilot study of engaging 

AFRICOM. Further research and analysis should be accomplished to 

ascertain the value of whether this type of partnership in Africa can 

be successful and mutually benecial. A study directed at the feasibility of a project like the NRT as a model for building partnerships 

through similar environmental security/sustainability projects in 

other regions of Africa would be benecial and should consider the 

following goals:

1. identify stakeholders for establishing the viability of such projects;

2. conduct capability needs assessment to identify the potential 

human, technological, and material resources that the DOD 

and AFRICOM could provide that would benet the NRT and 

other CBCs; and
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 173

3. initiate/participate in preliminary discussions with US governmental agencies and NGOs that would play important roles in the 

success of such projects (e.g., Kenyan Wildlife Services, Kenyan 

Land Trust ocials, Lewa Conservancy, and the NRT board).

Conclusion

Promoting African stability through development and eventual sustainability of human security by Africans is a necessary condition for 

successful promotion of US foreign interests. Environmental security 

eorts such as CBC programs oer positive and viable partnership 

building opportunities for AFRICOM. Using the NRT as a feasibility 

model and/or pilot program should be explored to include further research on the types of human and technological resources that would 

benet it with an eye on developing sustainability by the local conservancies and building initial relationships between AFRICOM and 

country teams and with those Kenyan local and national ocials and 

other necessary personnel. Such a model or pilot would also provide its 

own case study of how such engagement would occur and identify conditions such as education and training in cross-cultural competence 

that would be necessary.

Notes

1. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009.

2. Initially, human security was dened in the United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 1993, 2; and later in 2003, United Nations Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now.

3. United Nations Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now, 1.

4. Ferreira and Henk, “‘Operationalizing’ Human Security,” 1. See also Sands, 

“Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 27–40; and United Nations Development Program, 

Human Development Report 1994. e latter states on page 22, 

e concept of security has far too long been interpreted narrowly: as security 

of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in 

foreign policy or as global security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust. It 

has been related more to nation-states than to people. Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people. . . . For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conict, political repression and environmental hazards.
174 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

5. Adapted from the March 2009 LeMay Center Building Partnerships (BP) 

Symposium, 6–8 January 2010, session 1. is denition acts under the premise that 

“Airmen” are active duty, reserves, civilians, etc. (see Air Force Doctrine Document 

[AFDD] 1). e reference to Airmen in the denition supposes that they are performing aviation-related activities.

6. Adapted from dra AFDD 3-20, Building Partnerships.

7. Mosher et al., Green Warriors.

8. United States Africa Command, “About U.S. Africa Command.”

9. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 98–117.

10. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 27.

11. Ibid., 30.

12. Hardin’s notion of the “tragedy of the commons” describes how multiple stakeholders can negatively impact a shared ecology if their self interest overrides shared 

management and eorts toward sustainability. Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons.” 

13. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 31.

14. Henk, “Environment, the US Military.”

15. Brock, “Peace through Parks.”

16. See Conca and Dabelko, Environmental Peacekeeping.

17. e many denitions of the “protected” zone or areas that cross some formal or 

political boundary are in reality very closely allied in concept. See Hsiao, “Peace Parks.”

18. Southern African Development Community Protocol on Wildlife Conservation, 2. 

See also Sandwich et al., Transboundary Protected Area.

19. Weed, “Central America’s Peace Parks,” 177.

20. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership.” 

21. Ramutsindela, “Scaling Peace and Peacemakers”; and Ali, “Introduction.”

22. Hsiao, “Peace Parks,” 1.

23. Sandwich et al., Transboundary Protected Area. See also Ali, “Introduction.”

24. Alsdirawi and Faraj, “Establishing a Transboundary Peace Park.”

25. Healy, “Korean Demilitarized Zone”; and Kim, “Preserving Korea’s Demilitarized Corridor.”

26. Kemkar, “Environmental Peacemaking,” 3.

27. Ibid., 23.

28. Stevens, “Iraq and Iran in Ecological Perspectives.”

29. Fuller, “Linking Afghanistan with Its Neighbors.”

30. Brock, “Peace through Parks.”

31. Henk, “Human and Environmental Security.”

32. Peace Parks Foundation, http://www.peaceparks.org/Home.htm.

33. Bajracharya, Furley, and Newton, “Impacts of Community-Based Conservation”; 

Hulme and Murphree, “Communities, Wildlife, and the ‘New Conservation’ in Africa”; and 

Hulme and Murphree, eds., African Wildlife and Livelihoods.

34. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature,” 1.

35. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 108–9; and Metcalfe, “Campre.”

36. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature”; Campbell and Vainio-Mattila, “Participatory 

Development and Community-Based Conservation”; and Balint and Mashinya, “Decline of a Model Community-Based Conservation Project.”

37. Benjaminsen, Kepe, and Bråthen, “Between Global Interests and Local Needs.”
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 175

38. McCabe, Perkin, and Schoeld, “Can Conservation and Development Be 

Coupled among Pastoral People?”

39. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature,” 856.

40. Ibid.

41. “Kenya Land Conservation Trust Formed.”

42. Ibid.

43. Gichohi, “From the Desk of the Vice President for Programme.”

44. Northern Rangeland Trust, http://www.nrt-kenya.org.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. See Henk, “Environment, the US Military.”

52. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3.”

53. Cross-cultural competence (3C) can be dened as “the ability to adapt eectively in cross-cultural environments.” Sands, “Cultural Relativism,” 13. e DOD has 

identied 3C as a necessary enabler for mission success in culturally complex environments such as deployments. In today’s changing military engagements, as represented 

by counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and building partnerships, and specic to the 

engagements proposed to aid in environmental security, 3C would be a critical set of 

knowledge, skills, and abilities to develop and engage. Services across the DOD are 

instituting education and training programs in 3C, and 3C is and will be advanced to 

civilians within the DOD.

54. Air Force Culture and Language Center, http://www.culture.af.edu.

Chapter 10

“Making the Desert Green” 

The Effect of Environmental Considerations on the 

Deployment of the Israeli Air Force in the Negev

Tamir Libel

This chapter attempts to analyze the influence of environmental 

considerations on the Israeli Air Force (IAF) with regard to strengthening the force and educating its members on environmental concerns. This is accomplished through a case study of a major force generation initiative—the redeployment of the IAF into the Negev region 

in southern Israel—the largest infrastructure project that the IAF has 

carried out for decades.

The chapter is divided into three sections. The first reviews the 

impact of the IAF on Israel’s natural environment. The second analyzes the effects of environmental considerations on the redeployment in the Negev, describes steps taken by the IAF to reduce environmental damage during construction of the infrastructure there, 

and stresses environmental education activities initiated in the southern IAF bases. The third part concentrates on the effects of environmental considerations on IAF operations. The chapter concludes 

with a summary of the overall effects of environmental considerations on the IAF.

The IAF and the Environment in Israel

Government policy on environmental issues in Israel is determined by the Ministry for Protection of the Environment (MPE). The 

ministry espouses a comprehensive, systematic approach that considers the implications on the entirety of environmental resources. 

The activities of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) have great potential 

for harming the environment. These activities create a variety of pollutants: liquid and solid waste, sewage, hazardous materials, noise, 

and radiation. The potential for damage is great since the IDF and the 

Israeli defense system affect, directly or indirectly, 47 percent of the 
178 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

area of the state of Israel—30 percent of state lands are used for military exercises, 4 percent are military installations, 1 percent comprise 

defense system installations, and security restrictions are imposed on 

12 percent. Restrictions such as limiting the height of construction or 

xing a ight path prevent full land use.1

 e MPE and the IDF began 

to institutionalize the links between them in 1997. At the ministry, 

the deputy director of supervision and public relations is in charge of 

liaison with the IDF. In the IDF, the environmental section in the 

General Sta ’s Planning Division, established in 1997, is in charge of 

coordinating all IDF activities with the MPE. As an indication of the 

importance the ministry assigns to its link with the IDF, it nanced 

the position of head of the environmental section until 2002.

e IDF began to give greater attention to environmental issues in 

the 1990s. In December 1996, the Planning Division established a 

steering committee to coordinate the IDF’s environmental activities. 

e deputy head of the Planning Division established the scope of the 

committee’s activities in November 1997, determining that the membership of the committee would represent the services, the territorial 

commands, and other entities. e head of the Strategic Planning 

Branch in the Planning Division serves as committee chair, outlining 

the policy of the IDF in this matter, instructing military commands 

with regard to long-term planning, following up on application of the 

decisions, and initiating and promoting projects.

e Planning Division set up ve secondary committees in 1998 

that are subordinate to the steering committee: oils and fuel, waste 

and recycling, hazardous materials, commands, and procedures. Signicant progress began in February 1999 when the vice chief of sta 

ocially approved the document outlining the environmental policy 

of the IDF, detailing the objectives, and providing the operational 

means to attain them. It begins:

e IDF is aware of the potential environmental eects of its ongoing activities, and undertakes to act on the matter from a national standpoint, and according to the directions developing in the eld of quality of the environment 

in Israel. Out of concern for quality of the environment that is a component of 

the quality of life in Israel, the IDF has decided that environmental aspects 

will constitute an integral part in the totality of considerations on military action, and on condition (emphasis in original) that they do not harm the operational ability of the IDF to fulll security demands; the IDF will initiate activity to increase awareness of the values of environmental protection among 

ocers and soldiers, while creating a change in the current image of the army 

in this sphere; it is important to convey this message to the commanders, to 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 179

furnish them with relevant knowledge and to awaken in them the desire and 

commitment to act to protect the environment that is the quality of our life; 

within the IDF’s work program a planned integration of environmental considerations will be carried out in order to avoid harming the environment in 

IDF installations and to reduce their harmful eect on the environment in 

Israel, out of a commitment and persistent eort to observe all the laws and 

regulations with regard to environmental protection that apply to the IDF.2

ese policies were not put into practice, and disputes arose between the IDF and the MEP. e ministry frequently complained to 

military authorities about the lack of information about possible 

sources of pollution. In general, the IDF did not act methodically to 

pass on information about various pollutants that were discovered in 

its facilities that could have a real eect on the environment.3

 Due to 

this lack of information from the IDF, the MPE was forced to locate 

hazards in military bases from sampling and observation posts outside the bases or from citizens’ reports. Its ability to test in the bases is 

restricted. Even aer MPE inspectors received permission to carry out 

inspections, the military frequently refused them entry to the bases.4

e partial realization of IDF environmental policy is reected in 

the corps’ annual project schedule. e policy required that each service and command be required to prepare an annual project schedule 

concerning protection of the environment that would determine how 

it would advance the environmental objectives of the IDF. As of 

March 2004 the IAF had an “environmental master plan” for the years 

2001 to 2005. is was in contrast to the other services that did not 

formulate a perennial master plan. e IAF planned to allocate approximately 6.5 million new Israeli shekels (NIS) in 2001. In practice, 

the service spent only 4.4 million NIS (75 percent) that year. In 2002 

the service planned to allocate 5.30 million shekels but spent only 

2.67 million (50 percent).5

 e main reason for the underallocation 

in practice was large cuts in the Israeli defense budget that began in 

2000. ese cuts were necessitated by the economic crisis that affected Israel due to the Second Intifada (that started in December 

2000) and the world hi-tech crisis in the year 2000.

Among the IDF services, there is special importance regarding 

protection of the environment in the IAF, for better or worse, due to 

the potential scope of its eects. e IAF aects the environment in 

three ways. First, the physical infrastructure of the service has signicant environmental implications. One reason is that, due to the 

small scale of Israel, most of the bases are located near large concentrations 
180 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

of population. In the event of war, IAF bases would be primary targets of the enemy. erefore, there is a danger that civilian communities close to the bases would suer signicant environmental damage.

Second, IAF activity in the national airspace has environmental 

implications. e small area of the state of Israel and the plethora of 

aerial threats against it imbue the IAF with considerable inuence on 

the policy determining use of Israeli airspace. is policy, particularly the xing of military and civilian ight paths, has signicant 

environmental implications. ird, the Israel Defense Forces is a 

“people’s army” and not a professional force. Accordingly, it carries 

out an extensive array of educational activities intended to enrich the 

world of its soldiers as citizens in a democratic state. For well over a 

decade, the IAF has been carrying out courses about the environment 

as part of its educational activities. is has a great potential for inuencing the attitudes of the soldiers and ocers regarding quality of 

the environment.

As noted, the present study focuses on the rst aspect—the eect 

of the physical infrastructure of the IAF on the environment in Israel. 

is topic is of special interest because most of the primary bases in 

northern or central Israel were built during the British Mandate period and used by the British Royal Air Force. As a result, they suer 

from antiquated infrastructure that does not comply with modern 

standards. Two of the air force bases, Ramat David in northern Israel 

and Hatzor in the center of the country, were discovered to be main 

sources of surface and underground water pollution. e Hatzor base 

had been a major pollution source for many years. In 1983 a leak of 

20,000 cubic meters of jet fuel caused pollution measuring 300 meters long, 2,000 meters wide, and 90 centimeters deep in the Coastal 

Aquifer, one of the three main water sources in Israel. e Ramat 

David, the central base in the north, has documented repeated fuel 

leaks since 1974. ese leaks were caused by overlling underground 

fuel tanks, bad maintenance of the fuel pipes, ooding of the fuel 

tanks on rainy days, spilling of surplus jet fuel from planes to the 

ground, cleaning of planes with jet fuel and ushing the waste to the 

ground, leaks from the fuel lines, spillage from fuel tanks, and ushing of the surplus fuel into absorbing pits.6

 ese leaks caused pollution in the Kishon River and its streams and also in reservoirs in the 

settlements of Nahalal and Kfar Yehoshua.7

e cases of pollution led to talks between the IAF, the IDF, the 

Defense Ministry, the Water Commission (the regulatory authority 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 181

of the water system in Israel), and the Mekorot Company (a governmentowned company holding the monopoly on developing the water 

system in Israel). e discussions dealt with ways of solving the pollution in the Coastal Aquifer caused by the Hatzor base. e prolonged discussions led to conclusions that there had not been proper 

treatment of the jet fuel tanks and installations, both in Hatzor and in 

Ramat David. In both bases corrosion was found in the underground 

pipes used to transport huge quantities of jet fuel. Accordingly, the 

corrosion was the main source of the many leaks. e IAF was aware 

for many years that the solution to the problem was installation of 

cathodic protectors on the jet fuel tanks to help prevent corrosion. 

However, in practice they were installed only aer 2003.8

e slowness of the IAF and the IDF to treat the sources of pollution caused anger among governmental supervisory and law-enforcing 

elements in charge of environmental quality. In 2006, Baruch Weber, 

head of the Polluted Industrial Areas and Land Department in the 

MPE, stated, “e IDF needs to map the pollution, x priorities and 

begin to deal with the matter. We held discussions and talks with 

various elements in the armed forces, and I regret to say that no real 

progress has been made, not at a satisfactory pace.” Weber also 

claimed that the IDF made it dicult for the MPE to enforce the law. 

“We know about problems in a number of bases, but when our inspectors want to check what is going on in other bases, they don’t 

succeed in passing the guard at the gate.” He claims that the IDF used 

out-of-date equipment and control systems when more-modern 

equipment could have prevented this pollution. He says, “e problem in the IDF is chiey awareness. A soldier that spills fuel is not 

aware that the fuel seeps into and reaches springs.”9

ese claims were correct, partially, with regard to the IAF. It preferred to avoid investing in local solutions that would have prevented 

some of the pollution. Instead it invested in building new alternative 

infrastructure based on lasting development principles. e head of 

the quality control branch at the IAF sta in 2006, Lt Col Shai Kidon, 

claimed, “In the past they used to spill the oil into the channels in the 

area of the Hatzor base and it seeped into the earth and reached underground water.” At that time the question of pollution was not dealt 

with in the force as it is nowadays. During recent years the base has 

been approved by the Standards Institution of Israel, and today there 

are no cases of environmental pollution. e matter of treating the 
182 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

damage that was caused earlier is being examined at present by Mekorot and the Defense Ministry.10

Transferring the hub of the service’s activity to the new bases in the 

Negev included the potential for solving several main problems involving the environment. First, the infrastructure that the service established in the Negev was built from the start in accordance with 

progressive standards. Unlike the antiquated infrastructure at bases 

in the north and center of the country, the new infrastructure was 

built with an awareness of the need to avoid pollution. Second, although the Negev constitutes 60 percent of the area of the state of 

Israel, only about 10 percent of the country’s population lives there. 

e air force bases in the Negev, unlike those in the north and center 

of the country, mostly are not located near civilian population centers. Accordingly, they enjoy a greater freedom of action since they 

do not disturb the civilian population with noise.11 ird, the redeployment of the IAF in the Negev has the potential in the long term 

to remove some of the restrictions on airspace in the north and center 

of the country. In addition, reduction of IAF activity in these areas 

reduces, in itself, environmental damage.

Deployment of the Israeli Air Force in the 

Negev aer Withdrawal from the Sinai

Israel’s victory in the 1967 war dramatically expanded its airspace 

area. ese areas, specically the Sinai Peninsula, opened up training 

areas for the Israeli Air Force. e force hurried to use this opportunity, preparing to use Egyptian airelds abandoned during the war 

and setting up air control units.12 Aer the 1973 war, the IAF even 

built modern bases in Sinai. e peace agreement signed between 

Israel and Egypt in 1979 mandated that Israel remove all civilian and 

military presence in the Sinai Peninsula by April 1982. e treaty not 

only ended the dispute between Israel and Egypt, but also this idyll of 

open ying spaces. e IAF recognized that it would have to return 

and train in the limited airspace of Israel, within the 1967 borders. 

Pressure on Israeli airspace also was expected to be greater than before the war of 1967 because the lessons of the 1973 war pointed to 

the need to expand the IAF.

e IAF began to plan its redeployment within Israel immediately 

upon the signing of the peace agreement. One of the rst decisions 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 183

was to build a high-quality infrastructure that would serve the force 

for many years to come. e service avoided as much as possible using temporary buildings. e redeployment was called the Ramon 

Operation, aer the Ramon Crater in the Negev, and was carried out 

in two stages. Operation Ramon A included the evacuation of IDF 

forces from Sinai, transferring the area to the Egyptians, and redeployment of the IDF within Israel. Operation Ramon B included 

the redeployment of IDF forces in the Negev and in Judea and Samaria. 

is was carried on over a number of years and ended in the mid 

1980s.13 e main issues that the service dealt with concerning Operation Ramon are reected in the words of the IAF’s tenth commander, 

Gen Amos Lapidot (December 1982 to September 1987): 

Today we y, more or less, within the Green Line and a little over Judea and 

Samaria. is is a very narrow area, making exercises dicult and causing 

congestion in air activity, and as a result there occur exceptions to ight safety 

rules, exceptions likely to cause an increase in the number of accidents. To a 

certain extent disturbance of the civilian population increases; for example, 

sonic booms over residential areas. In this respect the return of the Sinai Peninsula was for the IAF the loss of an ideal training ground. . . . I regard the 

withdrawal and contraction with the connes of the Green Line as one of the 

most dicult challenges, for the reasons I have stated. e second challenge is 

the resettlement and redeployment in new bases and the third challenge—the 

absorption of sophisticated and modern equipment.14

e focus of the IAF’s redeployment was, as stated earlier, in the 

Negev, which served as the principal reserve land of the state of Israel. 

As such, it was the only area where one could build the extensive infrastructure of new airelds. Even before the start of the Ramon Operation, the IAF had many units in the Negev. However the Ramon 

Operation was expected to increase the military presence there signicantly. It was feared that the dramatic growth in the scope of military activity would adversely aect the fabric of civilian life in the 

Negev. e Israeli government prepared in advance to deal with the 

matter. e Ministry of Defense initiated a number of interministerial committees to coordinate the redeployment of the IDF in the Negev. e IDF and government ministries decided that the military 

project would be a tool for the advancement of civilian development 

of the region. Atypically, civilian regional planning objectives of various 

government ministries were integrated into military programs. However, it is possible that the main environmental eect of the Ramon 

program was that it fixed, irreversibly, the military and civilian 
184 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

allocations of land use in the Negev. Most of the area assigned to the 

IDF was used as training grounds and not for building infrastructure.15

e main involvement of the IAF in Operation Ramon was in Ramon 

B. In this operation the IAF managed a giant construction project 

that included the establishment of three new airelds: Ramon, Uvda, 

and Nevatim. e Ramon and Uvda bases had been established by 

the United States and were already operative during the withdrawal 

from the Sinai Peninsula in March 1982. e Nevatim base was built 

by the Israeli defense system. e IAF also enjoyed the allocation of 

training areas in the Negev. It received live-re training ranges in areas of the western Hanegev Mountain and in the northern Arava.16

e IAF was also involved in another aspect of the redeployment at 

the borders of the Green Line. e redeployment in the Negev obligated the closing of airspace to civilian aircra and a revision of civilian ight paths. e IAF cooperated with the Ministry of Transport 

and Road Safety and the Civil Aviation Authority in the revision of 

Israeli airspace.17

Redeployment of the IAF in the 

Negev from the Year 2000

In the 1990s the IDF and the IAF were under growing pressure to 

transfer army camps from the center of the country to the periphery. 

is pressure stemmed partially from the desire of civilian elements 

to use the land that the IDF would vacate for civilian purposes. However, it also reected a growing awareness of the pollution caused by 

military bases to the soil and underground water, decreasing toleration of noise nuisance, and lastly, air pollution caused by the activity 

of the IAF. To a lesser extent was the fear of damage to the population 

concentration in the center of the country in the event of ground-toground missile attacks against the military bases in the region.18 With 

the passing of time, this pressure partially bore fruit when the defense 

system agreed to vacate some of its bases. Most of the units involved 

were slated to move to the Negev. e IDF prepared plans for redeployment under the name “e IDF Goes South.” e IAF part in the 

plan was called “IAF to the South.” ese plans were integrated into 

the civilian development plan for the Negev—Negev 2015. e main 

points of the plan, which set a strategic vision for the development of 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 185

the Negev for the years 2005 to 2016, were approved by the Israeli 

government on 20 November 2005. 

e transfer of thousands of families of career ocers to the Negev 

due to the military redeployment was a central component of the 

plan. Moving families of IDF ocers, belonging to the upper-middle 

class in Israel, to the Negev was perceived as benecial to economic 

activity and physical development there.19 Together with its contribution to the promotion of civilian development objectives, the IDF regarded the IDF Goes South as a chance to create a military center of 

gravity in the south of the country—a new center of gravity that 

would improve the operational capabilities of the IDF should its bases 

in the center of the country be attacked.20

e IDF Goes South plan was dierent in a number of aspects 

from Operation Ramon, in which the IDF set up expansive new infrastructures. In IAF to the South, the IAF focused on extending the 

existing military infrastructure. Almost no new bases were established. Each one of the services established a special administration 

to plan the redeployment in the Negev. Similar to the military-civilian 

cooperation in Operation Ramon, the planning process took into account the possible eects on the way of life, infrastructure, and economic life of the citizens in the Negev. e IAF administration was 

the rst to implement plans for redeployment. e rst step was the 

closure of the base in Lod, in the center of the country, and the transfer of its units to the southern base at Nevatim. e IDF invested a 

huge amount of money, in Israeli terms, in extending the infrastructure 

at Nevatim: approximately 1.6 billion NIS (350 million US dollars).

According to Col Zvi Tweezer, head of the administration of IAF 

Goes South,

e Lod base is very old fashioned, having been built bit by bit over the years, 

and from the standpoint of infrastructure that we built in Nevatim, there is no 

doubt that we have made a great improvement over what the unit has been 

used to till now. e change begins with a long, state-of-the-art, runway, progresses to upgraded parking slots for planes plus advanced communications 

infrastructure, ending with an extensive improved defense cover that will be 

built in the base.21

e construction work in Nevatim began in June 2004. e units 

from the Lod base, the main base for the IAF’s transport squadron, 

transferred to Nevatim in August 2009.22

e extension plan of the infrastructure at the Nevatim base paid 

special attention to quality of the environment. Among other things, 
186 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

a power station powered by natural gas will be built in the base with 

a production capacity that exceeds the anticipated needs of the base. 

e surplus electricity created is intended to serve also the nearby 

civilian settlements. Similar to many IDF bases, the base had internal 

sewerage prone to leakage. e IAF administration planned to connect the base to the regional sewage treatment facility to reduce the 

risks of polluting soil and underground water.23

e increased emphasis on environmental considerations in the 

IAF plans reected a greater change in the service’s perception of the 

subject. e service began to understand that environmental damage 

has negative implications in operational, economic, and even social 

terms. Toward the end of the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, 

the IAF invested a great deal in its contacts with the MPE, answering 

a call from the ministry to the IDF to increase cooperation between 

them. e ministry demanded that the IDF, as the largest consumer 

of resources in Israel, help by reducing its harmful eects on the environment. Among other matters, the ministry called for improved 

coordination in allotting money from the defense budget to protect 

nature and to reconcile the goals of the ministry with military development plans. According to a senior source in the ministry, 

We have a solution for each environmental problem that arises and we would 

be happy to deal with it. e complexity is caused when there is a lack of reporting of damage. e amount of requests from commanders nowadays is 

greater than in the past but still not enough. Reporting straight aer an incident has occurred enables reduction of damage, even when it is a question of 

water or ground pollution. 

In his view the greatest stumbling block when working with the IDF 

is the lack of budget coordination. “ere is readiness on behalf of the 

commanders responsible for projects in the eld. Allocation of resources for that purpose is more complicated.”24

A meeting took place between then-commander of the IAF, Brig 

Gen Eliezer Shakedi and the then-director of the MPE Shai Avital in 

December 2007 that turned out to be a historic milestone. Also attending the meeting were personnel of the MPE, IAF base commanders from the south, and relevant ocers from IAF headquarters. e 

top echelons of the IAF proposed strengthening its activity in the 

environmental eld and pointed out several possibilities, such as 

recycling of sewerage and solid waste, reusing drain water, creating 

solar electricity, building drain water systems for irrigation, and 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 187

implementing green building, environmental education, and the 

transition from diesel fuel to natural gas, among others.25

e increasing cooperation between the MEP and the IAF led to 

positive results in the southern IAF bases. For example, in the Ramon 

base in 2007, one of the ocers was put in charge of treating the environmental damage. On his initiative the base began to recycle the 

waste it created extensively. e command of the base actively helped 

and set up a site designated for sorting the waste. It also issued a directive ordering the soldiers to evacuate the waste in the base to the 

sorting site and set up a recycling goal of 80 percent of the base’s 

waste. e recycling was expected to yield nancial prot, since the 

recycling companies began to buy the sorted waste. According to the 

Ramon base commander, Col Avishai Halevi, 

ose that serve in the base do not perceive recycling to be a burden, but as a 

small investment that contributes to the protection of the environment, and 

which also helps us to make a prot that helps us to improve the welfare of the 

soldiers. In almost every place on the base there is a Green corner where waste 

for recycling is sorted and oils drained. We understand that we have the obligation to the soil, and we have to nd new ways to recycle and not to return 

harmful substances.26

e focus of environmental considerations in planning the redeployment of the IAF in the Negev was reected in educational activities 

in the service’s bases in the south. From its inception the IDF considered itself, as the people’s army, obligated to investing in the promotion 

of the education of its personnel, and traditionally, these programs 

dealt with love of the land and the history of the Jewish people and of 

the state of Israel. During the 1990s, these educational programs began 

to deal also with environmental topics.27 is was especially prominent 

in the southern IAF bases where educational programs were developed 

that were meant to raise the awareness and broaden the knowledge of 

soldiers regarding quality of the environment.

e IAF base at Uvda developed a range of programs demonstrating the potential in educating conscripted soldiers (aged 18–21) to 

promote awareness of the environment in Israeli society. It was decided in 2006 to establish an ecological park integrating mud buildings in the base. In the park sitting areas, a tabun (clay oven) for baking, environmental benches, and statues were designed and all 

constructed from mud and recycled materials. e park was built under 

the leadership of six women from the families in the base, who had 

learned to build from mud in Kibbutz Lotan. e kibbutz residents 
188 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

are experts in ecological subjects and run projects on the matter. In 

the words of Tahal Biran, the project’s coordinator at the time and 

resident of the military families’ neighborhood, “We have for a long 

time been looking for a project connected to the environment. In the 

kibbutz we took a course on building from mud, and right now we 

are applying what we learnt in a rst attempt to build the ecological 

park.” She argues that the clay earth and the weather of the Negev enable the creation of mud buildings in a particularly ecient manner. 

According to her, the project succeeded to enlist all the families living 

in the neighborhood during 2006. “e children in school and the 

families provide the domestic waste, and thus help the environmental 

sculpture.” Aer the end of the rst stage, the soldiers at the base took 

responsibility for the project.28 Another educational initiative that 

crystallized at the base in 2007 was the “Sabbath of Values.” Each 

weekend, military and civilian rabbis alternately gave lessons on Judaism, Zionism, love of one’s country, and protection of the environment.29

As part of the eort of the IDF and the IAF to aid civilian authorities in the Negev, a program was formulated called “Sites and Values.” 

e program was developed at the initiative of the Educational and 

Youth Corps and the Beit Morasha of Jerusalem (literally, “Home of 

Tradition”), a civilian educational center. Within the framework of 

Sites and Values, soldiers at the base adopted the cover sands in the 

eastern Uvda valley. e cover sands are chalk sand dunes constituting the habitat of rare plants and many species of animals. e soldiers helped the inspectors of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority 

southern district to maintain the site. Likewise, the base planned 

workshops on values at the site. In the words of the then-education 

ocer of the base, 2nd Lt Noa Kenan, “We regarded the cover sands 

as a source for acquiring values for the soldiers of the base. e adaptation of animals to the desert environment and the aridness is impressive, and it is comparable to values such as the adaptation of the 

ghter to his/her environment and to self-discipline.” According to 

her, the site will be used for instilling love of homeland and the importance of settling the Negev and for the creation of a link between 

those serving at the base and the environment in which they live. e 

base command also planned to help maintain and protect a nearby 

archaeological site called Mikdash Hanamerim (Temple of the Tigers). 

In the temple, 16 illustrations of tigers were found, made from small 

tablets of local limestone. is rare nd, which is estimated to be 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 189

thousands of years old, was not protected against all-terrain vehicles. 

e base command, in cooperation with inspectors and ecologists 

from the southern district in the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 

intends to fence the site.30

Operational Implications of Environmental 

Considerations on IAF Activity

e growing awareness in the IAF of environmental considerations also had implications on its operations. ese implications 

found expression in several areas.

Damage to the Civilian Environment in the Event of 

Attacks on Bases

In most of Israel’s wars there were hardly ever attacks on IAF bases 

within the 1967 borders. e environmental damage likely to be 

caused in the event of ground-to-ground missiles being red at IAF 

bases was exposed during the Second Lebanon War (July–August 

2006). During this war thousands of rockets were red at northern 

Israel, including at several main IAF bases. One of those hit was the 

northern aerial control unit located on Mt. Meron. e unit is situated in the heart of a nature reserve that constitutes a natural habitat 

of rich vegetation and many animals. Rockets falling in the reserve 

ignited blazes that destroyed many thousands of square meters (or 

dunams, which are the area of 1,000 square meters) of natural forest. 

Aer the war ended, during the months of August and September 

2006, several dunams of natural forest were felled next to the base to 

minimize potential damage in a future war. Although this was likely 

to harm the animals and plants existing in the nature reserve, the Israel 

Nature and Parks Authority deemed it a necessary step. Guy Cohen 

then Israel Nature and Parks Authority inspector in charge of the Mt. 

Meron Reserve said, “During the war we visited the base several 

times because we wanted to comprehend the extent of the base’s responsibility and also to minimize the damage that such a felling 

would cause to nature, and to us, who protect it.” e IAF hired a 

contractor that carried out the work of thinning the trees. All in all, 

about ten dunams of natural forest were felled inside the base and up 

to a distance of 15 meters from the base fence.31
190 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

Increase in Restrictions on Exercises

At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 

twenty-rst, the IAF was required to prepare for action on a wide 

range of missions. It played a crucial part in the military action in the 

Second Intifada, 2000–2005, and in the Second Lebanon War. In 

these conicts the IAF was required to operate in urban environments densely populated with civilians. Simultaneously, it prepared 

for the possibility that it would be required to act against countries far 

away from Israel and even for the event of a conventional war. However, the IAF is being increasingly restricted in its ability to train. e 

proximity of the bases to civilian population centers in the north and 

the middle of the country created severe noise disturbances. In several cases the IAF decided to limit the hours of activity in the bases.32

In other cases, certain training contours, such as low-level ights, led 

to angry complaints from civilians. As a result, it is possible that its 

ability to train in an optimal way was harmed.33

Development of Simulators and Cooperation with 

Foreign Air Forces

e lack of training areas led the IAF to invest in two kinds of partial solutions. e rst was the development of advanced simulators.34

e investment was expressed both in the systems themselves, meant 

to be as realistic as possible, and in the training of the simulator operators.35 e simulators enabled IAF pilots to train on contours they 

were forbidden to y because of safety and environmental protection 

restrictions. e IAF aspired to develop systems that would enable 

communication between dierent simulators. is capability, when 

achieved, would enable joint training in the simulator for combat, 

helicopter, and transport pilots.

e second partial solution was creating cooperation with foreign 

air forces, beginning in the 1990s. One of the main aims was to attain 

the opportunity to train in foreign countries. us, the IAF could 

train, for the rst time since the withdrawal from Sinai, in vast spaces. 

As opposed to Sinai, where it was only possible to train under desert 

conditions, IAF squadrons began to train overseas in varying environments.36 Together with training in recognized international exercises such as Red Flag in the United States or Maple Flag in Canada, 

the IAF trained in states such as Italy and Turkey.37 e cooperation 

between the Israeli and Turkish air forces was especially fruitful.
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 191

In the words of Brig Gen Ram Shmueli, who played a central part in 

his capacity as head of the Combat Training Branch at IAF Headquarters, “In my rst job as Head of Branch for Combat Training I managed 

to lead the IAF to one of the most important strategic connections—

cooperation with the Turkish Air Force. When I began my post I made 

it my mission to bring about combined exercises with a foreign air 

force. Not that I had an inkling of how to do this but I felt that this was 

important.” At that time, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin decided 

to establish diplomatic ties with Turkey, and Shmueli notes, 

Suddenly the opportunity we had been looking for arose. At the highest echelons it was decided to send a group from the General Sta to the Turkish Air 

Force to build a foundation of cooperation. As Head of the Branch for Combat Training I was chosen to be head of the delegation sent to Ankara. . . . e 

rst talks were characterized by suspicion and tension on both sides. Both we 

and the Turks did not know what the other side thought and what exactly the 

aim of this idea was. Little by little, meeting aer meeting, the chilly atmosphere thawed.38

e cooperation between the Israeli and Turkish air forces was quite 

close and included joint exercises in both countries. Over the years it 

expanded to multinational exercises with additional air forces. e cooperation ran into diculties in October 2009 aer the Anatolian Eagle exercise was cancelled. e planned American, Turkish, and Israeli 

air force combined exercise was cancelled by the Turkish government.39

e incident illustrated the growing security importance that Israel attributes to cooperation between the IDF and foreign armed forces and 

the resulting dependence created on foreign states.

Conclusions

Since the 1990s, the IAF has shown increasing sensitivity to the 

eects of its bases and their activities on the environment in Israel. 

is is part of a growing awareness by the IDF of its inuence on environmental quality as Israel’s largest consumer of resources. e 

present study found that the IAF devoted considerable attention to 

environmental topics in two spheres: physical infrastructure and education. e IAF is aware of the environmental implications of its 

physical infrastructure due to pollution damage resulting from the 

antiquated infrastructure in the Ramat David and Hatzor bases. As 

early as the Ramon Operation in the 1980s, the IAF recognized the 
192 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

advantages of a high-standard, permanent infrastructure. Nevertheless, at that time the main attention was devoted to nancial gains 

resulting from ignoring this need. e planners of the IAF Goes 

South project paid a lot of attention to environmental issues. e IAF 

made a conscious decision to avoid as much as possible the renovation of its out-of-date infrastructure in its bases in the north and center of the country. Instead, projects were integrated that were intended to minimize damage to the environment and to bring about a 

reduction in the consumption of energy in the redeployment to the 

southern bases. e growing recognition by the IAF of the implications of its activities on the environment constitutes a large part of the 

changes in the civil-military relations in Israel. In the past, Israeli society revered the IDF as the realization of Zionist values. Aer the 

debacle of the 1973 war and, even more strongly, since the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli society began to show growing criticism toward the 

IDF.40 is criticism enabled the formation of pressure groups that 

demanded the IDF change its policies on specic matters.41

e IDF succeeded over the years in adopting policies intended to 

reduce possible criticism. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, parents who had lost their sons in training accidents criticized IDF safety 

procedures and methods of inquiry into training accidents.42 As a result, the IDF improved safety procedures in exercises and succeeded 

in dramatically reducing the number of accidents. e military even 

took care to publish these facts in the media to avoid future criticism. 

e attention that the IAF directed at environmental issues in the 

project IAF Goes South is similar to the IDF’s policy in other areas 

with a high public prole. e IAF probably would not have given 

attention to environmental issues had the Israeli public not shown 

increasing awareness of the economic, social, and health damage 

stemming from environmental pollution.

Proof of the IAF’s utilitarian attitude toward handling the environmental damage it caused was expressed by the negligible nancial 

allocation to the issue. As previously mentioned, the IAF did not even 

use its entire meager environmental budget allotment in the years 

2001–2002. It even refused to extensively treat the damage caused by 

fuel leaks in the bases at Ramat David and Hatzor. Ocially, the IAF 

declared that the out-of-date infrastructure in the bases would be 

renovated within the framework of a multiyear plan. e practical 

significance of this declaration was that many years would pass 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 193

before the rehabilitation of the antiquated infrastructure that continued to be a possible source of pollution.

e second eld in which the IAF acted extensively to promote 

environmentalism was that of education. It initiated a range of creative activities to promote awareness of quality of the environment in 

its soldiers and ocers. It is possible that the principal inuence of 

the IAF’s operations will be in this eld. Since the beginning of the 

decade, many thousands of enlisted soldiers who have been exposed 

to these activities have been released from the IAF. If the educational 

programs were eective, these young people internalized the need to 

become aware of environmental issues and have been instructed how 

to contribute to environmental protection. e traditional educational elements in the IDF and in the IAF derived, as pointed out 

previously, from the IDF being a “people’s army.” e essence of the 

activity was in promoting those values regarded as having a national 

consensus. e changes in civil-military relations and the widening 

schisms within Israeli society resulted in some educational activities 

in the IDF becoming controversial. From this angle, environmental 

issues that are a “consensus” in Israeli society helped educating elements in the IAF prove that they could contribute to developing the 

manpower of the service and its image.

It seems that the IAF did not clearly recognize the connection, indirect but signicant, between growing Israeli environmentalism and 

the growing restrictions on its operational activity within the state of 

Israel until recently. is may be the main reason for the lack of consideration of the environmental implications of IAF operations. Because the Israeli Air Force has been ghting constantly since its establishment, its organizational culture inclines toward consideration of 

force employment at the expense of force generation. Accordingly, 

the role of environmental considerations is limited if they are not included in the planning and execution of operations. is approach 

contradicts the growing attention of the international community to 

environmental considerations in attacking infrastructure targets such 

as fuel tanks or power stations.

In spite of the reservations mentioned, the very fact that environmental considerations had a practical eect on the largest IAF infrastructure project in decades is a signicant innovation. e activity of 

the service in this eld is demonstration of a possible contribution of 

armed forces to improving the quality of life and development of the 

whole of society.
194 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

Notes

1. Israel State Comptroller, “Treatment of the Ministry of Defense,” 78.

2. Ibid., 88–89.

3. Ibid., 80–82.

4. Ibid., 83.

5. Ibid., 89–90.

6. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 426.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Weiss and Salome, “Ministry of the Environment Claims.”

10. Ibid.

11. Despite the sparse population in the Negev, during extensive activity such as 

annual exercises, the residents of the Negev complain about the noise of the planes. 

See Buchbut, “Training for Long Runs.”

12. Habakuk, “First Sixty Years,” 69.

13. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 102–3.

14. Lapidot, “Special Interview,” 6–9.

15. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 104–5.

16. Ibid., 105–9.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 168.

19. Ibid., 187.

20. Ibid., 181.

21. Arden, “Conquering the Negev,” 6.

22. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 186.

23. Arden, “Conquering the Negev,” 6.

24. Karni, “In the Ministry for Protection of the Environment,” 9.

25. “IAF Will Promote Environmental Issues.”

26. Wol, “Soldiers Recycle,” 15.

27. Israel State Comptroller, “Treatment of the Ministry of Defence,” 93–94.

28. “Uvda Base: Deep in the Mud,” 16.

29. Wol, “Uvda Base,” 17.

30. Karni and Avior, “Uvda Base,” 18.

31. Karni, “Aer the Fighting,” 18; and Karni, “Animal, Plant and Vegetable,” 13.

32. Ashkenazi, “Grounded due to Ceramics Class,” 28.

33. Ibid. 

34. On the importance of simulators in the IAF, see Pfeer, “Under Simulated 

Fire”; and Yehoshua, “New in the Air Force.” 

35. Concerning the simulator systems, see Sharon, “New,” 9–11. Electronic version 

available at http://www.iaf.org.il/454-18564-HE/IAF.aspx. For the training of simulator 

operators, see Pfeer, “Under Simulated Fire.” 

36. e IAF utilised exercises in foreign countries for training long-range squadrons. 

e growing threats against the state of Israel from distant countries such as Iran magni-

ed the importance of the IAF’s ability to operate at long range. See Shuval, “Italian Job.” 

e IAF does not normally practice for long-range ights in simulators. See Pfeer, “Under 

Simulated Fire.” 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 195

37. e IAF participated in Red Flag in 1988 as an observer. In 1998 the IAF renewed 

its participation as an observer and even participated later on. See Peled-Fleischer, 

“Israeli Pilots Took Part,” 8–12; and Shuval, “Italian Job.” Shuval claims that cooperation between the Israeli and Italian air forces began in 1999 and that they include 

periodic joint exercises.

38. Rosenberg, “Man, Earth and the Heavens.” Electronic version available at 

http://www.iaf.org.il/1102-18386-he/IAF.aspx. 

39. At the time of writing, no one knows for certain why it was cancelled. In Turkey 

they claimed that the exercise was cancelled due to the negative Turkish public opinion 

toward Israel as a result of the IDF activity in the “Cast Lead” operation in Gaza at the 

beginning of 2009, or due to the anger of the Turkish defense system about a problematic arms deal with Israel. For example, see Eichner, “Turkey Soothes.” 

40. Concerning changes in civil-military relations in Israel, see in particular Cohen, 

Israel and its Army.

41. In fact, the activities of feminist pressure groups led to the integration of 

women in the ying course of the IAF during the 1990s. Cohen, Israel and its Army, 76.

42. Peri, “Civil-Military Relations in Israel in Crisis.” 

Chapter 11

Airpower and the Environment

Some Ecological Implications of Modern Warfare

Joel Hayward

This chapter examines the complex relationship between warfare 

(especially airpower), international humanitarian ethics, and environmental ethics. My philosophical framework should be easy to understand. Although I recognize intrinsic worth in the natural environment—it has a value in its own right regardless of what humans 

gain from it—I am primarily concerned with its instrumental value. 

That is, I argue from an anthropocentric vantage point that we should 

safeguard the environment and its myriad complex ecosystems because humans are part of those ecosystems and their security, health, 

and happiness depend entirely upon them. I see no conflict or inconsistencies between environmental ethics and the ethics of war. Western 

warriors increasingly understand that the environment is in many 

ways the collective property of all humanity, including future generations, and that responsible stewardship is critical regardless of the 

good and bad governments and regimes that might exist at any given 

time within man-made boundaries. In this respect the environment 

is highly akin to “cultural property” protected from damage or deliberate destruction by the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of 

Cultural Property.1

 The significance of the physical environment is 

actually inestimably greater than the “property of great importance to 

the cultural heritage of every people”—including unique architecture, archaeological sites, and other objects of artistic, historical, or 

cultural importance—that the convention considers inherently valuable and morally inappropriate as targets of military action.

Note: A version of the chapter “Air Power and the Environment: Some Ecological 

Implications of Modern Warfare,” by the editor of this volume, has appeared in Air 

Power Review 12, no. 3 (Autumn 2009): 15–41 and is published here with permission 

of the APR editors.
198 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Moreover, the West’s ethical framework for understanding armed 

conict, “just war,” forms a sizeable chunk of its warrior code. Within 

this code, warfare is a regrettable activity directed against the culpable, 

undertaken only when a better state of peace is the likely outcome 

and if the good accomplished outweighs the harm done. Deeply 

embedded within just war are concepts of proportionality and discrimination. In terms of jus in bello (the criteria for ghting wars 

“cleanly”), proportionality means that military forces must not undertake any actions in which the incidental harm would be excessive 

in relation to the likely military benet. roughout my own career 

of teaching military ocers, I have ordinarily summarized this concept by encouraging them never to use more force or to cause more 

damage than is necessary to guarantee the attainment of just military 

goals. Similarly, discrimination means that military forces may only 

wage war on combatants and military objects and must act purposely 

and painstakingly to ensure that civilians suer no more harm than 

military necessity demands. It is thus eminently logical that, as Western 

warriors are framing their use of force in terms of minimizing suering while doing good—all the while protecting the innocent, including those on the other side—they should understand the importance 

of minimizing harm to the very environment and habitat that sustain 

the innocent. It is equally reasonable that, as the purpose of military 

activity is a better state of peace, it would be incongruous to inict 

damage upon the innocents within the opposing state, and possibly 

within neighboring states, that lasts well beyond the end of conict 

and complicates the restoration of harmony.

Lastly, I strongly disagree with those ecologists who assert that we 

need to take an absolutist stance against all military activities that 

result in any ecological harm. Our just war criteria are adequate as a 

guide for military planners and practitioners. Both proportionality 

and discrimination involve careful calculations that render some regrettable harm acceptable when balanced against the greater good 

being achieved. I accept this line of reasoning and argue, not for absolutist prohibitions, but for the inclusion of ecological protection in 

all military planning and for it to be weighed expertly, along with the 

likely need for postwar remediation activities, among the factors that 

will ultimately determine the justiability of military actions.

is chapter draws on the Kosovo conict as its central case analysis 

to give readers something recent upon which to reect that does not 

involve the emotionally charged “war on terror.” (Equally powerful 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 199

examples of environmental harm caused by airpower and other forms 

of military force can also be found during that so-called war.) e 

chapter is not intended as the last word on the subject of the real and 

potential ecological ramications of modern airpower but merely as 

a rst word. It aims to demonstrate some complexities within the 

closely intertwined relationship between defense and security priorities, international humanitarian law, the Western just war framework, 

and environmental ethics. It oers several observations and asks a set 

of questions in the hope that readers will feel prompted to seek their 

own answers. It is my belief that air forces should engage these issues 

proactively, addressing them on their own terms with judgment and 

at a realistic tempo before public pressure and special interest groups 

might compel defense ministries to make sweeping changes, some of 

them possibly rushed and unhelpful.

Since ancient times armies have oen consciously used the natural 

environment as a weapon against opponents. ey have poisoned 

wells, salted elds, burned crops, and done other ecologically harmful things. In 1945, for example, German ocers who feared an Allied attack intentionally ooded 20,000 hectares of agricultural land 

in the Netherlands, leaving it unusable for crops until the Dutch -

nally reclaimed the land four months later aer a massive rehabilitation program. I began thinking about the ecological implications of 

modern air warfare when, as an undergraduate, I studied the environmental damage caused by the RAF bombing of the Möhne and 

Edersee dams in May 1943 and the USAF atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. I was surprised most of all to 

learn the full extent of the American defoliation program during the 

Vietnam War, which represented a watershed in the relationship between warfare and the environment. Between 1962 and 1971, US aircra sprayed 3,640 square kilometers of South Vietnam’s croplands, 

deep vegetation, and jungles with 55,000 metric tons of herbicides 

and defoliants to destroy the plant-based ecosystem for the purpose 

of disrupting agricultural food production and destroying plant cover 

for the Vietcong.2

 Its eects were dreadful for Vietnam’s ecosystems 

and, most infamously, for human health.

My thinking about the relationship between warfare and the environment began to focus in March 1999 when NATO airpower began 

wrecking Yugoslavian (especially Serbian) infrastructure in a wellintended but poorly conceived attempt to coerce Slobodan Milosevic’s 

government into protecting and granting more freedom to the beleaguered 
200 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Albanian ethnic majority of Kosovo and Metohija. I felt disappointed 

that, even in our era of eects-based operations and precision-strike 

capabilities, NATO chose to wreck almost all major oil reneries, petrochemical installations, and fertilizer works, as well as their tankage 

areas. NATO thereby spilled harmful oil and toxic chemicals into the 

soil, aquifers, and waterways—including into the Danube River, the 

crucial economic artery of several uninvolved nations—and created 

carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic, and perilous airborne pollution. 

ese acts were widely publicized and highly controversial. Like 

many concerned observers, I wondered why, in a war fought for 

humanitarian purposes, with a highly commendable, almost obsessive desire to ensure the totally accurate placement of ordnance to 

minimize immediate civilian deaths, NATO nonetheless seemed 

reckless with Yugoslavia’s natural environment.

I began researching this particular issue in July 2006 aer feeling 

equally disquieted when Israeli Air Force airstrikes created a dreadful 

six-mile-wide and 100-mile-long oil slick along the Lebanese coast 

by striking an oil storage depot at the Jiyeh power plant, about 19 

miles south of Beirut, ooding 15,000 tons of oil into the Mediterranean and causing the worst-ever oil spill in that sea. A further 25,000 

tons burned for 27 days, reportedly “spewing a toxic cloud into the air 

and causing a rain of toxic oil downwind.”3

Targeting oil infrastructure from the air is not new. During the 

Second World War, for instance, both Allied and Axis air forces considered oil production, renement, storage, and transportation facilities, and systems as integral to their enemies’ viability and survivability. Even the Luwae, which was designed and utilized primarily for 

battleeld interdiction and attack, bombed Caucasian oilelds in 

1942 in an angry attempt to punish the Soviet Union.4

 During the last 

three months of the Pacic War, the USAAF conducted a weighty 

campaign aimed at destroying Japan’s oil infrastructure.5

 e greatest 

counter-oil campaigns occurred during 1943 and 1944, when the 

USAAF struck the Romanian oilelds and reneries that supplied a 

large portion of Germany’s oil and both the RAF and the USAAF 

wrecked synthetic fuel plants across Germany.6

e targeting of oil sharply divided senior Allied air commanders, 

but only because some of them passionately argued against its purported strategic eectiveness and not because anyone felt gravely 

worried about the natural environment.7

 Decades before scientists 

began expounding concerns about “acid rain,” “sustainability,” “carbon 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 201

emissions,” and the “greenhouse eect,” and during a war in which 

neither side worried much about the suering of enemy populations, 

these great campaigns caused levels of local environmental harm that 

were not analyzed in any of the major postwar bombing surveys and 

which would be unacceptable in any of today’s limited wars.8

I would not dream of casting stones at our valiant forebears. It 

would be wrong to impose the widespread ecological values of today 

onto previous generations. Moreover, we cannot attribute responsibility for large-scale oil pollution during the Second World War solely 

to air forces. For example, navies, equally unaware of the long-term 

harm likely to occur, targeted and sank not only fuel-laden warships, 

but also each other’s merchant ships, including oil tankers. Indeed, 

the combined gross registered tonnage of the oil tankers sunk was 

1,235,097, with a total oil-carrying capacity of as much as 17,171,183 

barrels or 2,592,380 tons.9

 at is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez–

size spill occurring every month of World War II.

Petroleum, oil, and lubricants (oen simplied as “POL”) infrastructure remained a primary target set for airpower planners 

throughout the Cold War and following decades and featured prominently, for example, in the USAF and USN Rolling under and 

Linebacker bombing campaigns against North Vietnam.10 In 1988 

the most celebrated airpower thinker of recent times, John Warden 

III, maintained that the “petroleum chain . . . still remains a potentially key target simply because a modern military machine cannot 

function without fuel.”11 Indeed, Warden argued that, along with 

electricity, oil was a major center of gravity (one of his ve “rings”) 

and that carefully focused attacks on the oil chain would denude the 

enemy of energy. Warden’s ideas inuenced the Gulf War of 1991, 

during which coalition air forces wrecked Iraqi oil storage and distribution installations—but not all long-term export infrastructure—as 

part of a campaign aimed at paralyzing Saddam Hussein’s state and 

forces.12 (e Iraqis created far more devastating environmental harm 

when they detonated more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, igniting over 

600 of them, and discharged more than six million barrels of crude oil 

directly into the Persian Gulf. Happily for airpower advocates I must 

note that precision airstrikes by USAF F-111Fs against pumping stations and manifolds actually stemmed that horric ow.13

Warden and other air strategists of his generation did not analyze 

(and to be fair probably gave no thought to) the key problem with 

destroying or damaging oil infrastructure as opposed to merely 
202 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

disrupting distribution. ey ignored the fact that liquid hydrocarbons and the chemicals utilized in their renement are potentially 

extremely damaging to ecosystems. e explosive or incendiary force 

of ordnance either burns the petroleum upwards, creating potentially 

deadly air pollution which may cause dreadful health problems in the 

short term (but thankfully seldom causes lingering harm aer the 

pollution dissipates), or spills it into the ground, with the potential 

for long-lasting and calamitous contamination of soils, aquifers, and 

waterways. e Commentary on the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 

Geneva Conventions states, “As regards the destruction and setting 

alight of reneries and petroleum storage facilities, it is hardly necessary 

to stress the grave danger that may ensue for the civilian population.”14

NATO’s 1999 attacks on Yugoslavian reneries and petrochemical 

and fertilizer installations at Pančevo, Novi Sad, and elsewhere created such demonstrable environmental pollution—with the wreckage, spills, res, and billowing clouds being captured on the camcorder of local inhabitants as well as more expertly by journalists—that 

when the Serbian government accused NATO of creating an environmental catastrophe, it was not a lone voice. Even the relevant watchdog agencies within the United Nations and other reputable and nonpartisan interstate bodies expressed strong concerns about the 

attacks. Neither they nor Western media could brush aside the Serbian governmental allegations (which exaggeratedly described the 

violence as “ecocide”) as merely unveriable and unwarranted antiNATO propaganda.15 With many scores of thousands of Serbians 

evacuating towns and villages to ee clouds of toxic chemicals, with 

slicks in the Danube, and with smoke plumes moving eastward over 

Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Black Sea,16 it was impossible to deny that, even if only in the short term, the attacks had 

an adverse and widely dispersed environmental impact.17

NATO argued emphatically that the 100 or so industrial facilities 

it bombed throughout Serbia were “dual-usage” installations and 

thus legitimate targets according to sections of the 1977 Additional 

Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva conventions. For example, NATO described the Pančevo renery and works, the largest petrochemical 

complex in the Balkans,18 as a “strategic target” that “provided oil and 

other elements to support the Yugoslav Army. By cutting o these 

supplies [NATO] denied crucial material to the Serbian forces ghting in Kosovo.”19 Although civilian facilities are ordinarily strictly o 

limits, Article 52(2) does indeed permit attacks on those facilities 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 203

“which by their very nature, location, purpose, or use make an eective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at 

the time, oers a denite military advantage.”

e moral “double-eect” principle embedded within jus in bello

also permits the targeting of dual-usage infrastructure and makes allowance for incidental civilian deaths if those deaths are unavoidable. 

Yet, it permits this targeting only if it is solely intended to aect the 

capability of the opponent’s armed forces. If NATO’s intent was also 

to demoralize the Serbian population to generate additional pressure 

for the Milosevic regime to capitulate, then the double-eect principle no longer justies these actions.20

Unfortunately, this seems to have been the case. Even if one 

chooses to argue that oil reneries were providing fuel for military 

operations as well as for civilian consumption, and were thus reasonable dual-usage targets, it is harder to make an equally strong case for 

pharmaceutical factories, car factories, and even fertilizer plants.21

e view that NATO wanted to put pressure on Milosevic through 

squeezing and scaring his people by wrecking things around and 

among them gains support from the US military’s own reported admission to Human Rights Watch that NATO destroyed some targets 

that were not legitimately “dual-usage” and did so because they were 

“symbolic” and “psychologically lucrative.”22 Human Rights Watch 

found that such actions were “done more for psychological harassment of the civilian population than for direct military eect.” is 

conclusion is reinforced by an ironic source: the NATO joint air component commander, Lt Gen Michael C. Short. “If you wake up in the 

morning,” he told the Globe and Mail on 26 May 1999, “and you have 

no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you 

take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 

years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo[dan], what’s this all about? 

How much more of this do we have to withstand?’ ”23 Perhaps with a 

boast, he later said that he had wanted the Serbian leadership “to 

wake up to a city that was smoking.”24 He even admitted that he had 

warned Serbian air force commanders, “e speed and the violence 

and the lethality and the destruction that is going to occur is beyond 

anything that you can imagine. . . . If you force me to go to war against 

you, Belgrade will never look that way again—never in your lifetime, 

or your children’s lifetime. Belgrade and your country will be destroyed if you force me to go to war.”25
204 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Even ignoring this unusual ethical position, NATO failed to explain convincingly why its remarkably precise and thus potentially 

highly discriminate air force needed to destroy the storage tanks, thus 

burning or spilling staggering quantities of liquid hydrocarbons and 

chemicals, rather than less harmfully targeting the adjacent but separate renery installations, or, far better still, precisely hitting the more 

discrete river port, road, and rail nodes to stop loading, transportation, and distribution of the oil and chemicals.26 NATO did publicly 

explain on 3 May 1999 that it had damaged Serbia’s main electricity 

stations and thus robbed the Serbian population of 70 percent of its 

electricity. Spokesman Jamie Shea even publicly stated that Milosevic 

would thus know that NATO “has its ngers on the light switch. . . . 

We can turn the power o whenever we need to and whenever we 

want to.”27 Yet NATO’s information campaign included no real eort 

to explain why it was setting ablaze and ooding oil and chemicals in 

reneries and storage facilities instead of merely “switching o ” those 

installations by accurately targeting their internal and external 

sources of electricity. Aircra did target and destroy local transformers at the sites, interrupting their functionality, so it is less clear why 

NATO still chose to inict such heavy and dangerous damage to the 

plants, oil, and chemical tanks. Further, NATO did not explain why, 

aer a European Union total oil embargo of Yugoslavia came into effect on 30 April 199928—NATO’s chief spokesman claimed on that 

date, “the tap is being turned o all across Europe,”29—it continued to 

burn and spill huge quantities of oil and chemicals right up until the 

conict’s last days.

During the war NATO responded to accusations of grave environmental harm in a very strange fashion. Aware that the world rightly 

felt horror at the expulsion and panicked ight of 850,000 Kosovars, 

NATO exaggerated the physical harm being done to their abandoned 

dwellings by the Serbian army and by Serb paramilitaries. It maintained at one point that there were then “200 burning villages, town 

and cities” across Kosovo.30 Aer presenting exaggeration, it then 

relativized the environmental harm being committed by both NATO 

and the ethnic cleansers.

We see a lot of smoke, the smoke is coming from all of these burning villages 

in Kosovo and if you’re talking about environmental damage, I think the 

“scorched earth” policy applied to Kosovo, the destruction of livestock, the 

destruction of rivers and roads and communication routes, the destruction of 

the agriculture, the slaughtering of a large percentage of the cattle and the 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 205

livestock, is going to be much more signicant in the long term and incidentally require a lot more money to x than the repair of some oil reneries.31

is tu quoque defense (“You can’t criticize us for our wrongdoing 

because you’re doing it too!”) was disingenuous at best and dishonest 

at worst. Some Serbian regular army units and paramilitary groups 

did atrocious, murderous things in Kosovo, but they did not apply a 

“scorched earth” policy to the province, let alone cause or threaten a 

long-term environmental catastrophe involving the destruction of 

permanent natural features and resources. And the complaints leveled against NATO related to the imperilment of human life and 

widespread and potentially enduring damage to fragile ecosystems, 

not to the cost of repairing oil reneries.

NATO’s inadequate explanations and attempts at justications did 

little to assuage concerns all over the world about its jus in bello proportionality. Even worse, NATO’s actions and media ops failures resulted in accusations—and even formal charges presented at the International Court of Justice—of willful and criminal contravention of 

Articles 35(3) and 55(1) of the Additional Protocol I explicit prohibition against “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural 

environment.” Unlike other provisions of the same protocol, no exception can be made for “military necessity.”32

Convincing critics that the level of wreckage remained proportionate was always going to be far more dicult for NATO than justifying the inclusion of the installations in its target sets. People believe what they see, and in 1999 they saw colossal destruction. I use 

the word colossal here with no hyperbole. It may surprise some readers to learn that in total, NATO burned far more oil and dangerous 

chemicals into the air or spilled far more into the Serbian soils, aquifers, and waterways in its 1999 air war than the 10.8 million gallons 

(257,000 barrels or 38,800 tons) of crude oil that the Exxon Valdez

had spilled following its highly controversial grounding o the Alaskan coast in 1989.33

At Pančevo alone, NATO air attacks caused the release of 80,000 

tons of oil and oil products,34 most of which burned wildly from ruptured tanks, poisoning the air only 12 miles from Belgrade’s 1.5 million inhabitants with deadly substances including sulphur dioxide, 

nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and 

lead. e Pančevo raids also spilled over 2,000 tons of toxic dichloroethane into soils and groundwater, burned around 250 tons of vinyl 
206 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

chloride monomer (which would have produced toxic dioxins and 

hydrochloric acid), and ooded around 250 tons of liquid ammonia 

and eight tons of metallic mercury, some of which entered a canal 

leading straight into the Danube.35 Desperately weighing the lesser 

and greater of two evils, the site managers themselves released the 

liquid ammonia, knowing that a direct hit on stored ammonia had 

the potential to kill large numbers of people.36 Another 73,000 tons of 

crude oil and oil products burned or seeped into the groundwater in 

the northern city of Novi Sad.37 Elsewhere throughout Serbia (and 

Kosovo itself), heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and other 

caustics escaped from burning industrial facilities into the air, soil, 

groundwater, and rivers, causing large-scale evacuations and leaving 

many experts convinced that the impact of the toxic releases would 

reach—as they did—far beyond Yugoslavia’s borders.38

is is not to suggest that the long-term ecological consequences 

of the destruction at Pančevo and other sites exceeded those of the 

infamous Exxon Valdez spillage. e latter occurred in a highly fragile ecosystem in an area along the Alaskan coast so remote that 

cleanup proved tragically slow, dicult, and incomplete. Little of the 

spilled oil could be burned. While the unburned oil produced airborne toxins, burning would have reduced the destruction of ora 

and fauna caused by the concentrated surface “slick.” is evaporated 

and decomposed far more slowly in the low temperatures than it 

would have under similar circumstances in a more temperate climate.39

One cannot deny, on the other hand, that the environmental contamination at and around NATO’s Serbian industrial targets was, at 

least in the short term, so obviously severe that it greatly reduced 

NATO’s positive press from being extremely successful at minimizing 

civilian deaths caused directly by bombing.40 Moreover, the environmental destruction alienated many inuential observers, including 

former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and others, who had 

agreed with NATO’s aims of ending ethnic violence and caused very 

unhelpful domestic controversy in NATO nations.41

Serbia employed a clever media strategy to draw the world’s attention to the level of its environmental suering. ey were aware that 

no objective scientic teams were in country who could verify or 

challenge its claims during the conict and that NATO would have 

few options for countering its information (or misinformation) strategy.42 is is something important for military planners nowadays to 

ponder. If their campaigns or missions cause even what appears to be 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 207

large-scale ecological damage, their political leaders will nd it di-

cult to mount a credible defense against charges of catastrophic harm. 

Garnering and maintaining popular support for wars of choice that 

involve no direct threats to sovereignty or key interests are not easy, 

even within apparently reasonable contexts. But in this era of widespread public concern for the environment, politicians will nd it 

easier to maintain support for their actions if they do not seem to be 

doing harm while claiming to be doing good.

In response to continued reports of widespread environmental 

harm, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern 

Europe, assisted by a variety of specialist-contracted experts, undertook the very rst objective study of environmental conditions in 

Serbia.43 It reported that, while thankfully there was “no evidence of 

a large-scale ecological catastrophe . . . the environment in the whole 

territory of Yugoslavia was aected as a result of the military conict.” 

It also found that pollution was “very severe in the vicinity of targeted 

industrial complexes . . . and many valuable ecosystems were disturbed.”44 It considered it too early to oer evidence-based opinions 

about the long-term eects, but warned that the environmental damage that had occurred or that might in the future included threats to 

ecosystems (especially river systems) and human health caused by 

exposure to toxic or carcinogenic substances.

At almost the same time, the very concerned UN Environment 

Program took the unprecedented step of hastily forming a Balkans 

task force to assess the environmental consequences of NATO’s air 

campaign. is was the rst time that the UN had ever integrated 

environmental issues as a central part of a postconict humanitarian 

eort. Led by former Finnish environment minister Pekka Haavisto, 

the task force visited the wrecked reneries and industrial complexes 

in the weeks immediately aer the cessation of violence and released 

its ndings four months later. It detected four major ecological “hot 

spots” of grave concern that needed urgent attention (Pančevo, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, and Bor), but added that permanent degradation 

of soils and waterways seemed unlikely. e UN team recognized 

that some of the environmental pollution apparently predated the 

NATO strikes, while some of it resulted from them. e task force 

nonetheless added that urgent attention would be needed, irrespective of the cause, “if further damage to human health and the environment is to be avoided.”45
208 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

e task force’s report was not accepted by all scientists and interested bodies. Many considered it a “political” report supporting a 

predetermined conclusion and relying on hasty and imperfect research and an inadequate methodology.46 Better studies, the critics 

asserted, contradicted the task force’s ndings. ey pointed to a parallel short-term study by the World Wide Fund for Nature that highlighted the broader transboundary and ecosystem implications of the 

discharged toxic chemicals and oered the less-positive summation 

that “toxic contamination in Yugoslavia is spreading.”47 e politically neutral Swiss-based FOCUS team of humanitarians and scientists that spent several months in 1999 assessing postwar damage 

throughout Serbia also oered this somber assessment: “Destruction 

of many potentially dangerous objects on FRY [Federal Republic of 

Yugoslavia] territory caused the threat of ecological catastrophe.”48

Likewise, focusing especially on Novi Sad, two Belgrade scientists 

identied “catastrophic pollution.”49 ey reported that, although airborne pollution was “extreme but short-lived,” the pollution of the 

soil and surface and groundwater was long term. “e pollution in 

these zones,” they asserted, “especially in the Danube river basin, is a 

hazard for the further degradation of the environment, and a risk for 

the human health.”50 Similarly, and perhaps most notably, the USbased Institute of Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) expressed serious concerns in its 2002 assessment.51 Particularly at 

Pančevo, chemical releases occurred “which pose potentially longterm threats to the local population and local environment.”52 e 

IEER noted that, while it was impossible to be precise or to predict 

future circumstances with certainty because of a lack of available prewar baselines, persistent toxins, carcinogens, and other pollutants 

entering the ecosystems looked likely to have long-term negative 

consequences, including for human health. e IEER was very careful to apportion responsibility fairly and even criticized Serbia for its 

prewar record of industrial pollution at some sites. It nonetheless reserved its strongest criticism for NATO for its inclusion of some of 

the petrochemical infrastructural targets and the excessive level of 

their physical destruction, reporting, “persuasive evidence indicates 

that humanitarian law may have been violated in the NATO bombing 

campaign, notably with respect to the bombing of Pancevo.”53 e 

IEER went so far as to recommend:
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 209

e entire issue of bombing civilian facilities to accomplish military objectives 

needs to become the subject of a rigorous public inquiry. Such an inquiry 

should include consideration of immediate and/or environmental and health 

damage that could be inicted on the country or in neighboring countries 

sharing ecosystems with the countries at war.54

Given that NATO undoubtedly intended Operation Allied Force 

as a positive humanitarian intervention—with the ending of ethnic 

violence as the primary objective—even on balance, such environmental degradation and explicit criticisms of it can only be considered ultimately counterproductive. It weakens moral positions. Ethicist Alex J. Bellamy argues that humanitarian interventions place 

additional burdens of justice upon political leaders and military commanders more than many other expressions of warfare. He notes that 

planners must pay particular attention to the selection of targets involving civilian objects and that “in humanitarian interventions, failure to exhibit due care casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of the 

operation as a whole.”55

Just as any physician is morally obliged to cause no harm while 

seeking to remedy a patient’s malady, or at least to minimize all possible harm created by the treatment, responsible government institutions need to balance their security priorities and moral considerations with other inuential factors, which nowadays include 

environmental ethical considerations. It is not beyond reason to foresee a near future in which ecologists will sit alongside lawyers in campaign planning stas and air targeting cells to oer advice or direction on the potential harm likely to be caused in specic missions. 

eir expertise in helping air planners to minimize harm to the very 

people they are trying to support should be welcomed, not feared. 

e moral shi away from old-fashioned concepts of collective responsibility, in which populations are punished or permitted to suer 

harm because of the actions of their governments, as well as the 

strengthening of international legal protections of civilians, greatly 

increases the onus upon air planners to minimize every form of socalled collateral damage.

I disagree with some ethicists and lawyers who argue that, because 

of the likely release of “dangerous forces,” attacks on oil and petrochemical installations should be prohibited in the same ways that 

dams, dykes, and nuclear generators are protected under the provisions of Article 56 of the Additional Protocol I. Because meticulously 

planned and very precise attacks on oil targets need not cause “severe 
210 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

losses among the civilian population,” as dened by Article 56, I cannot accept the position that air planners must never target oil or petrochemical installations. When balancing competing priorities, particularly when a patient’s life is threatened, even the most compassionate 

of physicians may judge it necessary to dispense a treatment—

chemotherapy, for example—that will kill peripheral healthy cells 

even as it targets the source of the threat to life. Of course, no doctor 

would prescribe these terrible treatments unless the patient’s illness 

was grave. Likewise, continuing with this analogy, the implementation of any signicant environmentally risky or destructive measures 

should only be contemplated in military contexts involving tremendous 

need, such as tipping-point moments in struggles of national survival. Ethicist Michael Walzer argues that during such “supreme 

emergencies,” a fear exists beyond the ordinary fearfulness of war, 

caused by dangers beyond the ordinary dangers of war (he means the 

imminence of defeat and enslavement),56 and that such fear and danger 

may well require extreme measures that override ethical norms and 

may even contravene law.57

NATO made a reasonable case in 1999 that the world community 

should not tolerate Serbian maltreatment of Kosovars. It represented 

a grave aront to Western core values. Yet the scale of ethnic violence, 

while suciently distressing to merit eorts to end it, did not constitute enough of a grievance—let alone anything close to a “supreme 

emergency”—to warrant the scale of violence by NATO to inadvertently pose serious health risks to both Serbian and Kosovar civilian 

populations and thereby cause much short-term and some long-term 

harm to the environment and its ecosystems of the Balkans.

Even without the gravity of the disputed issues of legality and morality, NATO’s destruction of Yugoslavian oil infrastructure did not 

even accord with sound military strategizing. Planners who target an 

enemy’s cardinal energy systems must know that, with the exception 

of electricity, which can be quickly interrupted, it will take a relatively 

long time for the desired eects of a counter-oil campaign to kick in. 

Destroying petrochemical installations, reneries, and storage facilities will inevitably reduce the enemy’s ability to operate its armed 

forces eectively, but it will not do so swily, much less immediately, 

especially if the enemy armed forces are (as Yugoslavia’s were) adaptable, lying low, and not engaged in signicant fuel-consuming movements or maneuvers. Destroying enough oil infrastructure to paralyze armed forces will necessitate a massive and focused attack, or a 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 211

lengthy and constant series of attacks. Even aer 78 days of increasingly powerful attacks, NATO had only destroyed around 40 percent 

of Serbia’s military fuel stocks.58 While a counter-oil strategy might 

supercially seem eminently sensible for campaigns predicted to be 

protracted—and my view is that any such campaigns should be undertaken only with tremendous care, proportionality, precision, and 

thought for the future—it is not an especially useful modus operandi 

for brief coercive strikes, particularly those with humanitarian goals.

We should not forget that the NATO planners intended Operation 

Allied Force to be a short and sharp coercive mission along the lines 

of Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in December 1998. Indeed, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon announced on the eve of the rst 

strikes on Serbia, “We have plans for a swi and severe air campaign.”59 Likewise, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself 

stated on 24 March 1999, “I don’t see this as a long-term operation. I 

think it is achievable within a relatively short period of time.”60 e 

fact that Operation Allied Force lasted 78 days cannot disguise the 

fact that it was intended to coerce Milosevic into changing his mind 

on the violence in Kosovo within two or three days. As Tom DeLay, 

the US House majority whip, commented one-third of the way 

through the campaign, “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta told us that this 

was no big deal, that we were going to bomb for a couple of days, 48 

hours, and then stop bombing, and Milosevic would come to the table.”61 Permanent destruction of oil renement and storage facilities 

and other chemical works was thus at odds with the original rationale 

of the mission and makes little sense unless one attributes to NATO 

air planners a recognition sometime in April—as I do—that their coercive strategy had failed and that the campaign had changed from 

coercion, to denial, and then to punishment.62

Moreover, astute and politically smart strategists and planners 

might want to reect on the likelihood that in today’s ecologically 

aware world, massive or sustained attacks on petrochemical installations—

especially on their tank farms, which will cause sizeable poisonous 

spills and huge toxic res—will generate politically destabilizing arguments about proportionality, and thus the operation’s justice. Refuting public allegations over proportionality is not something a 

military wants to nd itself doing. It will have few objective and easily 

understandable criteria upon which to build a defense. e just war 

concept of proportionality pertaining to noncombatants is complex 
212 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

and not helpfully dened in international humanitarian law. e legal explanation of proportionality is codied in Articles 51.5(b) and 

57.2(a) (iii) of the Additional Protocol I, which states that it is prohibited for the military to engage in any action “which may be expected 

to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to 

civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive 

in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”63

A breach nowadays constitutes a war crime under the Statute of the 

International Criminal Court.64 Unhelpful ambiguity exists on how 

anyone can objectively determine when an attack crosses the threshold and becomes “excessive” (it is a comparative concept, not a measurable absolute concept) and how anyone can compare and evaluate 

such dissimilar values as civilian harm and military gain. Yet the consensus view and the jus in bello norm is that when waging war on 

combatants and military objects, military forces must act painstakingly, deliberately, and carefully to ensure that civilians suer no 

more harm than military necessity demands. Suggesting that the 

draers of the Additional Protocol I also meant ensuring that the 

quality and habitability of the environment are not degraded would 

be hyperbolic. e environmental movement was far less motivated, 

powerful, and ubiquitous in 1977 than it is now. Yet, it is not unreasonable to foresee that (as I believe and recommend) a strengthening of 

both ethical and legal denitions will come to include these concepts.65

Tightening legislation is necessary. Opponents of any attacks that 

purportedly cause environmental harm and who desire to see prosecutions made against the perpetrators are currently not helped by the 

ambiguity of the wording in the Additional Protocol I, which prohibits 

“widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment,” regardless of the military objective.66 e problem with this 

prohibition, of course, is that currently it is almost impossible to 

measure that sort of damage in specic and objective terms. Moreover, the adjectives “widespread, long-term and severe” are joined by 

the conjunction and, implying a cumulative triple standard that must 

be fullled. In other words, even an attack on a petrochemical plant 

that caused widespread and horric ecological harm might fail to 

meet this standard unless critics could demonstrate that its eects 

could also be measured in years, if not decades.67

Some critics of environmental degradation caused by air attacks 

have attempted to reduce this timescale by drawing upon the 1977 

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 213

of the Environmental Modication Techniques (ENMOD), written 

as a consequence of widespread criticism of the disastrous US defoliation program in Vietnam. e ENMOD was promulgated in 

1978 and was ratied by the United States in 1980.68 e ENMOD 

bans “military or any other hostile use of environmental modication 

techniques having widespread, long lasting or severe eects as a means 

of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party” (emphasis 

added).69 e Conference of the Committee on Disarmament dened 

these terms for the purpose of the ENMOD treaty in an Understanding Regarding the Convention:

a) “Widespread”: encompassing an area on the scale of several 

hundred square kilometers;

b) “Long-lasting”: lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season; or

c) “Severe”: involving serious or signicant disruption or harm to 

human life, natural and economic resources or other assets.70

Interestingly, the three criteria mentioned in the ENMOD are 

joined by the conjunction or, rather than the and of the Additional 

Protocol I, meaning that it may not be necessary to fulll a cumulative standard. Moreover, the Committee on Disarmament’s explanation that long-lasting might mean “a period of months, or approximately a season,” seems to suggest a more readily dened and 

reasonable threshold that would make prosecutions for environmental harm during wartime more likely. Indeed, if these criteria were 

applied to NATO’s targeting selection process, the worst of the aforementioned attacks on petrochemical installations in Serbia, especially the destruction of Pančevo, might have been prohibited. Aaron 

Schwabach, an American law professor who has written extensively 

on the NATO campaign, concluded that it seemed “likely” that the 

damage at Pančevo would meet “at least one of these requirements.”71

Unfortunately for critics of NATO’s war, the ENMOD prohibitions 

do not automatically include all attacks leading to environmental 

harm, but only those activities undertaken deliberately to manipulate 

the environment’s natural processes (e.g., by changing weather patterns or by widespread defoliation). Even more unhelpful for those 

who seek to minimize environmental harm during wartime, the 

Committee on Disarmament’s denition was not intended as a de-

nition of the Additional Protocol I (in addition to the ENMOD), and 
214 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

it is not even formally incorporated into the terms of the ENMOD. In 

other words, the denition actually serves to confuse matters, not to 

clarify them.

Given this lack of clarity over timescales, making a compelling legal 

case that a state has committed excessive harm to the environment is 

always going to be highly problematic immediately aer the cessation 

of any hostilities, at least without new laws or a strengthening of existing laws. Compounding this problem is the fact that demonstrable—as 

opposed to merely threatened or even likely—human health problems (e.g., unusual cancers) or damage to ecosystems may take years 

to appear. Also, within contexts in which little baseline public health 

and environmental information exists, such damage may never be 

readily measurable, let alone placed within an objective and provable 

analysis of causation. e emotions surrounding warfare, with inevitable nger pointing from both sides, also make this type of analysis 

particularly problematic.

is was precisely the problem that Yugoslavia and various NGOs 

faced when they tried to bring a case against NATO before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). To the 

dismay of many international legal experts and human rights groups, 

who accused her of accepting unbalanced evidence in favor of 

NATO,72 Carla Del Ponte, the ICTY prosecutor, informed the UN 

Security Council on 2 June 2000 that she had decided not to open a 

criminal investigation into any aspects of NATO’s 1999 air campaign.73 She specied that although NATO undoubtedly made mistakes, she felt “satised that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the campaign.” 

More importantly for the purposes of this study, while accepting a 

nding that NATO had caused “some” damage to the environment, 

Del Ponte rejected assertions that the tribunal should prosecute 

NATO for causing excessive ecological harm. e main problem was 

not that the United States and France had never ratied the Additional Protocols of 1977. (is was of course true. e United States 

has still not ratied them, and France only did in November 2001.) 

Rather, Del Ponte accepted a review committee’s nding that the “imprecise” phrasing in the Additional Protocol I meant that it was extremely dicult to determine when any attacks during any wars had 

caused environmental harm exceeding the protocol’s threshold, especially as “long-term” would (despite the ENMOD-related advice) 

need to be “measured in years rather than months.” e committee 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 215

noted that, while it had “led to criticisms by ecologists,” the vagueness 

of the standard meant that, “on the basis of information currently in 

its possession, the environmental damage caused during the NATO 

bombing campaign does not meet the Additional Protocol I threshold.”74 e issue of intent also created a problem:

e requisite mens rea [measure of intent] on the part of a commander would 

be actual or constructive knowledge as to the grave environmental eects of a 

military attack; a standard which would be dicult to establish for the purposes of prosecution and which may provide an insucient basis to prosecute 

military commanders inicting environmental harm in the (mistaken) belief 

that such conduct was warranted by military necessity.75

e current vagueness of international humanitarian law is also a 

problem for critics of air forces that use ordnance that the public considers extremely ecologically harmful, such as white phosphorus 

bombs, cluster munitions, and depleted uranium (DU) rounds. All 

three of these ordnance types have undeniably eective military roles 

when used only against enemy combatants. Yet, for dierent reasons, 

each one causes such highly controversial unintended secondary effects that many people consider any use to be reckless. Most environmentalists condemn them all as environmentally harmful. I also tend 

not to like their usage, especially in close proximity to civilians, but 

that is mainly because I recognize that the use of any contentious 

weapons will create destabilizing controversy and add to unwanted 

propaganda battles. Moreover, I am not convinced that an adequate 

scientic consensus exists to allow me to argue with certainty, for 

example, that even the 30,000 DU shells red at 112 locations in and 

around Kosovo by USAF A-10s caused (or will cause) serious and 

long-term environmental harm and that DU-contaminated areas 

should be treated with anything more than the “precautionary approach” recommended by the UN’s environmental watchdog organization.76 Science may in time demonstrably undermine the UN’s position, and I am mindful that the defoliation of Vietnam by Agent 

Orange and other defoliants has caused severe human health and environmental harm despite early US beliefs that no long-term harm to 

humans would occur.77

Cluster bombs are dierent from white phosphorus and depleted 

uranium shells in that they produce no secondary toxins that can 

cause chemical actions on life processes that might kill or harm humans, animals, or other living things. Yet they have a worse and more 

clearly proven inuence on the natural environment. Cluster bombs’ 
216 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

primary harm comes when widely spread and highly volatile unexploded submunitions cause the death and maiming of innocent people 

aer—sometimes long aer—the cessation of hostilities. Ninety-eight 

percent of the 11,044 recorded and veried casualties of cluster munitions in recent wars have been civilians.78 In terms of the environment, 

cluster munitions have a very deleterious eect. Hundreds of thousands of fearful farmers in modern warzones avoid tilling submunitioncontaminated elds, irrigating contaminated groves or orchards, and 

raising livestock on contaminated grasslands. is has a seriously 

negative impact on local economies and on ecosystems. Cluster munitions also cause health and hygiene problems by creating malnutrition and denying safe access to water. In these ways they cause foreseen but unintended harm similar to, although individually far more 

lethal than, antipersonnel landmines. During NATO’s war on Serbia, 

USAF and RAF (and a small number of Dutch) aircra dropped a 

conrmed minimum of 1,254 cluster bombs in Kosovo (531 by the 

RAF, which mainly targeted elded forces and their weapons).79 ey 

scattered no fewer than 234,123 submunitions.80 With a failure rate 

calculated at 7.8 percent, this means that NATO le 18,261 unexploded submunitions in or on the ground in Kosovo, none of them 

having self-destruct fuses. ankfully, nearly all have now been located and cleared,81 although 2,500 remain in Serbia proper,82 and 

Kosovo’s litter of USAF and RAF cluster submunitions has caused 

152 postwar civilian casualties.83

Within the rst year aer the war’s end, elements within the British government were unhappy with the RAF’s heavy use of cluster 

munitions. On 23 May 2000, a report of the Foreign Aairs Select 

Committee of the House of Commons concluded: “We recommend 

that the UK Government consider carefully the experience of the use 

of cluster bombs in the Kosovo campaign to determine in future con-

icts whether they are weapons which pose so great a risk to civilians 

that they fall foul of the 1977 Protocol and should not be used in areas 

where civilians live.”84 Likewise, on 23 October 2000, a report of the 

Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons concluded that 

“our major contribution to the bombing campaign was in the form of 

unguided cluster bombs—a contribution of limited military value 

and questionable legitimacy.”85 It is therefore unfortunate that the 

RAF used them again (although nowhere as prolically as the British 

Army) in Iraq in 2003, alongside the USAF, which had also used 

them in Afghanistan in and aer 2001. Israel’s air force, but especially 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 217

its army, likewise used staggering quantities of cluster munitions in 

its 2006 campaign against Hezbollah insurgents and terrorists, leaving one million unexploded submunitions across southern Lebanon.86 e unintended death and maiming rates of civilians in all 

three campaigns have been high and regretted and have seemed to 

undo some of the good that the various air forces and armies were 

trying hard to achieve.

A widespread Western consensus has quickly emerged that cluster 

munitions violate the jus in bello principles of proportionality and 

discrimination so grievously that they must be classed as weapons 

mala in se, which means “bad in themselves,” irrespective of any legal 

prohibitions. e logic framing this consensus is consistent with both 

international humanitarian law and just war principles. It argues that, 

because military forces nowadays can reasonably determine from objective analyses of recent conicts that almost all cluster-bomb victims will be civilians who will suer death, maiming, and environmental harm for many years aer their initial use for military 

purposes, their harm cannot reasonably be balanced against any 

good achieved.

Modern wars have included many things mala in se, such as rape, 

torture, ethnic cleansing, and chemical and biological weapons. Cluster munitions are the most recent addition to this category. In February 2007, 46 national representatives met in Oslo to endorse a call by 

Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre to conclude a new legally binding instrument that will prohibit the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of cluster munitions and to provide adequate 

resources to assist survivors and clear contaminated areas. Subsequent International Oslo Process meetings occurred in Peru (May 

2007), Austria (December 2007), New Zealand (February 2008), and 

Ireland (May 2008). In Dublin, 107 countries adopted the treaty text, 

and they opened a signature process in Oslo on 3 December 2008. 

e convention will enter into force six months aer 30 states have 

submitted their instruments of ratication to the secretary general of 

the United Nations. Four states have now done so. e United States 

has neither signed nor ratied the convention, although in March 

2009 President Obama took a highly commendable rst step by permanently banning the US sale of all cluster munitions except those 

(which is a tiny amount) that leave behind less than 1 percent of their 

submunitions as duds.87 e United Kingdom has gone even further. 

It responded to the emerging mala in se consensus on cluster munitions 
218 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

responsibly and decisively by banning them in three stages: rst, on 

20 March 2007, by withdrawing all of the RAF’s 3,650 RBL755 “dumb” 

cluster bombs and their 536,550 submunitions as well as the British 

army’s 43,200 multiple-launch M26 rockets and their 27,820,800 submunitions; second, in May 2008, by withdrawing the remaining army 

cluster munitions which had (inadequate) self-destruct fuses; and 

third, in December 2008, by signing the convention outlawing all 

cluster ordnance.88

Even if we accept a jus in bello argument that in any particular 

conict a belligerent may foresee but not intentionally cause some 

environmental harm, we should also accept the jus post bellum argument that aer the end of hostilities and the restoration of what we 

hope will be a better state of peace, the restoration of the quality of life 

of the aected innocents should occur as fully as swily as possible. 

As the UN explains, this is not only a moral obligation; it is a practical 

part of peacemaking and nowadays extends to the human habitat and 

even beyond. “Environmental conditions—from the air that people 

breathe and the water they drink, to the ecosystems that support forestry, farming and shing—have a crucial inuence on the success of 

eorts to rebuild shattered communities and livelihoods. Only by ensuring environmental security can the wider goals of postconict reconstruction and human development be sustained.”89 In the case of 

the Kosovo conict the infrastructural damage was substantial and the 

environment harm severe in places. Swi remediation was crucial.

e United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) took the unprecedented step of assuming responsibility for postwar remediation, 

concluding that “it was evident that, not only had people been 

through untold pain and suering, but that the environment had suffered as well.”90 It therefore immediately undertook to create a strategy to unite concerned nations in a program to clean up the worst 

pollution and contamination to minimize long-term risks to Serbs, 

Kosovars, and others. Its own 1999 task force, which had identied 

the four heavily polluted “hot spots” around Pančevo, Kragujevac, 

Novi Sad, and Bor, served as the basis of its feasibility study to dene 

the exact scientic and nancial requirements for urgent cleanup 

projects at those and maybe other locations. In March 2000, cleanup 

measures for the four worst hot spots featured prominently as priority projects at the funding conference organized under the auspices of 

the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. By the late summer of 

2000, following positive initial responses from many governments 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 219

and pledges from several European countries to support additional 

activities, the UNEP commenced a major environmental cleanup 

project at conict-caused contamination sites in Serbia (including 

Kosovo). Over the next four years the UNEP mitigation and remediation project helped to secure fresh drinking water, remediated 

contaminated soil and groundwater, removed and treated scores of 

tons of extremely hazardous chemicals and waste, rehabilitated 

wastewater treatment capacities, installed environmental monitoring 

stations, and strengthened national and local environmental management capacities.

Donor countries had pledged a total of $20 million, but several 

reneged altogether or reduced their contributions. e UNEP had to 

make do with $12 million and could not do everything it had wanted.91

Its eorts nonetheless made a highly positive dierence. Aer four 

years of intense industrial site, soil, and groundwater remediation 

work at the worst sites, the UNEP announced in May 2004 that, while 

the cleanup programs had only addressed the most urgent issues, 

they had made such substantial progress with them that the ecological hot spots no longer warranted that label and that the programs 

could be turned over to the Serbian government.92 ere was, and 

still is, much work le to Serbia to do before anyone can reasonably 

conclude that all environmental damage has been entirely negated.

It has now been 10 years since NATO airpower destroyed Serbian 

reneries and petrochemical installations and ve since the UNEP 

ended its partial environmental cleanup campaign. Yet, Serbia is still 

deeply troubled by NATO’s ostensible disregard of ecological responsibility. Unusually higher cancer rates, for instance, are still attributed 

to the eects of NATO’s bombing campaign and even to its use of 

depleted uranium.93 Establishing the verity of such claims is beyond 

my professional expertise and might not even be possible for an oncologist or a public health expert because of a lack of both baseline 

evidence and objective, thorough studies and because of Serbia’s continuing poor record of industrial pollution.94

Conclusions

is study has demonstrated that modern airpower has unequalled 

capacity for destructiveness within the human habitat and interrelated ecosystems of an opponent’s state. Traditional target sets still
220 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

include a lot of industrial plants and infrastructure that contain 

highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals which can, if discharged 

through attacks, cause severe damage to the natural environment and 

its ora and fauna, not to mention human health. Any such environmental harm nowadays has far greater potential for causing destabilizing 

controversy within the environmentally aware public than ever before. Existing international humanitarian law is not yet adequate to 

discourage protagonists during the heat of war from attacking some 

things that perhaps should only be targeted under unique circumstances, with extraordinary care, and aer weighing potentially wider 

implications. Existing conventions should be strengthened or new 

laws created. Yet, the jus in bello concepts of proportionality and discrimination embedded within our just war code already are—or 

would be if more widely understood—an eminently reasonable basis 

for constraining the injudicious use of force against objects that have 

the potential for environmental harm. Western warriors already conceptualize their use of violence in terms of minimizing suering 

while doing good, all the while protecting the innocent, including the 

opponent’s. It is a short and easy step of logic that they should understand the importance of minimizing harm to the habitat of the innocent. It is equally logical that, as the purpose of armed violence 

should always be a better state of peace, warriors will want to avoid 

inicting damage upon the innocents within the opposing state, and 

possibly within the wider region, that might last well beyond the end 

of conict and therefore complicate the restoration of lasting peace. 

One of the lessons we should learn from the Kosovo conict—indeed, 

from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon as well—is that most military 

commanders and planners are not adequately familiar with the key 

environmental sciences and are therefore not best placed to foresee 

all unwanted consequence as they plan operations and missions to 

achieve wanted eects. e inclusion of ecologists alongside lawyers 

in campaign planning stas and air targeting cells to oer advice or 

direction on the potential harm likely to be caused in specic missions will at least partially strengthen the way that environmental factors can be “brought in from the cold.” eir expertise in helping 

planners to minimize harm to the very people they are trying to support should be welcomed, not considered intrusive.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 221

Notes

1. Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, Art. 1(a).

2. Leaning, “War and the Environment,” 278.

3. Steiner, “Aer the Bombs.” See also United Nations Environment Program, 

Lebanon Post-Conict Environmental Assessment, especially 42–46; Carassava, “U.N. 

Pledges $64 Million”; Black, “Environmental ‘Crisis’ in Lebanon”; and Milstein, 

“Lebanon Oil Spill.”

4. See Hayward, “Too Little, Too Late.”

5. United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacic War), Crude Oil Production 

and Rening.

6. For Germany’s reliance on oil and the wartime consequence of this dependence, 

see Hayward, “Hitler’s Quest for Oil.” See also Pearton, Oil and the Romanian State; and 

Stout, Fortress Ploesti.

7. Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, 163; and Jacobs, “British Strategic 

Air Oensive,” 147, 150, 167.

8. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 120.

9. Stephens, Vulnerability of Total Petroleum Systems, 42–44.

10. Mark Clodfelter, Limits of Air Power; and Frankum, Like Rolling under.

11. Warden, Air Campaign, 39.

12. Davis, On Target; and Keaney, “Surveying Gulf War Airpower.”

13. Hallion, Storm over Iraq, 231.

14. Sandoz et al., eds., Commentary on the Additional Protocols, 669.

15. is colorful phrase even made it into mainstream publications. See, for example, 

Joksimovich, “Militarism and Ecology.”

16. Vukmirovic et al., “Regional Air Pollution,” 741.

17. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 25; United Nations 

Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat), 

e Kosovo Conict, 32; and Carter and Turnock, eds., Environmental Problems of 

East Central Europe, 403. 

18. Booth, “NATO Bombs Le a Toxic Slough.”

19. Hedges, “Serbian Town Bombed by NATO.”

20. Reichberg and Syse, “Protecting the Natural Environment,” 463; and Ceulemans, 

“NATO Intervention in the Kosovo Crisis.” Also see Meyer, “Tearing down the Façade,” 

172–73, 176–77, 181.

21. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 76.

22. Meyer, “Tearing down the Façade,” 100; and “Un cahier spécial sur le Kosovo.”

23. Short also said, “At some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb 

machismo . . . to thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues.”

Drozdiak, “Commander of Air War Says Kosovo Victory Near.”

24. Tirpak, “Washington Watch.”

25. Public Broadcasting Service, “War in Europe.” 

26. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 652.

27. NATO Brieng, 3 May 1999. Shea’s speech can be found in Shea and Jertz, 

“Press Conference.”

28. Cortright and López, eds., Smart Sanctions, 95.

29. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 30 April 1999.
222 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

30. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 19 April 1999.

31. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 30 April 1999.

32. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 651; and Operational Law Handbook 2000, 17–18.

33. Figures published on the website of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, 

“Oil Spill Facts.”

34. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 31, 34.

35. Assessment of the Environmental Impact, esp. § 4.1.1 and 4.1.2; Popovska and 

Sopova, “Pollution of the Balkans”; Carter and Turnock, Environmental Problems of East 

Central Europe, 403; and Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences, 649.

36. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 32, 33; United Nations 

Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat), 

Kosovo Conict, 34.

37. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 47.

38. Ibid.; and C. Morgan, “Collateral Damage.”

39. An excellent early study of pollution caused by warfare in arctic regions can 

be found in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Warfare in a Fragile 

World, 114–25, 151.

40. According to the International Criminal Tribunal’s Final Report to the Prosecutor,

NATO’s campaign killed 495 civilians and wounded a further 820. See § V(53).

41. For an example of Gorbachev’s concerns, see Gorbachev, “Poison in the Air.” 

A trawl of the Internet will produce hundreds of archived mainstream media reports 

of the ecological damage caused by NATO’s campaign. 

42. Bacevich and Cohen, eds., War over Kosovo, 15.

43. Assessment of the Environmental Impact.

44. Ibid., “Executive Summary.” 

45. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 9, 11.

46. See C. Morgan, “Collateral Damage.” In her 2000 paper, the late Dr. Janet M. 

Eaton, a Canadian biologist and activist, typied these critics, noting that the task 

force, “although composed of many expert scientists from around the world, was 

very limited in duration, lacked breadth and scope, failed to have within its mandate 

assessment of the impact on human health and lacked the cooperation of NATO 

authorities to either locate or assess the impact of depleted uranium weapons in spite 

of widespread concern and warnings about the ecological and health implications.” 

Eaton, “Ecological and Health Consequences.”

47. World Wide Fund for Nature, “Danube Carpathian Program.”

48. FOCUS Assessment Mission. 

49. Martinovic-Vitanovic and Kalafatic, “Consequences of War.”

50. Ibid.

51. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm.

52. Ibid., 85.

53. Ibid., 86.

54. Ibid., 13.

55. Bellamy, Just Wars, 213.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 223

56. See Orend, “Is ere a Supreme Emergency Exemption?”

57. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 251–62.

58. Bacevich and Cohen, War over Kosovo, 24.

59. See Hayward, “NATO’s War in the Balkans,” 2. 

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 3. See also Daalder and O’Hanlan, Winning Ugly, 91–93, 209; and Henriksen, 

NATO’s Gamble, 5, 199.

62. Observing the conict as it unfolded, I noticed a dramatic change of operational 

intensity and tempo in the fourth week of April 1999, coinciding with the NATO Summit 

in Washington. See Hayward, “NATO’s War in the Balkans,” 10. Eminent British defense 

commentator John Keegan saw the same shi, noting that NATO began to “visit a true 

blitz on the Serb homeland.” Keegan, “Please Mr Blair.”

63. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, Art. 51 (5)(b) and Art. 57 (2)(b).

64. United Nations, Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 8(2)(b)(iv). 

e statute modies “excessive” with the adjective “clearly” and “military advantage” 

with “overall,” thereby emphasizing both the need for clarity and the importance of 

avoiding assessments of individual attacks in total isolation.

65. Rodin, “Ethics of Asymmetric War,” 162.

66. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 651.

67. International Criminal Tribunal, Final Report to the Prosecutor, § I (15); and 

Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 652.

68. See Dieterich, “ ‘Law of War’ and Ecology,” 137–60.

69. Convention on the Prohibition, Art. I.

70. Quoted in Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 75.

71. Schwabach, “Environmental Damage,” 129.

72. For example, see Benvenuti, “ICTY Prosecutor”; Ronzitti, “Is the Non Liquet

of the Final Report?”; and “Amnesty International’s Initial Comments.”

73. International Criminal Tribunal, Final Report to the Prosecutor.

74. Ibid., § 4 (A)(17).

75. Ibid., § 4 (A)(23).

76. United Nations Environment Program, Depleted Uranium in Kosovo; and 

United Nations Environment Program, Depleted Uranium in Serbia and Montenegro.

77. Cf. “Defoliating Viet Nam.”

78. Fatal Footprint, 41.

79. Secretary of State for Defence Geo Hoon, House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 19 January 2000; Minister of State for the Armed Forces Adam Ingram, House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 16 November 2001; Cluster 

Munitions in Kosovo, 9, 10; and Norton-Taylor, “US Deploys Controversial Weapon.” 

80. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 9. See the very close NATO gures quoted by the 

International Committee of the Red Cross in Cluster Bombs and Landmines in Kosovo, 6.

81. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 43.

82. “2,500 NATO Cluster Bombs”; and Fawkes, “Scars of NATO Bombing.”

83. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 46.

84. House of Commons, Foreign Aairs Select Committee, Fourth Report.

85. House of Commons, Defence Select Committee, Fourteenth Report.

86. Secretary of State for International Development Hillary Benn, House of 

Commons Hansard Written Answers for 18 December 2006; and Fatal Footprint, 35. 
224 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

87. “Obama Takes US Closer to Cluster Bomb Ban.”

88. Hewson, “Cluster Weapons Ban Leaves Gap in UK Inventory”; and Norton-Taylor, 

Walker, and agencies, “Cluster Bomb Treaty.”

89. From Conict to Sustainable Development, 7.

90. Ibid., 6.

91. Marković, “Serbia.”

92. United Nations Environment Program, Press Release, 7 May 2004.

93. Cf. Zimonjic, “BALKANS: Fallout of Bombing.”

94. Cf. “Serbs Call for Restrictions on Noxious Factory Emissions.”
Abbreviations

AAF Army airfield

AAP Army ammunition plant

ACTS Army Air Corps Tactical School

ADD air domain development

AFRICOM US Africa Command

AU Africa Union

AVGAS aviation gasoline

AWF African Wildlife Foundation

AWPD Air War Plan Divisions

CAMPFIRE Communal Areas Management Program 

for Indigenous Resources

CAS chief of the Air Staff

CBC community-based conservation

CBNRM community-based natural resource management

CCS Combined Chiefs of Staff

CENTCOM US Central Command

COIN counterinsurgency

CONUS continental United States

DOD Department of Defense

DOE Department of Energy

DOS Department of State

DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo

DU depleted uranium

ENMOD environmental modification

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

EU European Union

FMNR farmer-managed natural regeneration

FMS foreign military sales

FUDS formerly used defense sites

GLTP Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

GPS Global Positioning System

IAF Israeli Air Force

IBC Iraq Body Count Project

ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile

ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the 

Former Yugoslavia
226 │ ABBREVIATIONS

IDF Israeli Defense Forces

IEER Institute of Energy and Environmental 

Research

IUNC International Union of Conservation of 

Nature

JCS Joint Chiefs of Sta

JDAM joint direct attack munition

KAZA Kavango–Zambezi

KLCT Kenya Land Conservation Trust

km kilometer

KWS Kenya Wildlife Service

LIFE Project Living in a Finite Environment

LWC Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

MPE (Israeli) Ministry for Protection of the 

Environment

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCA Ngorongono Conservation Area

NGO nongovernmental organization

NIS new Israeli shekels

NPL National Priority List

NRT Northern Rangeland Trust

OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom

OPEC Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries

PDA Project on Defense Alternatives

PGM precision-guided munitions

POL petroleum, oil, and lubricants

PP peace parks

RAF Royal Air Force

SAC Strategic Air Command

SPP state partnership programs

SS Schutzstael

TCE trichloroethylene

TFCA transfrontier conservation areas

TNA e National Archives, Kew, UK

UN United Nations

UNEP UN Environment Programme

UPT Undergraduate Pilot Training

USAAF United States Army Air Forces

USAF US Air Force

USAID US Agency of International Development
ABBREVIATIONS │ 227

USGS US Geological Service

USSBS US Strategic Bombing Survey

UST underground storage tank

WAP Western Area Plan

WWF World Wildlife Fund

WWII World War II

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15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 59

205 Group, 49

542 Squadron, 48

617 Squadron, 14, 48

ACTS. See Air Corps Tactical School 

ADD. See air domain development 

Afghanistan, 2, 4–5, 65–80, 87, 117–18, 

122–24, 159, 216, 220

Africa, 13, 84–85, 90, 92–101, 133–140, 

142–47, 149–51, 154–73

African Union (AU), 97, 98, 100

African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), 

162

AFRICOM. See US Africa Command 

Agent Blue, 70

Agent Orange, 4, 215

Ahmed Wali Karzai, 76

air control, 13

Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS), 45, 

47, 110, 125, 166, 200

aircraft production, 27

air domain development (ADD), 16, 

86, 146, 215

Air Ministry (United Kingdom), 12, 

45–48

air pollution, 184, 202

Air War Plans Division-1 (AWPD-1), 

47

Air War Plans Division-4 (AWPD-4), 

47

Air War Plans Division-42 (AWPD42), 47–48

Albright, Madeleine, 211

Al-Faw Peninsula, 59

Amherst, Jeffery, 2

Angola, 159

area bombing, 9–10, 13, 21, 110, 112, 

114

Arkansas River, 27–28

AU. See African Union 

Austin, Jay E., xi

The Environmental Consequences of 

War, xi

aviation fuel, 10, 18, 30

Avital, Shai, 186

AWF. See African Wildlife Foundation 

AWPD-1. See Air War Plans Division-1 

AWPD-4. See Air War Plans Division-4 

AWPD-42. See Air War Plans Division-42 

Az Zubayr, Iraq, 59

Baiji, Iraq, 57

Basrah, Iraq, 57, 59

Battle of Britain, 47

Battle of France, 110

Battle of the Atlantic, 47

Beirut, Lebanon, 109, 200

Belgrade, Serbia (Former Yugoslavia), 

203, 205, 208

Bellamy, Alex J., 209

biodiversity, 90, 100, 133–34, 136–37, 

142, 147, 149–50, 155–56, 158–60, 

163–5, 172

Biran, Tahal, 188

von Bismarck, Prince Otto, 21

Boeing-Wichita, 27

Bomber Command (Royal Air Force, 

UK), 11–13, 16–17, 20, 46–49, 110, 

112–13

Bosnia (Former Yugoslavia), 117

Botswana, 85, 93, 96–98, 136, 159, 163, 

168

British Expeditionary Force, 11

British Industrial Intelligence Center, 

45

Bruch, Carl E., xi

The Environmental Consequences of 

War, xi

Brundtland, Gro Harlem, ix

building partnerships, 149–52, 154–55, 

160, 167, 172

Burundi, 159

Butt Report, 13, 112

Callendar, Guy, 18

Cambodia, 2

Index
266 │ INDEX

CAMPIRE. See Communal Areas 

Management Program for Indigenous Resources 

carbon dioxide, 10, 18, 205

carbon emissions, 200

Carpenter, Chuck, 31–32

CBC. See community-based conservation 

CBNRM. See community-based natural 

resources management 

China, 55, 115

Chissano, Joachim, 159

Churchill, Winston S., 1, 6, 10, 17–18, 

22, 113

von Clausewitz, Carl, 85

Clinton, Pres. Bill, 2

cluster munitions, ix, 5, 108, 117, 

215–18

coercion, 86, 211

Colorado, 30, 34, 39

Columbus AFB, MS, 28

Combat Training Branch, Israeli Air 

Force, 191

Combined Chiefs of Sta, 49

Command of the Air, e (Douhet), 

44–45

Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources 

(CAMPFIRE), 160

community-based conservation 

(CBC), 149–50, 155–56, 160–64, 

168, 172–73

community-based natural resources 

management (CBNRM), 149, 157, 

160

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability 

Act, 36

Congo, 136–38, 159

Congo basin, 136

conservation, 90, 94, 137, 140, 149–50, 

155–58, 160–2, 164–68, 172

conservation zones, 149–50, 155–57, 

161–62, 165, 168, 172

Convention on Biological Diversity, 3

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of 

Environmental Modication Techniques (ENMOD), 212–14

Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant, 

NE, 30–31

Corps of Engineers, 25, 31, 34, 36, 38

Cottbus, Germany, 17

Coventry, UK, 1, 3, 113

Cronon, William, 39

Dambusters, 14–16, 20

Danube River, 200, 208

Daura, Iraq, 57

DCDC. See Development, Concepts 

and Doctrine Centre

Defence Select Committee of the 

House of Commons, UK, 216

Defense Plant Corporation, 30

defoliation, 25, 74, 76, 199, 213, 215

DeLay, Tom, 39, 211

Del Ponte, Carla, 214

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 

136–37

Denver, CO, 30, 34

depleted uranium (DU), 4, 215, 219

desertication, 92, 99, 134–35, 138–40, 

142

Development, Concepts and Doctrine 

Centre (DCDC), British Ministry 

of Defence, ix

Global Strategic Trends, ix

disposal of ordnance, ix, xii

DOD. See US Department of Defense 

DOE. See US Department of Energy 

Dortmund-Ems Canal, Germany, 17

Douglas Aircra Company, 29

Douhet, Giulio, 44–45, 86, 110–11

e Command of the Air, 44–45

Dresden, Germany, 2–3, 17, 107, 119

DU. See depleted uranium 

Dunkirk, France, 1, 11–12, 112

Dust Bowl, 26–27

DynCorp, 77

Eighth Air Force, 48–51

energy infrastructure, 43, 45–46, 52, 

54–55, 58, 60–62
INDEX │ 267

ENMOD. See Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Modication Techniques

Environmental Consequences of War, 

e (Austin and Bruch, eds.), xi

environmentalism, 18, 193

EPA. See US Environmental Protection 

Agency 

European Union, 204

Exxon Valdez, 201, 205–6

Fieenth Air Force, 49

First Lebanon War, 192

Foreign Aairs Select Committee of 

the House of Commons, UK, 216

forests, 11–13, 135–37, 156

Fort Worth, TX, 27, 29–30

France, 1, 11–12, 19, 44, 110, 112, 114, 

144, 214

Fray, Frank, 48

Friedrich, Jörg, 14, 16, 19

Gahr Støre, Jonas, 217 

Garlasco, Marc, 127

General Motors, 29

Geneva Agreements, 1954, regarding 

Vietnam, 70, 77

Geneva conventions, 19, 21, 108, 202

Geneva Disarmament Conference, 

1932, 109

Georgia, 28, 75

Gerber, Michele, 32

Germany, 1, 3, 9–21, 25, 46–52, 61, 

109–10, 112–15, 119, 126, 199–200

Gibson, Guy, 15

Global Positioning System (GPS), 118, 

123, 166

Global Strategic Trends, (DCDC), ix

global warming, 4, 18

GLTP. See Great Limpopo Transfrontier 

Park 

Goebbels, Joseph, 14

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 206

Gore, Al, ix

GPS. See Global Positioning System 

Grand Island, NE, 30–31

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park 

(GLTP), 158–59

Great Plains, 25–30, 34–35, 38

Greenpeace, 116

Guernica (Picasso), 1, 3, 112

Gulf War, 43, 55, 57–61, 116, 201

Haavisto, Pekka, 207

Hafvenstein, Joel, 66, 79

Hague Convention for the Protection 

of Cultural Property, 197

Haiphong, Vietnam, 53–55

Halevi, Avishai, 187

Hamas, 117

Hamburg, Germany, 2–3

Hanford Nuclear Site, WA, 32

Hanoi, Vietnam, 53–54

Harris, Arthur, 9–10, 13–20, 22, 113

Hastings, NE, 34

Hastings, Tom H., xiii

Hatzor, Israel, 180–81, 191–92

Hawaii, 3, 34, 43

health, 1–2, 5–6, 27, 31, 38, 57, 87, 89–

90, 94, 96, 100, 116, 124, 164–66, 

192, 197, 199, 202, 207–10, 214–16, 

219–20

Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 76, 79

Henk, Dan, 83, 154

Hezbollah, 117, 217

Hiroshima, Japan, 2, 4, 18, 107, 119, 

199

Hitler, Adolf, 107, 112

Hon Gay, Vietnam, 53

Human Rights Watch, 117, 123, 127, 

203

Hussein, Saddam, 56, 126, 201

IAF. See Israeli Air Force 

IBC. See Iraq Body Count Project 

ICBM. See intercontinental ballistic 

missiles 

ICTY. See International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 

IDF. See Israeli Defense Force 

IG Farben (Interessengemeinscha 

Farbenindustrie Aktien-gesellscha), 

51

Imperial Japanese Navy, 43

industrial pollution, 208, 219
268 │ INDEX

Institute of Energy and Environmental 

Research, 208

intercontinental ballistic missiles 

(ICBM), 26

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change, ix

International Court of Justice, 205

International Criminal Tribunal for the 

Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 214

International Union for Conservation 

of Nature (IUCN), 137, 158

Iran, 76, 159

Iraq, 2, 4–5, 13, 43, 55–61, 72, 87, 116–

18, 122, 124, 126–27, 158–59, 201, 

211, 216, 220

Iraq Body Count Project (IBC), 117

Iraq War, 43, 57, 60–61

Israel, 117, 125, 177–93, 200, 216

Israeli Air Force (IAF), 117, 179–93, 

200

Israeli Defense Force (IDF), 177–81, 

183–88, 191–93

IUCN. See International Union for 

Conservation of Nature 

Iwo Jima, Japan, 114

Japan, 2–4, 18, 25, 32, 43, 61, 107, 114–

15, 119, 199–200

Jason Summer Study, 54

JCS. See US Joint Chiefs of Sta 

JDAM. See Joint Direct Attack Munition 

Johnson, Pres. Lyndon, 53–54

Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), 

118

jus ad bellum, 121–22

jus in bello, 6, 121–22, 198, 203, 205, 

212, 217–18, 220

Just War, 3, 6, 108, 121-22, 198–99, 

203, 205, 211–12, 217–18, 220

Kabulov, Zamir, 124

Kansas, 27, 29–30, 32–37

Kansas Army Ammunition Plant, 30

Karzai, Ahmed Wali and Hamid, 74–

76

Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), 159

KAZA. See Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area 

Kenan, Noa, 188

Kenya, 150, 15657, 160, 162–64, 166–

67, 169, 171–73

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), 162, 

164, 167

Kfar Yehoshua, Israel, 180

Kibbutz Lotan, Israel, 187

Kidon, Shai, 181

Kishon River, Israel, 180

Komer, Robert, 71

Korean War, 32, 115

Kosovo, 2, 117–20, 122, 198, 200, 202, 

204–6, 210–11, 215–16, 218–20

KWS. See Kenya Wildlife Service 

Kyoto, Japan, 3

bin Laden, Osama, 121

Lake Chad, 136

landmines, 66, 93, 108, 126–27, 216

Lapidot, Amos, 183

Laughlin AFB, TX, 28

League of Nations, 109

Lebanon, 109, 117, 189–90, 192, 200, 

217, 220

Leuna, Germany, 51

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (LWC), 

163–65

Lewy, Guenter, 115–16

LIFE. See Living in a Finite Environment 

Lindemann, Frederick, 18

livestock, 13–14, 33, 93, 99, 162, 164–

65, 204–5, 216

Living in a Finite Environment (LIFE), 

160

Lockheed-Martin, 30

Lod, Israel, 185

London, UK, 1, 3, 78, 112

Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant, 

TX, 30

Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, 

TX, 30

Low Countries, 11, 46

Lowry AFB, CO, 34

Luwae, 47, 112, 200
INDEX │ 269

LWC. See Lewa Wildlife Conservancy 

mala in se, 217

Mandela, Nelson, 159

Manual of Air Tactics (RAF), 13

Mao Zedong, 107

megafauna, 90, 92, 96, 165

Mekorot Company, 181

Metohija, Kosovo (former Yugoslavia), 

200

Mikdash Hanamerim (Temple of the 

Tigers), Israel, 188

Milosevic, Slobodan, 117, 120, 199, 

203–4, 211

Ministry for Protection of the Environment (MPE), UK, 177–79, 181, 186

Mississippi, 28

Mitchell, William “Billy,” 44–45, 57, 86

 Winged Defense, 45, 57

Mogadishu, Somalia, 117

Möhne River, Germany, 14–16, 48, 199

Mongols, 2

Moody AFB, GA, 28

morale, 1, 9–10, 13, 46–48

Mozambican navy, 96

Mozambique, 85, 96–97, 158–59, 163

MPE. See Ministry for Protection of 

the Environment, UK

“Munitions Requirements of the Army 

Air Forces,” 47

Munk, Erika, 116

Nagasaki, Japan, 2, 4, 18, 199

Nagoya, Japan, 2

Nahalal, Israel, 180

Namib Desert, 134

Namibia, 160

Nanjing, People’s Republic of China, 

115

National Defense Strategy, June 2008, 

152

national parks, 149, 156–57, 160

NATO, 21, 76, 79, 85, 117, 120, 124, 

199–200, 202–11, 213–16, 219

navy, 110

Navy of the Republic of Poland, 59

NCA. See Ngorongono Conservation 

Area

Nebraska, 29–31, 34

Negev region, Israel, 177

Netherlands, 1, 3, 20, 112, 199

Nevatim air base, Israel, 184–85

Newall, Cyril, 46–47

“New Deal,” 27

Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve, 163

Ngo Dinh Diem, 70–71, 75–76

Ngorongono Conservation Area 

(NCA), 161

Niger, 138, 140, 142–43

Nile River, 137

Nobel, Alfred, 6

Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT), 

150–51, 163–73

Novi Sad, Serbia (Former Yugoslavia), 

202, 206–8, 218

NRT. See Northern Rangeland Trust

Obama, Pres. Barack, 124, 217

Outt AFB, NE, 29

oil consumption, 44, 50

oil infrastructure, 57, 59, 200–1, 210

Okavango Delta, Botswana, 136

Okinawa, Japan, 114

Oklahoma, 27–29, 34–35, 37

Oklahoma City, OK, 27, 29, 35

Operation Allied Force, 58, 117, 209, 

211

Operation Desert Fox, 58, 211

Operation Desert Storm, 116, 118

Operation Iraqi Freedom, 118

Operation Linebacker, 201

Operation Ramon, 183–85, 191

Operation Ranch Hand, 70, 77

Operation Rolling under, 53, 201

opium, 65–70, 72–80

Oppenheimer, Robert, 4

ordnance, 10, 30, 34, 117, 200, 202, 

215, 218

Orville Wright, 6

Osaka, Japan, 2

Oslo Process, 217

Pakistan, 76, 159

Pancevo, Serbia (Former Yugoslavia), 

202, 205–8, 213, 218

peace parks (PP), 150, 157–59, 168
270 │ INDEX

Pearl Harbor, HI, 3, 43

Peirse, Richard, 47

Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission, 94

PGM. See precision-guided munitions

Picasso, Pablo, 1

Guernica, 1, 3, 112

Pinyon Canyon, CO, 39

Planning Division of the Israeli General Sta, 178

Ploesti, Yugoslavia, 49–50

Poland, 1, 3, 50, 59, 110, 112

poppies, 65–70, 72–80

Portal, Charles, 11–12, 18, 47

PP. See peace parks

precision-guided munitions (PGM), 

57, 107, 118, 120, 122

Rabin, Yitzhak, 191

RAF. See Royal Air Force, UK

Ramat David air base, Israel, 180–81, 

191–92

Regional Environmental Center for 

Central and Eastern Europe, 207

Rocky Mountain Arsenal, CO, 30

Romania, 49, 200, 202

Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin, 27–28

Rotterdam, Netherlands, 3, 112

Royal Air Force, UK, 1–2, 9–13, 19, 44, 

46, 48–51, 110, 112–13, 115, 180, 

199–200, 216, 218

Manual of Air Tactics, 13

Royal Australian Navy, 59

Royal Navy, 59, 110, 112

Ruhr River dams, Germany, 14, 20

Rumpf, Hans, 115

Rupert, Anton, 159

Rwanda, 137–8, 159

Sahara Desert, 136

Saigon, Vietnam, 74, 76

Schilling AFB, KS, 35–37

Schutzstael (SS), 15

Schwabach, Aaron, 213

Sebald, Winfried Georg, 9

Second Intifada, 179, 190

Second Lebanon War, 189–90

Serbia (former Yugoslavia), 21, 58, 117, 

199, 202–8, 210–11, 213, 216, 218–

19

Seventeenth Air Force, 150

Shakedi, Eliezer, 186

Shannon, David, 16

Shea, Jamie, 204

Sheppard AFB, TX, 28

Shmueli, Ram, 191

Short, Michael C., 203

Sinclair, Archibald, 49

Somalia, 117, 167

South Africa, 94–97, 136, 158–59, 161

Southern African Development Community, 94

Soviet Union, 32, 55, 65, 113, 124, 156, 

200

Spaight, J. M., 109, 113

Spanish Civil War, 1, 112

Speer, Albert, 50, 112

SS. See Schutzstael

Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 

218

storage tanks, 35, 43, 57, 204

Sudan, 138–40, 142–43

Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1981, 36

sustainability, 83, 90, 144, 146, 152–53, 

156, 158, 164–65, 168, 172–73, 200

Sutner, Bertha, 6

synthetic fuel, 200

synthetic oil, 46–47, 49–51

Taliban, 65–66, 68–70, 76–79, 124

Tan Son Nhut air base, Vietnam, 73

Tanzania, 157, 160–61, 163

Texas, 27–30

TFCA. See transfrontier conservation 

areas

Tinker AFB, OK, 29, 35, 37

Tokyo, Japan, 2–3, 107

Townshend, Charles, 13

transfrontier conservation areas 

(TFCA), 149, 157–58, 168

Trenchard, Hugh, 44, 86

Tulsa, OK, 27, 29

tu quoque, 205
INDEX │ 271

Turkey, 57, 125, 190–91

Tweezer, Zvi, 185

U-boats, 47

Umm Qasr, Iraq, 59

UN. See United Nations

United Kingdom, 1–4, 9–22, 19, 44–51, 

59, 76, 78, 86, 108–15, 124, 144, 

177–81, 186, 199–200, 216, 218

United Nations (UN), 2, 22, 66, 85, 95, 

116, 124, 126–27, 138, 151, 158, 

202, 207, 214–15, 217–18

United Nations Children’s Fund, 116

United Nations Environment Program, 

138, 218

United Nations General Assembly, 22

United Nations University for Peace, 

158

United States (US), 2, 4, 18–19, 25–39, 

43, 45–55, 57–59, 61, 65, 69–80, 

86–87, 97, 107–8, 110–11, 113–18, 

120, 122–27, 133, 140, 142–47, 

149–55, 162–63, 168–69, 171–73, 

178, 185, 187, 189, 199–201, 203, 

205, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219

US. See United States

USAAF. See US Army Air Forces

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), 97, 

133, 138, 142–47, 149–50, 153–55, 

162–63, 167–69, 171–73

US Agency of International Development (USAID), 143, 154, 171

USAID. See US Agency of International Development

US Army Air Corps, 28, 45

US Army Air Forces (USAAF), 2, 25–

26, 32–35, 48–50, 110–11, 114–15, 

200

US Army General Sta, Planning Division, 178

US Army Ordnance Corps, 30

US Defense Intelligence Agency, 54

US Department of Defense (DOD), 4, 

25, 31–32, 34, 36–39, 149–150, 152, 

154, 162, 168–69, 171–72

US Department of Energy (DOE), 25, 

32

US Environmental Protection Agency 

(EPA), 30–31, 34, 36–37

US Geological Survey (USGS), 140, 

143

USGS. See US Geological Survey

US Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS), 53–54, 

211

USN. See US Navy

US Navy (USN), 34, 59, 201

US Pacic Fleet, 43

US Strategic Air Command, 29, 111

US War Department, 28

Uvda air base, Israel, 184, 187–88

V-1 (Vergeltungswae eins), ram-jet 

cruise missile, 17

V-2(Vergeltungswae zwei), ballistic 

missile, 17

Vance AFB, OK, 28

Vauthier, Pierre, 44

Veale, F. J. P., 18

Verne, Jules, 109

Vietnam, 2, 5, 18, 25, 31, 43, 52–55, 61, 

65, 70–78, 80, 115–16, 118, 126, 

199, 201, 213, 215

Vietnam War, 18, 25, 52, 61, 118, 199

Viorst, Milton, 116

Virunga National Park, Democratic 

Republic of the Congo, 137–38, 159

Walcheren Island, Netherlands, 20

Wallis, Barnes, 15–16, 20

Walzer, Michael, 113, 210

War Cabinet, UK, 12, 17

Warden, John, 201

Warsaw, Poland, 3, 112

Washington State, 32

water, 3–4, 10, 13–16, 18, 30–33, 35–

38, 48–49, 57, 66, 89–90, 92–94, 

116, 133–38, 140, 147, 156, 180–81, 

184, 186, 216, 218–19

Weber, Baruch, 181

wells, 30–31, 37, 59, 199, 201

Wells, H. G., 109

Western Area Plans, 46

Wichita, KS, 27, 29

Winged Defense (Mitchell), 45, 57

World Conservation Union, 137
272 │ INDEX

World Health Organization, 116

World War I, xi, 44, 86, 108, 126

World War II, x, 1–3, 10, 13, 25, 32–33, 

38, 43, 46, 52, 55, 61, 86, 100, 107, 

110–12, 115–16, 119, 126, 200–1

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 96, 158–

160

Wright, Orville, 6

WWF. See World Wildlife Fund

Yugoslavia, 4–5, 21, 49–50, 58, 117, 

199–208, 210, 213–14, 216, 218–19

Zeppelin raids, xi

Zimbabwe, 158–161

Zuckerman, Solomon, 18, 21
Airpower and the Environment

The Ecological Implications of Modern Air Warfare

Air University Press Team

Chief Editor

James S. Howard

Copy Editor

Carolyn Burns

Cover Art, Book Design, and Illustrations

Susan Fair

Composition and Prepress Production

Nedra Looney

Print Preparation and Distribution

Diane Clark
ii

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely 

those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Air University, the 

United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US government 

agency. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Air University Press

Air Force Research Institute 

155 North Twining Street 

Maxwell AFB, AL 36112-6026 

http://aupress.au.af.mil

AFRI

Air Force Research Institute

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Airpower and the environment : the ecological implications of modern air

warfare / edited by Joel Hayward.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58566-223-4

1. Air power—Environmental aspects. 2. Air warfare—Environmental

aspects. 3. Air warfare—Case studies. I. Hayward, Joel S. A. 

UG630.A3845 2012

363.739’2—dc23

 2012038356
2 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

later attacks on Dresden and Hamburg by RAF and US Army Air 

Forces (USAAF) bombers intensied this strategy.

US military aircra in the Pacic were employed for the same tactic, 

beginning with the 1942 bombing of Tokyo and other targets by the 

Doolittle Raiders.2

 en in March 1945, B-29s dropped incendiary 

bombs on the three largest cities of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya). 

e attacks on Tokyo killed an estimated 84,000 people, injured 

41,000, and made one million people homeless.3

 e dropping of 

atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was a continuation of this strategy using a new weapon whose blast, thermal energy, 

and ionizing radiation could kill close to 100,000 people and injure 

tens of thousands more with a single bomb.4

Following World War II, the use of airpower to harm people and 

destroy property continued. Air operations in Vietnam caused extensive casualties and physical destruction that were euphemized as 

“collateral damage.” e bombing of Cambodia, the full extent of 

which was not revealed until President Clinton did so in 2000, took 

place from 1964 to 1975.5

 Similar damage was inicted on Kosovo, 

Iraq, and Afghanistan. On 14 June 2009, the chief of the United Nations’ mission to Afghanistan criticized air operations that led to the 

deaths of hundreds of civilians.6

Although airpower’s capacity to cause long-lasting and possibly irreversible damage to the environment has added a new dimension, 

reports—some of them apparently apocryphal—of war-related environmental damage began long before the development of aircra. A 

frequently cited example is from the ird Punic War (second century BC): the Romans are said to have salted the elds of Carthage 

aer they conquered it.7

 A century later, Calgacus, a Caledonian 

chieain, inspired his troops to ght by warning them that their Roman 

enemy used “robbery, butchery and rapine.” He added, “ey create a 

desolation and call it a peace.”8

Closely related are the ways in which military forces attempted 

(long before the development of airpower) to cause indiscriminate 

damage to health. In 1347 Mongols attacking the walled city of Caa 

in what is now the Ukraine catapulted the corpses of those who had 

died of the plague into the city. In North America in 1763, Lord 

Jeffery Amherst, commander in chief of British forces, suggested to 

the besieged commander of Fort Pitt that blankets in which smallpox 

victims had slept be given to the enemy. A delegation of Delaware 
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 3

Indians visiting the fort seeking its surrender received “two blankets 

and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital.”

In recent years, protecting our planet from long-lasting and possibly irreversible change has become an important issue, producing 

attempts to reorder priorities and practices in many sectors of human 

life, including the use of energy for production and transportation 

and the ways we act in our daily lives. A new term, ecological damage, 

describes eects that are longer lasting and more severe than environmental damage. One result of the concern about ecological damage is the protection of endangered species and the negotiation of the 

Convention on Biological Diversity, which has now been ratied by 

more than 175 countries. e convention commits ratifying countries to the protection of ecosystems, which it denes as a “dynamic 

complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their 

non-living environment interacting as a functional unit.”9

 In other 

words, an ecosystem is a group of interdependent organisms which 

share the same habitat. Damage to ecosystems from cumulative 

causes, such as environmental pollution, threatens the existence not 

only of species dened as “endangered,” but ultimately of Homo sapiens

as well.

Environmental changes, in contrast to ecological changes, generally 

are changes to physical structures such as air, water, and soil, which 

may be reversible. Environmental damage can also refer, more broadly, 

to social, economic, and cultural changes. Such changes, when limited 

in duration and scope, can indeed be survivable or even benecial to a 

species in the short run, but care must be taken that the intensity or 

duration of these changes does not result in irreversible damage.

e advent of airpower during the twentieth century provided a 

series of terrible but probably reversible examples of damage to human 

beings and to the environment. Examples include the Nazi bombing 

of Guernica, Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Coventry, followed by 

the Allied bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, and other cities in Germany. e Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was followed by the 

United States using incendiary bombs to destroy much of Kyoto and 

Tokyo. In my assessment, which is not universally embraced,10 these 

responses were roughly proportional to the provocation and, although terribly damaging, for the most part followed the guidelines 

that dene conduct during a just war.

e capabilities of airpower to cause long-lasting environmental 

and ecological damage intensied dramatically at the end of World 
4 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

War II. e most striking examples are the use of nuclear weapons on 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the testing of thermonuclear weapons 

of far greater yield in the 1950s and following decades. ese weapons, 

whose consequences included long-lasting, ionizing radiation, appeared to cross a threshold for destructiveness and ecological damage. Some of those who developed the weapons recognized the crossing of a moral threshold. J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted from the 

Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”11

Other instances of environmental and ecological damage caused 

by airpower followed. One example is the use of depleted uranium 

(DU) in missiles and shells. DU is a waste product mainly from the 

production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. British and US 

armed forces have used it in the Middle East and in the former Yugoslavia.12

Another example is the use of vast quantities of petroleum products in military training and in war, which depletes nonrenewable 

natural resources and undoubtedly contributes to global warming. 

American service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years 

have used about 3.5 million gallons per day. Over the course of a year 

that amounts to 1.3 billion gallons. For every serviceperson stationed 

in these theatres, two others are in training or transit, and the Department of Defense (DOD) must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship. e 

DOD is the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, and an April 

2007 estimate suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 

14 billion gallons every day, greater than the daily total consumption 

of Sweden or Switzerland. It is impossible to identify how much of 

this total is due to consumption by military aircra, but since one 

F-15 using full aerburner power consumes 60,000 pounds of fuel 

per hour per engine, military aircra use is surely a signicant part of 

the total consumption.13

Airpower can also cause ecological damage when aircra are used 

to destroy nuclear power plants, spreading plutonium-239 with a 

half-life of 24,100 years. Aircra that spray herbicides such as Agent 

Orange may not only spread cancer-causing contaminants such as 

dioxin, but also cause damage to complex ecological systems such as 

mangroves.14 e production of bomb craters may lead to standing 

pools of water that in some climatic regions are breeding grounds for 

mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases. Even limited use 

of nuclear weapons, some have predicted, could result in widespread 
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 5

cooling, agricultural failure, famine, and infectious disease. Such uses 

of airpower not only cause individual instances of human and environmental damage, but may irreversibly damage ecosystems when 

they happen repeatedly and widely.

Another less discussed way airpower can inict potentially irreversible and widespread environmental damage is as a weapon of terrorism. Nation-states, individuals, and groups have long used other 

forms of indiscriminate attack to create fear. But the use of aircra 

creates what might be called an “ecological” level of fear. e “shock 

and awe” at the start of the attack on Iraq is one example. Others include using fuel-laden commercial aircra in the attacks on the 

World Trade Center and the Pentagon or aircra dropping napalm 

(jellied gasoline) in Vietnam, dropping white phosphorus in crowded 

urban areas in Gaza, and dropping cluster bombs. Ninety-ve nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Oslo in December 2008, but the United States, which used cluster bombs in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, has not yet signed. ese 

attacks not only kill and maim people, but may lead to long-lasting 

and perhaps irreversible conditions in which people carry their distrust of other individuals and nations into their social relationships.

Unmanned drone aircra present another way airpower can create 

fear, adding another element to warfare. When drone aircra are operated directly by human beings, some element of human responsibility for consequences may be present. When controllers far from 

the scene of battle operate them, human responsibility for consequences may be lacking.15

Drones have been used in Afghanistan to target individual human 

beings. is practice is ethically troubling and may be counterproductive in a “war against terrorism.” Not only can targets be misidentied, but by international law there must be no reasonable alternative, such as capture, to killing a targeted civilian. To warrant 

execution the target must be actively participating in an attack on 

others. e use of lethal force must be proportionate to the immediate threat. In this case, too, the use of aircra brings a warring nation 

closer to the borderline of illegal and unethical activities.16

What can be done to keep the changes brought by the use of aircra in war from causing irreversible damage to the environment, 

health, and natural resources? Other chapters in this book deal with 

legal responsibilities, reparations, and responsibility for repairing the 

reversible environmental damage. But, as in other areas of public 
6 │ THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

health, the answer must lie in prevention of adverse health consequences that cannot be eectively reversed. Prevention of the environmental and ecological consequences of war, whether caused by 

airpower or not, ultimately lies in preventing human conicts from 

becoming armed conicts. Indeed, some have wondered whether the 

damage war causes to people and to the environment is making war 

as an extension of foreign policy obsolete. A just war, as enumerated 

over the centuries and recently restated by the Roman Catholic 

Church, must meet the following criteria:

•   the damage inflicted by an aggressor on the nation or

community of nations must be lasting, grave, and

certain;

• all other means of putting an end to it must have been 

shown to be impractical or ineective;

• there must be serious prospects of success; and

• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders 

graver than the evil to be eliminated.17

e power of modern warfare means of destruction, particularly 

through airpower, should weigh heavily in evaluating actions against 

the last of these criteria for a just war.

Orville Wright, commenting in 1917 on his invention, said, “When 

my brother and I built the rst man-carrying ying machine we 

thought that we were introducing into the world an invention which 

would make further wars practically impossible.”18 e damage that 

airpower makes possible also led to a prediction by Winston Churchill 

in the House of Commons in 1933 that “Air power may either end 

war or end civilisation.”19

Wright and Churchill were not the rst to predict an end to war 

based on technological destructiveness. As Alfred Nobel wrote to 

Bertha von Sutner, recipient of the rst Nobel Peace Prize, “Perhaps 

my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your Congresses; 

on the day when two army corps will be able to annihilate each other 

in a second, all civilised nations will recoil with horror and disband 

their troops.”20 But such technological xes have not succeeded in 

preventing war. e problem is moral. To end war, military forces, in 

this case those who y and support air forces, would need to refuse to 

conduct operations that would violate the principles of jus in bello
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT │ 7

(justice in war). Perhaps books like this and others will help point the 

way to moral constraints on the role of these forces in war.21

Notes

(All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in 

the bibliography.)

1. Churchill, speech, 20 August 1940.

2. Lawson, irty Seconds over Tokyo.

3. Craven and Cate, eds., Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5: Pacic: Matterhorn to Nagasaki June 1944 to August 1945, 614–17.

4. Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, 599.

5. Owen and Kiernan, “Bombs over Cambodia.”

6. Hewitt, “Place Annihilation,” 257–84.

7. Susan Stevens, “Legend of the Destruction of Carthage,” 39–41.

8. Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, as translated by William Peterson 

quoted in Bromwich, “Euphemism and American Violence.”

9. United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, available at http://www.cbd.int/.

10. See Grayling, Among the Dead Cities.

11. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, ix.

12. Fairlie, “Depleted Uranium.” [Editor’s note: see Joel Hayward’s chapter 11 in 

this volume for a dierent perspective on DU.]

13. Frumkin, Hess, and Vindigni, “Energy and Public Health”; and Klare, “Pentagon 

v. Peak Oil.”

14. Grotto and Jones, “Agent Orange’s Lethal Legacy.” 

15. “60 Drone Hits Kill 14 Al-Qaeda Men, 687 Civilians,” News (Pakistan).

16. Mayer, “Predator War”; and Shane, “C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones.”

17. “Just War Doctrine.”

18. McFarland, ed., Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 76.

19. Churchill, debate, 14 March 1933.

20. Tagil, “Alfred Nobel’s oughts about War and Peace.”

21. See Hayward’s essay in this volume, “Airpower and the Environment: Some 

Ecological Implications of Modern Warfare.” Also see Byman, Waxman, and Larson, 

Air Power as a Coercive Instrument; Wrage, ed., Immaculate Warfare; Sidel, Levy, and 

Slutzman, “Prevention of War and Its Environmental Consequences”; Leaning, 

“Tracking the Four Horsemen”; and Sidel, “Impact of Military Preparedness.”
10 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

dwellings, his history, and his natural environment as can possibly 

be achieved.”2

is chapter asks if environmental considerations were a factor in 

the planning of the British strategic bombing oensive of the Second 

World War. It then oers some reections on why environmental 

considerations were not more prominent in the extensive and unfolding debates about the purposes of that oensive.

From the relatively safe vantage point of the early twenty-rst century, 

it is clear that in addition to injuries and deaths and the destruction 

caused to the neighborhoods in Germany by the British bombing, 

there was an environmental cost, as yet not measured. Four main areas 

can be isolated: (1) e burning of huge quantities of aviation fuel, 

the explosion of thousands of tons of ordnance, and, above all, the 

deliberate creation of huge res in German cities had as one consequence the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide into the 

atmosphere.3

 (2) e RAF’s focus on trying to destroy German oil 

supplies and oil production facilities released numerous other toxins 

into the atmosphere, the land, and the water around “oil targets.” (3) e 

deliberate attacks on the German chemical industry, and the lessfocused attacks on large and small industrial centers, inevitably 

caused the release of dangerous chemicals onto nearby land and into 

the atmosphere, rivers and lakes, and groundwater supplies. (4) ere 

was incalculable damage to all kinds of wildlife and to wildlife habitats.

Since the 1961 publication of the four-volume ocial history of 

the British bombing oensive and the earlier publication of memoirs 

by key gures (most notably Winston Churchill and Arthur Harris) 

in the evolution of British bombing policy, historians have scrutinized the debates surrounding the development of bombing from the 

air since 1914 and the evolution of British policy before and during 

World War II.4

 A number of recent histories have examined—with 

varying degrees of objectivity—the wartime debates about the best 

use of Britain’s growing bomber force in the changing circumstances 

of the Second World War and the heated arguments over whether 

aircra were best employed attacking specic “military objectives” or 

in “area bombing” intended to damage German morale. Most commentators also noted the concern of politicians, airmen, and bombing campaign critics for the potential damage to Germany’s architectural and cultural heritage and the destruction of churches, museums, 

art galleries, libraries, archives, and their contents.5

 None have explored the extent to which “environmental” considerations were a 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 11

part of the wartime debates. To explore this we need to return to the 

primary documents.

Britain declared war on Germany with a specic plan to attack the 

natural environment. e “Western Air Plans” of 1 September 1939 

detailed various options open to the RAF in the event of war with 

Germany. One of these, Plan W. A. 11, was for “attack on forests.”6

e RAF did not immediately exercise this option, as all the armed 

forces were restricted to attacking only “purely military objectives in 

the narrowest sense of the word” to avoid provoking the Germans 

into starting “unrestricted air warfare.”7

 Once the Germans attacked 

the Low Countries and France in May 1940, Britain revised this policy and, as the situation worsened in June 1940, revived its plan to 

attack the natural environment in Germany. By this time, many prewar assumptions about bombing had been revealed as unfounded. 

e war entered a critical phase with the collapse of the French Army 

and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk. 

Pressure on the RAF’s Bomber Command to help alleviate the crisis 

and a spell of exceptionally dry summer weather on the continent 

combined to provoke a directive from the deputy chief of the Air Sta 

to Air Marshal Charles Portal (then in charge of the Bomber Command) which included a section on “Destruction of Crops and Forests.” Portal was instructed:

e time to attack crops in Germany is within the next two or three weeks, 

and the new “pellet” incendiary will be available in quantity early in July. 

You should be prepared to distribute the “pellets” over selected areas in 

Germany immediately aer the current moon phase and a separate directif 

[sic], forwarding a map of the suggested areas, will be sent to you in the 

near future.

e directive continued:

As you are aware, there are extensive areas of coniferous forests in Germany which are believed to be extremely vulnerable to incendiarism at 

this time of year. Some of these are in the vicinity of important military 

objectives and aerodromes, where a forest re might have valuable results 

in dislocating German military and industrial activities apart from the 

moral eect.

“Crops and forests” were one of ve separate objectives specied in 

this directive. e aircra industry, communications, mine-laying in 

German coastal waters, and oil preceded it and were given greater 

priority.8

 e situation was very uid. A new 4 July 1940 directive 

instructed Portal that attacks on forests should be “discontinued,” but 
12 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

that he should still prepare to use the incendiary “pellet” against 

crops. On 24 July, Portal was told that

When suitable weather conditions obtain, attacks may be resumed against 

forest areas in Germany in accordance with the directives forwarded to 

your headquarters in Air Ministry letters dated 24th and 26th June, 1940. 

Among the areas suggested in the attachments to those letters, it is felt that 

the Harz Mountains would provide a valuable focus for a concentrated attack both from the material and psychological standpoints.

In this connection, I am to say that consideration has been given to the 

possibility of utilising the existing stocks of incendiary “pellets” in conjunction with normal bombing operations in order to take advantage of 

the diversions and alarms which may be caused through these potential 

sources of re scattered over a wide area. It is considered that, when the 

weather is dry, there is a reasonable chance of a number of “pellets” starting res on the extensive stretches of heath land and similar ground which 

is widespread throughout Western Germany, and thus adding to the demoralising and psychological eect of our operations. Authority is being 

sought for the employment of the “pellets” in this way and you will be noti-

ed immediately this is obtained.9

One wonders what the Air Sta imagined the “demoralising and 

psychological eect” of causing extensive heath and forest res in 

Germany might have been. Was there a sense that the Germans were 

particularly sensitive to nature and proud of their landscape and, as a 

result, would have been particularly troubled by its destruction? We 

will probably never know.

Although these plans came to naught, they are, when combined 

with other statements made at this time, very revealing. A “Committee on Preventing Oil from Reaching Germany” was established, making 

its Fourth Report to the government on 4 June 1940, as the evacuation at Dunkirk came to an end. It stated:

Oil targets are, from the Royal Air Force point of view, highly desirable 

objectives, particularly because they are vulnerable to air attack because 

attack upon them gives rise to very large secondary eects by way of re 

and explosions. e majority of the chief oil plants in Germany are remote 

from centres of civil population. erefore attack on oil plants is likely to 

cause fewer casualties among civilians than other targets.10

e chiefs of sta, in a report to the War Cabinet on 25 May 1940, 

urged bombing attacks on German oil targets.11 Unlike the proposed 

attacks on forests and crops, Bomber Command from 16 May had 

already started night attacks on oil targets in Germany. It is clear that 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 13

in the desperate circumstances of the summer of 1940, as RAF leaders 

realized that existing Bomber Command forces were not able to seriously impact any of the numerous targets being attacked, the British 

had few scruples about creating extensive res in German forests, on 

farmlands, and on heaths, nor about causing huge res and explosions in oil plants, with “very large secondary eects.” Indeed, they 

clearly thought this a preferable alternative to causing death or injury 

among the civilian population.

e broader idea of inuencing people by attacking their crops 

and other means of sustenance was indeed well established in British 

aerial doctrine, although it had only previously been used on “primitive peoples” and “recalcitrant tribes” in outlying areas of the British 

Empire as part of what in the 1920s and 1930s was termed “Air Control.” Charles Townshend documented how a 1922 Air Sta memorandum listed, under the heading “Forms of Frightfulness,” methods 

for breaking the morale of a colonial tribe. One method was to poison 

the water supplies with crude oil.12 roughout the 1920s and 1930s, 

the cattle and other livestock of “recalcitrant tribes” in outlying areas 

of the empire, notably in Africa, were targeted in “air policing” 

operations—typically in preference to the actual members of the 

tribe.13 As late as 1937, the RAF’s “Manual of Air Tactics” contained a 

rationale for setting crops and forests on re, noting that this had 

been used in “outlying areas as a punishment against primitive peoples.”14 Underlying these forms of attack within the broader doctrine 

of “Air Control” was a concern to nd ways of coercing people while 

restricting casualties to a minimum. e same concern was transferred into emerging plans for bombing Germany in the rst year of 

World War II.

Between the dry summer of 1940 and the appointment of Arthur 

Harris to lead Bomber Command in February 1942, there appears to 

have been no resurrection of the idea of attacking crops, forests, or 

heaths in Germany. ese ideas never appealed to Harris, who, despite his background in the practical application of “Air Control” in 

India and in Iraq, was committed to “the policy of destroying industrial cities” in the ght against Germany.15 e prolonged debate in 

Britain over the merits of “area bombing,” which followed the presentation of the Butt Report in August 1941 and the “Area Bombing Directive” in February 1942, did not engage with environmental considerations. e debate was mainly about the most eective ways of 
14 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

waging war against Germany, and to a lesser extent, the ethical legitimacy of directing attacks on working-class housing in German cities.16

Another prewar plan with potentially signicant environmental 

implications was resurrected—initially against Harris’s wishes—and 

constitutes a unique case for this study: the attack on the Ruhr dams 

in May 1943. In a recent book, which has attracted wide attention in 

Germany, Jörg Friedrich states:

e questionable method in the battle of the Ruhr belongs to the yet barely 

explored genre of environmental war. . . . e researchers for the operation 

had encountered the question of what would happen if a lightning strike 

with weapons was directed against two dams in the Ruhr; in all likelihood 

a modern biblical ood, which would work in two ways: rstly through the 

tidal wave released, and secondly through the resulting shortage of water 

in the whole Ruhr area.17

Friedrich produces no evidence from British sources to support 

these assertions, but gives a graphic description of the ooding in the 

Möhne-Ruhr valley and in the Eder valley following the successful 

attack on the dams by Lancasters of 617 Squadron. He focuses on the 

civilian deaths and injuries, but also notes the drowning of livestock, 

and states, “the whole sh population was exterminated” in the 

Möhne-Ruhr valley. Aer describing how the two dams were rapidly 

repaired, he states, “e potential of the environmental attack was 

not plumbed any further aer this.” He suggests that the British maintained their focus on re raids on cities aer May 1943 because they 

were was more protable to them than attacks on the environment, 

such as the “Dambusters Raid.”18

Friedrich is replicating a view that was widespread in Germany in 

the aermath of the Dambuster Raid. is raid appeared, to the survivors of ooded areas lying immediately below the dams, as an attempt to drown them and their livestock en masse and to cause huge 

environmental damage to carefully managed agricultural land. A report sent to Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who was charged with responsibility for coordinating the German response to the British bombing offensive, stressed these aspects of the “catastrophe” visited upon the 

people in the Möhne and Ruhr valleys. It highlighted the deaths of 

thousands of people and the destruction of animals of all kinds as 

well as houses, industrial premises, and agricultural land. Describing 

how people living on both sides of the Ruhr had lost everything they 

possessed, the report stated that the “work of a few hours made deserts 

of sand and shingle from land which has been fertilised and culti-
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 15

vated for years.” Describing eects further down the valley, the report 

continued: “Agriculture and industrial facilities have been for the 

most part exterminated.”19

is focus on the immediate damage caused by ooding was also 

present in the public opinion report prepared immediately aer the 

Dambusters Raid by the security forces of the SS (Schutzstael). e 

report listed the “devastation caused by masses of water” as the main 

consequence of the attack and the rst of the proofs understood by 

“wide parts of the population” that there was “a cold-blooded planning of the air war in the enemy camp.”20

In contrast, most British policy makers and historians argue that 

the primary intention of the attacks was to cause a shortage of water 

in the industrial cities downstream, thus restricting armaments production. Harris said that a secondary consequence of breaching the 

dams would be to cause widespread ooding and consequent damage. e breach of the Möhne Dam released a ood of 130 million 

gallons, but the destruction caused by ooding was not, and was 

never expected to be, as serious as the subsequent shortage of water 

for industrial purposes.21

e argument that the dams raid was primarily intended as an attack on German industry is restated by the author of an oral history 

explaining the genesis of the raid: “Barnes Wallis was essentially a 

peace-loving man, but he felt strongly that the right way forward was 

to destroy the dams, and thereby the Ruhr’s industrial power source.”22

Wallis explained the attack as “an engineer’s way of stopping the war. 

. . . If we rob them of all their water supply, they couldn’t produce steel 

and the war would come to an end.”23

According to Guy Gibson, Wallis provided a more dierentiated 

rationale for the attack when rst explaining the mission to him:

Between them they [the Möhne and Sorpe dams] hold back about 75% of 

the total water available in the Ruhr Valley. If they were both to be 

breached, the consequent shortage of water for both drinking and industrial purposes might be disastrous. Of course, the damage caused by oods 

if they were breached quickly would result in more damage to everything 

than has ever happened in this war.24

is is similar to the version presented on the National Archive 

website, which presents a number of ocial documents on the raid. 

Part of the introductory preamble to these reads,
16 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

In February 1943, the Assistant Chief Designer at Vickers Armstrong, 

Barnes Wallis, revealed his idea for “air attacks on dams” which would 

deprive the German arms industry of its vital water supply and cause a 

“disaster of the rst magnitude.”25

Charles Webster and Noble Frankland stated in 1961, perhaps a 

little defensively, “e sudden catastrophe which inundated the areas 

lying below the two dams was local, temporary, and largely agricultural.”26 In their appraisal of the raid, Webster and Frankland put as 

the last of a list of results “a considerable area of agricultural land 

ooded.”27 is view is undermined by the way British propaganda 

aer the Dambusters Raid represented the whole event. Photographs 

showing extensive ooding were published in Britain and in pamphlets 

dropped over occupied Europe, with captions celebrating the damage 

caused by the inundations. is was of course, far more visible as an 

eect of the attack than the notional damage to war production.

In 1953 Denis Richards and Hilary Saunders presented a view 

which was closer to that of Friedrich’s, who notes how the British, in 

their bombing, sought to harness the power of natural forces, like re 

and water. Richards and Saunders wrote:

It had long been determined to add water as well as re and high explosive 

to the list of plagues scourging the Ruhr. . . . To breach the [Möhne] dam 

meant the release of this water, which, gushing through the valley of the 

Ruhr would not only cause widespread, possibly disastrous, ooding, but 

would also aect electricity supplies in the most highly industrialised area 

possessed by the enemy.28

Robin Neillands presented a similar view in 2001, writing that in 

1940 Barnes Wallis believed that if the dams were blown up this 

would “let out a tidal wave of water to swamp the surrounding 

countryside.”29 In the end, the British planners and executors of the 

raid knew that if they were successful, they would cause incalculable 

damage and loss of life through ooding, as well as creating a shortage of water for power and for drinking. One of the pilots involved, 

Flt Lt David Shannon, bluntly expressed how the combined eects of 

the attacks on the dams were intended: “We were to strike a blow 

against the Hun.”30

ere was a steady intensication of the British bombing oensive 

against Germany through the remainder of 1943 and into 1944. 

Whether measured in sorties own or in the tonnage of bombs 

dropped, there was a huge increase in the destructive power of 

Bomber Command’s attacks.31 e diversion of Harris’s force in the 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 17

spring and summer of 1944 to support the Normandy invasion and 

to destroy V-1 and V-2 missile launch sites brought some relief to the 

German population but not to the environment. e focus on German oil targets in the autumn and winter of 1944 inevitably caused 

great environmental damage. In the last months of the war, as the 

German armies conducted a dogged resistance, the bombing campaign reached a furious climax. More sorties were own and more 

bombs were dropped in these nal months than in the whole previous 

campaign.32 Some of the most destructive raids of the war, including 

the notorious attack on Dresden, were carried out in this nal phase 

of the oensive.

e British government received information about the eects of 

the bombing by reports and photographs regularly presented to the 

War Cabinet by Bomber Command. Many of these photographs 

showed enormous res burning aer attacks on individual targets, 

and others displayed great devastation to landscapes surrounding 

targets. The annotations to some of these photographs appear—

unfortunately if not actually—to rejoice in the destruction and to 

celebrate a job well done, and in so doing, demonstrate a horrifying 

complacency. Some captions refer specically to the environmental 

damage. e caption to a photograph taken aer the attack on the 

Dortmund-Ems Canal on 21 and 22 November 1944 pointed out “the 

river has overowed and ooded the surrounding countryside.”33

e “Weekly Résumé” of the military situation presented to the 

War Cabinet on 15 February 1945, while noting that one million tons 

of bombs had been dropped on Germany and Austria since the beginning of the war, referred specically to the attack on Dresden 

where “1,471 tons of H. E. [high explosives] and 1,175 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped, leaving the town well ablaze with smoke 

rising to 15,000 feet.”34 This echoed details in the “Summary of 

Operations Night 13/14 February” sent to Bomber Command Headquarters, which had stated, “smoke was reported up to 15,000 Ft and 

all crews report an excellent attack with res visible for 100 miles.”35

e “Weekly Résumé” for 22 February 1945 referred to the renewed 

attacks on Dresden, noting, “On the 15th, 685 Fortresses . . . attacked 

Dresden and Cottbus, following the heavy attack on the former city 

on the previous day and night.”36 Harris, when asked a few days later 

by one of Churchill’s secretaries about the eect of the raid on Dresden, 

replied, “Dresden? ere is no such place as Dresden.”37
18 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

Misgivings about the consequences of the bombing also grew in 

these nal months, but those concerns—raised by both opponents 

and supporters of the bombing—were almost exclusively focused on 

the deaths and injuries of civilians and on the destruction of the manmade environment in Germany. It remains to ask why there was so 

little consideration given at a high level to the environmental consequences of the bombing campaign. ree strands to the answer are 

presented here.

First, we must bear in mind the understanding the British planners had of the environmental damage that they might be causing. It 

would be foolishly anachronistic to imagine that politicians and airmen in the 1930s and 1940s had anything like the appreciation they 

might have today of the environmental consequences of their actions. 

To give one example, the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were a cause of global warming, so closely connected in the public mind today with the burning of aviation fuel, 

had indeed been put forward by the British scientist Guy Callendar in 

1938.38 ere is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Churchill, 

Harris, Portal, or even scientic advisers like Solomon “Solly” Zuckerman or Frederick Lindemann knew before 1945 that the release of 

carbon dioxide into the atmosphere threatened to change the earth’s 

climate irreversibly. It was not until aer the dropping of the atom 

bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that people became aware that 

environmental damage on a really huge scale might transcend national 

boundaries. e notion that attackers might hurt themselves as much 

as their enemies by causing environmental damage simply did not exist 

before 1945.

Of course the British planners knew that individual consequences of 

the bombing, such as the release of oil or other contaminants into water 

supplies, would damage the environment, but they could reasonably assume that these consequences would be local and temporary. It is striking that even the most articulate opponents of the bombing during the 

war, and indeed in the half-century aer the war, focused their criticism 

on precisely those consequences of the bombing which were discussed 

by the planners—the death and injury of civilians and the destruction of 

Germany’s cultural heritage. Even that most vociferous of critics, F. J. P. 

Veale, made no mention of environmental considerations when he renewed his polemic against “terror bombing” in 1968.39

e whole idea of “ecological damage” and the discourse of “environmentalism” have emerged since the Vietnam War. It is only in the 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 19

last 20 years that scholars and diplomats have really engaged with the 

broader topic of war and the natural environment. A protocol was 

added in 1977 to the Geneva conventions of 1949 stating in part, “It 

is prohibited to employ methods of warfare which are intended, or 

may be expected, to cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage 

to the natural environment.”40 One will search in vain for the terms 

Friedrich uses in 2002—environmental war and environmental attack—

in documents from before May 1945.

is shi in perceptions about warfare, and about the natural world, 

may be illuminated with reference to the concept of mentalités, an idea 

that has been developed largely by French and German historians. 

eir concerns were not merely with the temporary outlook of any 

given group or individual, but with deeper, underlying, sometimes 

inaccessible attitudes, which shape collective approaches to a given 

situation. Typically, they see these attitudes as formations, which develop 

and change very slowly over the course of decades and even centuries. 

In the words of German historian Klaus Hatchel,

Such collective dispositions channel notions, attitudes, and ideas in two 

ways: positively by guiding individuals within the group in a particular direction, without there being any outright coordination or explicit agreement among them; or negatively by blocking out or repressing other conceivable options that would appear astonishingly self-evident to uninitiated 

outsiders.41

is approach can help us understand many aspects of the British 

bombing oensive planning, but it is particularly relevant to the idea 

of the environment, which is so markedly absent from virtually all of 

the extensive written records of this process. What appears obvious to 

us today was not necessarily so in the 1940s.

It is perhaps ironic that, among the politicians, airmen, and scientists who planned the British bombing, it was that most maligned 

gure, Arthur Harris, who commented most explicitly on what we 

would now call “environmental” consequences of their actions. In 

most cases—for example, when Harris commented on the “prolonged 

and bitter opposition” met by the RAF from bird lovers to its plans to 

use various places in Britain as bombing ranges—he was utterly contemptuous of these objections.42 What is relevant is that he, and presumably others, were aware of environmental considerations. ey 

simply did not treat them with anything like the signicance we 

would anticipate today.
20 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

Second, there was a common assumption among the planners that 

if there were damaging side eects of the bombing, insofar as these 

were visited upon the Germans, it was a fate they richly deserved. 

Another remark in Harris’s memoirs is illuminating in this regard. 

Referring to the deliberate ooding of Walcheren Island in October 

1944 by bombing and breaching its seawalls, Harris reveals again that 

he was aware of the environmental consequences of this action:

e ooding of the fertile soil of Walcheren, which it was believed could 

not be restored to its original condition within many years, was a most 

unfortunate necessity of war, but access to the port of Antwerp was essential for all future operations by land on the Western front. And, in any case, 

the wholesale destruction of property is, in my view, always justied if it is 

calculated to save casualties.43

Harris restates his concern to minimize casualties, but what is also 

revealing is that he comments in such specic detail about the environmental consequences of this particular action. Nowhere else in 

his memoir does he demonstrate anything like this; we may reasonably presume that he was not equally concerned with the destruction 

of the environment in Germany. His concern for the “fertile soil” of 

Walcheren—in the Netherlands—is not, for example, paralleled by 

any similar concern for the agricultural land devastated by the Dambusters Raid in May 1943. It would be a mistake, in discussing any 

consequence of the British bombing of Germany, not to take into 

consideration the feelings about Germany provoked by its own record since the very start of the war.

ird, and most important, we need to understand the nature of 

the war the British fought between 1939 and 1945. is is a consideration which feeds into any future debate about the environmental 

consequences of the deployment of airpower. e politicians and 

airmen—and their scientic advisers—who directed the British strategic 

bombing campaign believed that they were ghting for their national 

survival. Many had personal experience of the grim struggle between 

1914 and 1918 to draw upon and knew that in Germany they faced an 

utterly ruthless, resourceful, and determined enemy. is straightforward sense of duty is evident in Barnes Wallis, the kindly, sensitive 

man who designed the most destructive weapons used by Bomber 

Command. It will be remembered that Wallis had recognized that, 

for example, destroying the Ruhr dams would cause damage to 

“everything” below them, not just to German industrial production. 

A colleague commented, “Barnes Wallis was a Victorian, and a great 
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 21

‘Empire’ man, and the country meant an awful lot to him, so anything 

he could do which he thought would help the country, that’s what he 

felt he was put upon this earth to do.”44

Zuckerman serves as another example of an inuential scientist 

who devoted his intellect to the perfection of weapons of war. For 

example, he tried to maximize the blast eect of British bombs, without apparent environmental scruples.45

If we are to understand the evolution of British aerial strategy, we 

need to take full account of the precise context in which it emerged. 

e British decision not to bombard “fuel and oil producing plants, 

reneries, and storage installations” in September 1939 was not 

motivated by environmental or humanitarian concern, but by a 

desperate hope of avoiding German aerial attacks on Britain. e 

turn toward area bombing and the decision to concentrate resources 

on the development of a huge bomber force took place against a 

backdrop of sustained German bombing of British cities at a time 

when Britain and its empire stood alone. Note that the German 

bombing of Britain, and indeed its conduct of war in all theaters outside Germany between 1939 and 1945, was not, for all the later trumpeting of the allegedly “green” credentials of National Socialism, in 

any way tempered by environmental sensitivities.46

Even late in the war, when Britain’s bomber force had become a 

weapon of terrible destructive force, its planning took place against a 

background of sustained attack on British civilians by ying bombs 

and rockets and of extraordinarily dicult ghting on land in northwestern Europe. e idea that attacks on German oil or transportation targets should be called o because of potential damage to the 

environment would have appeared utterly ludicrous to the British 

planners, even in the late stages of the war.47 Briey consider the application of a similar concern to other aspects of the war. When the 

Bismarck le Gdynia in May 1941 bound for the North Atlantic, 

should the government have directed British submarines and aircra 

not to attack it lest thousands of tons of fuel oil from the ship’s bunkers 

be released to contaminate the sea?

It could be that in the circumstances of a limited war, a government, and its air force, can aord to consider the environmental implications of any proposed deployment of airpower. Few would disagree that this ought to have been a factor in the minds of NATO 

strategists during the aerial campaign against Serbia in 1999. Since 

the 1977 addition of Article 35.3 to the Geneva conventions, this is a 
22 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

binding obligation for signatories to those conventions. On 5 November 

2001 the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 56/4 declaring 6 November annually an International Day for Prevention of 

the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conict.48

is has added international weight to the obligation to have regard 

for the natural environment in war. It was not a luxury that Churchill, 

Harris, and others responsible for the planning of British strategic 

bombing felt they enjoyed between 1939 and 1945.

Notes

1. A rare exception was geographer Kenneth Hewitt, who, in developing his theory 

of “place destruction,” argued that “area bombing . . . became a form of extermination 

aimed at the whole spectrum of human, or more exactly, civil ecology.” Hewitt, “Place 

Annihilation,” 260.

2. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 19.

3. It is signicant in this context that the title of a recent German study of the 

British bombing is titled simply (in English) e Fire. Friedrich, Der Brand.

4. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany; Churchill, 

Second World War; and Harris, Bomber Oensive.

5. For a balanced summary, see Hastings, Bomber Command, 201–10, 417–25.

6. Appendix 6, “Western Air Plans 1st September 1939,” in Webster and Frankland, 

Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 99–102.

7. “Bombardment Policy,” CAB/66/8/16, e National Archives (United Kingdom), 

Kew (hereaer TNA), which contains the instructions issued just before the start of 

the war.

8. “Air Vice-Marshal W. S. Douglas (deputy chief of the Air Sta) to Air Marshal 

Sir Charles Portal,” in Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 

115–17.

9. Ibid., 118–19. e wording of the directive suggests that there had already been 

some attacks on forests. I have found no other reference to these attacks actually taking 

place. e Air Ministry pamphlet Bomber Command provides considerable detail 

about attacks on the rst four objectives specied in the directives of 20 June and 4 July 

1940, but makes no reference to attacks on crops, forests, or heathlands in Germany. 

Ibid., 121–23.

10. Fourth Report of Lord Hankey’s Committee on Preventing Oil from Reaching Germany Committee, 4 June 1940, TNA CAB/66/8/21.

11. Report by the Chiefs of Sta Committee, 25 May 1940, TNA CAB/66/7/48: 

Report by the Chiefs of Sta Committee.

12. Townshend, “Civilization and ‘Frightfulness,’ ” 142–62.

13. Killingray, “‘A Swi Agent of Government,’ ” 429–44. I am grateful to Neil 

Fleming for alerting me to this reference.

14. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, note 1.

15. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 88.
VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS │ 23

16. It is not the purpose of this chapter to revisit these debates. For an important 

example of a wartime contribution which does not consider environmental considerations, but focuses entirely on the eectiveness of bombing, see the “Memorandum by 

O. L. Lawrence,” in Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, 

vol. 4, 214–19.

17. Friedrich, Der Brand, 102. All translations from German here are my own 

unless otherwise indicated. 

18. Ibid., 104–5.

19. “Die Katastrophe an der Möhnetalsperre und Ruhr, Bericht 2,” 27 August 

1943, R 55/20738, Bundesarchiv, Außenstelle, Berlin, Germany.

20. “Meldungen aus dem Reich, Nr. 385, 24 May 1943,” in Boberach ed., Meldungen 

aus dem Reich, Band 13, 5277–85.

21. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 159.

22. Arthur, Dambusters, 39.

23. Ibid., 43.

24. Ibid., 57.

25. TNA, “e Idea,” http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/dambusters/idea.htm.

26. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 2, 168.

27. Ibid., 291.

28. Richards and Saunders, Royal Air Force 1939–1945, vol. 2, 291–92.

29. Neillands, Bomber War, 229–30.

30. Arthur, Dambusters, 150.

31. Although it is not the subject of this chapter, we should note in passing that the 

daylight bombing of Germany by the American Eighth Air Force, which commenced 

in January 1943 and intensied thereaer, was conducted with a similar disregard for 

environmental consequences.

32. For a statistical overview of sorties own and tonnage of bombs dropped, see 

Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 4, appendices 

40 and 41.

33. “Summary of Operations of Bomber Command,” TNA CAB/66/59/39.

34. “Weekly Résumé (no. 285) of the Naval, Military, and Air Situation,” 15 February 

1945, TNA CAB/66/62/3.

35. “Summary of Operations Night 13/14 February.” 

36. TNA CAB/66/62/11: “Weekly Résumé (no. 286) of the Naval, Military, and 

Air Situation,” TNA AIR 14/3080.

37. Colville, Fringes of Power, 562.

38. Weart, Discovery of Global Warming.

39. Veale, Advance to Barbarism, 180–85. Veale’s critique was rst advanced in 1948.

40. Article 35.3 of the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva conventions of 

1949, in Reichberg and Syse, “Protecting the Natural Environment in Wartime.”

41. Hentschel, Mental Aermath, 2.

42. Harris, Bomber Oensive, 26–27.

43. Ibid., 237. e Walcheren operation was conducted outside of Germany, in 

support of Allied ground forces, and therefore lies outside the scope of this study. I 

refer to it here insofar as it illustrates Harris’s thinking.

44. Ibid., 43, citing Norman Boorer.
24 │ VERY LARGE SECONDARY EFFECTS

45. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords. Zuckerman makes no reference to what 

we would now call environmental concerns in his record of his wartime service.

46. For an introduction to this topic, see “e Nature of German Environmental History.”

47. Arthur Harris defended the continuing oensive in the aermath of the raid on 

Dresden in characteristically forthright manner, stating, “I do not personally regard the 

whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British grenadier.” 

Harris to Air Marshal Sir Norman Bottomley, 29 March 1945, in Hastings, Bomber 

Command, 450–53.

48. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 56/4, also available online at 

http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/r56.htm.
26 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

markable story of American industrial capacity, organization, and 

deployment is well known, oen a chapter is omitted. e production 

facilities for both munitions and aircra, as well as the training and 

maintenance facilities established to meet the wartime emergency, 

le a toxic legacy that continues to plague the communities that 

hosted and supported these facilities. e purpose of this chapter is to 

examine that legacy and explore the repercussions for modern practitioners of airpower.

e Great Plains

e American Great Plains formed an attractive locale for government and defense ocials charged with expanding the USAAF’s production and training infrastructure. e region boasted a variety of 

factors that made it ideal for wartime planners.1

 First, the Great Plains 

encompass the geographical center of the lower 48 states. Locations 

there oered the maximum distance from either coast, increasing 

protection from aerial attack and sabotage. Because of these geographic advantages, the Air Force would later place the majority of its 

Cold War–era strategic assets, including intercontinental ballistic 

missile (ICBM) sites, bomber bases, and even its command and control facilities in the region. Today, all of the Air Force’s bomber and 

strategic communications aircra and ICBM silos remain on or near 

the Great Plains.

Aside from its strategic geographic location, the region oered 

several other features that made it attractive for a large aerial infrastructure. First, it was, and remains today, one of the most sparsely 

populated areas of the country. Given the low population densities, 

the USAAF would not signicantly endanger lives with accidents and 

would have little diculty locating vast expanses for training and 

weapons ranges.2

 e low population densities recently had been exacerbated by a man-made ecological disaster, commonly known as 

the Dust Bowl. Encouraged by cheap land and liberal homesteading 

laws, settlers had expanded into the more arid regions and plowed up 

the hardy prairie grasses that kept the topsoil in place. Drought returned to the region in the early 1930s, causing crops to fail and leaving no vegetation to anchor the topsoil. When windstorms moved 

across the largely treeless region, the topsoil was stripped and, in 

some cases, transported as far away as the east coast. ese storms, 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 27

known as dusters, plagued the region throughout the Great Depression and further contributed to low population densities as many 

residents abandoned failed farms in search of relief.3

e Dust Bowl and resulting depopulation of rural areas had the 

ironic result of facilitating the establishment of wartime production 

facilities across the plains. Some farmers and their families le the 

land and congregated in cities, looking for work or relief programs. 

Others remained on their farms but had become disenchanted with 

their prospects and were quick to embrace other opportunities when 

they arrived. By 1940 the plains held an underutilized population 

that could be quickly employed in the new armaments and aircra 

production facilities. A 1942 survey found that 50 percent of the 

workers at Boeing-Wichita had farm backgrounds. Further, a rural 

upbringing oen translated well into war industries work. Craig 

Miner, in his history of Kansas, relates the observations of the personnel director at the Boeing-Wichita factory who believed that “persons from modern farm backgrounds did especially well in aircra 

manufacturing jobs. . . . Nearly all Kansas farms are highly mechanized and Kansas farmers have learned the use of power machinery 

as well as hand tools.”4

Cities such as Wichita, Oklahoma City, and Fort Worth owe much 

of their remarkable wartime growth to a combination of these factors. Wichita’s population increased from 114,634 in 1940 to 176,316 

in 1944.5

 While much of the available labor was unfamiliar with modern manufacturing techniques, a technical background combined 

with training and relief programs initiated during Pres. Franklin 

Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to provide the necessary expertise. As a result, production facilities in these cities and others, such as Omaha, 

Kansas City, and Tulsa, had little diculty nding workers to sta 

aircra production centers. Oen the limiting factor was not available labor, but a shortage of housing and public utilities to shelter the 

new employees. In one newly constructed housing area near Wichita, 

untreated sewage was discharged directly into the Arkansas River, 

presenting a public health hazard for residents downstream.6

Weather was another factor that made the Great Plains region an 

attractive location for training bases. Portions of the area average 

over 300 days of sunshine per year, as the Rocky Mountains to the 

west wring out the moisture of east-moving storms. With a prevalence of excellent visual ying conditions, low precipitation, and brief 

periods of poor weather, the region remains popular for military 
28 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

ight training. Even today, over half of the Air Force’s undergraduate 

pilot training (UPT) bases are located on the plains, including the 

only combined Euro-NATO joint jet-ghter training facility at Sheppard AFB, Texas. Other UPT bases include Vance AFB, Oklahoma, 

and Laughlin AFB, Texas. Only Columbus AFB, Mississippi, and 

Moody AFB, Georgia are located outside the Great Plains region. Unfortunately, the scarcity of rainfall in the region oen exacerbated environmental damage. Low rainfall rates resulted in comparatively few 

owing rivers. Within the more than 2,000 miles between the Mexican and Canadian borders, only four major river systems—the Rio 

Grande, Arkansas, Platte, and Missouri—travel all the way from their 

source in the Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of the region west 

of the 100th meridian averages less than 20 inches (50 centimeters) of 

rain annually, making residents highly dependent upon subterranean 

groundwater, a source especially vulnerable to contamination. In addition, the relatively low ow rate in some of these rivers makes it 

dicult to adequately dilute pollutants discharged into them. All of 

these factors worsened environmental damage, especially the pollution of surface and groundwater.

Production Facilities

In May 1940, President Roosevelt, in response to events overseas 

and lobbying by Army Air Corps leaders, ordered the expansion of 

the aircra industry to permit production of 50,000 planes per year.7

Military production had totaled only 2,195 planes in 1939.8

 To 

achieve this incredible increase in production, owners of existing factories in Baltimore, Long Island, Bualo, Long Beach, and Seattle had 

to expand their facilities. But it soon became clear that the increased 

capacity at existing sites would be insucient. e War Department 

began to contract with manufacturers to operate new production facilities that the government would build and then lease to them. e 

War Department decided to locate many of these new facilities on or 

near the Great Plains. ese new factories eventually contributed a 

substantial portion of many of the more common types of aircra 

employed by US and Allied air forces during the war (table 1).

It is dicult to assess the environmental impact of many of these 

facilities. In most cases the plants ceased production aer the war but 

were occupied by other activities under war reutilization programs. 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 29

Type Facility Number 

Produced

Percent of Total 

Production

Heavy Bombers

B-24

Consolidated–Fort Worth

Douglas–Tulsa

North American–Dallas

 Total

2,743

 964

 966

4,673 24.3 percent 

(4,673/19,204) 

B-29

Martin–Omaha

Boeing–Wichita

 Total

 515

1,595

2,110 54.1 percent 

(2,110/3,898)

Medium Bombers

B-25

North American–Kansas 

City

B-26

Martin–Omaha

6,608

1,585

67.3 percent 

(6,608/9,816)

30.7 percent

 (1,585/5,157)

Transport Aircraft

C-47

Douglas–Oklahoma City 5,319 51.3 percent 

(5,319/10,368)

Pursuit Aircraft

P-51

North American–Dallas 4,552 31.0 percent 

(4,552/14,686)

Trainer Aircraft (All Types)

Boeing, Beech, and 

Cessna–Wichita 20,628 37.0 percent 

(20,628/55,712)

For example, the Douglas plant in Oklahoma City is currently occupied by Tinker AFB. Omaha’s Martin plant became the site of Outt 

AFB, home to Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters during 

the Cold War. In 1948 the US government sold the North American 

plant in Kansas City to General Motors to produce automobiles for 

their Chevrolet and Pontiac lines.

Table 1: Aircraft types produced on the Great Plains

Adapted from Irving Holley, Jr., Buying Aircra: Materiel Procurement for the Army Air Forces (Washington, 

DC: Oce of the Chief of Military History, 1964), appendix B, 576–79.
30 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Of all the new production facilities erected on the plains, only one 

has remained in continuous production. e Lockheed-Martin facility 

near Fort Worth, known as “Air Force Plant 4,” is also the only WWIIera plant to be listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 

(EPA) National Priority List (NPL). e NPL, or “Superfund” list, is a 

collection of the most heavily contaminated sites in the country. Listing a site allows the EPA to establish and implement appropriate 

cleanup plans.9

 At the Fort Worth plant, aggressive programs to pump 

groundwater contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), a known 

carcinogen, through ltration plants have, according to the EPA, 

reduced the threat to 13,000 residents, including those nearby at the 

former Carswell AFB. However, the EPA has detected contaminants 

in several underground aquifers above the main aquifer used for 

drinking water in the area.10 e facility produced over 2,000 B-24s 

during WWII and has been in continuous use since, producing B-36, 

B-58, F-111, and F-16 aircra and components for F-22 aircra types. 

e similarity of pollutants used during these various periods makes 

it dicult to determine exactly when the most serious damage occurred.

Airframe production is only one of the required steps in a successful sortie launch. e completed airframe must be fueled and armed 

before it is ready for a crew. While it is beyond the scope of this study 

to examine the signicant environmental repercussions of petroleum 

extraction and renement in the United States, it is sucient to note 

that a large percentage of Allied petroleum resources, including 90 

percent of all 100-octane aviation fuels, came from US wells and 

reneries, some of which were located on the southern plains. 

rough the Defense Plant Corporation, the US government built 

and leased reneries across the nation, including several in the region. 

By 1945 American reneries were producing 514,000 barrels a day of 

100-octane aviation fuel, up from 40,000 barrels per day in 1940.11

e Army Ordnance Corps established and operated munitions 

production plants in several Great Plains states. A number of these 

facilities are now on the EPA’s Superfund list, including the Rocky 

Mountain Arsenal, near Denver; the Kansas Army Ammunition 

Plant (AAP); Cornhusker AAP in Nebraska; and the Lone Star and 

Longhorn AAPs in Texas. All of these facilities opened during WWII, 

and several remained in operation during subsequent conicts. All 

eventually le their mark on the environment.

e Cornhusker AAP, near Grand Island, Nebraska, is a classic 

case of the unintended consequences of wartime production methods. 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 31

Built in 1942, the facility produced 330,562 1,000-pound bombs, 

20,698 2,000-pound bombs, and 1.5 million 260-pound fragmentation 

bombs, in addition to 11,476,545 105-millimeter artillery shells during 

the war.12 e DOD inactivated the facility aer the war but reactivated 

it during the conicts in Korea and Vietnam before nally closing it 

permanently. In preparing the site for sale, the Army “did extensive 

clean up on the plant itself, but a trail of contaminated water outside 

the boundaries complicated eorts to transfer the facility.”13

e Cornhusker AAP oers a stark reminder of the lingering costs 

to communities that hosted production and training facilities during 

WWII. Toxic chemicals from the facility were held in 56 dierent 

earthen impoundments across the 19-square-mile site, the EPA said. 

“Releases from the surface impoundments have contaminated approximately 500 private wells,” and “polluted groundwater has migrated o the site and has been detected as far as 7 miles beyond the 

plant’s border.”14 Perhaps encouraged by the potential sale of the site, 

the Army Corps of Engineers has embarked on an aggressive cleanup 

program, excavating and incinerating contaminated soil and extracting and pumping contaminated groundwater through a ltration system 

before returning it to the ground. e EPA estimates that this action 

has shrunk the osite contamination plume and that it will be “below 

cleanup levels” in three to ve years.15

e remediation programs came too late for one Grand Island 

resident. In 1978 Chuck Carpenter, a junior high school science 

teacher, bought a home in the Le Heights section of Grand Island. In 

1982 the Grand Island Independent reported that the Army had detected a highly toxic explosive compound known as “RDX” in the 

facility’s groundwater but assured residents that it would take “over a 

century” for the contaminants to reach the town. RDX is a unique 

compound used exclusively in the manufacture of military explosives, linking it denitively to the ammunition plant. Later investigations revealed that the plume of contaminants was moving at a rate of 

“three meters per day” and would reach the town in “just four years.”16

As early as 1980, the Army became aware of the contamination and 

that it was migrating across the installation boundary. e Army 

released no information to the public for four years, while conducting 

tests and collecting information. In 1984 Army ocials nally acknowledged that “more than half of the 467 private wells” in sections 

of Grand Island, including Le Heights, had “extremely elevated levels 

of RDX.”17 Concerned about his family’s health but unable to sell a 
32 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

home that had lost two-thirds of its value, Carpenter abandoned his 

home and declared bankruptcy. e Army refused to provide any 

compensation, alleging that the chemicals were released prior to the 

Korean War, when dumping was “legally permissible.”18 e Army 

eventually agreed to pay to connect residents to a city water supply 

but has not addressed the collapse in property value as a result of pollutants discharged from the facility.

e Air Force’s primary mission during the Cold War was not delivery of conventional munitions in case of a conict with the Soviet 

Union. Air Force bombers, missiles crews, and tactical ghters sat on 

nuclear alert, ready to launch atomic weapons at a moment’s notice. 

But in his analysis of environmental damage in Japan during WWII, 

William Tsutsui noted that “plant and animal life seem to have been 

relatively unaected by the bombs.” Further, “the atomic bombs—

like the incendiary attacks—were tremendously and tragically destructive for one species: Homo sapiens. When viewed from a less 

anthropocentric viewpoint, however, the environmental implications 

of direct combat in Japan during World War II are far more ambiguous.”19 Even so, production and testing of these weapons le an 

enormous scar on the American landscape.

In 1992, Michele Gerber detailed the eects of radiological contamination that will linger for millennia at the Hanford Site in Washington State.20 While this and other nuclear production facilities were 

operated by the DOE, the DOD was a primary customer. e damage 

inicted at these sites must be included in the cost of waging aerial 

warfare, even in a deterrence role, during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Bombing and Gunnery Ranges

In addition to manufacturing facilities, which le behind a toxic 

legacy, the military impacted the environment by locating large numbers 

of training facilities across the plains. Kansas supported 16 dierent 

Army airelds, up from only two during the prewar period.21 ese 

elds were used for training, from primary ight training to processing crews for overseas movement. Four of the bases—Great Bend, 

Pratt, Smoky Hill, and Walker—were dedicated to training B-29 

crews. e new bomber required large ranges for both gunnery and 

bombardment training. Fortunately for the USAAF, sparsely popu-
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 33

lated areas of western Kansas were ideally suited for this purpose. e 

Army established three gunnery ranges in Ellis, Ness, and Gove 

Counties and three bomb ranges in Trego and Graham Counties. e 

Gove County range covered 218,880 acres and displaced 150 farm 

families. Local farmers were not always happy with the compensation 

provided and petitioned their elected ocials in an unsuccessful attempt to seek redress.22

In addition to the hazard from aircra straying o the range, training exercises occasionally set prairie res that quickly spread to 

neighboring ranches, threatening livestock and buildings.23 One west 

Kansas resident, E. J. Montgomery, wrote his senator to complain. 

“e planes do not stay in their range, the bullets pass over my place 

and I live four miles from the range.”24 e Oakley newspaper rationalized: “It is unpleasant that many people will be temporarily ejected 

from their homes, especially aer the struggle of the dust years to 

regain nancial independence, but such conditions exist when a nation is at war.”25

e re risk and loss of productive agricultural and grazing lands 

may have been responsible for the adoption of an area that did not 

require anyone to relocate. Farmers near Great Bend petitioned the 

Army to use Cheyenne Bottoms, a nearby 41,000-acre wetland, as a 

bombing and gunnery range during the war.26 Cheyenne Bottoms has 

been described as the single most important wetland for migrating 

waterfowl and shorebirds between the Arctic tundra and the Gulf of 

Mexico.27 Fortunately, the USAAF’s use appears to have had little 

long-term negative eect. Despite the presence of spent projectiles 

and shell casings, a 1984 comprehensive survey of the wetlands found 

no excessive levels of heavy metals. e few areas with noticeable 

concentrations of lead in surface water had been heavily used by waterfowl hunters for years, and the appreciably lower levels in adjacent 

areas closed to hunting suggest that spent lead shotgun pellets were a 

far likelier source of contamination.28

Aer World War II, the newly independent Air Force sought to 

maintain bombing and gunnery ranges in Kansas to support the 

bases that remained open. e Army had operated Camp Phillips, an 

infantry training camp, on a 42,000-acre site near Salina and the 

Smoky Hill Army Aireld (AAF).29 Recognizing the site’s potential as 

a range, the Army retained control aer the war rather than returning 

it to the original landowners, eventually transferring Camp Phillips 

to the Air Force. Aer Smoky Hill AAF closed in the 1960s, the Kan-
34 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

sas Air National Guard assumed control of the range and operates it 

as the Great Plains Joint Regional Training Center.30 e range is covered by large expanses of native prairie grasses that are carefully managed by the range operators. Spraying for invasive species and controlled burns make it one of the most intensively managed tracts of 

native tallgrass prairies in the state. A 2007 study found that “the size 

and generally good condition of this largely unfragmented tallgrass 

prairie makes it a valuable reservoir of biological diversity for the 

Great Plains.”31 While the threat for contamination from unexploded 

ordnance remains, the intensive management demonstrates the potential for modern air forces to be good stewards of environmental 

resources. Had the military not retained control of Smoky Hill aer 

WWII, it likely would have returned to agricultural production and 

become signicantly less useful to many species of wildlife.32

Ranges in other areas are not as free from environmental damage 

as the Smoky Hill Range. e former Lowry AFB, located southeast 

of Denver, served as an aircrew-training center during WWII. e 

USAAF operated a 100-square-mile range in Arapahoe County 

southeast of Denver to support aircrew training for B-17, B-24, and 

B-29 crews. e range remained in operation through the Korean 

conict before being closed in 1962. e DOD transferred large portions of the range to the state of Colorado and private landowners, 

but the presence of unexploded munitions required the Army Corps 

of Engineers to conduct an extensive site cleanup.33 However, the 

most signicant environmental damage on the range occurred on a 

portion transferred to the city of Denver in 1965 and used as a landll 

for toxic chemicals. e “Lowry Landll” has been designated as an 

EPA Superfund site due to the presence of metal plating wastes, industrial solvents, and radioactive wastes.34

So far I have focused only on USAAF production and training facilities. e US Navy also operated a number of facilities on the Great 

Plains, including a naval ammunition plant at Hastings, Nebraska, 

and primary ight training facilities in Olathe and Hutchinson, Kansas, and Norman, Oklahoma. However, the vast majority of naval 

aviation training occurred in coastal and marine environments, 

which oen contain far more sensitive ecosystems. e more recent 

disputes over environmental damage at naval bombing and gunnery 

ranges on the islands of Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Kaho’olawe, Hawaii, demonstrate that the USAAF was comparatively fortunate to 

have a number of inland sites available for training. Some of those 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 35

sites may have even beneted from military use. As Edmund Russell 

and Richard Tucker have noted, “military bases have oen been de 

facto nature preserves. By building up small areas while leaving most 

of the bases open for training and maneuvers, bases have sometimes 

created well-guarded sanctuaries for species.” Russell and Tucker do 

not “argue that one should create bases and bombing ranges to preserve wildlife,” but they note the “complex, surprising and oen ironic 

ways in which war and nature interact.”35

Operational and Maintenance Bases

In comparison with production and training facilities, the permanent bases established on the Great Plains proved to be the most intrusive and environmentally damaging facilities. While most lasted 

only as long as the war, those that remained released substantial 

quantities of toxic materials into the ground. Air bases in particular 

may be slightly more susceptible to this type of contamination than 

other facilities for several reasons. First, they require large quantities 

of potentially toxic liquids, most notably jet fuels, to accomplish their 

missions. ese compounds are oen stored in underground storage 

tanks (UST) to protect them from fragmenting explosives in case of 

attack and to reduce vertical obstructions in the aireld environment. 

Aboveground storage tanks could potentially intrude into the ight 

paths of landing and departing aircra and also block instrument 

landing signals. Unfortunately, the burial of storage tanks makes it 

more dicult to detect leakage and failure, exacerbating the potential 

for release of toxic substances into the soil and groundwater.

Two Air Force facilities on the Great Plains have had signicant 

issues with chemical release and groundwater contamination. Smoky 

Hill, later Schilling AFB, near Salina, Kansas, and Tinker AFB, near 

Oklahoma City, have released sucient quantities of chemicals into 

the ground over the years to seriously threaten the water supplies of 

nearby residents. e most common pollutant is TCE, a persistent 

chemical. When rst introduced as an industrial solvent, TCE quickly 

gained favor among maintenance specialists for its highly eective 

degreasing properties. Unfortunately, TCE is persistent in the environment and is a known carcinogen.36 Even as early as 1942, the 

USAAF’s eld service section reminded users “the toxicity of this material and of all halogenated hydrocarbons generally is well known.”37
36 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

Schilling and Tinker discharged sucient quantities of TCE into the 

ground to pollute local aquifers, threatening drinking water supplies 

for on- and o-base residents. While current regulations prohibit the 

reckless discharge of TCE and other chemicals into the environment, 

decades of abuse have le a toxic legacy of varying severity at both sites.

Smoky Hill AAF was established in 1942 and served as a B-29 

training, processing, and staging base during WWII. It remained in 

service aer the war and in 1957 was renamed in honor of Col David 

C. Schilling, a native of Leavenworth, Kansas, who was killed in an 

auto accident in England. As a member of the 56th Fighter Group 

(Zemke’s Wolfpack), Schilling amassed 33 “kills” during WWII. e 

SAC base hosted two bomb wings composed of B-47 bombers and 

KC-97 tankers.38 In 1960 an Atlas-F missile wing was also headquartered at the base, with the actual missiles located at 12 dispersed sites 

across central Kansas. In November 1964 Air Force ocials elected 

to close the base, surprising local ocials who scrambled to nd 

new occupants for the facility.39 Today, the Salina Airport Authority 

operates the aireld as a municipal facility, while a number of commercial and educational enterprises also occupy the site, including 

the Salina Area Technical School and the campus of Kansas State 

University at Salina.

When the base closed, local ocials were absorbed with preparing 

the site for new occupants. e thought of potential contamination 

was not a major consideration, despite a provision in the deed, which 

apparently absolved the US government of any liability for restoration or other damages.40 Fortunately for the city, the Comprehensive 

Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, passed 

by Congress in December 1980 and later amended by the Superfund 

Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1981, required the DOD to 

comply with all EPA guidelines, even at sites already transferred to 

the private sector. In 1986 the DOD established the Formerly Used 

Defense Sites program and placed it under the authority of the Army 

Corps of Engineers to assess environmental damage and engage in 

remediation activities. e corps has spent $3.9 billion on the program as of 2006 and estimates that it will take a total of $18.7 billion 

to complete remediation at the more than 4,600 sites in the program.41

Later estimates raise this total to as high as $35 billion.

One of the main problems in addressing the issue is the number of 

new sites that continue to be added to the list. is was the case when 

the extent of Schilling AFB’s contamination was rst discovered in 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 37

the early 1990s. In 1993 the corps hired a contractor to complete a 

site investigation. Based on the results, the corps agreed to “remove 

or abandon in place” 107 USTs. Even this action required the Salina 

Airport Authority’s cooperation, as the corps dug in its heels, stating 

that since “non-DOD parties used petroleum products at the former 

Air Force Base property following DOD ownership, the Corps does 

not intend to clean up petroleum in soils or groundwater as a separate contaminant unless it imposes imminent and substantial risk 

and has been identied as the sole responsibility of DOD.”42

Discoveries of contaminated areas outside those originally tested 

in 1993 resulted in the corps conducting a second site investigation in 

1998. e city of Salina disputed some of the ndings in the second 

survey, only to be told that they “had no formal role in the process.”43

e city engaged with the EPA, which conducted an “expanded site 

investigation” that rmly tied source areas to DOD activities. In January 2006 the corps released a study of the TCE plume extending from 

under the base and determined that it would not reach the city’s water wells for 75 years. Four months later, the corps was forced to admit it had made a mistake in its calculations and that the plume 

would reach the water wells serving the town’s 45,679 residents in less 

than 10 years.44

Unlike Schilling, Tinker AFB continues as an active base today, 

despite its status as an EPA Superfund site. Established in 1942 at a 

cost of over $21 million, the base employed nearly 15,000 workers 

and served as a repair and modication center for the B-29 bomber.45

It remained in active service aer the war as one of ve air logistics 

centers in the Air Force. As the Cold War began, the Air Force attempted to curtail some of the worst wartime excesses and address 

the pollution released from its facilities. By 1950 regulations required 

that “military authorities in the Continental United States will cooperate with civil authorities in preventing the pollution of surface or 

underground waters by sewage or industrial wastes from Air Force 

installations and activities.”46 Yet as late as 1984, Tinker was still discharging industrial waste into storm drains. In congressional testimony, the chief of the Water Quality Division of the Oklahoma Water 

Resources Board noted that “when the base was built, storm drains 

oen legally carried industrial wastes. However, this practice is no 

longer acceptable.”47 Unfortunately, not all lines had been rerouted to 

collection tanks, and hazardous waste was still being discharged directly into local creeks. By December 1990 some local wells were so 
38 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

badly contaminated that the base began supplying nearby residents 

with bottled water until they could be connected to municipal water 

supplies, which took place between September 1993 and May 1994.48

Conclusion

It is clear that the Air Force’s infrastructure has inicted considerable environmental damage on the Great Plains. In almost every case, 

the US government has acknowledged its role in the contamination. 

Legislation passed in the early 1980s has forced the DOD to participate in cleanup eorts, even at facilities no longer under DOD control. Aer a slow start, the Army Corps of Engineers now spends considerable time and eort in assessment and remediation programs, 

both at facilities on the plains and across the country. However, the 

impact will linger long aer nal cleanup eorts are complete. In 

most cases, the corps will be unable to remove all the pollutants, and 

some cleanup eorts will cease when testing reveals concentrations 

have dropped below levels considered dangerous to human health. 

Yet, the fact remains that the Air Force inicted serious damage on 

the environment.

It should be noted that the environmental philosophy that permeated the service during the earlier period was not unique. Many private industries followed equally callous disposal policies during that 

era, and many have not been as engaged as the DOD in remediation 

eorts. e Army Air Forces had a vital mission during World War II, 

and the increases in eciency and time must be weighed against the 

millions who suered under despotic regimes that were toppled only 

by force. Some might argue that the Cold War presented an equal 

threat. e costs must be weighed against the benets.

Still, the Army and the Air Force colluded in activities that threatened the health of residents near their bases. e question of acceptable endangerment leads down a path toward determining which 

lives are most worth protecting, with a consideration of both immediate and longer-term threats and orders of magnitude. Military 

forces have long operated under the concept of acceptable “casualty 

rates” and “collateral damage” and seem to be more comfortable with 

the idea that some must suer so that many survive. Today, the service’s tolerance for collateral and environmental damage is well below 

where it was 75 years ago. For example, current Air Force hazardous 
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 39

materials regulations emphasize that individuals and commanders 

can be held personally liable for the release of pollutants at their 

bases. Yet, the legacy of years of reckless discharge will linger and 

continue to aect relations with host communities.

Having once clamored for military facilities as engines of economic development, the public is now far more wary of their presence. A recent attempt by the Army to expand its Pinyon Canyon 

maneuver area on the high plains of Colorado met widespread opposition from an odd coalition of antimilitary groups and moreconservative ranchers and landowners. Eorts to expand existing 

military facilities are oen met with suspicion by local residents, 

whose trust has been compromised by eorts to disguise or delay 

notication of previous environmental threats. e current period of 

nancial retrenchment and a shrinking share of the defense budget 

magnify the billions spent to remediate previous environmental 

damage. Perhaps there is no truer example that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Already, there is evidence that the current operating requirements reduce DOD cleanup expenditures and 

make it more dicult for state and federal regulatory agencies to 

compel compliance.49 All of these factors impact current and future 

readiness and the Air Force’s ability to accomplish its mission.

In this century, aerial weapons have demonstrated the ability to in-

ict devastating damage on remote battleelds. Yet, as William Cronon 

has observed in his work on nineteenth-century Chicago, “the ecological place of production (grows) ever more remote from the economic 

point of consumption, making it harder and harder to keep track of the 

true costs and consequences of any particular product.”50

Certainly this is true for airpower. As the sites of employment expand further from the points of production, it is easy to lose sight of 

the true costs of developing and employing weapons from the sky. 

However, in any accounting of the impact of aerial warfare on the 

environment, these production costs, which sometimes far exceed 

those resulting from the weapon employment, must be included in 

the nal tally.

Notes

1. White, It’s Your Misfortune, 497. He notes that factors that had initially stalled 

development in the American West (remoteness, aridity, and low populations) all 

worked in its favor to attract defense activities during the war.
40 │ THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

2. “Hundreds Mourn Family Killed in Marine Jet Crash,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 

11 December 2008. e utility of locating air bases away from population centers was 

recently demonstrated by a mishap involving a Marine F/A-18 aircra that killed a family 

of four near MCAS Miramar.

3. Worster, Dust Bowl.

4. Miner, Kansas, 312.

5. Ibid., 312–13.

6. Hurt, Great Plains during World War II, 56.

7. Simonson, History of the American Aircra Industry, 119.

8. Bilstein, Enterprise of Flight, 77.

9. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “What Is Superfund?”

10. EPA, “Current Status, Air Force Plant 4.”

11. Yergin, Prize, 365.

12. Wit, “Social and Economic Impact,” 153.

13. Ibid., 162.

14. EPA, “Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant.”

15. Ibid.

16. Shulman, reat at Home, 74, 77.

17. Ibid., 78.

18. Ibid., 81.

19. Tsutsui, “Landscapes in the Dark Valley,” 199.

20. Gerber, On the Home Front.

21. “US Army and Air Force Wings over Kansas,” 129–57, 334–60. e prewar 

elds were the post airelds at Forts Leavenworth and Riley.

22. R. A. Fouts to Sen. Arthur Capper, letters, 20 July and 30 October 1943, 

“Gove County Gunnery Range” folder, Box 11, Arthur Capper Papers.

23. Hurt, Great Plains, 276.

24. E. J. Montgomery to Sen. Arthur Capper, letter. Capper Papers.

25. Undated, unidentied newspaper clipping, “Gove County Gunnery Range” 

folder, Box 11, Capper Papers. 

26. McMullen to Sen. Arthur Capper, telegram, 13 November 1943, “Air Bases-Hays” 

folder, Box 1, Capper Papers. 

27. Zimmerman, Cheyenne Bottoms.

28. Biological Survey, “Cheyenne Bottoms,” 52.

29. 184th Bomb Group, Cultural Legacy of the Smoky Hill Air National Guard Range.

30. “Kansas Governor Hosts Ribbon Cutting,” news release. 

31. Busby et al. Natural Features Inventory, ix.

32. Ibid., 7, 253.

33. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Former Lowry 

Bombing and Gunnery Range.”

34. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Lowry Landll Site.” 

35. Tucker and Russell, Natural Enemy, 11.

36. US Department of Health and Human Services, “Fact Sheet.”

37. US Army Air Forces, Field Service Section, Technical Bulletin, 25 March 1942, 

Schilling AFB Files, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Topeka, KS.

38. “US Army and Air Force Wings over Kansas,” 348–49.

39. Olson, “Salina’s Response.”
THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT │ 41

40. “Quitclaim Deed for Schilling Air Force Base,” 465. 

41. US Army Corps of Engineers, “Formerly Used Defense Sites Program.”

42. “Fact Sheet,” Kansas Department of Health and Environment. 

43. “Schilling Air Force Base Project,” 2.

44. “2000 Census: Corps Admits Miscalculation,” Salina Journal, 5 May 2006.

45. Hurt, Great Plains, 243.

46. US Air Force Regulation 91–9.

47. US House, “Review of Hazardous Waste Cleanup,” 89.

48. US Department of Health and Human Services, “Public Health Assessment, 

Tinker.”

49. One source claims that between 2001 and 2004, the DOD cut its cleanup 

budget by 57 percent. “Cleanup Fights Stall,” USA Today.

50. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 340.
44 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

attacked; and what are the collateral eects, the impact on the environment, and the law of war implications.

Modern warfare is destructive and has a signicant impact on a 

nation. It requires not only balanced military forces that are organized, trained, and equipped to defend a state’s national interests, but 

also economic infrastructures capable of supporting those forces. 

Economic infrastructures provide large, vulnerable targets susceptible 

to various types of enemy attacks. While some targets have little 

value, this is not the case with energy. Petroleum-based products will 

remain a viable world energy source for the foreseeable future. As of 

1 January 2009, known global crude oil reserves were estimated between 

1,184.2 and 1,342.2 billion barrels. World oil consumption has 

dropped sharply since the middle of 2008 in response to the global 

economic downturn and higher prices.1

Airpower eory and Interwar Planning

Between the two world wars, military theorists from several nations 

advocated what they called “strategic” bombing as the logical and 

obvious way to employ aircra. To the thinkers who emerged from 

the Great War and believed in the future of airpower, the strategic 

employment of its capabilities was considered the panacea that would 

avoid future senseless slaughters. A number of men arrived at these 

conclusions more or less independently. In Great Britain, Hugh 

Trenchard (“father of the Royal Air Force”) was less of a theorist than 

the others, with his ideas limited in scope. Pierre Vauthier of France 

was the principal protagonist in that country, and the United States 

had Billy Mitchell.2

e rst theoretical “prophet” of airpower was an Italian named 

Giulio Douhet, who published Command of the Air in 1921. e book 

was a fully developed theory of airpower and its potential. Douhet 

saw the airplane as the perfect oensive weapon with none of the 

limitations of ground or naval power. Based on his own positive and 

negative experiences in World War I, he concluded that the airplane 

was capable of inicting overwhelming destruction. With the proper 

amount of airplanes appearing over an enemy’s capital and industrial 

centers, chaos would occur and cause the immediate collapse of the 

enemy’s government and industrial base. e bomber would always 

get through, because there was no eective defense against it. Douhet 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 45

stated empathically that “the fundamental principle of aerial warfare 

is this: to resign oneself to endure enemy aerial oensives in order to 

inict the greatest possible oensives on the enemy.”3

 He pointed out 

that his theory of war and employment of airpower, brutally conducted but concluded quickly, was far more humane than what had 

occurred in the world war. His proposals were hugely inuential 

among airpower advocates, arguing that the air arm was the most 

important, powerful, and invulnerable part of any military. With 

Douhet, airpower had its rst coherent theory. Air forces would no 

longer be considered auxiliaries and should be a nation’s primary instrument of war.

In 1922 Douhet met the like-minded American airpower theorist 

Billy Mitchell on a visit to Europe, and soon an excerpted translation 

of Douhet’s Command of the Air began to circulate in the US Air Service. 

Mitchell’s book Winged Defense was published in 1925. In it he argues 

that airpower had become a main force in war instead of an auxiliary 

to the other services and would continue to be a dominating factor. In 

hindsight, Mitchell was more of a propagandist than a theorist, and 

his ideas were more limited in scope than those of others. As a result 

of Douhet’s proposals, air forces allocated greater resources to their 

bomber squadrons than to their ghters. Prewar planners, on the 

whole, vastly overestimated the damage bombers could do and 

equally underestimated the resilience of civilian populations. Given 

the technological advances made during the 1920s and 1930s, the 

possibility of unlimited war continued to expand. During this period, 

little practical experience existed when it came to targeting national 

economic infrastructure. Serious thought on the subject was not considered until the late 1930s when the US Army Air Corps Tactical 

School (ACTS) and the British Air Ministry began to study the utility 

of targeting a nation’s energy infrastructure, specically the petroleumbased sector. e ACTS laid the foundation for economic analysis 

and industrial targeting while advocating a strategic airpower doctrine. Believing that a nation’s ability to wage war was directly related 

to its ability to convert raw materials into weapons, strategic bombing 

of a nation’s industrial base or economic infrastructure became the 

American approach. 

At the same time, the British were also busy analyzing how best to 

destroy an adversary with airpower.4

 Aer a series of studies conducted during 1936, the British Industrial Intelligence Center recognized that targeting the oil industry was key. erefore, the British 
46 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

prioritized oil industry targets along with various other target sets in 

a series of 13 war plans known as the Western Area Plans (WAP), 

published on 1 October 1937. Particularly, WAPs 5 and 6 dealt with 

the oil industry. e latter was the basic plan to destroy the core of 

German fuel production and supply: 14 synthetic oil plants and as 

many major oil reneries. In 1939, the British Air Ministry directed a 

series of studies to locate the key points within critical sectors of the 

German economy.5

 British leaders sought target sets containing only 

a few targets whose destruction would have an immediate eect on 

the enemy’s will to resist. To qualify, a target set had to be of major 

importance to a nation’s military, be concentrated in a few locations, 

have no appreciable redundant capacity in or out of the country, and 

be incapable of quick repair or replacement or quick dispersal without loss of production.

At the heart of US doctrine as it entered World War II was the idea 

that the ultimate aim in war was to destroy the morale of the people. 

Planners believed that this objective could best be met by destroying 

vital links in the industrial economic structure that was already 

strained by the requirements of war. is approach assumed that adequate intelligence would be available on the location of these vital 

links and once attacked that they would not be restored for many 

months. Likewise, unescorted mass bomber formations would penetrate enemy defenses and destroy assigned targets.6

 Energy infrastructure was a prime target—specically the petroleum industry. 

e rise of airpower made possible unprecedented violence on population centers, factories, and economic infrastructures.

Unlimited Warfare: World War II

During the course of World War II the petroleum-based sector 

was the primary target in a variety of warfare. On 22 February 1940, 

Sir Cyril Newall, chief of the British Air Sta, agreed that the Royal 

Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command should attack targets in accordance with WAP 6 if Germany invaded the Low Countries. By mid 

April 1940, the British became convinced that German rened petroleum stocks were desperately low and that any further reduction 

would force Germany into a crisis situation. Five days aer the German invasion of the Low Countries in May 1940, Bomber Command 

began ying missions against Germany’s petroleum-based energy 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 47

sector in the Ruhr Valley using WAP W. A. 4(c).7 Great Britain’s air 

oensive strategy continued to target the petroleum-based sector 

throughout most of 1940. In September 1940, the overly optimistic 

British chiefs of sta believed that Germany’s rened oil stocks might 

be exhausted by June 1941.

In October 1940 a signicant change occurred within the Air Ministry 

and Bomber Command. Bomber Command’s Charles Portal replaced Newall as chief of the British Air Sta, and Sir Richard Peirse, 

an advocate of precision bombing, replaced Portal at Bomber Command. is had a massive impact upon the future of the bombing 

policy. Unlike Newall, Portal had rsthand experience in Bomber 

Command and knew its limitations far better. His views on its use 

were directly translated into an Air Ministry directive. e two principal objectives were now the oil plan and destruction of enemy morale.8

Competing target sets and a lack of suitable long-range aircra prevented realization of campaign objectives. Competing target sets in 

1941 included German U-boats, U-boat construction yards and 

maintenance facilities, bombers, aircra factories, and airelds. ese 

target sets reected the demands of the Battle of the Atlantic with 

German submarines and the Battle of Britain with the Luwae.

e US Army War Plans Division submitted the rst of the major 

target studies on 11 August 1941. Entitled Munitions Requirements of 

the Army Air Forces, it was commonly referred to as Air War Plans 

Division-1 (AWPD-1). is plan reected ACTS doctrine that an air 

force should conduct precision aerial attacks against critical targets in 

an enemy’s national economic structure to eliminate the ability to 

resist. Critical to the planning introduced in AWPD-1 was the disruption of German electrical power and transportation systems, destruction of petroleum systems, and, if necessary, the undermining of 

morale.9

 In the case of the petroleum-based sector, AWPD-1 planners identied German synthetic oil plants as high value or essential 

targets. At the time, synthetic oil plants were responsible for 60 percent of the German aviation gasoline (AVGAS) production. Eighty 

percent of the AVGAS was produced by 27 reneries located in western 

and central Germany about 1,000 miles from bases in England. ese 

27 reneries became the primary petroleum-based-sector targets for 

US bombers. Two minor plans—AWPD-4, Air Estimate of the Situation and Recommendations for the Conduct of War, and the Plan for 

the Initiation of Air Force Bombardment in the British Isles—listed 

oil as a priority target before the next major war plan, AWPD-42, 
48 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Requirements for Air Ascendancy, 1942, set responsibilities and revised targeting priorities.10 AWPD-42, developed in the late summer 

of 1942, set forth the planning requirements for the number of combat aircra required to achieve complete air superiority in Europe 

combined with the results of bombing eorts to date. e plan served 

as the basis for US Army Air Forces (USAAF) strategic planning. 

AWPD-42 also established a division of labor between the USAAF 

and the RAF bomber forces. e US Eighth Air Force pursued a precision daylight bombing campaign against critical elements of Germany’s war economy. At night the RAF would continue its areabombing oensive in an eort to break enemy morale.

Operation Chastise was the ocial name given the aerial attacks 

on German dams in the Ruhr Valley on 16 and 17 May 1943. Prior to 

the war, the industrial base of Germany had been identied by the 

British Air Ministry as an important strategic target, and the dams in 

that area were considered as particular targets. Besides electrical 

power, the dams provided water into the canal transport system. 

ere were three primary targets for Operation Chastise—the 

Möhne, Sorpe, and Eder Dams—and three alternative targets—the 

Lister, Ennerpe, and Diemel Dams. e Möhne and Sorpe Dams controlled about 75 percent of the water supplied to the Ruhr basin. e 

Eder Dam regulated the ow of the Eder River, the principal tributary of the Weser River. It also provided electrical generating stations 

and a pumped storage station for power load equalization.11 e tactics to attack the dams had been carefully considered, and analysis 

indicated that repeated strikes with large bombs would be eective in 

breaching them. RAF 617 Squadron, using a specially developed 

“bouncing bomb”, carried out the raid. Nineteen Lancaster bombers 

took o to attack the targets. e raid was a success, despite the loss 

of eight aircra and crews; the Möhne and Eder Dams were breached, 

causing a catastrophic ooding of the Ruhr Valley, while the Sorpe 

Dam sustained only minor damage.12 Bomber Command conducted a 

bomb damage assessment as soon as possible using a photographic reconnaissance Spitre from 542 Squadron, arriving over the Ruhr just 

aer rst light. e pilot, Flying Ocer Frank Fray, described the 

experience:

When I was about 150 miles from the Möhne Dam I could see the industrial 

haze over the Ruhr area and what appeared to be a cloud to the east. On ying 

closer I saw that what had seemed to be cloud was the sun shining on the 

oodwaters. I looked down into the deep valley which had seemed so peaceful 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 49

three days before but now it was a wide torrent. e whole valley of the river 

was inundated with only patches of high ground and the tops of trees and 

church steeples showing above the ood. I was overcome by the immensity of it.13

Photographs taken of the breached dams showed oodwaters sweeping through the Ruhr valley, damaging factories, houses, and power 

stations; railway and road bridges disappeared. e raid disrupted 

water and electricity supplies in a key German war munitions manufacturing area. Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, called 

the raid “a trenchant blow for victory.”14

e Combined Chiefs of Sta (CCS) directed that the strategic 

bombardment of Germany receive top priority, with the US Eighth 

Air Force ying from air bases in England, the US Fieenth Air Force 

ying from air bases in the Mediterranean and Italy, and the RAF 

Bomber Command teamed to conduct the combined bomber oensive. Rened oil products became the h priority target set behind 

Germany’s aircra industry, submarine yards, transportation networks, and electrical power. e plan specied the complete destruction 

of 23 of 27 synthetic oil reneries and crude oil reneries in Romania, 

including Ploesti; the overall goal was a 47 percent reduction in re-

ned oil products. To achieve these goals required accurate and current strategic intelligence. e CCS direction rearmed that requirement in support of air targeting, and the London-based Economic 

Objectives Unit of the US Oce of Strategic Services provided part of 

the solution. Political considerations prevented formal prioritizing of 

the list of potential targets, but the top three target sets were ghter 

aircra, ball bearings, and petroleum.15

e Ploesti reneries were targeted, beginning with a daring and 

costly low-level attack in August 1943. ese attacks had only limited 

eects; oil deliveries increased until April 1944 when the attacks were 

resumed by the Fieenth Air Force.16 e Fieenth Air Force was 

directed to execute four broad air campaigns against the Axis target 

sets: oil capabilities, air forces, communications, and ground forces. 

Most critical of the oil target sets were the reneries in Ploesti, which 

contributed about 30 percent of the entire Axis supply of oil and gasoline. One hundred and y German and Romanian ghters in addition to 250 heavy antiaircra guns defended Ploesti. e Fieenth 

Air Force, with the cooperation of RAF 205 Group bombers, began a 

series of raids on 5 April 1944, attacking the Ploesti reneries 19 

times before the campaign ended on 19 August. USAAF and RAF 

bombers ew 5,287 sorties and dropped 12,870 tons of bombs. Ten 
50 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

dive bombers, 39 escort ghters, and 237 heavy bombers—15 from 

the RAF—were lost; the results were good despite the losses.17 At the 

end of the campaign the reneries were reduced to only 10 percent of 

their normal rate of activity. e average production rate was reduced 

by 60 percent from April to August.

In late August 1944, the Russian occupation eliminated this source 

of supply; dependence on the synthetic plants became even greater. 

Following the Ploesti raids, the USAAF and RAF dropped 10,000 

tons of bombs on three synthetic oil plants in Silesia and one in 

Poland. By February 1945, their combined production was reduced 

to 20 percent of what it had been in June 1944.18

e petroleum-based energy sector did not receive signicant attention from the Allied planners until May 1944. Previously, only 

about 1 percent of all Allied bombs dropped had targeted this sector. 

With the reduction of German airpower, oil became the priority target 

in the German economy. A preliminary attack was launched on 12 

May 1944, with another on 28 May; the main blow was not struck 

until aer D-day. e Germans viewed the attacks as catastrophic. 

Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production for the 

ird Reich, said,

On that day the technological war was decided. Until then we had managed to 

produce approximately as many weapons as the armed forces needed, in spite 

of their considerable losses. But with the attack of nine hundred and thirty-

ve daylight bombers of the American Eighth Air Force upon several fuel 

plants in central and eastern Germany, a new era in the air war began. It 

meant the end of German armaments production.19

Synthetic oil production declined steadily, and by July 1944 every 

major plant had been hit. When the attacks began, these plants produced an average of 316,000 tons per month, but production fell to 

107,000 tons in June and 17,000 tons in September. Output of AVGAS 

from synthetic plants dropped from 175,000 tons in April to 30,000 

tons in July and 5,000 tons in September. Production recovered in 

November and December but was a fraction of pre-attack output for 

the rest of the war. e Germans took steps to repair and reconstruct 

the reneries, but synthetic oil reneries were vast, complex structures and could not be easily dispersed. Consumption of oil exceeded 

production from May 1944 until the end of the war. Accumulated 

stocks were rapidly used up and in six months were almost exhausted. 

e German armed forces sharply felt the loss of oil production.20
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 51

Programs of dispersal and underground construction were incomplete 

when the war ended.

Synthetic oil reneries returned to partial production in a remarkably short time but were attacked again. e IG Farben factory at 

Leuna, Germany’s second-largest synthetic oil plant and second-biggest 

chemical operation, serves as an example of repetitive targeting. 

Leuna was protected by a highly eective smoke screen and the heaviest 

antiaircra concentration in Europe. Aircrews viewed the Farben 

Leuna synthetic renery as the most dangerous and dicult mission 

of the air campaign. Although it was attacked on 12 May and put out 

of production, postwar investigation of plant records and interrogation of Farben Leuna’s ocials established that several thousand men 

restored partial operation in about 10 days. e renery was attacked 

again on 28 May but resumed partial production on 3 June and 

reached 75 percent of capacity in early July. e renery resumed 

production two days aer an attack on 7 July, reaching 53 percent of 

capacity on 19 July. An attack on 20 July shut the plant down again 

but only for three days; by 27 July production was back to 35 percent 

of capacity. Attacks throughout July, August, and September halted 

production, but it resumed on 14 October. e Farben facility at 

Leuna reached 28 percent of capacity by 20 November. Six more attacks in November and December were largely ineective because of 

adverse weather. Production increased to 15 percent of capacity in 

January and remained at that level until near the end of the war. 

From the rst attack to the war’s end, production at Leuna averaged 

9 percent of capacity.21

ere were 22 attacks on Leuna—20 by the Eighth Air Force and 

two by the RAF. Due to the urgency of keeping this plant out of production, many missions were own in dicult bombing weather. 

Consequently, bombing accuracy was not high compared with other 

targets. On clear days, only 29 percent of the bombs landed inside 

Farben Leuna’s gates; on radar raids the number dropped to just over 

5 percent. Allied crews ew a total of 6,552 bomber sorties against the 

plant and dropped 18,328 tons of bombs over an entire year.22

Except for isolated raids, the German power grid was not a priority 

target set during the war. is was partly due to the belief that it was 

highly developed and that losses in one area could be compensated 

by switching power from another. is assumption proved false in a 

postwar investigation conducted by the US Strategic Bombing Survey.23

e German power grid was in a precarious condition from the outset 
52 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

and became more unstable as the war progressed, as conrmed by 

statements of a large number of German ocials, condential memoranda of the National Load Dispatcher, and secret minutes of the Central Planning Committee. e destruction of ve large generating stations in Germany would have caused a loss of 8 percent of the total 

capacity, both public and private. Destruction of 45 plants would have 

caused a capacity loss of almost 40 percent, and the destruction of 95 

plants would have eliminated over 50 percent of the entire generating 

capacity of the country. e shortage was suciently critical that any 

signicant loss of output would have directly aected essential war 

production. Generating and distribution facilities were relatively vulnerable, and their recuperation was dicult and time consuming.24

Postwar evidence indicates that, had the power grid—electric generating plants and substations—been made a priority target set as soon as 

it became within range of Allied air attacks, the destruction would 

have had serious eects on Germany’s war production.

Energy infrastructure was a vital target during World War II, and 

the eort’s benet was signicant. Allied airpower was able to gain and 

maintain air superiority as Allied armies drove across Europe, overrunning the German war machine. Ultimately, the war offered 

numerous lessons that are still applicable today: the need for strategic 

intelligence; realization that doctrine is not a synonym for targeting; 

recognition that centers of gravity are not necessarily subject to attack; 

the need to anticipate the collateral eects of air attacks; and recognition that gaining air superiority is critical. e US Air Force exited 

World War II with the continued belief that the strategic bombing mission was the decisive military instrument of war.25

Limited Warfare: Vietnam

Whereas World War II was an unlimited war, Vietnam was a limited 

one. Four major characteristics of limited wars include (1) what is 

limited for one party may be total for another, (2) they may be costly 

and prolonged, (3) prolonged limited wars generally enjoy much less 

public support than other types of war, and (4) the duration and cost 

of war generally increases when limitations are imposed. As warfare 

becomes limited, the role of the energy-based sector and its associated products must change as well.26 In true Clausewitzian fashion, it 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 53

was political and not military objectives that drove the air campaign 

against North Vietnam.

Air planners and strategists sought to weaken North Vietnam’s will 

to resist by destroying its capability to ght. As a result, they chose 

what they thought to be key sources of military and economic power 

as primary targets. In an operation code-named Rolling under, 

they used three targeting criteria: reduce North Vietnamese assistance from external sources; destroy war resources already in North 

Vietnam; and harass, disrupt, and impede the movement of men and 

materials to Laos and South Vietnam.27 When Operation Rolling 

under began on 2 March 1965, a majority of the energy-sector targets were o limits due to geographical constraints imposed by Pres. 

Lyndon Johnson on the Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS) and air planners. 

When President Johnson expanded the war in the summer of 1965, 

the JCS sought to increase the use of airpower.28

In August 1965 a revised air campaign plan was submitted that 

called for attacks against military installations in Haiphong and Hon 

Gay, the mining of ports, and raids on transportation networks north 

of Hanoi. e plan encompassed further attacks on airelds, air defense sites, other military facilities in Hanoi, petroleum storage areas, 

electrical power stations, and the remaining industrial targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. e JCS’s intent in targeting the petroleum infrastructure was to reduce North Vietnam’s capability to provide transportation to the general population, impact the economy, and 

interdict the movement of supplies and troops south.29 Due to con-

icting political objectives, such as the need to end the war quickly 

and to prevent Russian involvement, senior Johnson administration 

policy makers did not back the JCS. As a result, US aircrews attacked only 126 of the 240 proposed targets by the end of October 

1965. Of the remaining 114 targets, 104 were in areas that were geographically constrained.30

e following month, senior US defense ocials recommended an 

evolving ve-month air campaign that would conclude with attacks 

on the petroleum infrastructure and the mining of Haiphong harbor. 

e JCS called for an immediate acceleration in scale, scope, and intensity of the bombing, beginning with airstrikes against the petroleum target sets. ey assumed that if the supply of petroleum 

products could be eliminated, the ow of supplies, materiel, and 

troops would slow, or stop, causing the insurgency in South Vietnam 

to wither away.31
54 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

e fact that North Vietnam possessed no oil elds or reneries 

and imported 170,000 metric tons of fuel in 1965, mostly through 

Haiphong, supported the JCS case. e Haiphong tank farms, apparently the critical link in the system, held about 72,000 metric tons. 

Ninety-seven percent of North Vietnam’s petroleum storage capacity 

could be found in 13 sites, of which four had already been destroyed. 

e JCS believed that destruction of the Haiphong tank farm, combined with eight other major storage areas, would cause more damage than an attack on any other single target set.32 However, intelligence indicated that numerous small petroleum storage sites and 

drum storage capabilities were beginning to appear. If the energy sector were to be a suitable target, timing was critical to interdict the 

supply system.33

It was not until the winter of 1965–66 that support for airstrikes 

began to grow. President Johnson authorized attacks against six small 

petroleum storage facilities in lightly populated areas at the end of 

May 1966. By mid June, the president’s advisors convinced him to 

authorize airstrikes against the remaining energy-sector targets, including the storage facilities in Hanoi and Haiphong. Resumption of 

the airstrikes began on 29 June 1966 and continued through August. 

While 70 percent of their petroleum bulk storage had been destroyed, 

the North Vietnamese still possessed a signicant amount of reserve 

storage, mostly in areas that were o limits inside of North Vietnam.34

As the summer wore on, North Vietnam continued to import petroleum products that were dispersed at small storage sites in quantities 

sucient to meet wartime requirements.

According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the invulnerability 

of the dispersed petroleum infrastructure meant an increased cost in 

munitions, fuel, and loss of aircra and aircrew. e end of airstrikes 

against the petroleum infrastructure came on 30 August 1966 when 

the Jason Summer Study was released; 47 top US scientists stated that 

North Vietnam was a subsistence agricultural economy that presented a dicult, challenging, and unrewarding array of target sets to 

be attacked by airpower. is study estimated that only 5 percent of 

North Vietnam’s fuel requirements were required for logistics ow to 

the South, suggesting the air campaign could not possibly achieve its 

goal.35 By the fall of 1966, US military and civilian leaders had given 

up any expectation of the North Vietnamese energy infrastructure 

being the critical link in maintaining its military and economy. Subsequently, they shied their attention to other industries. Six years 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 55

later, a short but intense air campaign ended US participation in this 

limited war.

Overall, the US attempt to destroy North Vietnam’s energy infrastructure can be dened as a strategic failure. Planners had overestimated the North’s dependence on the port facilities at Haiphong. After airstrikes destroyed the dock facilities, tankers simply ooaded 

their cargoes into waiting barges, which dispersed the petroleum 

products among concealed storage sites along waterways. When bulk 

distribution became a challenge, the North Vietnamese simply 

switched to drums, making distribution easier, faster, and more e-

cient. Simple innovation reduced their reliance upon vulnerable storage and distribution facilities.36

Why did air planners target the energy infrastructure—speci-

cally, the petroleum sector—if it was not essential? e answer is 

simple: they were guilty of mirror imaging. What worked in World 

War II was expected to work in Vietnam. Even if the air planners 

were able to overcome mirror imaging, they lacked accurate and 

timely strategic intelligence to support targeting.37 e US intelligence community was focused on the Soviet Union, basically ignoring the rest of the world. Furthermore, the air planners were unprepared for limited warfare, failed to analyze properly the enemy, and 

had to deal with the issue of sanctuary.

By denition, a sanctuary is a “place of refuge or protection for 

someone who is being chased or hunted” and is a self-imposed restraint.38 North Vietnam enjoyed the benets of sanctuary in China. 

e United States also recognized certain areas within North Vietnam as being o limits in an eort to keep hostilities from escalating 

into unlimited warfare. Communist forces, lines of communication, 

and the limited petroleum industry were able to operate in a safe environment, while the targeting and destruction of the energy-based 

sector became more dicult and less ecient. e only way to have 

eliminated or marginalized the petroleum industrial base would have 

been to interdict it before it arrived for end use.39

e Gulf War

e bombing of Iraq during the Gulf War, described at the time as 

an air campaign against Iraq’s oensive military capabilities, was 

broader in its intent and target selection. During the 43-day air cam-
56 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

paign, the United States and its allies sought to achieve some of their 

strategic objectives by targeting the Iraqi society. e air campaign 

was not aimed solely at Iraq’s military, but included targets that were 

bombed primarily to create a potential postwar leverage over the 

Iraqi leadership rather than to inuence the course of the war itself. 

e planners sought to damage or destroy key infrastructure that 

could not be repaired or rebuilt without foreign assistance. ey selected a number of targets with the expectation that bombing them 

would amplify the impact of international economic sanctions on the 

Iraqi society, compelling Saddam Hussein to withdraw Iraqi forces 

from Kuwait to avoid a ground campaign.

Preliminary planning for an air campaign based on 27 strategic 

Iraqi targets in a notional “Southwest Asia contingency” plan began 

ve days aer Iraq invaded Kuwait. Revisions added additional targets, and when the air campaign began on 17 January 1991, the list 

included slightly more than 400 targets concentrated in an area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Additional intelligence gathered aer the war began and additional bombing capabilities expanded the target list to over 700 targets. e targets were divided 

into 12 sets: leadership; command, control, and communications; air 

defense; airelds; nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons; railroads and bridges; Scud missiles; conventional military production 

and storage facilities; oil facilities; electricity; naval ports; and Republican Guard forces.40 e majority of these target sets directly linked 

to Iraqi oensive military capabilities, but two categories—electrical 

and oil facilities—had a long-term impact on the Iraqi populace.

Of the more than 700 targets on the expanded list, 28 were identi-

ed as key nodes of the electrical power grid. e United States and 

its allies ew 215 sorties against the electrical infrastructure using 

unguided bombs, cruise missiles, and laser-guided bombs. At least 

nine targets were transformers, each estimated to take a year to repair. Other targets included main generator halls, with an estimated 

ve-year repair time. Between the sixth and seventh days of the air 

campaign, the Iraqis shut down what remained of their national electrical power grid. By the end of the war, 17 of 20 Iraqi generating 

plants were damaged or destroyed; 11 were determined to be total 

losses. Within four months of the war’s end, Iraq’s electrical power 

grid had reached only 20 to 25 percent of its prewar capacity of 9,000 

to 9,500 megawatts, roughly its 1920 generating capacity before reliance on refrigeration and sewage treatment became widespread.41
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 57

Bombing some of the electrical facilities did reinforce other strategic 

goals while weakening air defenses and communications between 

Baghdad and its eld army.

Attacks on Iraqi oil facilities resulted in a similar combination of 

military and civilian eects. Coalition air forces dropped an estimated 1,200 tons of explosives in 518 sorties own against 28 oil infrastructure targets.42 e planners intended to obtain complete cessation of rening capability without damaging or destroying most of 

Iraq’s crude oil industrial base. ey believed the lack of rened petroleum products would deprive the Iraqi military of its ability to maneuver. Among the oil facilities targeted were major storage tanks, 

gas and oil separators, distilling towers, and pipelines. e target set 

included the major K2 pipeline junction near Baiji connecting the 

northern Iraq oil elds, an export pipeline to Turkey, and a reversible 

north-south pipeline inside Iraq.43 All three of Iraq’s large, modern 

reneries—the 110,000 barrel-a-day Daura facility outside Baghdad, 

the 150,000 barrel-a-day Basrah renery, and the 300,000 barrel-aday Baiji facility in northern Iraq—were attacked.44 e Daura and 

Basra reneries were badly damaged early in the air campaign; the 

Baiji renery was not bombed until its nal days.

In a potentially protracted war, destroying Iraq’s ability to rene oil 

and produce ammunition, as well as its stockpiled reserves, made 

sense. At the same time, US Air Force planners sought only to damage temporarily Iraq’s economic infrastructure by precisely targeting 

easy-to-replace elements of key facilities rather than destroying those 

facilities outright. ese plans were thwarted by the military community’s deeply ingrained standard operating procedures. Wary of 

underestimating Iraq, air planners inicted massive damage on the 

country’s economic infrastructure. e Gulf War also highlighted the 

unforeseen consequences of disrupting the highly interconnected 

critical infrastructure of a modern industrialized country. Attacks on 

dual-use power facilities caused cascading damage throughout the 

water purication and sanitation systems, exacerbating a public 

health crisis.45

e United States and its allies, using unguided bombs, cruise missiles, and precision-guided munitions, hit the targets they intended 

to hit: electrical facilities, oil reneries, and the sustaining distribution networks. For the US Air Force, the Gulf War demonstrated 

what airpower strategists and proponents had argued since Billy 

Mitchell published Winged Defense in 1925: airplanes could defeat an 
58 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

enemy by ying over its defensive perimeter and directly attacking its 

economic, energy, and military cores. is war also showed why the 

indirect eects of airpower must be planned in the same level of detail as the direct ones.

In the years following the Gulf War, these lessons were rapidly incorporated into targeting policy. During the four-day Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, air planners focused strikes on command, 

control, and intelligence targets rather than on dual-use infrastructure. ey destroyed numerous Ba’ath security, intelligence, and military targets while sparing power and telephone systems. e sole energy infrastructure target, authorized aer hard bargaining by 

planners, was an oil renery linked to smuggling. It was temporarily 

crippled in a strike that disabled the site for six months while minimizing pollution. US Army attack helicopters played an important 

role in the plan for Desert Fox and the deployments and contingency 

plans that preceded it, such as Desert under in January 1998. Five 

months aer Desert Fox, new types of munitions were used during 

Operation Allied Force to disable Serbian electrical networks, greatly 

reducing permanent damage.46

Iraq in 2003

e Iraqi military had been greatly reduced by early 2003. e operational problem was how to overcome quickly a static Iraqi defense 

to support a high-intensity ground war beginning almost simultaneously with an air campaign. In such a situation, slowly maturing attacks on Iraqi dual-use industrial infrastructure would not be particularly useful from a military point of view.47 US leaders, policy 

makers, strategists, and planners recognized that targeting certain 

forms of economic and energy infrastructure causes more disruption 

to civilians than to the enemy military and reduces the risk to allied 

forces. Moreover, such attacks may cause collateral damage, a particularly sensitive issue given the uncertain US mandate for war. Air 

attacks against dual-use facilities were automatically assumed to 

cause collateral damage and required special authorization to be included in the target sets.

When Saddam refused to abdicate power and leave Iraq in 2003, 

US and coalition forces launched an attack on the morning of 20 

March. US aircra dropped several precision-guided bombs on a 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 59

bunker complex where the Iraqi president was believed to be meeting 

with senior sta. is was followed by a series of air and cruise missile strikes directed against government and military installations. US 

and coalition forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait in the south and from 

the sea. In southern Iraq, US forces advancing northward faced the 

greatest resistance from irregular groups of Ba’ath Party supporters 

known as Saddam’s Fedayeen. British forces, deployed around the 

southern city of Al-Basrah, faced similar resistance from paramilitary and irregular ghters. Despite fears that Iraqi forces would engage in a scorched-earth policy, destroying bridges, dams, critical 

infrastructure, and setting re to Iraq’s southern oil wells, retreating 

Iraqi forces did little damage. In fact, large numbers of Iraqi troops 

simply chose not to resist the advance of coalition forces. Securing 

the oil infrastructure was very important to mitigate damage done at 

the end of the Gulf War. While retreating from Kuwait, the Iraqi army 

set numerous oil wells on re in an attempt to disguise troop movements and distract coalition forces. Prior to the 2003 invasion, Iraqi 

forces mined some 400 oil wells around Basrah and the Al-Faw peninsula with explosives.

Coalition forces launched an air and amphibious assault on the 

Al-Faw peninsula on 20 March to secure the oil elds. Warships of 

the UK Royal Navy, Navy of the Republic of Poland, and Royal Australian Navy supported the amphibious assault. e US 15th Marine 

Expeditionary Unit, a special forces unit of the Republic of Poland, 

and the UK Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade attacked and captured the port facilities of Umm Qasr and Az Zubayr to destroy Iraqi 

resistance and enable follow-on humanitarian assistance. ey encountered heavy resistance by Iraqi troops. Meanwhile the British 

Army’s 16 Air Assault Brigade secured the oil elds in southern Iraq 

while Polish commandos and Navy SEALs captured oshore oil platforms, preventing their destruction. Despite the rapid advance of the 

invasion ground forces, about 44 oil wells were destroyed and set 

ablaze by Iraqi explosives or by incidental re.48 Coalition forces 

quickly capped the wells and extinguished the res, preventing the 

ecological damage and loss of oil production capacity that occurred 

at the end of the rst Gulf War. e swi invasion led to collapse of 

the Iraqi government and its military forces in about three weeks, allowing coalition forces to seize and secure the Iraqi oil infrastructure 

with only limited damage.
60 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

Final Analysis and a Look to the Future

When ghting an unlimited war requiring years of combat to defeat an enemy, destroying the enemy’s energy infrastructure makes 

sense. Such targeting may be inappropriate in a limited war against a 

nation where the populace is not free to alter its leadership. In either 

type of warfare, the energy infrastructure is targeted because the nation 

and its citizens heavily depend on it. Strategists and planners will 

continue to see the energy target sets as leveraged. From a military 

perspective, electricity is indispensable and impossible to stockpile. 

Damaging or destroying removes the supply immediately, and backup 

sources are neither powerful nor reliable enough to replace the lost 

facilities. Targeting lessons learned during previous wars are still being applied and include the need to 

• ask if energy is always a primary target,

• question if only certain aircra or platforms can attack certain 

targets, 

• obtain eective and actionable intelligence at both the tactical 

and strategic levels, 

• consider the potential postwar impacts or ramications of targeting energy infrastructure, 

• and prepare to plan around or address the presence of sanctuaries.

In planning for the future, one logically seeks to use past experience combined with current intelligence. is study of targeting energy infrastructure is no dierent. is strategy is probably recognized as useful in an unlimited war but one may question its 

eectiveness during a limited war.

Petroleum-based energy is not likely to be replaced by any alternative energy sources for military use in the short term. Cost will not 

be the limiting factor, but rather the lack of a developed industrial 

base to sustain the alternative energy sources. Given the varying utility of targeting energy in past conicts, will it remain a valid target in 

the future? e answer is an overwhelming yes. As the Gulf War and 

Iraq in 2003 have demonstrated, energy will remain a critical target 

in future conicts. Since time is of the essence in limited warfare, it 

makes sense to target selected energy infrastructure. However, leaders 
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 61

and planners must not overlook the possibility of a protracted war 

that becomes unlimited. To meet these conditions, a exible targeting 

methodology must be used to achieve immediate or long-term eects 

as required. at methodology would be to rst strike military tactical targets for immediate eect and then strike critical elements of the 

energy supply chain. e sources for energy products should only be 

struck last, should the need arise. Retired US Army colonel Douglas 

A. Macgregor sums up the implications for future policy makers, 

commanders, strategists, and planners:

Senior ocers on the operational level are central to the drama that translates 

strategic goals into tactical action. ey must not only constantly link the strategic and tactical levels but comprehend the actions of their opponents in a 

similar context. How they interpret missions and employ their forces dominates operations.49

When discussing warfare, most people tend to think of force on 

force, soldier against soldier. Employing airpower against multiple 

target sets that include the energy infrastructure attacks everything 

that allows a nation to sustain itself. Understanding historical precedents is important in the success of any future targeting strategy, including that of a nation’s energy infrastructure. While a number of 

conicts are available for study, World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War, 

and Iraq in 2003 oer the best perspectives. In World War II, the Allies fought an unlimited war against Germany and Japan. In Vietnam, 

limited warfare had become the practice with the goal of avoiding 

unlimited warfare. Energy targeting in past wars has taught many lessons that are applicable today. 

• Strategic intelligence is a must.

• Doctrine is not a synonym for targeting.

• e risk of mirror imaging is a constant threat.

• e ability to gain air superiority is critical.

• Centers of gravity are not necessarily subject to attack.

• e indirect eects of airpower must be planned in the same 

level of detail as the direct ones.

• A plan must be developed to attenuate sanctuaries.

e fact remains that a nation’s energy sector is an extremely suitable target set today and in the future. Given current and future technological developments, it is possible to identify, target, interdict, seize, 
62 │ AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE

and, when required, destroy the critical components of a nation’s 

energy infrastructure, greatly enhancing the probability of victory.

Notes

1. US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Short-Term Energy Outlook.

2. Stokesbury, Short History of Air Power, 126.

3. Ibid., 172.

4. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 3–4.

5. Ibid., 4.

6. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 16.

7. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 4.

8. University of Leeds, British Strategic Bombing, 39.

9. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 4–5.

10. Ibid., 5.

11. T. Jones, 617 Squadron Operational Record Book 1943–1945, AIR 8/1238: Air 

Chief Marshall Charles Portal to Gen Sir Alan Brooke, letter, 27 March 1943, 11–14.

12. Ibid., AIR 27/2128, 20–21.

13. Foggo and Burke, “I Captured Proof.”

14. British Broadcasting Corporation, “1943: RAF Raid Smashes German Dams.” 

15. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 5–6.

16. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 21. 

17. Skelly, “References to Ploesti.”

18. Ibid.

19. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 26.

20. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 21–23. 

21. Ibid., 22.

22. Ibid., 22–23.

23. Ibid., 33.

24. Ibid., 33–34.

25. McMullen, “United States Strategic Bombing,” 41.

26. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 11.

27. Ibid., 33–34.

28. Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 85.

29. Ibid., 88.

30. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 12.

31. Clodfelter, Limits of Airpower, 90.

32. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 4, 60.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 109.

35. Ibid., 109–20.

36. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 3, 111.

37. Gravel, Pentagon Papers, vol. 4, 109–11.

38. American Heritage Dictionary.

39. Wuestho, “Utility of Targeting,” 15–16.

40. Gellman, “Allied Air War.”
AIRPOWER AND THE TARGETING OF A NATION’S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE │ 63

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. EIA, Iraq Energy Data.

45. Knights, “Infrastructure Targeting.”

46. Ibid.; and Mason, “US Army Apache Helicopters,” 7.

47. Knights, “Infrastructure Targeting.”

48. Dao, “Nation at War: Commandos”; Dao, “Nation at War: Navy Special Warfare 

Group”; Klare, “Oil War”; and “Battle for Al Faw.”

49. Macgregor, “Command and Control,” 32.
66 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

the country’s agriculture. en, aer the Soviet defeat, the Taliban’s 

“fundamental neglect of economic development” caused further 

damage.2

 e Afghan environment was also badly injured during 

these years. Environmental degradation is a serious problem because 

of Afghanistan’s reliance on agriculture. About 70 percent of Afghans’ 

foodstu and most of the country’s licit gross domestic product 

comes from agriculture despite having only 12 percent arable land.3

Environmental Problems

e two most signicant environmental problems are an enormous 

number of landmines and a pervasive water shortage. e Soviet invaders mined orchards and elds, eectively closing fertile land to cultivation and considerably reducing the amount of arable land.4

 Author 

and international development consultant Joel Hafvenstein noted, 

“Afghanistan as a whole was one of the most heavily mined countries 

on earth. e United Nations guessed it would take a decade just to 

clear the most dangerous areas.”5

 Mine removal has proceeded slowly. 

Many main roads are not yet cleared; rural elds are even less safe. e 

presence of so many landmines sharply reduces not only the amount 

of land available for cultivation, but also the ability of farmers to get 

products to market.

Lack of water also handicaps Afghanistan’s licit agriculture. e 

Soviet war, combined with a devastating multiyear drought, wreaked 

havoc. Many irrigation systems destroyed during the war have not 

been rebuilt. Much of the land is too dry for crops such as cotton and 

wheat. ese stresses on the soil helped start a cycle of desiccation 

and soil loss. Fruit trees that had not been shattered during the war 

died from lack of water, either because of the ruined irrigation systems or because of the drought itself. is die-o, in turn, led to erosion of the remaining soil.6

 For an economy dependent on agriculture, the extent of environmental damage from mines and lack of 

water has been an enormous handicap.

In the midst of these economic and environmental diculties, one 

crop has ourished: the opium poppy (Papaver somniforum). In some 

ways, opium is the best of all environmental and economic crops. Being easy to grow, transport, store, and monetize makes it an attractive 

crop for farmers and buyers. Hafvenstein asks, not entirely rhetorically, “How do you convince a farmer to give up the perfect crop?”7
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 67

is question needs to be answered to eradicate or even signicantly 

reduce the poppy trade in Afghanistan.

Poppy Cultivation

e environment of Afghanistan is very hospitable for poppies, 

making them relatively easy to grow and highly productive. “Afghanistan’s soils, climate, and altitude have also made its poppy cultivation 

more productive than is cultivation in other major opium-producing 

regions.”8

 Poppies do not require much fertile soil or irrigation, which 

makes them well suited for present-day Afghanistan. With so much 

soil o limits because of mines, and the remaining land oen arid, a 

plant that is not particularly nicky can become very attractive.

To grow poppies, farmers need almost no initial investment. Fertilizer may improve yields, but only a supply of seeds is necessary for 

a poppy eld. In contrast, “legal agriculture necessitates substantial 

prenancing, as irrigation and fertilizer are quite costly.”9

 Afghani 

farmers oen cannot aord products such as fertilizer, even if they 

have access to them. Poppies do not require such luxuries and do not 

require much time investment. Fruit trees may require years to produce marketable crops; poppies need just several months, from spring 

planting to fall harvest. Given the uncertainties of life in Afghanistan, 

this is no small advantage.

Labor is the main constraint in poppy cultivation. Labor requirements, however, are not much of a burden. Given the lack of other 

jobs, there is plenty of available labor. Furthermore, because poppies 

are grown at home, women can contribute their labor.10 Women are 

forbidden from working outside of the home under strict interpretations of Islam; poppy cultivation taps into this underused labor pool. 

Harvesting the resin is particularly labor-intensive. Itinerant workers 

score each seedpod individually, and very carefully, to extract all of 

the resin produced by each poppy ower. Once the resin is drawn 

from the poppies, it must be transported to local reneries for transformation into raw opium.

Transporting the resin is easier than transporting other agricultural products. Again, poppies show their suitability for Afghanistan. 

Many agricultural commodities would not survive the trip to market; 

poppy resin is a highly protable exception. e transportation network in Afghanistan is badly frayed. “Eighty percent of Afghanistan’s 
68 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

population lives in rural communities which are only thinly connected by roads.”11 Light, packable poppy resin need not travel over 

the roads. If the roads are impassable, farmers and trackers can 

load resin or raw opium onto all-terrain vehicles or even camels.

ere are few easy ways to get legal products to market, and the 

surcharges levied by those controlling the roads make many crops 

economically unattractive. Opium, however, always has access to the 

market since many people have great interest in getting the resin to 

where it needs to go. us, farmers are better able to monetize their 

crop of opium than, for example, their almonds. Trackers help 

them do this, “occasionally pick[ing] up raw opium directly from 

farmers, relieving them of the need to undertake an expensive trip to 

regional markets on a poor road system.”12

e resin’s durability is an advantage in storage as well. Raw opium 

requires no refrigeration, a major advantage in a country where even 

the capital city does not have reliable electricity. Only about 15 percent 

of the country has access to electricity; the percentage with 24-hour 

refrigeration is smaller still.13

Opium can be stored for many years.14 is durability allows suppliers to manipulate perceptions of availability. Huge stockpiles of 

opium may be little more than legends, but given opium’s durability, 

they are plausible.15

e ease of opium storage changes the economics of poppy production. is durability allows producers, or their agents, to manage 

carefully the amount of resin and opium coming to market to stabilize the price. is is similar to how the Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) manages the world oil supply. Hermann 

Kreutzmann, among others, believes that the Taliban’s dramatic cuts 

in Afghan poppy cultivation in 2001, so loudly announced in the 

press, may be an economically rational response to a glut rather than 

a religiously motivated prohibition. Prices quickly rose “tenfold the 

following year,” allowing opium dealers to make substantially more 

money than they would have before the ban.16 Year-by-year trends 

mean little given that the supply coming to market can be carefully 

managed; only steady, multiyear declines might indicate that total 

supply is decreasing.

e ease of growing, transporting, and storing resin does not alone 

make opium attractive. e nal and most important advantage that 

poppies have over other agricultural crops is that they are easy to 

monetize. Resin nds willing buyers; farmers benet economically 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 69

from selling the produce from their poppy elds. Disagreements exist 

about whether farmers are coerced into growing poppies, but even 

analysts who believe that cultivation is largely imposed admit that “at 

the same time, it holds true that poppy is a valuable cash crop which 

oers about ten times higher returns than wheat crops.”17 Furthermore, poppy cultivation is not limited to farmers trying to stave o 

destitution. “Growing poppies is . . . not simply about survival in the 

face of grinding poverty, but also upward mobility.”18 Even more af-

uent farmers nd the returns from poppies attractive.

Debt is another reason why some in Afghanistan grow poppies. e 

ease with which buyers can resell opium gum, the unprocessed harvest of the pods, has entrenched a sharecropping system in Afghanistan. Many farmers do not own their own land; some landlords pay 

well for poppy, and even forbid the growth of other crops.19

A cycle of indebtedness, known as the salaam system, traps even 

more farmers. ey presell their poppy crops before the growing season at below-market prices, receiving money and supplies to sustain 

them through the growth and harvest of a new crop, which the lender 

takes as payment.20 When the lender takes the crop, it can be resold at 

a substantial prot; there are always willing buyers. is structure has 

helped keep many small growers in the poppy business. Having many 

smaller suppliers gives purchasers a good deal more leverage; if one 

farmer balks at a price, plenty of others will agree to it. Many small 

producers mean that few poppy farmers can achieve any kind of 

leverage over the opium producers or exporters.

e bulk of the money does not accrue to the farmers but to the 

reners and trackers. “Narcotics tracking is regarded by some as 

[sic] core impediment to the US mission in Afghanistan, generating 

what US commanders estimate to be about $100 million per year for 

the Taliban.”21 is approximate number does not include money going to other subversives or criminals that are not part of the Taliban.

Aerial Interdiction

e poppy economy is only one aspect of an extremely complicated foreign policy problem for the United States: how to stabilize 

Afghanistan under a benign central government with a limited 

investment of money and manpower. e revenue from opium production ows to the Taliban, other antigovernment groups, and various 
70 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

criminals, all having dierent interests than those of the United 

States. Cutting o this funding source, given the limited US resources 

in Afghanistan, is a dicult problem. One proposal, seemingly 

straightforward, is to kill the poppies. Aerial eradication appears to 

be an attractive solution.

But one also has to consider the demands of a casualty-averse public. 

Aerial eradication ts this consideration. Manual eradication in rural 

Afghanistan is an extremely risky method for drug control. Even Afghanistan’s own soldiers have met resistance. “Predictably, the Afghan government eradication teams that actually attempted to carry 

out their orders, rather than simply accepting bribes, have frequently 

met with armed resistance from peasants, even in the restricted and 

relatively safe areas where they have been deployed.”22 US troops 

would face similar, if not more acute, resistance. Should casualties 

result from these operations, the political fallout could handicap US 

eorts in Afghanistan. Awkward questions about mission creep could 

arise. Even if there were no US casualties, the number of adversarial 

interactions between US troops and Afghani civilians could increase. 

is increase is, presumably, something the United States would 

rather avoid.

Finally, aerial eradication is very easy to explain and publicize. 

Charts and PowerPoint slides showing the number of acres sprayed, 

sorties own, and the gallons of chemical sprayed are clear, persuasive, and reassuring. Pictures of sprayed elds and dead plants seem 

to prove progress in the ght against the Taliban and illegal drugs.

Although aerial eradication might seem a plausible option for reducing the amount of poppy, the decision to spray herbicidal chemicals should be made cautiously. e United States has an unhappy 

history with aerial eradication and counterinsurgency (COIN). In 

early 1962, as part of Operation Ranch Hand, Pres. John F. Kennedy 

authorized the use of chemicals, primarily the arsenical Agent Blue, 

to destroy rice, manioc, and other food crops in South Vietnam.23 e 

rationale for this decision, supported by South Vietnamese president 

Ngo Dinh Diem was that aerial eradication would prevent crops from 

falling into the hands of National Liberation Front soldiers. e 

North Vietnamese forces would thus fail in their eorts to overthrow 

the South Vietnam government, in part because of lack of food.

e United States brought herbicides into South Vietnam in violation of the 1954 Geneva Agreements, which partitioned Vietnam 

along the 17th parallel and forbade foreign intervention in the country’s 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 71

war. e United States did not sign the agreement but pledged to uphold it. Since providing military equipment to either the North or the 

South was prohibited, the United States transported the chemicals in 

anonymous barrels, distinguished only by the colored bands around 

them. e South Vietnamese air force conducted the spraying missions, but the equipment, advisors, and chemicals were all American.

e scheme did not work. North Vietnamese soldiers and allies in 

the South got the food they required to wage war against the Diem 

government. Furthermore, the rural South Vietnamese whose lands 

were sprayed saw their elds die o, losing the produce from those 

elds. Understandably, these people resented the spray campaign.24

e United States was unable to hide its involvement in the operation, despite concerted eorts to do so.25 e perception that the 

United States was making war on Vietnamese peasants was very dif-

cult to counteract. It also undermined the legitimacy of the South 

Vietnam government at a time when that government was increasingly under threat.

Aerial eradication eorts in South Vietnam and in Afghanistan 

have some striking similarities. A sense of control over an unfamiliar 

and dangerous environment may be part of the attraction of an aerial 

spray campaign. ere are signicant environmental challenges to 

aerial spraying in each country—each has climate and weather extremes, and both environments are very dierent from those found 

in the United States. Spraying also entails using herbicides, which are 

powerful chemicals. Finally, in each case, aerial spraying makes up 

only one piece of a complicated COIN puzzle.

e United States has a long history of attempting to control frightening new lands. e Homestead Act of 1862 is the best-known example, 

but historians have documented others beginning from the earliest 

settlements.26 ese eorts have included settlement, forced migrations, and deforestation. e themes of reclamation and cleansing 

pervaded discussions of the South Vietnamese landscape. “Plans call 

for burning over the defoliated areas where they have dried out suf-

ciently. is will drive out any Viet Cong still taking cover there, and 

will facilitate later planned reclamation of much of the area for 

crops.”27 National Security Council member Robert Komer was 

blunter than most: “Aer Laos, and with Berlin on the horizon, we 

cannot aord to go less than all-out in cleaning up South Vietnam.”28

e same is true for Afghanistan. As in South Vietnam, the environmental and logistical challenges t within this larger narrative 
72 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

of American history: taking action to civilize a wilderness. In working with an Afghan ocer on an eradication campaign, a US contractor dismissed claims that it was too late in the growing season 

for eradication.29

Battling the environments in South Vietnam and Afghanistan has 

proved formidable because they are both so extreme and dierent 

from any found in the United States. e United States has no ecosystems like those found in South Vietnam. e US Air Force tested 

its spray equipment at Eglin AFB on the North Florida coast; however, the tropical plants and the extreme heat, rain, and humidity of 

South Vietnam are not found in Florida or anywhere else in the 

United States.

e punishing climate of southern Afghanistan, with blistering 

hot days and freezing nights, is found only in the western US deserts; 

this area does not share Afghanistan’s challenging terrain. One senior 

Defense Department ocial observed that

Getting into Afghanistan, which we need to do as quickly as we can possibly 

do it, is very dicult because . . . next to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably 

the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to 

ght a war. . . . It’s landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, 

much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, dierent geography.30

A more prosaic diculty with spraying in South Vietnam or Afghanistan is the climate’s eects on equipment. In South Vietnam, the US 

Air Force was initially unprepared for the demands of triple-digit 

heat and torrential rains on its spraying equipment. e equipment 

soon malfunctioned under the strain. e climate in Afghanistan, although obviously very dierent, is also wearing. Extremes of heat and 

cold, combined with dust that works its way into all machinery, take 

a toll on aircra and equipment. Furthermore, because Afghanistan 

is landlocked, access to fuel and spare parts is very limited.

Locating poppy elds is not dicult. ey can “[stretch] as far as 

the eye could see: intense fuchsia blossoms in brilliant seas of green.”31

Rice paddies are an almost surreal green; they, too, are easy to spot. 

Precise application of herbicide, however, is considerably more di-

cult than just locating the elds. Temperature, wind patterns, and local 

ecology are only three of the factors that can determine where exactly 

the sprayed chemicals land.32 In the southern United States, a region 

Americans understood better than South Vietnam, controlling forest 

growth through spraying proved almost prohibitively dicult. In 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 73

South Vietnam, the herbicides’ instability became apparent even before they were loaded onto the planes. Fumes from chemicals stored 

at Tan Son Nhut Air Base killed surrounding vegetation, including 

two ame trees. Even empty barrels were unsafe; about 1 percent of 

the chemical remained aer the contents were emptied, and this 

small percentage was enough to kill plants near the barrel.33

Perhaps the most important similarity is that, in each case, aerial 

eradication makes up only part of a larger COIN eort. In addition to 

evaluating the ecacy and practicality of aerial interdiction by itself, 

decision makers had to grapple with how this tactic might aect the 

achievement of broader goals. To complicate matters further, decisions about interdiction competed with decisions not just about other 

COIN tactics, but also with choices about broad COIN strategies—as 

well as with policy decisions in other parts of the world. A decision to 

use aerial herbicides is complicated, but it is only one piece of a 

complex problem, which in turn is embedded in challenges. is 

was true for the United States in South Vietnam and is also true for 

eorts in Afghanistan.

Within this context, aerial eradication can imply a level of US 

commitment that does not exist. Spraying can send misleading messages about what the United States is willing to do. e public images 

of spraying suggest that nothing is o limits. e starkness of sprayed 

rice paddies or a bare eld may imply that the United States is prepared to go as far as needed in its COIN eorts. is was not the case 

in South Vietnam and is not the case in Afghanistan. e illusion that 

these chemicals signify some sort of commitment aects US allies 

and adversaries. One proponent of spraying wrote in the New York 

Times that US allies should “help in [an aerial eradication] eort or 

stand down and let us do the job.”34 Given the self-imposed limits on 

the US eorts in Afghanistan, this stance may lead to a role that the 

United States is not willing to play.

Even a relatively limited commitment may prove dicult. e ostensible goal in both countries is to change the behavior of the local populace through eradication. In South Vietnam, the goal was that rural 

Vietnamese would not supply the insurgents; in Afghanistan, the goal 

is that farmers will not grow poppies. According to some proponents, 

total eradication may not be needed to lead to changes in behavior. 

Douglas Wankel, a former Drug Enforcement Agency ocial who is 

now a private US government contractor, led an eradication campaign in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province. He notes,
74 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

We’re not able to destroy all the poppy—that’s not the point. What we’re trying 

to do is lend an element of threat and risk to the farmers’ calculations, so they 

won’t plant next year. . . . It’s like robbing a bank. If people see there’s more 

money to be had by robbing a bank than by working in one, they’re going to 

rob it, until they learn there’s a price to pay.35

In South Vietnam, the United States was equally condent in predictions about the eects of spraying. At a high-level conference on Vietnam on 23 July 1962,

[Gen Paul D.] Harkins outlined for the conferees the plan developed in Saigon 

and explained that elds abandoned by Montagnards as they moved to strategic 

hamlets needed to be sprayed in order to keep those crops from falling into 

guerrilla hands. . . . e Secretary inquired of Ambassador Nolting as to 

whether crop destruction would cause negative propaganda inside South 

Vietnam. Nolting responded that destroying crops abandoned by Montagnards should cause no problem.36

Nolting was wrong. A later RAND Corporation study indicated 

that defoliation and crop destruction had built widespread and lasting antipathy toward the United States. As far as many rural Vietnamese were concerned, outsiders, who previously did not intervene 

for good or bad, were suddenly deeply involved in their day-to-day 

aairs, determining what and where they could farm. Not surprisingly, many resented this sudden and heavy intrusion. A RAND study 

noted, “e reaction to spraying operations which destroy civilian 

crops is almost unanimously hostile.”37 Aerial spraying did inuence 

the local population but perhaps not always in the direction the United 

States preferred.

e same dynamic may hold true in Afghanistan. Rural South Vietnam and rural Afghanistan have long-standing traditions of local governance and a tenuous, if not hostile, relationship with their national 

government, a relationship that aerial spraying further erodes. Should 

spraying become widespread, many rural farmers, otherwise largely 

disconnected from the capital, would have their most direct contact 

with Kabul and Washington through the spray of a crop duster. is 

has already led to increased hostility toward the US and Afghan governments in sprayed areas.38 Estrangement from the central government provides opportunities for extra-governmental forces to build 

inuence and power. ese local actors have their own agendas, which 

may or may not match those of the Karzai government or the United 

States. Many are also deeply, and very protably, involved in the 

opium trade.39
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 75

Although the national government may be remote to rural dwellers, 

its survival is an important motive for aerial eradication. Internal 

forces threatened Diem’s regime in the early 1960s and the Karzai 

government currently. Crops targeted for eradication fund groups 

that undermine the stability and the very existence of the US-backed 

regime. Depriving the communists and their allies of food was clearly 

in the interest of the Diem government if the communists conquered 

South Vietnam. Pres. Hamid Karzai must cope with insurgencies and 

opponents that receive considerable revenue from the drug trade and 

are working to destroy his government.

Environmental Damage

Environmental damage is another potential consequence of aerial 

eradication. While most ocials in the early 1960s dismissed environmental safety, the issue receives a great deal more attention today. 

However, when discussing eradication in South Vietnam and Afghanistan, the public message is that herbicidal chemicals are perfectly safe. In the case of Vietnam, it is now quite clear that the United 

States sprayed poorly understood chemicals. Despite pronouncements that these agents were safe, insurance companies, environmental activists, and scientists all had questions (and reservations). 

As Rachel Carson warned of widespread damage from defoliants, 

Illinois insurance companies tightened underwriting standards for 

farmers who used these chemicals.40 e academic and corporate 

scientic communities also had persistent concerns.41

In the debate over eradication in Afghanistan, the Bush administration expressed condence that poppies could be killed with no unanticipated environmental consequences. omas Schweich, a senior 

counternarcotics ocial in the administration, dismissed concerns: 

“Drug lords use [glyphosate] in their gardens in Kabul. . . . My assistant at the time was a Georgia farmer, and he told me that his father 

mixed glyphosate with his hands before applying it to their orchards.” 

Others, however, are not so sanguine. Studies indicate that various 

formulations of glyphosate can persist in the soil and have been 

linked to cell damage.42 e impact of glyphosate on an environment 

as degraded as Afghanistan’s can only be guessed.

e eradication dilemma in Afghanistan diers from the one in 

South Vietnam because the situation in Afghanistan is geometrically 
76 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

more complicated. Opium interdiction is a problem aecting US policies regarding not only Afghanistan, but also Pakistan and Iran (two 

major transit points for Afghani opium) and Great Britain, the NATO 

ally responsible for counternarcotics in Afghanistan under the 2001 

Bonn Agreement.43 e phrase “ghting the Taliban” simplies the 

problem to meaninglessness. e Taliban are involved in the drug 

trade, but to what extent has been disputed for years. In addition, 

other people and organizations are proting from illegal opium; some 

are aliated with the Taliban, and some are not.

Karzai’s position in Afghanistan is even more compromised than 

was Diem’s. Karzai has active political opposition; by 1961, Diem had 

neutralized most of his. Karzai’s vulnerability may obviate his willingness to allow aerial spraying. Any negative eects may be blamed 

on his government, weakening it still further. Antigovernment forces, 

in their eorts to show the Karzai government as uncaring and a 

Western puppet, can use consequences that may be tangentially 

linked to spray campaigns. Should there be a bad harvest or another 

drought, opponents might plausibly argue that the United States, 

aided and abetted by the Afghan government, caused it.

e depth of the Karzai family’s involvement in the drug trade also 

poses problems. ere are swirling rumors about the complicity of 

the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, in the illegal drug trade. 

Another brother has substantial investments in property and car 

dealerships in areas rife with illegal drug activity.44 e vast majority 

of Afghan poppy cultivation takes place in the southern provinces, 

especially Helmand, which are the base of Karzai’s support. Spraying 

poisonous chemicals on the elds of his Pashtun countrymen may 

not be a high priority for Karzai.

e United States would have to be visibly and publicly responsible for spraying, unlike in Vietnam. Aerial spraying in Afghanistan 

would have to occur without the comforting ction that it was an 

activity performed and controlled by Afghanistan’s own sovereign 

government. In Vietnam, the United States kept its national ngerprints o of the spraying operations to the greatest extent possible. 

e US Embassy in Saigon, the US Information Agency, and the State 

Department made elaborate plans to deect responsibility for defoliation and crop destruction onto the government of South Vietnam.45

Even this pretence would be impossible in Afghanistan; the US role 

in spraying would be enormous and obvious. is would forestall 

charges of duplicity but make conclusions about meddling and war 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 77

making on the Afghan people quite easy to draw. One author observed that “even if a private company such as DynCorp, which has 

experience spraying in Colombia, carried out such an operation secretly and both the Kabul government and the international community denied any knowledge or authorization, the United States, which 

controls Afghanistan’s air space, would inevitably receive the blame 

as a bully sentencing poor Afghan Muslims to starvation.”46

Instead of evading the Geneva Agreements’ restrictions, as it did 

in South Vietnam, the United States would have to manage its allies’ 

prohibitions on defoliant and herbicide use to undertake an aerial 

eradication program in Afghanistan. is is a big disadvantage, given 

the importance of allied troops in Afghanistan. John Lee Anderson in 

e New Yorker observed, “e Europeans are adamantly opposed [to 

chemical spraying]—just look at the whole genetically-modied-crop 

debate in Europe. If they decided to spray over the next few months, 

we would need to have an information campaign on spraying, telling 

the Afghans they’re not going to have two-headed babies, but also 

telling them so in Europe, in e Hague, and in Rome.”47 e United 

States dropped leaets during Operation Ranch Hand, but there was 

still lasting public relations damage. In the case of spraying poppies, 

public backlash and a reduction or withdrawal of coalition troops 

could hamper the overall eort in Afghanistan.

A saying commonly attributed to the Taliban is, “e Americans 

have watches, but we have time.”48 is may describe the COIN campaign in general, but it is almost certainly true in the case of aerial 

eradication. In South Vietnam, spraying a rice paddy could kill the 

plants and reduce the insurgents’ supply of rice for that season. In 

Afghanistan, the time horizons of a spray campaign, focused on immediate and visible results, versus those of a tracker are very dierent. 

Killing poppies is an ambiguous achievement. Even if an entire eld 

is eradicated, the supply-and-demand dynamics of opiates make this 

almost irrelevant. If the supply of resin goes down materially, then 

middlemen should be able to rebalance the market by processing and 

selling the previously stored product. If the supply of illegal drugs 

declines, then the dominant suppliers and dealers would pick up 

market share at the expense of less powerful ones, as happens in legal 

and illegal industries alike. e rice elds of Vietnam lled a very different economic role, one that did not generate extraordinary revenues 

or prots and did not attract numerous competing buyers or sellers.
78 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

To reduce poppy cultivation in the near and far term will take a 

multiyear eort and have steep environmental costs. Because poppies 

are an annual crop and their resin so easy to store, spray campaigns 

would have to happen every year to kill that year’s crop and force existing stockpiles into the market to meet demand. e repeated application of powerful chemicals could have a serious impact on the Afghan environment, making it even more dicult to replace poppies 

with other crops. In the worst case, as occurred in parts of South Vietnam, the landscape becomes sterilized.49 Under these conditions, crop 

substitution becomes impossible. e damage from herbicides on Afghanistan’s soil, already taxed by decades of war, could be considerable. 

Whatever eects glyphosate or other herbicides might have on elds in 

the southern United States, those eects may not remain the same in 

such a radically dierent, and compromised, environment.

e role of money is the biggest dierence in the cases of Afghanistan and South Vietnam. In Afghanistan, the money the crops generate 

nances crime and corruption throughout the Middle East and 

Central Asia. e targeted crops in South Vietnam were not as valuable, did not have as wide a market, and easily reached consumers. 

Rice required relatively little processing aer harvest, and manioc 

required none. Communist troops could seize harvests, or even 

elds, and gain a food supply that did not require much further eort.

Poppies, on the other hand, do not have much value when still in 

the eld. e real money is made and the largest benets accrue once 

the resin is harvested and rened. Each step in the process adds value 

and generates revenue for the growers, harvesters, or reners. e 

poppies are not moneymakers. ese funds go, if only in part, to fund 

the Taliban.50

e amount of money generated by poppies severely distorts the 

Afghan economy because it makes up so much of the country’s total 

revenue. As Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books described 

the situation: “ere is almost no economic activity in the country, 

aside from international aid and the production of illegal narcotics.”51

To complicate matters further, a signicant percentage of that international aid comes into Afghanistan to ght the illegal drug trade. 

Alternate sources of income would need to make up the shortfall 

from aid reduction as well as from poppy reduction.

Aerial eradication would aect rural citizens before it aected 

nongovernmental organizations. Money is why farmers grow poppies, and for some, the loss of a poppy crop might drive them more 
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 79

deeply into debt.52 Gretchen Peters, a journalist who has worked extensively to understand and document the problem, puts it bluntly: 

“Wide-scale spraying would play into the hands of trackers and terrorists. If implemented, this policy would drive up opium prices, thus 

increasing prots for drug dealers and the Taliban, and make life 

even harder for already debt-ridden Afghan farmers—exactly the results the US government and NATO don’t want.”53

All of this is not to say that eradicating the poppies and damming 

the ow of money and illegal drugs are not worthwhile goals. However, depending on how this goal is dened, aerial eradication may 

not be an eective route toward achieving it. e rst question that 

must be asked is what does success look like? is question has 

dogged US eorts in Afghanistan, and not just in the context of 

poppies or spraying.

If the goal is stability, depending on how that word is dened, poppies may help rather than hinder. A certain level of safety and predictability is necessary for economic transactions to occur, whether 

legal or illegal. Hafvenstein implies that poppies may not be the force 

for anarchy they seem to be. “Our target area was Helmand province, 

which was both an oasis of relative calm in the heart of the Taliban 

resistance and the foremost drug-producing region in the country.”

Poppies provide jobs, and jobs foster stability. As a rule, farmers 

are active, vigorous men. Insurgents target farmers who have no 

crops and few job prospects. If the insurgency has a ready supply of 

cash, perhaps from the illegal drug trade, it becomes even more attractive to a disaected and unemployed man. In rural Afghanistan, 

nonagricultural jobs are in short supply. Even in the few urban areas, 

jobs are limited, particularly for the majority of potential workers 

who are illiterate and unskilled.54

It is also unclear what the farmers would do with non-poppy crops. 

In order to monetize them, as they do poppies, they have to sell them. 

Other countries would need to open their markets to agricultural imports, a politically formidable goal given the power of the farm lobbies in the United States and Western Europe. Even getting agricultural crops to market within Afghanistan is a nearly insurmountable 

problem because of the lack of secure roads. Journeys are too dangerous 

and take too long to make economic sense.

Various local militias have taken root along with the poppies, promoting a sort of stability. ere remains a strong bias toward local 

governance, but not because local leaders have political legitimacy or 
80 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

local support. Rather, leaders may gain and hold their positions 

through the buildup of private militias, paid for through drug revenues. Furthermore, these same leaders, because of their inuence, 

may be particularly attractive to foreign intelligence services. An informer among their ranks could prove useful enough to justify, if not 

blindness, some myopia toward the ongoing production and sale of 

illegal drugs.

Aerial eradication is an imperfect solution to a dicult problem. 

e hurdles that the United States encountered in the early 1960s 

during another eradication campaign give some indication of just 

how challenging an Afghanistan campaign might be. In fact, spraying 

the poppy elds in Afghanistan would be an even more complicated 

campaign than crop destruction in South Vietnam.

is is not to say that aerial spraying could not play a role in 

breaking the cycle of indebtedness, unemployment, and violence 

that has taken hold. However, considerations about the appropriateness of spraying would have to include the potential economic 

and environmental eects of a successful campaign, however dened. 

If herbicides further damage the Afghanistan environment and 

farmers are le with even fewer choices of how to support themselves and their families, the results for Afghanistan and the United 

States could be devastating.

Notes

1. Because of the complexity and opaqueness of the illegal drug trade, this chapter 

does not rely on statistics about drug production, pricing, or use. David MacDonald, 

an advisor to the United Nations, rightly warns that “certainly all ocial estimates and 

gures emanating from Afghanistan, right up to the present day and whether collected 

by government or international agencies, are subject to wide variation and should be 

treated with caution.” MacDonald, Drugs in Afghanistan, xxii.

2. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 56.

3. Glaze, Opium and Afghanistan, 2.

4. Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 188.

5. Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 47.

6. Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 149–50.

7. Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 10.

8. Clemens, “Opium in Afghanistan,” 409.

9. Aras and Toktas, “Afghanistan’s Security,” 46.

10. Clemens, “Opium in Afghanistan,” 409.

11. Robichaud, “Buying Time in Afghanistan,” 8.

12. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 57.
THE FOREST AND THE TREES │ 81

13. Katzman, Afghanistan, 4.

14. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 57.

15. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 237.

16. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 613. Other authors who assert 

this include Hafvenstein, Opium Season, 215; Chayes, Punishment of Virtue, 85; and 

Blanchard, Afghanistan, 8.

17. Kreutzmann cites the World Drug Report 2006 (Vienna: United Nations Oce 

on Drugs and Crime, 2006), 212. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 609.

18. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 59.

19. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

20. Kreutzmann, “Afghanistan and the Opium,” 617; and Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

21. Katzman, Afghanistan, 20.

22. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 62.

23. Stellman et al., “Extent and Patterns of Usage,” 682. 

24. Betts and Denton, Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction, xi–xii.

25. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 23.

26. See, for example, Cronon, Changes in the Land; Nye, America as Second Creation; 

and E. Morgan, American Slavery.

27. National Security Files, Countries—Vietnam, Box 203, Subjects—Summary 

of Suggested Courses of Action (1961), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (JFKL).

28. US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 236.

29. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.”

30. Mufson and Pincus, “Major Challenges for Pentagon.”

31. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 2.

32. Burns, “Use of Aircra for Foliar Applications,” 92.

33. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 39; and Stellman et al., “Extent and 

Patterns of Usage,” 685.

34. Schweich, “Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?”

35. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.”

36. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 72.

37. Betts and Denton, “An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction,” 13.

38. Van Ham and Kamminga, “Poppies for Peace,” 72.

39. Giustozzi, “War and Peace Economies,” 82.

40. Carson, Silent Spring, 60–61; and “14th Custom Spray School.” 

41. For examples, see McDermid, ed., Use of Chemicals; and Mullison, “Volatility 

of Several Salts,” 287.

42. Albers et al, “Inuence of Organic Matter”; and Benachour and Séralini, 

“Glyphosate Formulations.”

43. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 8.

44. Katzman, Afghanistan, 10.

45. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, 28–29; Telegram #235, Edward Murrow to 

Frederick Nolting, 11 March 1963, National Security Files, Countries, Vietnam, General, 

3/1/62–3/17/63, Box 197, Document 12, 1, 2, JFKL; and Telegram #497 from Rusk to 

Nolting, 14 November 1962, National Security Files, Countries, Vietnam, General, 

11/11/62–11/25/62, Box 197, Doc 1, JFKL.

46. Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan,” 63.

47. Anderson, “Taliban’s Opium War.” 
82 │ THE FOREST AND THE TREES

48. Robichaud, “Buying Time in Afghanistan,” 1. 

49. David Biggs (professor of Southeast Asian and environmental history, University 

of California, Riverside), personal communication, 11 September 2009.

50. Katzman, Afghanistan, 20.

51. Stewart, “Irresistible Illusion,” 3.

52. Blanchard, Afghanistan, 9.

53. Peters, Seeds of Terror, 7.

54. Katzman, Afghanistan, 52.
84 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

functions, and (2) whether or not there are meaningful environmentally relevant roles these security establishments could eectively 

play. In the rst decade, neither question was denitively answered by 

existing theory or practice.

is chapter proposes partial answers to the second question. It 

does not delve deeply into the topic of evolving military roles and 

missions. It avoids a treatment of civil-military relations and oers no 

conclusions as to the propriety of employing military institutions in 

pursuit of society’s environmental ends. Instead, it identies some 

roles that militaries could play if asked to do so.

Military establishments are not homogeneous in composition or 

in function. e assessment taken here is much more enlightening if 

focused on the capabilities of particular organizational actors. Hence 

the chapter spotlights the potential role of airpower—and the contribution that a relatively sophisticated air force could make—to environmental ends. Likewise, environmental activities do not occur in a 

vacuum but in particular places. Application of airpower is meaningful only if contextualized to the political realities of a natural and cultural environment. Some of the world’s most trenchant environmental dilemmas—and some of the most hopeful prospects for progress 

on environmental issues—can be found in developing countries in 

southern Africa. at region is the geographic focus for this chapter, 

with the implication that at least some of what is true for southern 

Africa will apply elsewhere (with appropriate contextual adjustment).

Security Sector not Spared

Since the mid 1980s, a substantial worldwide discourse has 

emerged on the security implications of environmental issues.1

 Some 

scholars have challenged the notion that security and the environment should be linked, but those scholars represent a minority view 

that does not generate much current traction.2

 Rather, the world’s 

leaders now recognize that environment plays a role in virtually all 

national and international eorts to promote long-term development, reduce destabilizing want, and attenuate violent conict.3

Security agencies have not been exempt from this international environmental conversation. Many governments have looked to the security sector for some environmentally related activity. National intelligence organizations increasingly are asked to assess the political and 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 85

security implications of environmental trends. Police agencies and 

judiciaries enforce growing bodies of environmental law. Defense 

establishments are held to ever-stricter standards of environmental 

accountability, as are broader international military coalitions. Both 

the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now publish environmental policy guidance for military operations.4

 Some governments have harnessed their militaries 

to environmental ends, as evident in the antipoaching operations of 

countries like Botswana, Brazil, and Mozambique.

What has not emerged to date is any substantial advocacy for the 

targeting of military establishments at wide-ranging environmental 

ends. No military constituency has made a strong public case for its 

greater involvement in environmental issues.5

 With a handful of exceptions, national governments have not assigned prominent environmental roles and missions to armed forces.6

 In fact, it is easy to 

anticipate the complaints of military leaders if their organizations suddenly were saddled with such responsibilities, as well as the complaints 

of environmental activists worried about militarizing the environment.

Yet the fact that militaries have not engaged in sophisticated environmental roles does not suggest that they are incapable of performing them. At various times in human history military establishments 

undertook signicant shis in function and ethos to successfully address the peculiar needs of sovereign or society. Twenty-rst-century 

airmen would do likewise if directed. However, airpower and the 

environment probably do not give an initial impression of signi-

cant overlap. Making the case that they could requires a brief excursion into the nature of airpower and contemporary thinking about 

the environment.

Implications of Airpower

Western military scholarship still respects the dicta of nineteenthcentury Prussian thinker Carl von Clausewitz, and none of his writing is more oen quoted than “war is . . . a true political instrument, 

a continuation of political activity by other means.”7

 In this line of 

reasoning, neither military establishments nor their capabilities are 

ends in themselves, but means to larger political ends. e same is 

true of more narrowly delimited military capabilities like airpower. 

No matter how that capability may be dened, a Clausewitzian paradigm 
86 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

would classify it simply as one among many military capacities employed by a nation-state within a range of policy instruments available to pursue its national interests.

A standardized international denition of airpower is somewhat 

problematic. Each nation maintains a unique inventory of interests 

and parcels military roles and responsibilities rather dierently. Military establishments exhibit distinctive national traditions, structures, 

and doctrine, so a denition is partially dependent on peculiar historical and cultural circumstances. However, a universally acceptable 

and minimalist denition of airpower would identify its one key feature: an ability to use the atmosphere as the peculiar medium in 

which a security-related end is pursued (or the atmosphere as a medium 

that is leveraged to apply a military capacity). Western militaries add 

the dimension of space to the notion of airpower, inferring a concern 

for missiles, satellites, and other space vehicles (and the protection 

from threats posed by such vehicles).8

e notion of airpower itself has certainly not been static, generating a continuing spate of controversies. Aerial reconnaissance of the 

battleeld dates back to manned balloons. But the advent of powered 

ight in the early twentieth century shied the focus to the packaging 

and delivery of coercive power. Early airpower debates centered on 

emphasizing the priorities for delivering that coercion: whether priority should be given to the direct support of ground forces, defense 

from adversary use of the air, or attack on the adversary heartland. 

World War I experiences contributed to erce controversies on these 

issues, propelled by men like Giulio Douhet in Italy, Hugh Trenchard 

in the United Kingdom, and Billy Mitchell in the United States.9

World War II intensied the earlier obsession with delivery of coercive 

power—US airpower ultimately delivered the most lethal technology 

of that era—but also sowed the seeds of other important roles, including strategic aerial reconnaissance and the airli of men and materiel.

ese new airpower roles matured during the Cold War. Delivery 

of coercive power at the tactical, theater, and strategic levels remained 

a key concern, although airmen per se were not always in charge of 

this function.10 In America, and elsewhere, airmen typically bore 

much of the responsibility for protecting the heartland from aerial 

attack, though responsibilities for air defense were scattered among 

ground, air, and sea services. Despite some dispersion of tactical aerial 

surveillance responsibilities, airmen and airpower continue to play a 

large and growing role in surveillance and reconnaissance. For its 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 87

part, strategic surveillance in the developed countries tends to be an 

airpower function shared with—and overseen by—national intelligence services. Short-range tactical air transport (emphasizing rotarywing aircra) is oen a ground forces function, while airmen ying 

xed-wing aircra continue to dominate the longer-range airli and 

continue to control strategic aerial transport, along with the logistics 

and communications to support it.11

Evolving new roles endow airpower with attributes most relevant to 

this discussion. During the Cold War, the worldwide scope of strategic 

attack, strategic li, and strategic surveillance pushed American Airmen to develop broad, global perspectives. In the wake of the Cold 

War, a proliferation of international interventions in complex humanitarian emergencies around the world almost inevitably resorted 

to US strategic airpower. is placed demands not only on the technological and managerial prowess of US Airmen, but also upon their 

ability to work eectively with coalition partners, international humanitarian organizations, and host-nation civil societies.

Along with the interventions by international coalitions in complex humanitarian emergencies came an increasing emphasis on taking care of people—human populations traumatized by violence or 

natural disaster. ose activities included at least some concern for 

conict management along with the provision of materiel for basic 

human needs and delivery of emergency health care. By 2010 the US 

Air Force had developed a well-rened and tested tactical capability 

to quickly install the management of such functions “on the ground” 

through activation and deployment of a contingency response group.

Aer 2001 US involvement in conicts in Iraq and Afghanistan 

brought an expansion of US military roles into activities which may 

loosely be characterized as national reconstruction. Airmen, along 

with other military personnel, were heavily involved with the details 

of local government and civil society, assisting in providing both the 

physical and economic security required to rebuild the shattered lives 

of local communities and reestablishing the capability of security 

forces and the legitimacy of host-nation political authorities. 

America’s Airmen had acquired some responsibility for managing social 

change within civil societies.

Meanwhile, airpower’s location within the dimensions of air and 

space brought some interesting corollaries. By the early twenty-rst 

century, the ability to conduct military operations within these dimensions inferred considerable technological sophistication. e 
88 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

associated equipment was some of the most advanced ever produced. is equipment required intensive education for its operators as well as organizational and individual sophistication in the 

processes of production, elding, and maintenance. Twenty-rst 

century air operations demanded substantial management skill to 

oversee even the most routine activities.12

Airpower in developed nations also required a long-term focus. 

Technology was developed and applied in costly, long-term acquisition 

programs, generating sophisticated equipment which then remained 

in use for decades. Egregious acquisition errors inevitably squandered 

scarce resources and posed substantial security risks. ese factors dictated a clear requirement for higher-ranking airmen to see a future 

with some clarity and manage the risks with some dexterity.

Military leadership, whether in airpower or any other domain of 

military endeavor, heavily focuses on solving problems and overcoming obstacles—typically in circumstances of adversity, ambiguity, and 

intercultural complexity. Such roles demand a capacity to establish 

coherence and order in inherently disordered surroundings, along 

with signicant technological and management capabilities to overcome the problems. But the successful accomplishment of these roles 

also requires prociency in “people skills”: building teams, harmonizing eorts, and motivating diverse individuals and groups to work 

together towards common goals. Because of the unique technological 

demands and the unforgiving lethality of error, airpower demands a 

substantial inventory of all these skills. When brought into nonmilitary activities, the men and women in uniform who managed America’s 

air operations in peace and war generally have proven to be competent leaders, good organizers, and eective technical experts.13

When it comes to airpower per se, the managerial oversight and 

many of the actual operations are similar to other public sector activities. For instance, the same kind of expertise and equipment required for contingency planning and military airli is regularly applied to natural disaster response or to the surge capabilities of 

commercial mail carriers. Strategic air operations require robust, reliable, 

long-range logistics and communications capabilities which have obvious utility for rapid, long-range movement of any commodity. Air 

and space surveillance provides rapid warning of dangerous military 

adversaries but could also be used to track natural environment 

changes. For responsive reporting on atmospheric conditions, some 

air forces maintain their own weather services. In short, airpower 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 89

carries within it the seeds of many nonmilitary public and private 

sector functions.

Airpower’s unique, inherent capabilities also make it in many cases 

the military capability most suited to extending the reach of the state 

and enhancing its capabilities. Particularly in circumstances where 

infrastructure is underdeveloped or deteriorated (an all too common 

characteristic of the developing world), airpower provides national 

leaders with otherwise unequalled options for exible, rapid response 

to the remotest reaches of the state and beyond. In cases of dire national emergency, few institutions can equal a reasonably competent 

and well-equipped air force in supporting the symbolic and redistributive mandates of state power. e qualities required for typical 

roles in military management and leadership, along with the scientic and technical expertise required for eective deployment of airpower, suggest that senior airmen may be uniquely equipped among 

their public sector colleagues to assist in addressing a nation’s environmental priorities.

Dening Environment, Connecting Dots

e discussion earlier noted a lack of global consensus on environmental issues. Diculty in achieving that consensus may be due 

in large part to the loose conceptual boundaries of the domain itself.14 “Environmental” issues comprise an amorphous mass of assorted topics that do not always appear closely connected or even 

inherently related, and the issues elide easily into other domains 

such as health and livelihood. Although the boundaries of the eld 

are ambiguous, it is useful to identify several of the broader categories of environmental concerns before turning to a discussion of 

possible roles for airpower.

Natural resources comprise one area of environmental concern 

and are also subject to substantial controversy. (e resources themselves may range from minerals, to water, to ora and fauna in the 

natural environment, to soils, air, and other natural features.) Here, 

societies exhibit a variety of apprehensions. One is centered on rights 

to access—questions of legitimacy in exploiting the resources and the 

propriety of methods employed in that exploitation. is calls attention to some of the most dicult yet important roles played by political authorities—establishing societal consensus on rights of access 
90 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

to natural resources, achieving transparency and accountability in 

administering those rights, and distributing the associated benets so 

that the issues do not become politically destabilizing. A related question is how to preclude exploitation of natural resources by unauthorized actors. Another relates to conservation and sustainability—how 

to exploit natural resources in a responsible way that avoids, attenuates, or otherwise manages the problem of resource depletion.

An associated environmental concern is “biodiversity”—an interest in preserving and protecting the various forms of life on the 

planet. is is now increasingly based on a conviction that mankind 

is impoverished by the extinction of any form of life and by regret at 

the loss of potential contributions to human well-being. (A smaller 

but vocal ecocentric community argues for the criticality of biodiversity out of a conviction that all forms of life have an equal right to 

coexist with humankind.15) By the mid 1990s, biodiversity had become a mainstream concern within an attentive Western public sensitized to poaching of megafauna in Asia and Africa—with the very 

real prospect that wildlife species like the Siberian tiger and rhinoceros faced imminent extinction.16

Another topic overlapping “natural resources” is the natural environment’s capability to sustain human health and well-being—or to 

threaten it. As noted earlier, overuse depletes resources. e more 

immediate threat is the contamination of air, soils, and water resources which compromises their use for human livelihoods—imperiling human health or menacing food chains upon which humans 

are dependent. African environmental threats, such as drought, 

ooding, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and euence of toxic volcanic gasses, range widely.

Some environmental problems attack human populations directly. 

For instance, the natural environment in tropical zones incubates 

diseases that can take a devastating toll on the life or health of human 

populations, sometimes (as with the hemorrhagic fevers of central 

Africa) appearing with terrifying suddenness and lethality. Such diseases 

can also be quickly borne by human hosts along modern transportation 

routes directly into the population centers of the developed world. 

Some environmental threats emanate from unwise economic development practices, whether these are the toxic chemicals le over 

from mineral extraction, waste from electricity generation plants, or 

soils contaminated beyond use from accumulated salts in poorly 

managed irrigation schemes. Many threats arise from complicated 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 91

interactions of multiple factors, such as the depletion of atmospheric 

ozone and the resulting dangerous increases in ultraviolet radiation 

on the earth’s surface. Some environmental threats are stimulated by 

human activity; others are not.

Climate impacts many other environmental variables, and climate 

change has unsurprisingly become an issue of great concern as well as 

great controversy. In recent years the issue became entangled with 

global political wrangling over causality and responsibility. Greenhouse gasses, thought to be a primary cause, result mainly from the 

combustion of fossil fuels that powers the conveniences and industries of the world. International eorts to contain and reverse that 

combustion had proven relatively ineectual until 2010, but the issue 

had the attention of world leaders and an attentive international public. It was nonetheless apparent that real progress on this issue would 

require painful and politically fraught choices, where long-term benet demanded short and midterm sacrice.

Even a supercial overview of these various environmental domains and issues points to complex interconnectedness. Many of the 

categories signicantly overlap each other and also extend into other 

domains of human endeavor, whether economic development, subsistence, or quality of life. A satisfactory solution to virtually any single environmental dilemma requires a simultaneous resolution of 

problems stemming from the second- and third-order eects of that 

solution. Put another way, real progress in addressing environmental 

concerns almost inherently requires holistic “systems thinking” about 

all the impacted elds along with the capacity to achieve “buy-in” 

across aected communities of human actors. It also requires approaches that do not sacrice the future for the political convenience 

of the present. Here, the unique skills and understandings of military 

leaders may give them an advantage as contributors to the management of a society’s environmental equities. Military leaders (and particularly airmen) have a unique preparation among the professions 

for connecting scientic with technical expertise, people skills, and 

holistic long-range thinking to address problems that are partly 

anchored in the material universe and partly in the world of ideas 

and culture.
92 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

e Southern African Environmental Scene

e thought of Africa conjures up interesting and contrasting environmental stereotypes in the developed West. On one hand, the 

continent enjoys a quaint reputation for the richness of its fauna—

particularly the spectacular megafauna. On the other hand are images of catastrophe, environmental disaster, conict over resources, 

scarcity, disease, and human suering.17

Perhaps two-thirds of Africa’s people depend wholly or in part on 

subsistence agriculture. For populations whose livelihoods—and 

lives—are at the mercy of an unpredictable natural environment, the 

factors of precipitation, soils, predatory insects, and disease loom 

very large. African dependence on subsistence agriculture is compounded by the inadequacies of weak states that oer little safety in 

times of diculty. While the ramications of climate change are debated by scholars and policy makers in developed countries, African 

farmers and herders experience its eects every day, having seen precipitous declines in precipitation in some areas, more frequent 

droughts (with increasing severity), and decreasing predictability of 

weather patterns in general since the mid twentieth century.18 e 

impact of climate change is compounded by (in some respects perhaps caused by) expanding human populations and human activities, 

such as deforestation and the overplanting or overgrazing of marginal land, leading to desertication and decreased carrying capacity 

of the land.19

Subsistence agriculture is by no means the only focus of environmental concern. For millions of residents of Africa’s urban and periurban environments, access to clean air and clean water is problematic at best. Given the limitations of fresh water resources in some 

areas, access to any water may be a signicant problem for some African urban areas in the intermediate future.20 Rapid, uncontrolled 

urbanization has imposed severe challenges on city authorities, 

whose capacity to extend urban sanitation infrastructure into growing squatter communities is almost uniformly limited, resulting in 

heavy use of scarce distribution resources and the inadequate processing of waste. e continent’s escalating deforestation is kindled in 

large part by a demand for charcoal—the only fuel aordable for 

cooking and heating in much of urban Africa. On winter days, African cities oen are enveloped in palls of carcinogenic charcoal smog.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 93

African conict has its own unfortunate connections to Africa’s 

environmental problems. Some of the continent’s conict has been 

stimulated or prolonged by struggles over mineral resources such as 

diamonds and coltan. ese struggles deny environmental benets 

to local societies and empower exploitative and sociopathic warlords 

while encouraging egregious human rights abuses. In regions of 

conict, African states have diculty maintaining control of natural 

resources, including precious minerals and wildlife, resulting in 

wanton and unsustainable exploitation.21 African conict typically 

results in ows of refugees and displaced persons, with concomitant 

fouling of water resources, deforestation, poaching, destruction of 

wildlife habitat, and epidemic human diseases. In some areas, legacies of past conict include huge swaths of rural land seeded with 

chemical contaminants or landmines that continue to kill or maim 

humans and animals.22

Economic development in Africa also has not been kind to the 

environment.23 e emphasis on mineral exploitation since the colonial era has le in its wake the toxic environments of environmentally unfriendly extraction and rening. An expansion of the transportation infrastructure has enabled illegal harvesting and poaching 

of ora and fauna in once inaccessible areas. Like livestock ranchers 

everywhere, African herders are not sympathetic to wildlife that 

competes for grazing and water, preys on their cattle, or transmits 

disease—and they oen use modern technology to eliminate such 

threats, with unfortunate second- and third-order eects for the rest 

of the environment. e fossil fuels that generate electricity for 

growing populations of African consumers tend to be “dirty,” contributing to high levels of unhealthy atmospheric particulates, as do 

mineral and petroleum reneries and other industries weakly restrained by environmental regulations. Particulates enter the air 

from eets of urban vehicles whose exhaust systems go largely unregulated. e environment is further plagued by the all too frequent 

unfortunate accidents—such as contamination of a critically important aquifer in water-poor Botswana by nitrates leaching out of local 

commercial chicken farms.

Africa’s ability to deal with its many environmental problems is 

limited. African leaders—faced with a host of urgent problems and 

pressures from constituents and international actors and constrained 

by woefully inadequate resources—are obliged to make dicult 

choices. Environmental issues are rarely the most immediate and 
94 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

pressing of their concerns, and oen are deferred in favor of more 

urgent priorities. In fact, African leaders and common citizens pay 

attention to environmental issues mainly when these signicantly 

overlap other areas of greater concern such as human health and economic development. en, too, African environmental concerns can 

be signicantly at odds with those of their external partners. Africans 

are skeptical of the agendas of Western environmental activists who 

prioritize conservation and the well-being of wildlife over the wellbeing of people.

Although Africans face dicult environmental dilemmas, they 

have demonstrated a willingness and ability to nd solutions, particularly in the southern region. Several southern African countries 

have made explicit national commitments to the environment in 

published policy statements. e region as a whole (in the form of the 

Southern African Development Community) has committed itself to 

commendable environmental objectives.24 Southern African countries have demonstrated an impressive commitment to work together 

on environmental issues through such initiatives as the three-nation 

Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission or the ambitious Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, the latter a 

project to tie the national park systems of ve countries together in 

an enormous human development and environmental conservation 

scheme.25 Of particular interest to this discussion is the fact that several southern African countries have assigned environmental roles to 

their military establishments. While there is currently no regionwide consensus on such roles, a local precedent is rmly established.

Two broad and somewhat overlapping categories dene southern 

African public-sector environmental programs. e broadest is natural 

resources management, which breaks down into several divergent 

streams. A second category may be described as mitigation of threats 

to human health and well-being that emanate from the natural environment, a category that also diverges into a variety of dierent programs and approaches. ese two broad streams are not particularly 

connected in public policy—either at the national level or in the region as a whole. If both categories and all their various divergent 

streams were eectively integrated into a synergistic, overarching environmental program, the region could probably achieve signicant 

eciencies, along with a better capability to partner with internal and 

external allies and a greater eectiveness in pursuing the particulars. 

Regrettably, the present situation lacks that unity of approach.26
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 95

e Regional Embrace of Human Security

By 2010 most southern African countries subscribed to the broad 

new conceptualizations of security generally categorized under the 

rubric of “human security.”27 e term was popularized by the UN in 

the early 1990s and, by the turn of the century, was thoroughly embedded in UN agencies and approaches.28 e UN portrayed its new 

security model as “people-centered” (rather than state-centered); the 

most basic components were freedom from fear and want. e formula consisted of various constituent parts, prominently including 

“environmental security” that protected people from the short- and 

long-term ravages of nature, man-made threats in nature, and deterioration of the natural environment.

e broader denitions of security did not resonate everywhere, 

and some scholars challenged the human security paradigm as a 

whole, while others rejected the notion that the environment and security should be linked.29 Not all the world’s scholars are equally enthusiastic about the government embrace of environmental agendas. 

Some are naturally suspicious of any governmental interest in the environment and are worried that “securitizing environmental issues 

[risks] state co-option, colonization and emptying of the environmental agenda.”30 Such dierences are also evident in arguments over 

the meaning and implications of environmental security, a construct 

that continues to elude a widely accepted denition.31 Early on, African 

scholars supported the new “security” thinking and tended to endorse the broader denition exemplied in the UN conceptualization. As early as the 1990s, human security themes were prominent in 

the thinking of African ocials and academics.32 Interestingly, environment appeared in most of the new African denitions of security, 

either in terms of a human right to a healthful environment or in 

terms of rights by common citizens to environmental resources.33

Initially, the broader models of security le little room for the coercive agencies of the state and seemed to deny security-sector o-

cials any exclusive right to dene the subject. e new thinking questioned the relevance of the traditional military establishments 

themselves. However, a few countries bravely endeavored to adapt 

the broader models of security to military roles and missions. One of 

the most remarkable was post-apartheid South Africa. Aer 1994 

that country made a very concerted eort to realign its military to its 

new national priorities and commitment to human security.34 South 
96 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

Africa’s foundational document for its new military establishment articulated a whole new philosophy of national defense, capturing one 

of the most expansive denitions of security on record and oering a 

clear environmental dimension:

National security is no longer viewed as a predominantly military and police 

problem. It has broadened to incorporate political, economic, social, and environmental matters . . . security is an all-encompassing condition in which 

individual citizens . . . inhabit an environment which is not detrimental to their 

health and well-being [emphasis added].35

e linkages in the South African white paper were not foreign to 

ocials in other African countries. By the twenty-rstcentury, southern Africans had established a conceptual relationship between militaries and environmental security in their region, though they were 

far from a full exploration of its possibilities and a long way from 

unanimous endorsement of the notion of employing militaries in 

such roles.36 However, two southern African countries have pursued 

environmental security through resort to military force, Botswana 

and Mozambique.

By the mid 1980s, Africa’s megafauna were severely threatened, 

particularly elephants and rhinos. Networks of well-armed criminals 

with links to the Persian Gulf and Far East sponsored much of the 

slaughter.37 In Botswana, as in other parts of Africa, commercial 

poachers threatened the wildlife, along with the closely associated 

tourist industry, and assaulted local citizens living near the national 

conservancies. Botswana deployed its defense force into those conservancies in 1987, initiating a successful, long-term eort to halt 

egregious, commercial megafauna poaching. National park protection continues to be an important military mission for Botswana.38

In the mid 1990s, the southern African country of Mozambique 

elected to use part of its military in an environmental security role. 

Here, its navy was recruited into an innovative partnership sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international environmental advocacy group. Within this partnership, the Mozambican 

navy works closely with the Ministry of Fisheries and local civil 

society groups to protect natural resources and enforce environmental law on the country’s inland waterways.39

Two African countries’ successful use of military force in an environmental security role does not validate that usage as a universal 

norm. Nor does it prove that military deployment is the best solution 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 97

to the commercial poaching problem. However, it does suggest that 

African security agencies can play useful environmental securityniche roles in carefully dened circumstances.

Beyond Botswana and Mozambique, in 2010 South Africa was the 

only southern African country with a serious military involvement in 

environmental security. It maintained a small environmental oce 

within its National Defense Force headquarters and was concerned 

with a broad range of environmental issues, although its focus was 

limited almost exclusively to military installations and their immediate environs. South Africa employed its air force in routine coastal 

patrolling to secure its maritime resources, drawing aircra from a 

Cape Town squadron and linking that to coastal law enforcement. 

Just as signicantly, it served as a bridge to military environmental 

activities in other African countries, hosting consultations on environmental issues among military ocials. ese initiatives suggested 

that senior leaders in African militaries were open to possible roles in 

regional environmental initiatives.40

Since the activation of the Africa Union (AU) in 2002, Africans 

have engaged in productive consultations with each other to address 

their regional security dilemmas. ese years have witnessed the initial outlines of a continent-wide security architecture conceived and 

created by Africans, involving a system of regional standby brigades 

for peace support operations and a centralized early-warning crisis 

tracking center.41 is new security architecture potentially can attenuate many security-related problems, including those connected 

to the environment. Many of Africa’s crises have profound environmental ramications, and it is inevitable that any intervention in 

complex humanitarian emergencies deal with at least some environmental aspects of human security.

With the end of the Cold War, Africans engaged with external security 

actors, among them the United States and the EU, in fundamentally 

new ways. One of the novel features of these post–Cold War relationships has been a growing commitment to mutual partnerships intended to reduce instability and insecurity while promoting human 

rights along with sustainable human and economic development. 

African connections with the United States since 2007 have been 

troubled by the activation of a new military command—the US Africa Command—to oversee US security interests in the region. However, despite African suspicion of American intentions, the new US 

military entity is fundamentally oriented towards partnership, coop-
98 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

eration, and multisector/whole of government relationships.42 e 

same is true of the deeper though less visible relationship emerging 

between the AU and the EU.43 While environmental security has not 

been a strong feature of these security partnerships to date, a good 

potential and an excellent forum now exist.

Airpower: A Potentially Useful Contributor

e bottom-line concern here is the role that airpower could play 

in eorts by southern Africans to deal with their environmentally 

related problems and issues. e challenge now is to speculate on 

how all this might tie together, leading to observations on the applicability of airpower at three dierent levels: (1) the technical characteristics of airpower; (2) contemporary airpower roles; and (3) the 

unique skills of airmen.

An argument was oered earlier that airpower provides the state 

with unmatched capacity to extend its physical reach through rapid, 

agile airli. is applies to any state priority, including reaction to 

environmentally related crises. Perhaps just as important is the potential of modern airpower to provide state authorities with timely 

all-source surveillance. Currently elded technology allows aircra—

both manned and unmanned—to collect information from radar, 

video imagery, and electronic signals.

At least one southern African country—Botswana—uses airpower 

in combined-arms military operations against armed criminals targeting its wildlife resources. In this case, airpower provides both tactical surveillance and airli. While these technical capabilities of airpower are applicable to environmentally related national and regional 

issues, their full potential has not been maximized anywhere (including southern Africa). For instance, space-based sensors could be particularly useful in providing analysts and policy makers with timely 

environmental information. It is not hard to envision air force analysts charged with responsibilities for collecting, analyzing, and reporting that kind of information.

Existing airpower missions hold the seeds of potential environmental roles. One of the most obvious is the airpower obsession with 

weather—environmental factors that impact the safety and capacity 

of aerial vehicles. e same military expertise that tracks weather 

conditions for ight could facilitate similar weather-related roles: 

providing warning of dangerous weather conditions, tracking longer-
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 99

range environmental trends for policy makers, and assessing impacts 

of weather phenomena on human safety, human livelihoods, and 

national infrastructure. Airpower also oers prospects for employing 

technology such as satellites and manned or remotely piloted aircra 

to conduct scientic surveillance of the environment, ranging from 

measuring atmospheric particulates and ambient radiation to tracking levels of desertication and deforestation.

e contemporary connection of military airpower to human 

need (to address complex humanitarian emergencies) also has implications for helping human populations cope with environmental 

threats. For instance, air forces now routinely deliver medical care to 

populations traumatized by deadly epidemic disease. It is not dicult 

to picture air force analysts following trends in human and livestock 

disease (typically having climatological ramications) and advising on 

quick responses to disease outbreaks. e same may be true of similar 

environmental threats, such as crop disease and damaging insects.

e technological characteristics of airpower oer potential environmental applications, but the most important contribution may be 

a purely human factor—the capabilities of airmen themselves. Given 

the ambiguous, interrelated, and complex nature of environmental 

issues, the capacity of the nation-state to address them requires analysts and planners that think scientically, holistically, and longrange. ose managing these eorts must establish priorities and 

chart a clear path to identied ends. Contemporary military leaders 

excel at these roles. Most military education now emphasizes problem analysis and eective planning, and the military profession has a 

well-deserved reputation for skills in these areas.

Airmen bring both a particular depth in harnessing sophisticated 

technology to a wide range of requirements and a profound institutional understanding of the man-machine interface. Since airmen 

must understand both the science of the technology they use and the 

natural environment (particularly the atmosphere) in which it is 

used, they are uniquely suited among the military services to connect the dots between the development of environmental policy, the 

planning for its implementation, and at least some of the implementing programs.
100 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

A Partnership Angle

Military leaders in southern Africa and elsewhere are unlikely advocates for expanded environmentally related roles, and neither they nor 

the policy makers they serve are inclined to endow military establishments with primary responsibility for environmental issues in the near 

future. Military involvement in a society’s environmental equities, if 

any, will probably always involve a subordinate and supporting role to 

other government and civil society actors. However, military personnel 

and military technology could make important contributions in a variety of such roles, whether in data collection and analysis, provision of 

logistic support to other state and civil society actors, natural disaster 

and health threat mitigation, or strategic and operational planning. e 

state should also require military organizations to model environmental stewardship and assure that military planning deliberately considers 

environmental factors in all operations. is is as true for airpower as 

for any other military engagement.

e environment is important in its own right, but it also is a logical candidate for transnational partnerships and relationship building. Many environmental problems are regional and transnational 

and can serve eectively as relatively benign “bridging issues” (similar to coal and transportation infrastructure in post–World War II 

Europe), connecting partners that are signicantly at odds with each 

other over other concerns. is is true within southern Africa and 

true between southern Africans and external parties.44 Southern Africans should be most receptive to such partnerships if the ultimate 

mutual objective is enhanced human security. Cooperation to mitigate environmental threats and promote health, well-being, and economic development will resonate with Africans. A narrow, exclusive 

focus on biodiversity (e.g., protecting wildlife) probably will not.

Southern Africans may elect to task their militaries with substantially greater environmental roles, but it is unlikely they will do so 

without encouragement, resourcing, and perhaps some modeling 

from external military partners. As discussed in the unique airpower 

roles, that probably would include at a minimum oers of education 

and training specically targeted at environmental management, 

environmental analysis, and use of technology for collection of scientic information.

e relationship could conceivably involve far more. If the AU 

implements its ambitious vision of a robust continental security in-
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 101

frastructure, including a crisis tracking center, environmental security should take its rightful place among the other components of 

human security—and environmental threats could be as carefully 

monitored as any other menace to human well-being. is may particularly be a domain in which EU countries could oer resources 

and expertise. It may also be an opportunity for both developed 

Western countries and their African partners to think about the use 

of military human and technical resources to address the burgeoning 

environmental threats of the twenty-rst century.

e time is ripe for the kinds of partnerships that could make 

southern Africa a showcase of international cooperation on issues of 

environmental security, with enormous potential benets to Africans 

and to humanity as a whole. If airmen and airpower were asked to 

play a productive part, they could make a signicant contribution.

Notes

1. Ullman, “Redening Security,” 129–53; Matthews, “Redening Security,” 162–

77; Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 76–116; Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcity and Global Security, 5–40; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity and Violence; 

Homer-Dixon and Blitt, Ecoviolence; akur, “United Nations and Human Security,” 52; 

Kaplan, “Coming Anarchy,” 44–77; Stoet, Human and Global Security; HomerDixon, “Debating Violent Environments,” 89–96; and Brauer, War and Nature.

2. Dalby, “Contesting an Essential Concept,” 3–32; Levy, “Is the Environment a 

National Security Issue?” 35–62; Kakonen, Green Security; Deudney, “Case against 

Linking Environmental Degradation,” 461–76; and Deudney, “Environment and 

Security,” 23–28. For a useful overview of contemporary approaches to environment and security, see Brown, “Environment and Peace,” 3. For interesting discussions 

of the controversies surrounding the concept of environmental security, see Foster, “Environmental Security,” 373–95; and Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology,” 95–134.

3. As an example, note the assertion of former UN secretary general Ko Annan 

that “our eorts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain 

if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated,” 

quoted in Dodds and Pippard, Human and Environmental Security, xvi.

4. United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, “Environmental 

Policy for UN Field Missions”; and NATO STANAG 7141. 

5. A case has been made by others. Singh, “Role of the Military”; Henk, Botswana 

Defence Force; and Mosher et al., “Green Warriors.”

6. It is important to note that some military establishments have assumed signicant environmental responsibilities, perhaps best exemplied by the US Army 

Corps of Engineers, which historically has been heavily involved in domestic US 

river basin and wetland management, applying that expertise on a limited basis in 

contingency operations overseas. Note also that the US Army Environmental Policy 

Institute was created to assist Army leadership in policy formulation and implemen-
102 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

tation related to the environment. However, military involvements in environmental 

issues almost inevitably are limited and typically focused on one environmental domain while neither holistic nor comprehensive.

7. Clausewitz, On War, 87.

8. A useful discussion is oered by Lambeth, Transformation of American Airpower, 233–59. e publication is a RAND Corporation study, suggesting a close 

connection to the thinking of senior US Air Force thinkers and leaders.

9. For Douhet’s ideas, see Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 71–105. For Trenchard, 

see Meilinger, “Trenchard and Morale Bombing,” 243–70. For Mitchell, see Clodfelter, 

“Molding Airpower Convictions,” 79–114. For current implications, see Lambeth, 

Transformation of American Airpower, 260–96.

10. For example, attack on the adversary’s heartland from the air tended to be the 

unique prerogative of airmen until the advent of strategic missiles. At that point, 

America’s newly independent Air Force assumed this role without much controversy, while the Soviet Union opted to create an entirely new ground-based service 

(the Strategic Rocket Forces) to conduct intercontinental attack from space.

11. An interesting overview of the evolution of these airpower roles is provided 

by Mets, Reections of a Middling Cold Warrior.

12. Organizing and supervising a space vehicle launch were epitomes of this expertise. Yet the normal air operations of ight planning and air trac control, oen taken for 

granted by common citizens enjoying the benets, were no activities for amateurs.

13. In the late 1950s, the eminent Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington 

made a compelling case for regarding military ocership as a profession in the 

United States. According to the model he oered, a profession required (among 

other attributes) a unique expertise gained through intensive, specialized education. 

He argued that the professional expertise of the military ocer was “the management of violence” on behalf of the state. Not surprisingly, Huntington’s model became quite popular with military professionals, but by the early twenty-rst century 

the conclusions he reached in the 1950s no longer did full justice to the expertise he 

had sought to describe. Had Huntington written his book in 2010 he might well have 

described the unique expertise of the military ocer as simply “management,” or 

even better, “leadership.” Huntington, Soldier and the State.

14. For commentary on domain boundaries, see Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 88; Sills et al., Environmental Security, xi; Speth, Red Sky at Morning, 30–33; and 

Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 100.

15. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 99–100.

16. Blaike, Blaike, and Blaike, “Elephants, People, Parks and Development,” 735–51; 

Martin, “Yemeni Rhino Horn Trade,” 13–16; Martin, “Report on the Trade in Rhino 

Products,” 13–20; Vigne and Martin, “Taiwan,” 23–25; Western, “Undetected Trade 

in Rhino Horn,” 26–28; Barbier et al., Elephants, Economics and Ivory; Balfour and 

Balfour, Rhino; Douglas-Hamilton and Douglas-Hamilton, Battle for the Elephants; 

Leader-Williams, World Trade in Rhino Horn; Bonner, At the Hand of Man; Ricciuti, 

“Elephant Wars,” 14–35; Ellis, “Of Elephants and Men,” 53–69; Sas-Rolfes, Rhinos; 

and du Bois, “Illegal Trade in Endangered Species,” 28–41.

17. Regrettably, a half century of dramatic population growth, urbanization, and 

economic development, as well as the devastations of armed conict, has severely 

threatened Africa’s once rich wildlife. Biodiversity is far from the most signicant 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 103

environmental issue in the minds of either most African citizens or their political 

leaders. For the issues of global economic disaster (including African implications), 

see Kaplan, “Coming Anarchy,” 44–77; Homer-Dixon, “On the reshold,” 76–116; 

Homer-Dixon, Environmental Scarcity and Global Security; “Environmental Scarcities 

and Violent Conict,” 5–40; Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity and Violence; 

Homer-Dixon, “Debating Violent Environments,” 89–96; Homer-Dixon and Blitt, 

Ecoviolence; Bannon and Collier, Natural Resources and Violent Conict; Berdal and 

Malone, Greed and Grievance; Kansteiner and Morrison, Rising U.S. Stakes in Africa, 

88–103; and Lake et al., More than Humanitarianism, 28–76.

18. Ackerman, “Most Vulnerable Continent,” 141–66. For the southern African 

region, see Tyson, “Climatic Change in Southern Africa,” 241–58; Chenje and Johnson, 

State of the Environment in Southern Africa; and Tsheko, “Rainfall Reliability.”

19. Burgess, “Environment and Human Security,” 36–41.

20. Schwartz and Singh, Environmental Conditions; Godschalk, “Waging War 

over Water,” 110–33; Klare, Resource Wars; and Swatuk, “Environmental Cooperation in Southern Africa,” 143–45.

21. Feleke, “From Greed to Grievance,” 185–99; and Smilie, Gberie, and Hazleton, 

Heart of the Matter.

22. A useful overview is provided in Austin and Brunch, Environmental Consequences of War. For another broad overview that touches on many of the issues, see 

Purkitt, African Environmental and Human Security.

23. For fascinating insights by an African scholar who has paid a high personal 

price for his courage in calling attention to these issues, see Turton, “Resource Allocation and Xenophobic Violence,” 111–23.

24. Esty et al., 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index; South African Department of Environmental Aairs and Tourism, “Overview of Integrated Environmental Management”; Republic of Botswana, Vision 2016, 6–7; Southern African Development Community; and Swatuk, “Power and Water,” 210–47.

25. For an excellent overview of southern African cooperation on river basin 

development and conservation, see Turton, Ashton and Cloete, eds., Transboundary 

Rivers. For historical detail on the Permanent Okavango River Basin Commission, 

see Pinheiro, Gabaake, and Heyns, “Cooperation in the Okavango River Basin,” 105–18. 

For a description of the Kavango-Zambezi initiative, see Henk, “Human and Environmental Security in Southern Africa.”

26. For a more detailed discussion of the southern African environmental scene, 

see Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 98–117.

27. For a brief overview of the debate, see Matthews, “Redening Security,” 162–77; 

Baldwin, “Concept of Security,” 5–26; Buzan, Waever, and de Wilde, Security; Smith, 

“Increasing Insecurity of Security Studies,” 72–101; Zacarias, “Redening Security,” 

31–52; and Cilliers, Human Security in Africa.

28. Human Development Report, 1993; and Human Development Report, 1994.

29. Deudney, “Case against Linking Environmental Degradation,” 461–76; 

Deudney, “Environment and Security,” 23–28; Kakonen, Green Security; Levy, “Is the 

Environment a National Security Issue?” 35–62; and Dalby, “Contesting an Essential 

Concept,” 3–32.

30. Barnett, Meaning of Environmental Security, 157; and Dalby, Environmental 

Security.
104 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS

31. Dalby, “Security, Modernity, Ecology,” 95–134; Foster, “Environmental Security,” 373–95; and Swatuk, “Environmental Security,” 203–36. 

32. Solomon and van Aardt, eds., Caring Security in Africa; Swatuk and Vale, 

“Why Democracy Is Not Enough,” 361–89; Muloongo, Kibasomba, and Kariri, Many 

Faces of Human Security; and Hendricks, From State Security to Human Security.

33. Okoth, “New East African Community,”158–59. Two years before the UN 

endorsed “human security,” the celebrated Kampala Document published by the African Leadership Forum (and supported by the Organization of African Unity and 

the United Nations) oered a denition of security very close to the later UN conceptualization. Kampala Document, 9. By the early twenty-rst century, African 

scholars in seven nongovernmental research organizations across the continent had 

come together to form the African Human Security Initiative with a specic agenda 

of measuring the performance of African governments in promoting human security, insisting on accountability to human security principles (www.africanreview.

org). By that point, the new African Union had agreed on a Common African Defence and Security Policy with a particularly nuanced and robust articulation of its 

human security foundations. See Cilliers, Human Security in Africa.

34. Ferreira and Henk, “ ‘Operationalizing’ Human Security,” 501–25; and R. Williams, 

“Defence in a Democracy,” 205–23.

35. South African White Paper, 1.

36. African militaries in general have a relatively unsavory reputation in Africa, in 

many cases well deserved. is reputation undermines eective communication 

within African public sectors and compromises the willingness of ocials outside 

the security sector to communicate with their military counterparts. For further discussion of these issues, see Howe, Ambiguous Order, 27–72.

37. Blaike, Blaike, and Blaike, “Elephants, People, Parks and Development,” 735–

51; Martin, “Yemeni Rhino Horn Trade”; Martin, “Report on the Trade in Rhino 

Products”; Vigne and Martin, “Taiwan”; Western, “Undetected Trade in Rhino 

Horn”; Barbier et al., Elephants, Economics and Ivory; Balfour and Balfour, Rhino; 

Douglas-Hamilton and Douglas-Hamilton, Battle for the Elephants; Leader-Williams, 

World Trade in Rhino Horn; Bonner, At the Hand of Man; Ricciuti, “Elephant Wars,” 

14–35; Ellis, “Of Elephants and Men,” 53–69; Sas-Rolfes, Rhinos; and du Bois, “Illegal 

Trade in Endangered Species.”

38. Henk, “Botswana Defence Force,” 170–91; Henk, “Biodiversity and the Military”; and Henk, Botswana Defense Force.

39. “Strategic Partnership.” For additional details, see http://wwf.panda.org

/who_we_are/wwf_oces/mozambique/.

40. omas Schultheis (US European Command environmental ocer, StuttgartVaihingen, Germany), personal communication with author, 24 February 2005; Lt 

Col Brian P. Smith (US Air Force, chief of the Oce of Defense Cooperation), interview by the author, 11 June 2005, Pretoria, South Africa; and Col Seakle Godschalk 

(director of the Environmental Oce in the Headquarters, South African National 

Defence Force), communications with the author, 2004–2006, Pretoria, South Africa. 

See also Godschalk, “Protecting Our Environment,” 24–27.

41. Cilliers, African Standby Force. 

42. “Symposium,” 1–99; and Ploch, Africa Command. For some African concerns, see Malan, “AFRICOM.”
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: APPLICATIONS │ 105

43. For illustrative detail, see e Africa-EU Strategy Partnership; and Toth, “Historical Duty or Pragmatic Interest?”

44. For the European analogy, see Haas, Beyond the Nation-State. Signicantly, at 

a time when military-to-military relations between the United States and two countries in southern Africa were fraught by political disagreement, amicable military 

cooperation and communication continued over issues of the environment. Henk, 

“Environment, the US Military,” 107–10.
108 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

improvements in intelligence gathering tools have made it easier to 

discriminate between military and civilian targets and to strike only 

those of a military nature. Moreover, this capability greatly reduces 

the attacker’s risk. Modern air warfare reduces casualties among both 

the attackers and the attacked, making it an increasingly ecient, effective, and humane tool of US foreign policy. Unfortunately, ground 

war remains extremely deadly, and the use of weapons such as landmines and cluster munitions continues to exact a high toll on civilians. International law, ostensibly designed to limit the suering of 

civilian noncombatants in war, falls short in important areas. Deadly 

activities and weapons—largely policy weapons such as sieges and 

economic sanctions—continue to kill civilians and cause untold suffering. ese horric weapons should now become our focus.

e eory

e Law of Armed Conict governs whether or not a war is just as 

well as what actions are permissible in it. Some laws have been agreed 

to by international treaty, as in the Geneva conventions of 1949. In 

the absence of codied law, nations turn to customary usage or the 

just war tradition that has developed over several centuries and has, 

seemingly, consistently stressed the immunity of noncombatants.2

e inauguration of balloon ight during the nineteenth century 

presented potentially new dangers to civilians, so in 1899 delegates 

from 26 nations met at e Hague to discuss limitations on the use of 

airships as weapons. Attendees agreed to a prohibition on the dropping of explosives from balloons to remain in eect for ve years. 

When the stricture lapsed in 1904, an attempt was made to reinstate 

it. e prohibition was not renewed since only Britain and the United 

States supported an extension.3

 is was the only international attempt to limit air war prior to 1914. World War I saw strategic bombing conducted by all major belligerents. ese attacks were highly 

inaccurate due to the primitive navigation and bombing equipment 

of the day.4

 Even so, bombing claimed only a small number of noncombatants—1,413 dead in Britain and perhaps a few thousand more 

scattered throughout the rest of Europe.5

In contrast, nearly 15 million died in the war, and this carnage had 

a profound impact on survivors. Aer the armistice the great powers 

began discussing disarmament, and a commission of jurists met at 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 109

e Hague in 1922–23 to draw up guidelines for regulating air warfare. Rules were draed, but political and military leaders rejected the 

restrictive and impractical language. As a result, no country ratied 

the treaty.6

 More talks at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 

1932 also proved fruitless.7

As war approached in 1938, the League of Nations passed a nonbinding resolution prohibiting the intentional bombing of civilian 

populations, bombing of other than military objectives, and attacks 

that negligently imperiled the civilian population.8

 is was a meager 

eort, and in 1938 British jurist J. M. Spaight wrote, “e law of bombardment is very far from being clear. . . . It is indeed in a state of 

baing chaos and confusion that makes it almost impossible to say 

what in any situation the rule really is. . . . From one point of view one 

might say, indeed, that there is no law at all, for air bombardment.”9

Military commanders attempted to modify the existing rules regarding war on land and sea but were not successful. For example, 

armies could bombard a defended fortress even if it contained civilians—Atlanta in 1864, Paris in 1871, Alexandria in 1882, and Port 

Arthur in 1904. Using these precedents, Airmen later reasoned that 

when Allied bombers ew over German-occupied Europe and were 

shot at by tens of thousands of antiaircra guns and intercepted by 

hundreds of enemy ghters, all of Nazi-occupied Europe was, in eect, 

a “defended fortress.” Of greater relevance (and confusion), international law permitted navies to shell undefended fortresses and cities 

to destroy the military stores and facilities—Canton in 1856, Tripoli 

in 1911, Beirut in 1912, and German coastal raids against England in 

1914 and 1916. Sailors were given wider latitude in shelling civilians 

because navies could not occupy a port as an army could. Aircra, 

like ships, could not occupy a city, defended or otherwise, so the permissive rules of sea warfare were more applicable to air war.10 Debates 

continued, but limitation attempts failed because the airplane oered 

an escape from the hecatomb of the world war. No one wished to return to the trenches, so military and civilian leaders were reluctant to 

emasculate a weapon oering relief from that nightmare.

Political and military leaders’ ambivalence in addressing the legal 

issues regarding air warfare was also present among those devising a 

doctrine for employing the new weapon that oered both great hope 

and great uncertainties. eorists and practitioners believed the airplane revolutionized warfare by allowing dierent strategies, doctrine, and organization. Novelists such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells 
110 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

imagined aerial navies raining bombs and terror on urban populations, causing panic and pressure for peace. Some early military theorists took a similar approach. Italian general Giulio Douhet described 

airpower’s destructive potential and paradoxical peaceful intent in 

terms that echoed the dire predictions of the novelists:

Who could keep all those lost, panic-stricken people from eeing to the open 

countryside to escape this terror from the air? A complete breakdown of the 

social structure cannot but take place in a country subjected to this kind of 

merciless pounding from the air. e time would soon come when, to put an 

end to horror and suering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of 

self-preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war—before their 

army and navy had time to mobilize at all!11

Air leaders in Britain and the United States rejected such apocalyptic visions and instead argued that airpower would shorten wars 

and make them less bloody. ey theorized that it was possible, in 

principle, to shoot the gun out of the enemy’s hand—to disarm by 

disrupting the enemy’s industrial war production.

e British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the US Army Air Forces 

(USAAF) entered World War II with doctrines stressing precision 

bombing of enemy industrial centers. e RAF operations manual 

stated that the civilian populace was not, as such, a legitimate target. 

Area bombing was rejected—“all air bombardment aims to hit a particular target,” and in every case “the bombing crew must be given an 

exact target and it must be impressed upon them that it is their task 

to hit and cause material damage to that target.”12 In August 1939, the 

month before Germany invaded Poland, the chief of the Air Sta 

(CAS) sent a message to the head of Bomber Command stating RAF 

policy in clear terms: “we should not initiate air action against other 

than purely military objectives in the narrowest sense of the word, 

i.e., Navy, Army and Air Forces and establishments, and that as far as 

possible we should conne it to objectives on which attack will not 

involve loss of civil life.”13 During the campaign in France the following 

year, the CAS reiterated this policy in a message to RAF commanders—

the intentional bombing of civilian populations was illegal; commanders should identify objectives struck in advance; attacks must 

be made with “reasonable care” to avoid undue loss of civilian lives; 

and the provisions of international law must be observed.14 War’s realities would soon put these idealistic goals to the test.

Bombing doctrine in the United States was similar. Ocers at the 

Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, believed that a 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 111

country’s economy was complex but fragile. Key nodes within that 

economy—the transportation system or specic factories that manufactured crucial industrial components—were disproportionately vital 

to smooth operation. If this “industrial web” were disrupted, the entire system would suer debilitating shock waves.15 e USAAF war 

doctrine manual listed several potential target systems: raw materials, 

rail and motor transport, power plants, factories, steel mills, oil reneries, and other similar establishments. ere was no mention of targeting population centers or popular will.16 As in Britain, Douhet’s 

city-busting theories were rejected for a focus on the industrial infrastructure that made a nation’s war economy operate.

Although humane standards were important, military eciency 

also played a role. An enemy country contained thousands of potential targets—things of value or of importance—but only nite numbers 

of bombs, planes, and crews were available. Which targets were more 

vital than others? Prioritization was necessary to separate the critical 

from the trivial, and industrial strength seemed a logical top candidate.

In addition, airpower strategists in Britain and the United States 

believed that the precision bombing of military targets would not 

only disrupt the war economy, but would cause revulsion among the 

populace who would then clamor for peace. In other words, an air 

war was so potent that it would deter war, but if war broke out, it 

would be over quickly, and the number of people killed would be 

fairly small—especially as compared to the 15 million that died in the 

Great War. Airpower would humanize war.17

Although this notion seems peculiar today, such thinking underpins the nuclear deterrence doctrine operating since the early 1950s. 

Nuclear war would be so awful as to be unthinkable; therefore, it will 

not occur (that is, as long as one is prepared to wage it). It was no 

coincidence that the motto of the Strategic Air Command—the custodian of US nuclear-armed bombers and missiles throughout the 

Cold War—was Peace Is Our Profession. e nuclear deterrent posture, backed by thousands of nuclear weapons among a number of 

countries, remains in place today.

e Practice

World War II proved to be far dierent than predicted. Airpower 

did not deter armed conict as had been hoped—although neither 
112 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

did land power, sea power, or the policy of appeasement. Nor did 

airpower ensure a short war, although it did make the war shorter—

especially in the Pacic.

Germany had bombed urban centers in the Spanish Civil War 

(Guernica) and in the opening stages of World War II (Warsaw and 

Rotterdam). In 1940 it was England’s turn. In the summer of 1940 

Hitler gleefully predicted to Albert Speer:

Have you ever seen a map of London? It is so densely built that one re alone 

would be enough to destroy the whole city, just as it did over two hundred years 

ago. Göring will start res all over London, res everywhere, with countless 

incendiary bombs of an entirely new type: thousands of res. ey will unite in 

one huge blaze over the whole area. Göring has the right idea: high explosives 

don’t work, but we can do it with incendiaries; we can destroy London completely. What will their remen be able to do once it’s really burning?18

France’s fall in June 1940 le Britain alone against Germany, and 

the ensuing blitz against British cities le the country reeling. Tens of 

thousands of civilians died under German bombs, but surrender was 

unthinkable. Yet, Britain could not retaliate with its army—that had 

been thrown o the continent at Dunkirk—or with an overstretched 

navy ghting for its life against German submarines and land-based 

aircra. e only hope of hitting back at Germany and eventually 

winning the war lay with Bomber Command, but operations quickly 

demonstrated that prewar doctrine had been unrealistic. British 

bombers were too small, too slow, too vulnerable, and too few. German ghters and antiaircra guns decimated the attackers, so Bomber 

Command retreated to the safety of night, something for which it was 

neither trained nor equipped. (e Luwae also suered problems 

when bombing Britain in daylight, so the blitz was carried out at 

night.) Worse, dismal winter weather adversely aected navigation, 

target acquisition, and bombing accuracy. e Butt Report of 1941 

revealed that only 33 percent of bombs dropped during British night 

attacks fell within ve miles of the intended targets; strike accuracy 

on moonless nights was even more inaccurate.19 Although Britain’s 

intent was precision bombing, in practice, it became area bombing. 

Aircrew survival dictated night area attacks, and there was little alternative other than not to attack at all.20 Moral constraints bowed to 

military necessity, and this led air leaders down a precarious path.

By early 1942 the RAF’s night oensive was targeting German cities, 

partly out of frustration over abysmal bombing accuracy and partly 

in retaliation for similar attacks on British cities by the Luwae. e 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 113

November 1940 German raid on Coventry had been a turning 

point—Prime Minister Winston Churchill then directed the RAF to 

aim for city centers on missions over Germany. “Our plans are to 

bomb, burn, and ruthlessly destroy in every way available to us the 

people responsible for creating this war,” Churchill said.21 Air Marshal 

Arthur Harris, who took over Bomber Command in February 1942, 

agreed with his civilian superiors about the concept of area attacks.

Philosopher Michael Walzer has examined the moral implications 

of area attacks.22 Early in the war British leaders argued that a combination of reprisal, revenge, and military necessity made city bombing 

both necessary and acceptable. Although rejecting the motivations of 

reprisal or revenge—in my view far too summarily—Walzer looked 

closely at the rationale of military necessity. Arguing that the triumph 

of the Nazi state was too terrible to contemplate, he conceded that in 

the dark days of 1941, before the Soviet Union and the United States 

entered the war, Britain’s future looked bleak. Britain’s only hope of 

hurting Germany and ultimately achieving victory was through strategic 

bombing. Given the inaccuracy of the night strikes, it was obvious 

that thousands of civilians would die if such a strategy were employed. Viewing this strategy as a “supreme emergency,” Walzer 

concluded that although distasteful, it was morally acceptable. However, he then argued that this justication evaporated when the Allies 

began winning the war. With the specter of defeat no longer looming, 

Allied armies closing in on the Reich, and bombing accuracy greatly 

enhanced, city busting lost its necessity and acceptability. At least that 

is the position of a philosopher writing several decades aer the event.

At the time, ultimate victory was not obvious, and J. M. Spaight, 

the British jurist who had complained of air war’s lack of legal guidelines, argued in 1944 that total war meant factory workers and transportation systems were “warriors,” not noncombatants. An attacker 

was therefore “fully entitled to put them out of action.” In addition, 

German cities were all “battle-making towns” and thus legitimate 

military targets.23 A more recent study echoes this view. “e cities of 

Europe and their inhabitants represented not merely another target 

among many. ey stood at the epicenter of modern warfare. ey 

were sites of production; they delivered essential economic and demographic resources to battle.” e urban populations “were more 

than passive victims.”24 War in practice was considerably dierent 

from war in theory, and people of intellect and integrity could disagree even on the most basic premises.
114 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

US air doctrine also evolved during the war. e USAAF’s losses 

during daylight strikes were severe, culminating in the Schweinfurt 

mission of 14 October 1943, when 60 B-17s and more than 600 crewmen were lost—over 20 percent of the attacking force. Nonetheless, 

American air leaders clung tenaciously to their daylight precision 

bombing doctrine, convinced that only a daylight precision campaign made sense. An invasion of France oered no hope of success 

before mid 1944, and something had to be done to take the war into 

Germany and relieve pressure on the Soviets, who were already talking about a separate peace—the route they had taken in 1917. Britain 

and the United States could not allow that to happen.

e Pacic air campaign also posed problems for the USAAF. 

Bombing accuracy was worse than in Europe because of the greater 

distances involved and the unexpected 200 mile-per-hour jet stream 

at 35,000 feet where the B-29s generally ew. In addition, Allied intelligence concerning Japan’s economy was inadequate, due to the closed 

nature of Japanese society.25 Japanese industry was less centralized 

than in Europe—rather than located in large factories near towns, 

numerous small shops were spread throughout the cities. To destroy 

an aircra assembly complex, the Allies had to identify and strike 

several dozen “cottage factories” or destroy a large section of the city, 

eliminating the dozens of small factories it contained. Area bombing 

could be done at night with less risk to the attackers, but it crumpled 

the idea of not targeting the population that had been US doctrine for 

two decades.

e war had to be won, however, and Japan was a particularly tenacious opponent—more than 20,000 Americans died at Iwo Jima 

and Okinawa; the Japanese defenders suered nearly 150,000 fatalities. Moreover, on Okinawa over 160,000 civilians died—caught in 

the crossre between the opposing armies.26 One can debate the 

numbers of projected casualties that would have resulted in the 

planned Allied invasions of the home islands, but such landings 

would likely have cost millions of American and Japanese lives. Air 

attacks, culminating in the two atomic strikes, seemed an expedient 

alternative and no less inhumane than starvation of the civilian populace through the slowly tightening naval blockade or the vicious and 

bloody land campaigns already scheduled.27

An important issue oen overlooked regarding strategic bombing 

attacks concerned eorts taken by defenders to thwart the bomber 

crews. Germany and Japan were trying to decrease the accuracy of 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 115

Allied attacks. Indeed, the RAF’s move to night operations in 1940 

was a result of successful German air defenses. But at night, the Germans blacked out city lights and jammed radio navigation signals 

designed to help the bombers pinpoint their targets. To fool the 

USAAF bombers in daylight, the Germans and Japanese built fake 

factories, camouaged real ones, and built smoke generators to deliberately obscure targets. ey launched hundreds of interceptor planes 

and thousands of artillery shells to shoot down the bombers. ese 

activities greatly distracted the bomber crews, making their aim less 

accurate. Consequently, they oen missed the intended targets and 

bombed something else, resulting in civilian casualties.28 Who was 

responsible for this collateral damage—the crews that dropped the 

bombs or the defenders that deliberately worked to make those 

bombs hit something else, usually innocent people? Unquestionably, 

many noncombatants were killed in the Allied air attacks of World 

War II, but relative to the total number of deaths in the war, air attack—as had been predicted by prewar air theorists—was a surprisingly discriminate weapon.

Perhaps 40 million civilians died during World War II. Of those, 

the US Strategic Bombing Survey states that 635,000 died in Germany and Japan due to Allied air attacks.29 e Germans and Japanese claim the number is higher. Hans Rumpf, Germany’s general 

inspector for re services during the war, estimates that over 600,000 

died in Germany alone. He states that a further 182,000 civilians died 

in other European countries as a result of air attack, including 60,000 

in Britain killed by German bombs, rockets, and missiles.30 Even so, 

these numbers are a fraction of the total war dead. For example, over 

six million people died at the hands of the Japanese; however, less 

than 600,000 of those died via air attack. Indeed, the Japanese murdered over 100,000 Chinese at Nanjing using small arms and swords.31 

us, even if using the maximum of two million dead due to air attack, 95 percent of the civilians killed in World War II were claimed 

by genocide or traditional means of land and sea warfare; they were 

shot, shelled, or starved to death or succumbed to disease.

e plight of civilians subjected to air attack—at least as practiced 

by the West—improved aer 1945. Many noncombatants died in 

both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but statistics for the Korean War 

are unreliable.32 Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of political science 

at the University of Massachusetts, provides plausible gures for 

Vietnam. According to his research, around 587,000 North and South 
116 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Vietnamese civilians were killed in the ghting. Of those, the Vietcong assassinated 39,000 South Vietnamese people, and another 

65,000 civilians died in US bombing operations over North Vietnam. 

e bulk of the Vietnamese noncombatant dead, 483,000, were killed 

in South Vietnam. Based on admissions to South Vietnamese hospitals between 1967 and 1970, Lewy estimates that 66.5 percent of all 

injuries resulted from mines, mortars, guns, or grenades. Shelling or 

bombing injured the other 33.5 percent. If these percentages are used 

for the entire war, if we assume that the number of those injured by 

shelling or bombing are equal (Lewy does not break this category 

down), and if we assume that those killed met their fates in the same 

percentages as did those who were wounded—and these are big ifs—

then of the 587,000 Vietnamese civilians that Lewy states were killed 

during the war, around 146,000 (25 percent) died from air attacks. 

e other 75 percent, over 440,000 people, were killed by ground or 

naval action.33

e number of civilian casualties in conicts involving the United 

States has dropped dramatically since Vietnam. Greenpeace estimated that 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed by air attack in the 1991 

Gulf War, but other researchers put the gure at less than 1,000.34

Although thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on Iraqi targets 

during Desert Storm, damage to the civilian population was minor, 

which amazed Western observers. Milton Viorst wrote, “Oddly, it 

seemed, there was no Second World War–style urban destruction, 

despite the tons of explosives that had fallen. Instead, with meticulous care—one might almost call it artistry—American aircra had 

taken out telecommunications facilities, transportation links, key 

government oces, and, most painful of all, electrical generating 

plants.”35 Another visitor, Erika Munk, wrote in similar terms, “We 

expected to nd enormous unreported destruction. . . . Instead we 

found a city whose homes and oces were almost entirely intact, where 

the electricity was coming back on and the water was running. . . . I 

think the reason we didn’t see more destruction was that it wasn’t 

there.” Munk estimated that the maximum number of civilians killed 

during the six-week air campaign was 3,000.36 is is a sizeable gure, 

but not in comparison to the estimated one million plus Iraqis (most 

of them children) who, according to the United Nations Children’s 

Fund and the World Health Organization, died as a result of UN 

sanctions put in place before the war but not lied until aer the 

second Gulf War of 2003.37
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 117

e next sizable conict involving the United States was in 1995 

when force was used to halt the ghting in Bosnia. According to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, perhaps 25 civilians died from 

NATO’s three-week air campaign. To stop the ethnic cleansing by the 

Serbs in Kosovo, NATO launched Operation Allied Force in 1999. 

Aer a 78-day air campaign, Milosevic capitulated. Despite the duration and intensity of this air campaign, Human Rights Watch estimated that fewer than 500 civilians were killed.38

Statistics for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are inconsistent, 

running from 500 to 1,300 dead in Afghanistan through 2002, and 

from 3,000 to 7,000 dead for the rst six months of the Iraq campaign.39 Human Rights Watch states that “the ground war caused the 

vast majority of deaths,” noting that ground-launched cluster bomb 

munitions caused 90 percent of all civilian casualties at al-Hilla.40

e Iraq Body Count (IBC) provides another account of civilian 

casualties in Iraq. is organization has determined that through 

2008, about 85,000 Iraqi civilians died as a result of the war. Of these, 

about 9,500 were the result of air strikes (11.3 percent of the total). 

Signicantly, not only have the numbers of civilian deaths decreased 

since 2005, but the percentage of deaths attributable to air attack has 

also decreased to 2.6. In other words, the IBC calculates that over 97 

percent of the 60,922 Iraqi civilians killed since 2005 have been the 

victims of ground warfare.41

e Israelis went through a similar trend in their military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas. Prior to 2004 the ratio of noncombatants to terrorists killed was around 1:1. At that point the Israeli Air Force changed its rules of engagement, tactics, ordnance, 

and intelligence procedures. e ratio improved to 1:12 in 2004, 1:28 

in 2005, and 1:24 in the rst half of 2007. In the second half of 2007 

the ratio was a remarkable 1:100. However, the Israelis note that operations in densely populated areas in southern Lebanon and Gaza, 

where signicant Israeli ground forces were employed and which required extensive air support, once again pushed the ratio down to 

around 1:1.42

e low numbers of deaths due to airstrikes are remarkable, especially when compared to the alternatives of sanctions or a traditional 

land campaign. In the ambush and subsequent reght between US 

Army Soldiers and Somalis in Mogadishu in October 1993, for example, 

18 Americans were killed and another 82 wounded, but between 500 

and 1,000 Somali civilians were gunned down in that 24-hour period.43
118 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

What has caused the remarkable drop in casualties in air warfare? 

Largely, it is a result of precision-guided munitions (PGM). Although 

PGMs were used in the Vietnam War, Desert Storm was the rst con-

ict where they played a major role. ere are various types of PGMs: 

electro-optical, infrared, cruise missiles using ground-tracking radar, 

and laser-guided bombs. e laser-guided bomb was the most widely 

heralded “new” weapon of Desert Storm. Because of cockpit videos 

necessary to track laser bombs, the world saw memorable lm clips 

of bombs ying down airshas and through bunker doors. Nonetheless, of the more than 200,000 bombs dropped during Desert 

Storm, fewer than 17,000, or slightly more than 7 percent, were 

PGMs.44 Only a small percentage of aircra in the US inventory were 

equipped to drop such weapons.

Following Desert Storm the numbers and types of PGMs increased. PGM use increased to 35 percent over Kosovo in 1999. In 

Afghanistan the number jumped to 56 percent, and in Operation 

Iraqi Freedom (OIF) 70 percent of all bombs dropped were PGMs. 

All US strike aircra can now deliver these munitions.45 e types of 

PGMs available have also expanded and been improved to allow 

greater accuracy and exibility. e global positioning system–aided 

joint direct attack munition (JDAM), which can bomb through 

clouds or sandstorms, made its debut over Kosovo. A laser-guided 

JDAM, rst employed in Iraq in August 2008, allows precision strike 

against moving targets.46 e standard gure given for JDAM accuracy is ve meters, but those who employed the weapons in OIF say 

accuracy was far better than advertised.47

Yet, PGMs are only as good as the intelligence used to guide them. If 

it is now possible to put a bomb through a specic window of a particular 

building, then it is essential to ensure that it is the correct window. Sensors 

have grown in number and resolution capability over the past two decades. 

Space-based cameras and radar can produce resolutions of a few feet. 

Airborne sensors have a similar performance, and spotters on the 

ground have sophisticated Global Positioning System (GPS) rangenders and laser designators to accurately locate and mark potential targets.

e impact of increased PGM use has been profound. One PGM is 

equivalent to dozens if not hundreds of unguided bombs in the effects that it achieves—neutralizing the target. Besides lowering the 

risk to the attacking aircrew (fewer aircra/sorties are needed, thus 

putting fewer crewmembers at risk), PGM use dramatically reduces 

the amount of collateral damage.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 119

Perceptions of Air War and the Use of Force

Yet the negative reputation that airpower had been saddled with 

aer World War II was dicult to shake. Strategic bombing brought 

to mind Dresden or Hiroshima.48 ose events were certainly horrible, but it is important to remember that far more civilians died in the 

siege of Leningrad (over one million) than died in all of the bombing 

raids on Germany and Japan combined.49

Why did airpower get such bad press through the end of the Cold 

War? Several possible explanations exist. First, the psychological 

trauma produced by aerial destruction can be profound: it can occur 

with little or no warning and in a greatly compressed period of time. 

Land and sea warfare eects are generally felt only over the long term. 

e Romans destroyed Carthage as totally as the United States did 

Hiroshima, but it took the Roman legions several years; it took one 

B-29 two minutes. It was the conquest of time, not of matter, that so 

shocked the world.

Second, airpower is violent and graphic, whereas a blockade is 

seen as nonviolent and bloodless. A RAND study refers to airpower, 

and especially any collateral damage caused by it, as being “mediagenic.” e study notes that collateral damage incidents are four times 

more likely to be reported on television than in the print media.50

ird, some view airpower as less noble than close combat and 

question the “morality of distance.” A Marine Corps general recently 

commented: “ere comes a point when a country puts young folks 

at risk because it becomes important for them to defend a certain way 

of life. . . . From a Marine point of view, we can’t lose our honor by 

failing to put our own skin on the line.”51 To those of such ilk, it is only 

honorable to kill if there is a good chance you will be killed in return. 

Such thinking is, to me, astonishingly foolish. Airpower oers a far 

more intelligent and humane alternative.

Dramatic advances in weapons technology permitting previously 

impossible accuracy have been crucial to limiting collateral damage; 

yet a tension remains between risk to friendly forces and accuracy 

seeking to limit collateral damage, and sometimes this issue is misunderstood. For example, during the 1999 Kosovo air campaign allied 

aircra were directed to remain above 15,000 feet to avoid enemy 

ground re. Some have argued that this policy was immoral or illegal 

because it induced inaccurate bombing, thus increasing collateral 

damage and civilian casualties.52
120 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

In truth, a PGM is most accurate when dropped from medium to 

high altitude, because that allows time for the weapon to correct itself 

in ight. If dropped from a lower altitude, the weapon will have less 

kinetic energy, and its steering ns will have less time to correct the 

aim; the weapon will usually hit short. From the pilot’s perspective, 

higher altitude also allows time to identify the target at sucient distance, designate it (if laser guided), and launch the weapon. e optimum altitude to ensure accuracy is above 15,000 feet for PGMs 

against a xed target.

In contrast, the optimum drop altitude to ensure accuracy for nonguided munitions is lower than for a PGM. Even so, target acquisition 

by the aircrew remains a limiting factor; coming in too low at 500 

knots makes it nearly impossible to acquire the target, line up, and 

drop the bomb accurately. As a result, the best altitude for delivering 

unguided weapons is around 5,000 feet. However, this places the aircra right in the thick of re from ground defenses. Air commanders 

resolved this dilemma by keeping aircra at medium altitudes but restricting the use of non-PGMs to areas where there was little or no 

chance there would be civilian casualties or collateral damage.

A diculty arises when attacking mobile targets, where the key 

factor becomes identication. Is the column below comprised of military or civilian vehicles; if both, which are which? At medium altitudes 

it is dicult to make such a distinction. On 14 April 1999, near 

Djakovica, Kosovo, NATO pilots attacked what intelligence sources 

had identied as—and which indeed appeared to be—a military column. It is now known the column also contained refugees—the Serbs 

illegally commingled military and civilian vehicles. As a result, several dozen civilians were killed in the airstrikes.53 Could this accident 

have been avoided if the aircra had own at a lower altitude? Perhaps. Indeed, NATO then changed the rules, allowing aircra in certain circumstances to y lower to ensure target identication. ere 

is a tradeo in such instances: if ying lower increases the risk to 

aircrews, at what point does the risk of misidentifying a target override the risk of losing a plane and its crew? If incurring friendly losses 

meant the shattering of the alliance, was that preferable to Milosevic 

continuing his atrocities unchecked?

e drive to limit civilian casualties and collateral damage has generated great scrutiny among military planners. Since the air campaign in Kosovo, a special soware program has been used, appropriately termed “Bugsplat,” which predicts the amount of damage that 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 121

could occur for a given airstrike. Planners examine a computergenerated map of the target area that contains details regarding the 

size, construction materials, and function of surrounding buildings. 

Planners can specify the type of bomb used, warhead size, attack 

path, fuse setting, and other factors for a specic target. e computer program then estimates how much damage, if any, would occur 

to nearby buildings if a munition hit on target or if it missed. Based 

on the results, planners can then modify the size of the warhead, 

weapon type, attack path, and other variables to drive the anticipated 

damage results lower.54 In some cases, the target might be avoided 

altogether if Bugsplat indicates that signicant collateral damage 

would occur.

Even so, mobile targets pose special problems. Because of their nature, aircrews have less time to determine their identity. For example, if 

a suspected Scud missile launcher is seen headed for a tunnel, the 

pilot must quickly decide to either hit it—and risk that it is actually a 

civilian fuel truck—or hold up, allowing the vehicle to escape. If it is 

a Scud, it could reemerge an hour later, aer the aircra is gone, and 

launch, perhaps against civilian targets. Finding the means to accelerate the decision making for hitting mobile/eeting targets to enhance 

military eectiveness, while still assuring the protection of civilians, 

will not be an easy task.

e Challenges Ahead

Jus ad bellum and jus in bello are dierent but related concepts: 

the rst refers to reasons for going to war, and the second relates to 

actions during the war itself. ere is a separation between these concepts because military actions in war should not be judged according 

to the validity of the reasons politicians chose to prosecute the war. 

Combatants may not exceed the law just to remove a particularly 

nasty opponent. is is not the case in Islamic law where a just cause 

allows “any means to further that cause.”55 Indeed, Osama bin Laden 

argued that since the United States is evil and makes war on Muslims, 

all Americans are likewise guilty and deserve to die—making no distinction between military and civilians.56

Regardless, for a variety of reasons, the separation between jus in 

bello and jus ad bellum is breaking down. Internationally sanctioned 

interventions are more prevalent, being justied as humanitarian. In 
122 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

some cases, like Kosovo and Afghanistan, the West partly justied 

intervention to prevent genocide and other war crimes committed in 

civil wars (thereby setting controversial precedents). Since intervention was justied in moral terms (jus in bello), the application of force 

had to be above reproach (jus ad bellum). e world expected much 

higher standards of conduct from coalition forces in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq than were required of those they were ghting.

Part of the problem is that military planners are tied to an archaic, 

Clausewitzian view of war that emphasizes the destruction of the 

enemy’s armed forces.57 Targeting is therefore considered legal because it is applied to military forces and those things that support 

them.58 For example, a factory making military equipment is a legitimate military target. A factory making women’s dresses might be attacked because it is owned by the enemy dictator’s brother and striking it increases pressure on the dictator to make peace. Many lawyers 

would argue that striking that target would be illegal since the target 

was not “military” per se. Such a view stems from an outdated view of 

warfare. Airpower makes coercive strategies increasingly possible—

with less loss of life and damage to both sides. e law must catch up 

to airpower’s increasingly eective coercive capacity.59

Another dilemma concerns the requirement that military commanders protect the lives of their own forces and not put them at 

undue risk, while simultaneously limiting noncombatant casualties 

and property damage. Deliberate commingling military targets with 

civilians has aggravated this dilemma. Examples include placing 

surface-to-air missile sites on or near hospitals and schools, installing a military communications center in the basement of Baghdad’s 

al-Rashid Hotel, or simply using civilian refugees as shields, as the 

Serbs did in a military encampment in the woods near Korisa, and as 

the “Fedayeen” did south of Baghdad.60

ose activities were illegal, but what response is appropriate? Allowing these practices to go unpunished is rewarding bad behavior, 

but is there an alternative to turning the other cheek, especially when 

the price for doing so could be increased military casualties?

is is a contentious issue that centers on an interpretation of the 

rules of discrimination and proportionality. Tactically, the United 

States generally responds by using more PGMs, more accurate PGMs, 

nonlethal weapons, and restrictive rules of engagement. Examples include coalition aircra at times using concrete-lled bombs to limit 

collateral damage and certain types of military targets, like bridges, 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 123

being struck only at night to minimize the possibility of injury to

civilians. But what if these eorts at mitigation are insucient?

Targeting lies at the heart of this. Some targets are considered “preplanned” while others are not. e problem of “pop-up” or eeting 

targets has already been noted: what if a target presents itself and 

there is little time to analyze it? en what if the enemy ground forces 

are attacking friendly troops? is situation, termed “troops in contact,” has proved an especially thorny problem. Ordinarily, preplanned targets are thoroughly vetted in advance of an airstrike to 

ensure that intelligence has identied the correct target and that collateral damage will be held to a minimum—the Bugsplat process 

noted above. e degree of collateral damage expected determines 

the necessary level of authority—the air commander, the theater 

commander, or even the president—required to authorize the airstrike. In a troops-in-contact situation, this process is bypassed. 

Forces under attack on the ground oen call in airstrikes to assist 

them. e strike location provided might be GPS coordinates or 

might just be a rough description of a building the enemy is ring 

from. Pilots then do their best to identify the enemy location and 

deploy their weapons to eectively strike that location. It is in this 

situation where most mistakes occur.

Human Rights Watch completed a study of collateral damage incidents in Afghanistan and determined that the vast majority of cases 

where air-delivered weapons caused civilian casualties were troopsin-contact situations. e statistics are compelling. Of 35 airstrikes 

involving collateral damage during 2006 and 2007, only two were 

preplanned strikes. Over 95 percent those airstrikes involved troops 

in contact—instances when the rigorous safeguards taken to avoid 

collateral damage were necessarily bypassed.61 Out of 5,342 airstrikes 

own by coalition air forces that dropped “major munitions” during 

2006 and 2007, a mere 0.66 percent of that total caused collateral 

damage.62 Yes, any mistake is deplorable, but that is still a remarkably 

small number.

It should thus not come as a surprise when the US death toll in 

Afghanistan began building toward a new high in 2009 that an Army 

spokesman stated bluntly, “It is what we expected. We anticipated 

that with forces going in, increased number of troops, increased engagement, you are going to have increased casualties.”63 e solution 

to lowering casualties, on both sides, seems apparent: avoid putting 

in ground forces.
124 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

e priceless ruins of ancient Babylon have suered grievously at 

American hands. e US Army actually turned these ruins into a 

military base, Camp Alpha, causing “major damage” according to the 

United Nations Educational, Scientic, and Cultural Organization. 

e report of the UN’s cultural agency stated that “foreign troops and 

contractors bulldozed hilltops and then covered them with gravel to 

serve as parking lots. . . . ey drove heavy vehicles over the fragile 

paving of once-sacred highways.” When fortifying this new base, the 

Soldiers “built barriers and embankments . . . pulverizing ancient 

pottery and bricks that were engraved with cuneiform characters.” 

Among the structures suering most was the famed Ishtar Gate; the 

damage will be extremely dicult if not impossible to repair.64

It is of more than passing interest that the former Russian Federation ambassador to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, believes that the 

United States has repeated all the major mistakes that the Soviet 

Union made aer invading Afghanistan nearly 30 years ago. He 

stated, “Aer we changed the regime, we should have handed over 

and said goodbye. But we didn’t. And the Americans haven’t either.” 

Kabulov is especially critical of President Obama’s plan to send in 

more ground troops—the same strategy that backred on Moscow: 

“e more foreign troops you have roaming the country, the more 

the irritative allergy toward them is going to be provoked.” e Taliban 

seem to agree with that assessment, as they stated in an interview 

conducted by a British reporter. e subsequent article’s title says it 

all: “e More Troops ey Send, e More Targets We Have.”65 is 

is a depressing prophecy.

It is alarming, but should not be surprising, that recent polls show 

that Afghanis blame the United States and NATO more than the Taliban 

for their country’s travails: only 47 percent have a favorable opinion 

of the United States, and 25 percent actually hold that attacks on US/

NATO forces are justied.66

Such animosity appears to be mutual. A US Army report on the 

mental health of Soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq contained 

some remarkable ndings. When asked, 62 percent of Marines and 

53 percent of Soldiers responded that they felt noncombatants need 

not be treated with dignity and respect. Worse, 60 percent of all 

Marines surveyed and 45 percent of all Soldiers stated that they 

would not report a unit member that they saw killing an innocent 

noncombatant. ese are astounding ndings, reported by the military itself, which cast an ominous cloud on ground operations.67
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 125

Aircra were rst used in war in 1911 when Italy fought the Ottoman Empire in Libya. When an Italian aircra bombed Turkish infantry positions, the Turks claimed, falsely, that it had struck a hospital and killed several civilians.68 It would seem that the propaganda 

value of collateral damage caused by air attack, both real and imagined, was recognized nearly as quickly as the importance of bombing 

itself. Given the seriousness of collateral damage incidents, it is surprising that the US military has not been more proactive in investigating incidents and then releasing ndings. When asked about this, 

one high-ranking military public aairs ocer responded that such 

activities “were not command essential.”69 is is shortsighted. e 

military’s access to numerous sensors, videos, pilot reports, and reports from personnel on the ground means that no one is better able 

to determine the facts.70 If this responsibility is abdicated, then someone else will ll the information vacuum with reports, probably inaccurate and fragmentary, that will be accepted as true. e Israelis 

have formed special teams that accompany all ground units into action with the mission to conduct “operational verication.” Armed 

with video cameras and tape recorders, they “document the story in 

real time” to counteract the tales spread by terrorists.71

e “war on terror” highlights many of the challenges noted above. 

Terrorists oen use illegal methods and weapons to achieve their 

goals; yet they are oen shielded from the consequences of their illegal 

acts. Terrorists oen operate in urban areas, deliberately commingling with civilians and occupying protected structures such as 

mosques and schools. ey are well aware that the United States and 

other Western countries will be loath to strike—which they would be 

legally entitled to do—for fear of collateral damage and international 

censure. Terrorists are capable of blending into the civilian populace, 

making it extremely dicult to track them, much less strike them.72

ese are all formidable challenges for any type of military force to 

address, including airpower.

Conclusions

We must confront what one could cynically call “the myth of noncombatant immunity.” e noble attempts to reduce the suering of 

noncombatants during war only paste a g leaf on the problem. In 

reality, civilians have always suered the most in war. is was never 
126 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

truer than in the twentieth century, when estimates of those who died 

in war ranged as high as 175 million, the majority of whom were noncombatants. Worse, the number of civilians dying in war as a percentage of total deaths has increased dramatically over the past century. 

ese statistics indicate that the principle of noncombatant immunity 

is at best a goal we have tried unsuccessfully to achieve, but at worst a 

myth that hides the truth. Innocent people have always suered the 

most in war, especially in the traditional forms of land and sea warfare. 

roughout the past century, indiscriminate killers included unrestricted submarine warfare, landmines, blockades, sanctions, 

sieges, artillery barrages, starvation, and genocide—as well as some 

bombing operations in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

Centuries of evidence show that blockades, sanctions, and sieges 

have a percolating eect: they start killing at the bottom levels of society 

and slowly work their way upwards. Over one million civilians died at 

Leningrad during World War II, while more than 20,000 civilians died at 

Sarajevo in 1993; yet sieges are still legal under international law.73 Regarding blockades, the more than 800,000 German civilians who died 

as a result of the Allied starvation blockade in World War I were not 

soldiers, politicians, or even factory workers.74 Instead, the rst to die 

were the old, the young, and the sick. Eventually, and only very slowly, 

did the eects reach the upper levels of society. Such odious results 

also were the norm in Iraq during the 1990s as a result of sanctions 

imposed by the UN to pressure Saddam Hussein, sanctions that killed 

over one million civilians; it was not Saddam Hussein and his generals 

who went to bed without their supper.

e sanctions imposed on Haiti between 1991 and 1993 in an 

attempt to push out the military junta in power were similarly egregious. During those two years the Haitian economy was devastated: 

unemployment soared to 70 percent, ination doubled, GDP 

dropped 15 percent, and 1,000 children died each month as a direct 

result of the legally levied sanctions.75 Small wonder that two observers 

wrote a critical and cynical article on the matter titled “Sanctions of 

Mass Destruction.”76

Some have argued that such suering is the fault of the country’s 

leaders, who refuse to give in or who hoard food and medicine for 

themselves—and not the responsibility of those who impose these 

deadly sanctions. History shows, however, that countries usually react to attacks in war by accepting casualties to achieve their objectives, and they will protect whatever allows them to continue the 
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 127

ght. ey will sacrice the weakest segments of society so that the 

strong can ght on. Nations at war for their survival (or at least the 

survival of their leaders) cannot aord to take a “women and children 

to the lifeboats rst” stance. us, dozens of cases over several centuries demonstrate what should have been anticipated aer the US and 

UN leaders imposed sanctions on Iraq and Haiti. It is disingenuous to 

claim aerwards that they did not know the gun was loaded. In truth, 

blockades and sanctions are deliberately genocidal policies that must 

be outlawed.

It is time to return to the basics. If the intent of international law is 

to limit civilian deaths in war, then we should look at the past century 

to see what methods of war and which weapons have been most destructive and move for legislation to limit them. e arithmetic is 

clear. e biggest killers have been blockades, sanctions, sieges, landmines, artillery, small arms, genocide, starvation, and despotic rulers 

who murdered their own people to consolidate power. ese are the 

areas that the law should examine, rather than concern itself with 

putting further restrictions on airpower, which has proven to be, as 

Marc Garlasco from Human Rights Watch has stated, “probably the 

most discriminate weapon that exists.”77 To continue to put additional 

restrictions on what targets can be attacked from the air, with what 

weapons, and in what manner, makes little sense. It may reduce the 

number of civilians killed in war by a hundred people here or there, 

but it will ignore the hundreds of thousands who die in traditional 

forms of war. Focusing on airpower, as if it were the real problem, is 

akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It must be our goal and the main focus of the law to employ weapons 

and strategies that limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. 

Clearly, the events of the past two decades have revealed the stark 

contrast between the discriminate and precise nature of air warfare—

especially as conducted by the United States and its allies—and that 

of land warfare. But even more to the point, the appalling slaughter of 

one million Iraqi civilians as the consequence of UN-imposed sanctions must become the primary focus of the legal community. ere 

is a gaping hole here that must be lled; yet it is barely even acknowledged. War is indeed hell. People suer in war, innocent people, and 

this is precisely why countries try to avoid war and why they decide 

to end it. e challenge is to ght only when it is necessary and then 

to exercise forbearance in war, while also achieving the stated political 

objectives. Airpower now oers the greatest possibility of achieving 
128 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

these diverse goals, which means international law must turn its focus 

to the far more prevalent and deadly threats.

Notes

1. Elliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, 154, 161. According to Elliot, “demographic violence” is when government forces re on protestors.

2. For historical background on the just war tradition, see James Turner, Just War 

Tradition. For an update, see his Morality and Contemporary Warfare. It is an ironic 

paradox that at the same time international eorts to put legal restrictions on war 

have increased over the past century, so have the number of noncombatants killed.

3. Royse, Aerial Bombardment; and Watt, “Restraints on War,” 57–65.

4. Kennett, First Air War; and Fredette, Sky on Fire.

5. Royse, Aerial Bombardment, 181. Of note, 10 times as many British noncombatants were killed on ships attacked by German submarines or that struck German mines 

than were killed by German air raids (13,333 and 1,620 dead, respectively). Micheal 

Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 427.

6. Wyman, “First Rules of Air Warfare”; Brune, “Eort to Regulate,” 183–85; and 

P. Williams, “Legitimate Targets in Aerial Bombardment,” 574–76.

7. For an overview of the attempt to put limits on war, and especially airpower, 

see Meilinger, “Clipping the Bomber’s Wings,” 306–30.

8. Leroy, “Limitations on Air Warfare,” 27. For the text of the resolution, see 

Schindler and Toman, Laws of Armed Conict, 221–22.

9. Spaight, “Chaotic State of the International Law,” 25. Spaight had been a British 

delegate to e Hague Commission of Jurists in 1922–23.

10. For a discussion of the attempt to shoehorn air operations into laws designed 

for war on land and at sea, see Parks, “Air War”; and Spaight, Air Power and the Cities. 

Of interest, more than three decades aer World War II, the US Air Force published a 

manual on the legal aspects of air warfare in which it dened cities located behind enemy 

lines as “defended fortresses.” US Air Force Pamphlet 110–31, International Law.

11. Douhet, Command of the Air, 58. e book was written in 1921 and revised 

in 1927, but the rst English translation did not appear until 1942.

12. Royal Air Force, War Manual, I/10. is reasoning was the same as that espoused 

by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain before the House of Commons in June 1938. 

Meyer, “Tearing Down the Façade,” 152.

13. Air Chief Marshall Newell to Air Chief Marshall Ludlow-Hewitt, message, 23 

August 1939, e National Archives, Kew, UK (TNA): AIR 75/8.

14. Chief of the Air Service to all Air Ocers Commanding, message, 4 June 

1940, TNA: AIR 8/283.

15. For the best overviews of US air doctrine prior to World War II, see McFarland, 

America’s Pursuit of Precision Bombing; and Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare. 

For typical examples of Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) lectures on the subject of 

strategic bombing of an industrial web, see “ACTS: Bombardment Text” and “ACTS: 

Bombardment Aviation.”

16. US Army Field Manual 1-5, Employment of Aviation, 36.

17. Ader, Military Aviation, 27.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 129

18. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, 103–4. At the time, Albert 

Speer was Hitler’s chief architect; later he would become the minister of armaments 

production. Reichsmarschall Herman Göring commanded the Luwae.

19. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 4, 205–13. 

Due to improvements in radar/radio navigation and bombing aids, accuracy improved 

throughout the war. By the end of 1944, more than 80 percent of RAF bombs were falling 

within three miles of the aim point. US Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), “Description 

of RAF Bombing.”

20. Britain attempted a starvation blockade of Germany, like it had imposed in World 

War I, but Hitler had overrun so much of Europe that the blockade had only a minor 

eect. Nevertheless, there were local shortages and hardship, especially in Greece, where 

starvation threatened the populace with “decimation” in 1942. Medlicott, European 

Blockade, vol. 2, 272. See also Beaumont, “Starving for Democracy,” 57–82.

21. Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Oensive against Germany, vol. 2, 215; 

and Batchelder, Irreversible Decision, 175.

22. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 253–63. A similar argument is made in Cohen, 

Arms and Judgment, 129–44.

23. Spaight, Bombing Vindicated, 76–77, 112.

24. Funck and Chickering, Endangered Cities, 5.

25. Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 5, 3–175, 507–756.

26. Feifer, Tennozan, 533.

27. For projected Allied casualty gures, see Giangreco, “Casualty Projections,” 

521–82. For the Japanese decision to surrender, see Asada, “Shock of the Atomic 

Bomb,” 477–512. e invasion of Kyushu, set for 1 November 1945, envisioned 767,000 

Allied troops, and that of Honshu, planned for February 1946, projected the use of 

more than one million Allied troops. ere were at least three million armed Japanese 

defenders throughout the home islands. On average, the United States suered 35 percent casualties when attacking Japanese positions throughout the war (about 30 percent of which were deaths); Japanese losses were far higher: 95 percent dead (very few 

Japanese surrendered or were captured). us, if these averages would have held true 

for the projected invasions of the home islands, the Allies could have expected around 

180,000 dead, while the Japanese would have lost nearly three million military dead. 

Civilian deaths (based on the Okinawa campaign) would have been horrendous.

28. Note that the same was true for the Germans. British air defenses forced 

them to attack at night, and British defenses also included blackouts and electronic 

warfare to bae German bombers. See R. V. Jones, Wizard War.

29. United States Strategic Bombing Surveys, 36, 92.

30. Rumpf, Bombing of Germany, 164–65. He gives no sources for his estimates. M. 

Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 490, 526–27, 543–44, gives lower estimates.

31. Rummell, Death by Government, 4, 148, 152; and Katsuichi, Nanjing Massacre, xiii. 

32. M. Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conicts, 234. He states that 129,000 South 

Korean civilians were murdered by the communists, with another 115,000 killed in the 

ghting (the cause of death is not given). In addition, up to one million civilians died in 

the North, most due to famine and disease. Close to one million combatants also died 

during the war.

33. Lewy, America in Vietnam, 442–51. e math: 587,000 – 39,000 (Vietcong murders) = 548,000; 548,000 – 65,000 (bombing of North) = 483,000; 483,000 x 16.75 percent 
130 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

(percentage of civilians presumed killed by air in South) = 80,902; 80,902 + 65,000 = 145,902 

total dead to air attacks; 145,902 ÷ 587,000 = 24.8 percent.

34. Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni, On Impact, 46; and Heidenrich, “Gulf War,” 108–25. 

Arkin, Durrant, and Cherni also note on page 15 that at least 50,000 Kurds and Shiites 

were killed by Saddam in the abortive uprisings of summer 1991.

35. Viorst, “Report from Baghdad,” 58.

36. Munk, “New Face of Techno-War,” 583.

37. United Nations Children’s Fund, “Child and Maternal Mortality,” 10; and 

Gareld, “Morbidity and Mortality.”

38. Owen, Deliberate Force, 161. For Kosovo, see Human Rights Watch, Civilian 

Deaths, 5.

39. e Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) estimates that between 1,000 and 1,300 

civilians died in Afghanistan as a result of air attack. Conetta Strange Victory, 6. Perhaps 

3,750 civilians died in Iraq. Conetta, “Disappearing the Dead,” 1, 3. e Iraq Body Count 

(IBC) organization gives the higher gures. IBC, “Dossier of Civilian Casualties.”

40. Human Rights Watch, O Target, 13.

41. e IBC website contains a number of studies dealing with Iraqi civilian deaths. 

For the early period see IBC, “Dossier of Civilian Casualties.” e IBC continues to update its gures at www.iraqbodycount.org. e highest casualty gures are given by a 

Johns Hopkins University study; its estimates are more than six times greater than other 

agencies. Even so, the percentage of deaths it cites as caused by air attacks through 2006 

(13 percent) is similar to the percentage provided by the IBC. Burnham et al., “Human 

Cost of the War.” is study has been severely criticised due to its methodology; see “Author 

of Shocking Iraq Study,” 1. A recent study gives a slightly smaller number for total deaths, 

but the percentage of civilians killed by air attack remains the same. Hicks et al., “Weapons 

at Kill Civilians.”

42. ese statistics were provided to the author in July 2009 by Lt Col Roni Amir 

of the Israeli Air Force.

43. Bowden, Black Hawk Down, 333.

44. Cordesman, “ ‘Instant Lessons’ of the Iraq War,” 88.

45. Ibid.

46. Schanz, “Focused Lethality.”

47. Wall and Barrie, “US, UK Eye Upgrades.” e article gives an average accuracy 

gure of 2.4 meters for the JDAM.

48. Carlino, “Moral Limits,” 15–29; and Crane, “Sky High.”

49. Glantz, Battle of Leningrad, 543, 547. e primary causes of civilian deaths in 

Leningrad were starvation, artillery re, and small arms re.

50. Larson and Savych, Misfortunes of War, 2–3.

51. “Panel Touts Robots’ Future,” Virginian-Pilot.

52. Former president Jimmy Carter termed Operation Allied Force “excessively 

brutal.” See Washington Post, 27 May 1999, A-33; and novelist Norman Mailer said it 

was “obscene.” See Washington Times, 24 May 1999, A-27.

53. Human Rights Watch, NATO Deaths, 9–10.

54. Graham, “Military Turns to Soware.” e name derives from the colorcoded products that depict splotches where dierent degrees of damage are likely to 

occur upon weapon impact.

55. Rauert, “Inuence of Just War,” 75.
AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE │ 131

56. Laden “Letter to the American People.”

57. Clausewitz, On War, 258. e book contains several statements such as, “permit 

us to make the following unequivocal statement: 1. Destruction of the enemy forces is the 

overriding principle of war, and, so far as positive action is concerned, the principal way 

to achieve our object.”

58. For an interesting discussion of targeting civilian leaders, see Lotrionte, 

“When to Target Leaders.”

59. For an excellent discussion, see Meyer, “Tearing Down the Façade,” 152.

60. Human Rights Watch, NATO Deaths, 19–22. For a detailed account, see Central 

Intelligence Agency, Putting Noncombatants at Risk.

61. Human Rights Watch, “ ‘Troops in Contact,’ ” 2–5.

62. Air Forces Central Combined Air and Space Operations Center, “2004–2008 Combined Forces Air Component Commander.” ese statistics include only those on which 

“major munitions” were dropped. is term does not include sorties that expended 20 or 

30 millimeter cannon re or rockets. Obviously, if those sorties were included (the number 

is unknown), then the percentage that caused collateral damage would be even lower.

63. King and Barnes, “Deadly Afghan Day Signals,” 12. In mid 2009, new procedures were instituted that restricted ground troops from calling in air strikes, and 

this lowered collateral damage. See “Air Strike Rules,” 11.

64. Bakri, “Babylon’s Ancient Wonder.”

65. Abdul-Ahad, “More Troops ey Send.”

66. Cohen and Agiesta, “Poll of Afghans Shows Drop.” e British Parliament’s 

report on Afghanistan also refers to the “cultural insensitivity” of US troops and the 

“scandal-ridden matter of treatment of detainees.” See United Kingdom Parliament, 

“Eighth Report,” sect. 2, para. 28 and 30.

67. Oce of the Surgeon, “Mental Health Advisory Team,” 35–37. Curiously, 

these questions were not asked in the Army’s follow-up report released in March 

2008. It is because of these disturbing facts that the Army has formed a Center of 

Excellence for the Professional Military Ethic at West Point in a belated attempt to 

heighten moral, ethical, and legal standards among Soldiers. It does not appear the 

Marine Corps has taken a similar step.

68. Boyne, Inuence of Air Power, 8.

69. For example, see “5,558 Iraqis Killed since Occupation,” Dallas Morning 

News. In 2004 a two-star admiral in charge of US Central Command public aairs 

used these words in speaking to me.

70. It took over four months for US Central Command (CENTCOM) to release 

its ndings regarding the 8 April 2003 ring of a US tank round into the Palestine 

Hotel, killing two journalists and wounding several others. It is dicult to understand why this report could not have been completed and released within days of the 

shooting. Human Rights Watch has called for the military to establish an agency to 

investigate quickly all incidents of alleged collateral damage and then report their 

ndings to the world. See Human Right Watch, “Troops in Contact,” 8.

71. Dunlap, “Lawfare,” 36–37.

72. e magnitude of this problem is increasing as women and children are now 

being used in suicide attacks. “Insurgents Using Teens,” Chicago Tribune; and S. 

Carter, “Taliban Buying Children.”

73. M. Waxman, “Siegecra and Surrender,” 402.
132 │ AIRPOWER AND COLLATERAL DAMAGE

74. Bell, History of the Blockade, 672. Bell states that 762,736 German civilians 

starved to death during the war due to the Allied blockade, and another 66,466 died 

of tuberculosis and other lung diseases caused by the lack of fat, oils, and milk in 

their diets (the absence of which were also due to the blockade).

75. D. Waxman, “Sanctions,” 40.

76. Mueller and Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction.”

77. Dunlap, “Lawfare,” 36.
134 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

government agencies, can bring the knowledge, expertise, and resources needed to make Africa more stable and secure by making its 

environment more stable and secure.

Environmental Degradation and Conict in Africa

Environmental degradation in Africa can be explored from several 

perspectives. To analyze this issue comprehensively, we can dissect it 

into ve major subheadings: land, water, climate, plants and animals, 

and people.4

 Each topic can be viewed as to how degradation is or is not 

aecting it. Some background information about Africa and environmental degradation there should also help illuminate key challenges.

At present, the rich and diverse African biodiversity is threatened 

by a conuence of climate change, habitat destruction, poaching, and 

surging populations.5

 Rapidly increasing populations are modifying 

land-use patterns, demanding more clean water, and stressing animal 

and plant communities throughout Africa. All these environmental 

changes are occurring across an ecologically diverse continent populated by equally diverse people.

Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent 

behind Asia. It contains a vast variety of natural resources including 

approximately 30 percent of all of the earth’s minerals.6

 Forty percent of the world’s gold, 60 percent of the cobalt, and 90 percent of 

the planet’s platinum are found in Africa.7

 e continent is also 

home of the Nile, the longest river in the world; the Sahara, the biggest 

desert in the world; the Namib, the oldest desert; and the shortest continental coastline.

Land

Environmental degradation of land results from processes that reduce the capacity of the land to produce sustenance or resources. 

ese can include desertication, deforestation, soil erosion, salinization, and other natural and anthropogenic processes. Comprehensive review of public information and peer-reviewed reports indicates 

that Africans in 32 countries consider land degradation a preeminent 

environmental challenge.8

e geography of Africa is quite interesting and diverse. African 

land is mostly arid (60 percent), and most of the land (65 percent) is 

degraded either naturally or anthropogenically. irty-one percent of 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 135

African pasture lands and 19 percent of forests are degraded in some 

form or another—while only 10 percent of all African land is considered prime farmland and another 25 percent is rated as having low to 

moderate potential for sustainable agriculture. While 20 percent of 

Africa’s overall land area is forested, an average of 40,000 square kilometers (0.6 per cent) are deforested every year. e areas that are vulnerable to desertication and home to over 20 million Africans are 

expanding, increasing pressure on land natural resources. In 1950, 

the hypothetical individual share of the land could be calculated at 

13.5 hectares/person; in 2005 it had dropped to 3.2 hectares/person 

and is predicted to be 1.5 hectares/person in 2050.9

 Land degradation 

is obviously increasing, although restoration eorts have been successful in a few areas with reforestation, soil enhancement, and erosion control programs.

Water

Water is another environmental resource that is oen the focus of 

intense competition and conict. “Changes in water quality and 

quantity—in freshwater environments (lakes and rivers) and in 

coastal and marine environments—rank among the most challenging environmental and social issues that Africa currently faces.” Water 

pollution and water scarcity were specically identied in several African states as critical environmental issues.10 Land and water conditions are aected by ongoing changes in Africa’s varied and unique 

climate zones. e recent and rapid increases in global average temperatures are driving a variety of transformations to Africa’s climate, 

increasing environmental degradation. Rainfall patterns and growing 

seasons are changing, sea levels are rising, water stress is spreading, 

ecosystems are being transformed, and disease vector ranges are being altered.11

Africa is the second driest continent aer Australia; therefore, 75 

percent of Africans rely upon groundwater as their major source of 

drinking water. Water resources are unevenly distributed in Africa 

with some areas having abundance while other areas suer from scarcity. Scientists estimate that more than 300 million of Africa’s almost 

one billion people face water scarcity and stress challenges. Africa 

contains approximately 3,930 cubic kilometersof renewable water resources, representing less than nine percent of the global total, while 

per capita consumption of water is 31 cubic meters per year for its 
136 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

almost a billion people.12 Scientists estimate that an additional 250 

million Africans will face water scarcity challenges as a result of 

global climate change.13 Pressures on water resources are clearly increasing. For example, Lake Chad in northern Africa has been 

shrinking as a result of climate change and increasing agricultural 

demand.14 In other areas, cooperation and water management processes are preserving vital watersheds. e Okavango Delta presents 

a spectacular case of how coordinated wetland management is preserving the world’s largest inland delta.15

Climate

Not only is Africa the second driest continent, it is also the world’s 

hottest. It has six climatic zones: tropical wet, tropical summer rainfall, semiarid, arid, highland, and Mediterranean. Some of these 

zones contain spectacular biodiversity. e Fynbos region in the 

Cape Province of South Africa, for example, has the highest rate of 

general endemism in the world. e seasonal and diurnal variation in 

some of Africa’s climatic zones is amazing. For instance, the temperature variation seasonally in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 

only 1.4°C, while temperature swings between the coldest and hottest 

month in the Sahara Desert can exceed 20°C. One interesting fact is 

that Africa is the lightning center of the planet and has more lightning ashes per square kilometer that anywhere else.16 Africa’s variation in climate also enables enormous continental biodiversity.

Plants and Animals

Africa’s plants and animals are varied, plentiful in some regions 

and endangered in others. e world’s largest bird (ostrich) and largest 

land mammal (African elephant) both reside in Africa. Large populations of mammals, such as wildebeests and zebras, migrate across 

African savannahs by the thousands. Additionally, 98 percent of 

Madagascar’s land mammals, 92 percent of its reptiles, 68 percent of 

its plants, and 41 percent of its bird species are found only on this island. e Congo basin contains the second largest area of intact rain 

forests aer the Amazon basin. e rich African biodiversity includes 

eight of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Nevertheless, African 

biodiversity is declining steadily, as more than 120 plant species have 

become extinct and another 1,771 are threatened with extinction.17
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 137

e critical factor in reversing the decline of biodiversity and environmental degradation in general involves human activities.

People

Africa is home to 965 million people and is considered by many to 

be the birthplace of mankind. It is the second most populous continent, with a population density of 32.6 people per square kilometer. 

e population is unevenly distributed, with some areas—for example 

in the Sahara—with very few permanent towns or villages, while areas 

such as the Nile River Delta are extremely densely populated. In 2005, 

over 60 percent of Africans still lived in rural areas, but the number 

moving to urban areas is rapidly increasing. While approximately 57 

percent of all Africans are still employed in agricultural activities, 

urban growth in Africa is the highest in the world. Africa’s overall 

population growth rate of 2.32 percent annually (almost double the 

1.24 percent global rate) is the highest in the world, and 20 of the 30 

fastest growing countries are African states.18 is places enormous 

pressure on agriculture to feed the growing populations, which in 

turn places even more pressure on natural habitats and environmental resources.

Wars on the African continent have also had serious and lasting 

eects on the natural environment and on Africa’s human populations. For example,

e social dislocation caused by war is a further cause of environmental damage. Floods of refugees in particular can threaten natural resources such as water 

and forests. e Rwandan conict and the events that it triggered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, ex-Zaire) became a major cause of deforestation in central Africa. One casualty was Africa’s rst national park, the Virunga 

National Park, on the border between the DRC and Rwanda. e World Conservation Union [International Union for Conservation of Nature] (IUCN) reported that in six months, the Rwandan refugees and Hutu soldiers from camps 

around the town of Goma in the DRC had deforested some 300 square kilometers of Virunga National Park in their search for food and wood. At the height 

of the crisis, the IUCN estimated that some 850,000 refugees were living within 

or close to the park and took between 410 and 770 tons of forest products out of 

the park daily. In the confusion, Zairian soldiers were raiding the park for timber to sell to refugees and relief organizations. Similar destruction became a 

feature of civil and cross-border conicts across much of Africa in the 1990s.19

Roving bands of guerrilla and other unconventional forces can do 

great harm to natural resources and entire ecosystems when they live 

o the land or plunder resources to buy arms and food. e recent 
138 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

conict in Rwanda resulted in the mass slaughter of the mountain 

gorillas in the Virunga National Park. e widespread loss of centralized or sovereign control over natural resources throughout Africa as 

a byproduct of civil war or violent conict continues to lead to extensive environmental degradation.

Reactions of state and regional governmental organizations to 

growing environmental degradation vary throughout Africa. Some 

countries have been unable to nd the means to reduce conict while 

others have adapted and mitigated environmental degradation, 

thereby reducing conict and insecurity. Two contrasting cases where 

state reactions to environmental degradation challenges were dissimilar and consequent stability and security outcomes were also 

vastly dierent, the Sudan and Niger, are discussed below. Examination of these two cases can yield potential lessons for AFRICOM 

leaders that may help eorts to increase their capacity to enhance 

Africa’s stability and security in the future.

Case Studies: Degradation and Conict

e relationship between conict and environmental degradation in 

Africa is oen complex and multicausal. Case studies of environmental 

degradation in the Sudan and Niger—analyzed within the ve domains 

of land, water, climate, plants and animals, and people—reveal some of 

the specic pressures and challenges, which can then become focal 

points for AFRICOM eorts to help Africans help themselves.

Sudan

A case study of the Sudan by the United Nations Environment 

Program (UNEP) identied environmental degradation as a major 

factor contributing to violent conict. Years of ethnic conict; population displacement; weak, corrupt, and biased governance; uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources; and little or no investment 

in sustainable development signicantly contributed to instability 

and insecurity as well.20 In the Darfur region of Sudan, years of 

drought exacerbated by desertication and population growth led 

nomadic pastoralists to move herds of cattle and goats into land occupied primarily by subsistence farmers. A vicious conict ensued, 

with as many as 450,000 people killed by ghting and disease and approximately 2.4 million people displaced from their homes.21
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 139

Nile

Blue

Red

Sea

Nile

SUDAN

ERITREA

UGANDA

CENTRAL AFRICAN

REPUBLIC

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

OF THE CONGO

CHAD

LIBYA

EGYPT SAUDIA

ARABIA

Khartoum

Juba

Omdurman

WhiteNile

KENYA

ETHIOPIA

SOUTH SUDAN

e UNEP’s analysis indicates a very strong link between land 

degradation, desertification, and conflict in Darfur. Northern 

Darfur—where exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conicts to be triggered 

and sustained by political, tribal, or ethnic dierences—can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from 

ecological collapse. Long-term peace in the region will not be possible 

unless these underlying and closely linked environmental and livelihood issues are resolved.22

Environmental issues have been and continue to be contributing 

causes of conict. Competition over oil and gas reserves, Nile waters 

and timber, as well as land use issues related to agricultural land are 

important causative factors in the instigation and perpetuation of 

conict in Sudan. Confrontations over rangeland and rain-fed agricultural land in the drier parts of the country are a particularly 

striking manifestation of the connection between natural resource 

scarcity and violent conict. In all cases, however, environmental 
140 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

factors are intertwined with a range of other social, political, and 

economic issues.23

Land degradation, competition for scarce water supplies, changing 

precipitation patterns contributing to drought and desertication, 

widespread destruction of forested ecosystems by refugees, and large, 

uncontrolled population movements all contributed to instability 

and insecurity in this troubled region. While Sudan presents a clear 

example of environmental degradation intertwined in a circular relationship with violent conict, Niger oers an opposing case study 

where environmental degradation initiated innovative, proactive 

processes that improved ecological conditions and contributed to enhanced security and stability.

Niger

During the 1970s, Niger was in the grip of an enormous drought. 

e Sahel region, already characterized as an arid region of variable 

rainfall and low-fertility soils, is home to most of Niger’s people. 

reats of desertication and land degradation forced the rural farmers 

in this enormous dry land to change their relationships with the land 

and with each other. Systematic ecosystem management processes 

designed to restore environmental conditions and agricultural productivity were adopted throughout the region. Specically, farmers 

adopted simple, low-cost environmental management techniques 

that enabled natural regeneration of trees and shrubs. e techniques, 

collectively known as farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), 

involved uncomplicated forest, soil, and water conservation programs.24 e results have been spectacular. US Geological Service 

(USGS) scientists compared aerial photographs from the 1970s to 

photos taken in 2005 and were astonished by the widespread environmental transformations. Over ve million hectares of land in Niger 

now show regeneration of vegetation.

Today, agricultural parklands replace the windswept elds of the 

1970s. On-farm tree densities have increased ten- to twentyfold. Village sizes have also dramatically increased in the area, generally by a 

factor of three—a direct indicator of rural population growth. e 

changes were equally surprising on the rocky slopes and plateaus east 

of Tahoua, almost totally denuded in 1975. A patchwork of terraces 

and rock bunds constructed to stem soil erosion, trap precious rainfall, and create micro catchments for planting and nurturing trees 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 141

now extends throughout the region. Trees now occur on most plateaus, and farmers have taken advantage of the new environment to 

plant elds of millet and sorghum between the ribbons of trees. 

Windbreaks of mature trees crisscross the wide Maggia Valley and its 

tributaries. Many of the valleys now have dikes and low dams to create 

ephemeral lakes. As their waters recede in the dry season, farmers 

plant vegetables. A vibrant dry season market gardening economy 

has developed. Large tracts of valley lands are now green with produce, 

including onions, lettuce, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and peppers. Many 

interviews with villagers at all sites conrm that there has been notable environmental improvement since the 1970s. Farmers point to 

the increase in woody cover, the diversity of high-value trees, and the 

rehabilitation of the productive capacity of tens of thousands of hectares of degraded land. e projects of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated what could be done, giving villagers options. Since then, there 

has been a huge spread eect, particularly in farmer-managed natural 

regeneration—a signicant change in the way farmers maintain their 

elds, allowing high-value trees to grow in their elds.25

NIGER

Agadez

Arlit

Zinder Niamey

Kano

Niger

Maradi

Tahoua

LIBYA

ALGERIA

MALI

NIGERIA

CHAD
142 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

Changes in ecosystem management have improved the environment across all ve domains in Niger. Degradation of the land is been 

markedly reduced, erosion decreased, fertility enhanced, and agricultural productivity dramatically improved. Even though rainfall levels 

are still below historic levels before the 1970s drought, farmers have 

learned to capture scarce rainfall, and groundwater levels have risen 

in some areas. Niger has been experiencing many of the climatic 

changes that aect the Sudan, and yet its farmers are adapting to the 

changing conditions without the violence and instability seen in the 

Sudan. In addition, the biodiversity of the area has been greatly increased by expansive terracing and planting of trees. Scientists assert, 

“Farmers have reacted proactively to the large-scale land degradation 

that occurred during the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, and have 

begun protecting their resources on a massive scale, encouraging 

natural regeneration, rebuilding their soils, and harvesting scarce 

rainfall.” Even though the population of Niger has doubled since the 

1970s, Niger’s rural farmers have decentralized control over natural 

resources, increased land/food security, and empowered local people 

to care for their own resources.26 Importantly, for other “Sahelian 

countries facing the triple challenges of population growth, deserti-

cation, and climate change, FMNR also oers a cheap and eective 

model to improve farm productivity and reclaim precious land from 

the dunes.” Conict still occurs over property rights and access to 

natural resources but large-scale violence and population displacements have not been a consequence of environmental degradation 

and change in Niger.27

e dramatic dierences in how people in the Sudan and Niger 

reacted to environmental degradation and change illustrate the need 

for more study into the intricate relationships between environmental 

degradation and conict. e lessons learned from these two disparate outcomes also oer opportunities for AFRICOM to learn from 

the processes and measures applied successfully and unsuccessfully 

and provide focused, proactive, constructive assistance to Africans as 

they learn to help themselves.

Overall Recommendations

AFRICOM has the potential to contribute signicantly to stability 

and security in Africa. By building positive relationships with African 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 143

militaries and governments, AFRICOM personnel can build Africa’s 

capacity to adapt to and mitigate environmental change. e following recommendations are oered for AFRICOM consideration.

1. “Help Africans operationalize their knowledge of the relationships between the environment and security—Prepare and provide training/education material on environmental security.”28

Exemplied by the Sudan and Niger, environmental degradation is 

a threat to the environmental and national security of all African 

states. Degradation contributes to conict, both violent and nonviolent, across Africa. AFRICOM can employ focused environmental 

security curricula to help increase the awareness of individual African states and select regions to the impending challenges to their stability and security created by continued environmental degradation.

AFRICOM should work toward establishing centers of excellence 

that address environmental security issues. ese centers could prepare environmental security training and education curricula that 

investigate and provide responses to local, state, and regional linkages between environmental degradation and conict.29

2. “Share environmental information/data with African states in 

an easily accessible manner.”30

African states on the whole lack access to up-to-date, advanced, 

and comprehensive environmental information/data. When simple, 

scientically based ecosystem management processes were implemented in Niger, stability and security increased. In the Sudan, where 

these processes and other good governance procedures were not applied, violence and instability erupted. Without accurate and current 

environmental information, African states cannot make informed security decisions for the future.

AFRICOM can either provide environmental information directly 

to selected states or assist in the creation of environmental information databases that are transparent, easily used, and accessible to as 

many citizens as possible. Additional environmental information can 

be obtained from “aer action reports” from various agencies (Department of State, USAID, World Food Program, Peace Corp, etc.) to 

see how they support environmental activities in Africa. Reports 

from the USGS have been crucial in determining what went right in 

Niger. Information also can be acquired from contractors and from 
144 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

allies such as Italy, the United Kingdom, and France who provide environmental support in Africa.31

3. “Assist African militaries to facilitate, inculcate, and disseminate an African environmental ethic—focused on mission, 

community, and environment—understanding ecosystem services 

and causal relationships.”32

US military forces are currently struggling to develop a comprehensive environmental ethic that extends to contingency and peacekeeping operations.33 Progress includes the US Army’s environmental sustainability ethic of “mission, community, and environment,” 

which could provide a template upon which African states and AFRICOM can begin a dialogue with military professionals on the relationships between ecosystem services, environmental security, and 

conict.34 An African environmental ethic can prevent degradation 

and augment security. Perhaps African Contingency Operations 

Training and Assistance funds could be used to initiate the process of 

instilling an environmental ethic in interested African militaries.35

4. “Expand the use of state partnership programs (SPP) and US 

National Guard personnel to train African militaries for natural 

disaster and environmental mitigation responses.”36

Many SPP personnel and US National Guard units are experts at 

responding to natural and environmental disasters. African militaries can benet from this expertise through training on how to respond to environmental disasters like oods, droughts, and disease 

pandemics. SPP personnel and US Guardsmen also understand the 

importance of environmental mitigation procedures and could share 

their extensive knowledge with African military professionals with 

AFRICOM assistance.

5. “Help African militaries purchase and utilize available environmental monitoring and early warning devices.”37

Many African states lack a proactive solution to the natural and 

environmental disasters that oen weaken and disable state security. 

AFRICOM professionals can assist acquisition of early warning and 

natural disaster monitoring devices by selected African militaries. If 

African militaries, and in particular air forces, can increase their 

monitoring and response capabilities to natural and environmental 

disasters, they will enhance their security competencies, public image, and professionalism.
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 145

One concept to consider is “fractional ownership,” where African 

states or regional organizations can lease expensive environmental 

monitoring equipment. Fractional ownership or leasing “could be a 

concept explored by US Foreign Military Sales” and/or international 

corporations and the overall process “could foster growth of real African regional capability” to respond to environmental crises and disasters even if the process started bilaterally or unilaterally.38

6. “Assist African environmental security specialists to train others.”39

Establishing a core cadre of African environmental security specialists will have multiple benets. ese specialists can create targeted programs that address African environmental security challenges and responses and help professionalize African militaries. 

AFRICOM can provide training, expertise, and a curriculum that 

will make this eort possible.

7. “Assist Africans to mitigate environmental degradation by 

migrants and refugees.”40

Environmental refugees and migrants eeing environmental degradation and conict challenge every African state’s limited security 

and economic resources. Mass movements of displaced individuals 

and families place a huge burden on the refugee camps and on the 

local environment. AFRICOM can help African militaries locate refugee camps in sustainable locations, construct camps that reduce environmental and security challenges, and proactively prevent environmental degradation from happening in the rst place.

8. “Inform African militaries of US environmental security expertise and capabilities.”41

A specialized segment of US military and governmental professionals have extensive expertise in environmental security, degradation, and mitigation issues. e in-depth and practical knowledge of 

these professionals can be used to reduce environmental degradation 

and conict in Africa. AFRICOM should provide African military 

leaders with information on these capabilities and opportunities for 

US environmental security professionals to share their prociencies 

with their African counterparts.

One method to share information could involve building “social 

networks” between AFRICOM sta members, African environmentalists, African environmental security experts, and other agencies, 

components, and even nongovernmental environmental agencies. 
146 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

An environmental security social network could enhance sustainable 

environmental practices and processes and augment stability and security operations. In addition, personal handheld communication 

devices could improve communications reliability, speed, and access 

in all of Africa without an expensive supporting land infrastructure. 

Social networks and personal handheld devices would be invaluable 

as tools for strategic environmental security communications.42 Nevertheless, local environmental knowledge should not be discounted; 

simple word-of-mouth, low-tech communication can be very eective, and inclusion of oen marginalized groups (women and young 

men) should be a focal point of all communication and environmental security strategies.43

9. “AFRICOM should concentrate on those environmental security projects that provide visible results measured against realistic milestones.”

AFRICOM must hold engagement partners accountable and continually move those partners toward becoming self-sucient contributors.44 Various studies have shown that when individuals and 

groups become accountable and responsible for managing environmental assets and have the capacity to manage ecosystems eectively, 

then cooperation, ownership and stewardship values, and sustainability of the resources increase visibly.45

10. “Assist Africans in building aviation capacity or air domain 

development (ADD).”46

AFRICOM can help African states build ADD, which will enhance 

air safety, expand trade, promote security/stability, and improve surveillance, control, and protection of natural resources by developing 

civil-military partnerships between AFRICOM aviation organizations and African states. ADD will enable African states to overcome 

transportation infrastructure limitations that plague many states 

throughout the continent.47

Conclusions

AFRICOM can become a positive, proactive force on the African 

continent helping Africans help themselves. US military forces, environmental organizations, and government agencies have enormous 

expertise and knowledge on environmental change and the challenges 
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA │ 147

and opportunities it can create. AFRICOM must help Africans build 

environmental, economic, and social capital to ensure stability and 

security. e processes AFRICOM supports should ensure Africans 

are provided with expert, current, and relevant environmental 

management information; gain secure and equitable control over 

their natural resources; and are empowered to make communitybased decisions concerning these resources. e frameworks and 

institutions that enable the supporting processes all have working 

antecedents in the United States and other developed states, and 

AFRICOM can assist process adaption by Africans for Africans.48

Information, expertise, secure resource ownership, frameworks, 

and institutions can give Africans the tools to protect the land, water, 

climate, biodiversity, and people from further environmental degradation and the added devastation of linked violent conict. e 

goals of these eorts are to help Africans reduce environmental 

degradation, protect and sustain natural resources, and mitigate 

conict over the environment. AFRICOM’s charge is to become a 

strategic, operational, and tactical enabler.

Notes

1. See United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), GEO-4; 2008 Living Planet 

Report; and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystem and Human Well-Being.

2. UNEP, Africa, 57.

3. Ward, United States Africa Command, 11.

4. UNEP, Africa, chap. 1, PowerPoint presentation, slide 5.

5. Ibid, xi.

6. Ibid., chap. 1: PowerPoint slide 4.

7. Ibid., x.

8. Ibid., 19, xii.

9. Ibid., xi, 19, 13.

10. Ibid., 20, xii.

11. Ibid., 14; and Boko, “Africa,” 435.

12. Ibid., xi, 6.

13. Boko et al., “Africa,” 435.

14. UNEP, Africa, 52–55.

15. Henk, Botswana Defense Force.

16. UNEP, Africa, 9, 11, 8, 29.

17. Ibid., 220, 23.

18. Ibid., 14, x, 13.

19. Pearce, “From Viet Nam to Rwanda.

20. UNEP, Sudan, 6.

21. UNEP, Africa, 60.
148 │ ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND CONFLICT IN AFRICA

22. UNEP, Sudan, 7.

23. Ibid., 6.

24. World Resources Report, 143–45.

25. UNEP, Africa, 16–17; and Tappan, “RE: Extent of Natural Regeneration.”

26. UNEP, Africa, 17.

27. World Resources Report, 155, 157.

28. Burgess, ed., Air Force Symposium 2009, 8.

29. Ibid., 6.

30. Ibid., 8.

31. Ibid., 4.

32. Ibid., 8.

33. Mosher et al., Green Warriors.

34. Schoomaker and Brownlee, Army Strategy for the Environment, 2.

35. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009, 5.

36. Ibid., 8.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 31–32.

39. Ibid., 8.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., 9.

42. Ibid., 28–29.

43. World Resources Report, 156.

44. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009, 5.

45. World Resources Report.

46. Peltier and omas, “Air Domain Development in Africa.”

47. Ibid., 111.

48. Ibid., 111–57.
150 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

to build partnerships that could signicantly increase the inuence of 

US African Command (AFRICOM), the newest combatant command within the DOD.

A 2009 AFRICOM/Air University symposium featured a track on 

environmental security, which identied ways AFRICOM could engage in partnering for lasting and meaningful inuence. One workshop featured discussion of conservation zones, such as TFCAs and 

peace parks (PP).1

 e workshop proposed several initiatives and 

roles where AFRICOM, and specically the US Air Force (USAF), 

could promote environmental security in Africa.

is chapter oers analysis of the mutual benets to US national 

security interests, African governments, and marginalized populations accruing from promotion of environmental security by building partnerships. Utilizing airpower as an engagement capacity, partnership building can aid in the development and sustainment of 

conservation zones in Africa. 

• is chapter proposes that promoting environmental security is 

both an end in itself and a critical component of human security. As such it will aid in legitimizing nation-states and ultimately promote stability in Africa. Application of the concept of 

“conservation zones” can be eective in promoting environmental and human security.

• It proposes that US foreign policy should include environmental security programs as means for building partnerships for stability in foreign nation-states. AFRICOM, and specically the 

Seventeenth Air Force, can play a vital role in the success of environmental security programs.

• It denes the various types of conservation zones in Africa and 

explores three primary benets—sustainment of biodiversity, 

an engine for economic development, and a means of conict 

management—that can result from successful conservation 

zones. One specic type of conservation zone, CBC programs, 

oers unique partnership opportunities to address human and 

environmental security at a local community level. Eective 

partnership building should not just be at national levels.

• It oers a specic case study of a successful CBC program, the 

Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT) in Kenya, with a brief illustration of how AFRICOM could engage an array of aviation and 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 151

USAF resources to benet the development and sustainment of 

the NRT, thereby promoting lasting and eective partnerships 

with local and ultimately national governments.

Use of the NRT as a partnership-building model would also provide 

an example of how such engagements would occur and identify elements, like education and training in cross-cultural competence, necessary for success.

Human (and Environmental) Security: 

e New Security Strategy

Stability in Africa and elsewhere requires human security; the 

guarantee of human rights is necessary for lasting sovereign governments. e concept of human security was established by the United 

Nations (UN) beginning in the 1990s.2

 e notion of human security 

has been redened to mean that state security requires the safety of 

individuals and the well-being of local communities rather than national 

military power.3

 “is kind of security redirected attention away 

from the nation-state and toward individuals and local communities. 

In addition to protection from physical violence, it oered safety 

from chronic threats like hunger, disease, severe economic deprivation, or political repression.”4

Crucial to human security is environmental security—protecting 

people from the short- and long-term ravages of nature, deterioration 

of the natural environment, and man-made threats to the environment, while guaranteeing access to and preserving natural resources. 

e concept of environmental security has grown beyond the concern of species and habitat protection to a concern for survivability of 

the planet. Developing and sustaining environmental security in Africa 

oers military and nonmilitary organizations an opportunity to engage in mutually benecial partnerships with African partner nations 

and their local populations, thereby promoting stability and ultimately beneting US national security.

Building Partnerships

Arguably, the most important military component of the 

struggle against violent extremists is not the ghting we do 
152 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves.

—National Defense Strategy, June 2008

A government’s legitimacy requires an ability to provide human 

security. Building partnerships has become an important instrument 

of the DOD and US foreign policy in promoting stability in partner 

nations. It is dened as “Airmen interacting with international airmen and other relevant actors to develop, guide, and sustain relationships for mutual benet and security.”5

e USAF is developing partnership-building doctrine predicated 

on the continued and increasing importance of establishing and sustaining partnerships that will evolve into long-term alliances. Partnership building includes the following concepts important to the USAF:

1. Security assistance can encompass a variety of interactions 

ranging from passing conversations to formalized agreements. 

Partnership-building activities include humanitarian assistance, medical readiness exchanges, exchange programs with 

military members and civilians in professional military education and topical education/training in specic areas (civil engineering, environmental management, technological schools, 

etc.), and the more traditional military-to-military programs 

such as collaboration in exercises and weapons programs.

2. Actors involved in partnership building include those from local 

to international authorities and nongovernmental organizations 

(NGO). Partnerships develop across a spectrum of methods and 

relationships. Collaboration and strong, vital relationships are 

the currency involved.

3. Successful partnerships are built on courses of action and resources that can bring immediate and longer-term benets. e 

focus of the partnership is its sustainability over the long term. 

However, the most successful partnerships see a gradual drawdown in US resources and involvement.

4. Aviation and airpower can promote the prosperity of all nations, 

especially those that work toward human security. Some policy 

makers might recognize that aviation can provide a wide range 

of benets, but few fully comprehend airpower as a strategic 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 153

investment in national and human security. It can catalyze legitimacy, project national sovereignty, and accelerate internal stability and regional security. Airpower can also be an engine for economic, technological, and intellectual development, generating 

infrastructure essential to the internal and external strength of a 

nation. Connecting aviation to local leaders/communities could 

promote the development and sustainment of human security 

and result in successful partnership building.6

Environmental Security and Conict

We live in a world of ongoing conict, rapidly increasing population, and dwindling resources. Recently, the eect of kinetic operations has become increasingly relevant. Current US military strategy 

and doctrine have recognized environmental security concerns in 

tactical and operational planning and policies.7

 It is understood, 

however, that military stability operations—that is, kinetic operations, 

including conict and postconict operations, staged domestically 

and from foreign bases—impact the environment greatly. Understanding the ecological footprint of conict and postconict operations to human/environmental security and managing this footprint 

to minimize the eect on the natural resources and human populations are necessary for the success of postconict physical, social, and 

cultural reconstruction and long-term sustainability. Along these 

lines, environmental security “best practices” for military operations 

outside the continental United States (CONUS) have developed from 

the environmental programs found at all military installations inside 

CONUS, including a suite of processes (environmental baseline surveys, environmental impact statements, etc.).

AFRICOM, Partnership Building, 

and Environmental Security

is chapter argues that militaries can also be engaged to promote 

and sustain environmental security in many areas of the developing 

world, or in areas that are caught in the pincers of human and/or 

environmental crises, in addition to being deployed into conict situations. Militaries oer unique command and support structures that 

include capabilities, technologies, and a “military culture” that can 
154 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

develop and sustain environmental security in the entire continent of 

Africa as well as conict areas such as the Middle East, Southwest and 

Southeast Asia, South America, and elsewhere. Providing resources 

to nations and local communities needing environmental security 

support in terms of mutual benets and cooperation can minimize 

perceptions of militarization or military colonialism.

e standing up of AFRICOM represents a departure from traditional forms of US military engagement, growing from a desire to 

create a combatant command that could engineer a “whole of government approach” for positive inuence by engaging in collaborative relationships with partner nations and other organizations across 

the African continent. 

USAFRICOM better enables the Department of Defense to work with other 

elements of the U.S. government and others to achieve a more stable environment where political and economic growth can take place. USAFRICOM is 

committed to supporting U.S. government objectives through the delivery 

and sustainment of eective security cooperation programs that assist African 

nations build their security capacity to enable them to better provide for their 

own defense.8

e leadership of ARFICOM includes representation from the Department of State (DOS), the DOD, the US Agency of International 

Development (USAID), and other government agencies involved in 

Africa. AFRICOM also seeks to engage humanitarian organizations 

involved in Africa issues and common concerns.

is paradigm shi in US military-civilian relations reects the 

changing face of foreign relations in an increasingly “globalized” 

twenty-rst century. e end result of US involvement in a continent 

as diverse as Africa, and with many countries still struggling from the 

aermath of colonialism, points toward reconstruction and stability 

operations as primary concerns for US foreign policy and a potential 

DOD opportunity in building partnerships with African nations. 

Dr. Dan Henk observed that historic patterns of foreign policy initiatives in African environmental security indicate that interagency dysfunction and stove piping would exist in stability operations projects 

undertaken within the traditional combatant command approach.9

AFRICOM exists as a means of harnessing the eorts and strengths of 

several agencies to engage in a range of programs—including militaryto-military, military-to-civilian, and civilian-to-civilian—to promote 

a “stable and secure” African environment and to promote human security.
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 155

A host of African, non-African governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and funding will be necessary to develop and 

sustain environmental security programs in local, regional, and international partnerships. Both non-African and African militaries 

can and will need to play critical roles in providing support. In Africa, 

where most nation-states are in their infancy and human security is 

constrained by a host of factors—little or no infrastructure, ethnic 

conict, and environmental crises, both man-made and natural, resulting in natural resource loss, disease, and famine—the notion of 

“security” cannot be tied to the traditional concept of defending national 

integrity but should reect a more human-centric perspective. Historically, militaries in Africa supported dictatorships and juntas 

whose social, cultural, and economic policies undermined human/

environmental security. Many African countries have resisted or at 

least approached AFRICOM with trepidation due to this history. In 

the past, colonial powers protected Africa from the Africans. Resources owed out—diamonds, minerals, oil—even Africans, up to 

the nineteenth century—and many of those resources still continue 

to leave, with benets accruing only to a tiny percentage of Africans. 

With independence rolling across the continent in the mid-to-late 

twentieth century and new governments unable to govern eectively, 

human life and natural resources were and are victims of civil wars, 

terrorism, and cross-border conicts. In many parts of Africa, the 

militaries have contributed to destabilizing countries and to genocide, ethnic cleansing, and marginalization of ethnic and cultural 

groups not in power. is perception of militaries, past and present, 

has led to the concept of “militarization” and has initially stained the 

eorts of AFRICOM. Dealing with the perception of militarization 

and thus abating resistance to stability operations will be the burden 

of organizations such as AFRICOM.

AFRICOM, and thereby the USAF, can bring to bear unique capabilities and technologies through building partnerships, particularly 

in the development and sustainment of national and international 

conservation zones, TFCAs, PPs, and CBC programs. e conservation zone can be understood in terms of three primary benets: sustainment of biodiversity, development and sustainment of economic 

development, and a vehicle for conict management and resolution.10

ere are several types of conservation zones, including TFCAs, PPs, 

and CBC programs. Each oers opportunities for developing and 

sustaining partnerships with Africans.
156 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

e CBC programs oer opportunities for developing lasting partnerships with African communities that can promote the development of human security beyond what national government organizations can provide.11 One CBC program in northern Kenya suggests 

how the USAF through partnership building can develop and promote sustained partnerships at the level of local communities—considered critical in promoting stability in developing and conictprone nation-states.

Conservation Zones

e environment, as we have discussed, is a critical component to 

guaranteeing human security for Africans. e development and 

implementation of conservation zones that incorporate local communities and governmental organizations in managing land for multiple purposes can promote stability. e development of ecological 

areas/conservation zones to promote sustainability and stability has a 

long history. e birth of national parks and forests in the United 

States is just one example of such use. More recently, the use of conservation zones in Africa and other areas, such as North/South Korea, 

the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and nations in and around the former 

Soviet Union, has been promoted as a means of conict resolution.

Conservation zones are based on three general benets or pillars 

of sustainability:

1. sustainability of biodiversity through conservation [conservation and management of natural resources, including water 

(hydroelectric) and land resources such as forests and wildlife] 

and preservation of the “commons” to reduce conict over depletion of resources; 12

2. management and sustainability of economic development both 

locally and regionally through the engines of ecotourism and 

community-based land use programs; and

3. sustainability of regional peace and stability through conict 

resolution to include bilateral and multilateral relations between nations.13

Conservation zones refer to ecologically protected areas whose 

boundaries and land use have been agreed upon by local, national, 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 157

and/or consortia of national governments and NGOs. At the local 

community level, conservation zones can create governance that is 

oen far more inuential and benecial to local populations than national governments, especially where the national government lacks 

a strong presence in areas more rural and distant from the government centers.

ere are three basic types of conservation zones in Africa. e 

rst, transnational, has borders established by national governments 

and maintained by a consortium of governments. ese not only engage indigenous and local populations, but also depend on successful 

international cooperation to create, sustain, and protect natural and 

human resources in and around the conservation areas. A second 

type includes areas within national borders (e.g., wildlife refuges and 

national parks). e third type engages local populations in establishing and managing natural resources areas for sustaining wildlife and 

promoting local economic development. Community-based natural 

resources management (CBNRM) programs in southern Africa, 

originating in the 1980s and piloted in Kenya, Tanzania, and other 

countries, exemplify these.14 Rural communities that live in nontenable or marginal agricultural lands in and around wildlife- or gamerich habitats or migratory routes are empowered to manage the natural resources for economical benet through ecotourism. Management 

of these community-based areas creates local governance that oen 

becomes the de facto decision maker in community issues and a tie to 

the national government.

Environmental stress rarely respects national boundaries, and it 

may be benecial for countries and regions to cooperate to alleviate 

similar or mutual problems.15 Concentrating on environmental 

peacekeeping instead of environmental problems and environmental 

security entails interactions that can be building blocks for future cooperation.16 Protected areas—transfrontier protected areas, transboundary protected areas, or transfrontier conservation areas 

(TFCA) that straddle national or regional boundaries—are oen 

called peace parks.17 Peace parks are found primarily in past conict, 

postconict, or potential conict regions.

Generally, TFCAs are ecological “protected areas” developed between nation-states sharing a political boundary. ere is usually 

some regular communication and information sharing between 

TFCA partners. TFCAs may or may not have contiguous boundaries 

and/or contain human use land areas.18 e development of TFCAs 
158 │ TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT

in Africa has been especially successful in facilitating the resolution 

of territorial conict and promotion of environmental sustainability. 

TFCAs have also become “important symbols and outright manifestations of the peace process.”19 For conservationists, TFCAs are an 

enforceable means for protecting biodiversity. For national militaries, 

they become an area without human population encroachment. Recently, however, TFCAs have become refuge areas or staging platforms for rebels. TFCAs also represent economic development for 

local indigenous groups or privately sponsored ecotourism companies. ey oer pharmaceutical companies or NGOs interested in 

preserving agricultural biodiversity a genetic “warehouse” of potential natural resources or information.

Ecotourism is an engine that can drive both funding and livelihoods for those who live in and around the TFCA.20 TFCAs such as 

the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) that straddles the 

boundaries of Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe oer places 

to live within and adjacent to park boundaries

Peace parks date from 1932 and the development of the WatertonGlacier International Peace Park on the border between the United 

States and Canada.21 Organizations such as the World Commission 

on Protected Areas of the International Union for Conservation of Nature

(IUCN), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the United Nations 

University for Peace have worked in some way to further the concept 

of promoting peace through building peace parks. According to the 

IUCN, a PP must promote a “clear biodiversity objective, a clear 

peace objective and cooperation between two countries or subnational jurisdiction.” e UN University for Peace denes PPs as protected areas where “there is a signicant conictive past.”22 Others 

have dened “Parks for Peace” as “transboundary protected areas that 

are formally dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and to 

the promotion of peace and cooperation.”23 Clearly, PPs focus on sustaining peaceful relations between nations, promoting environmental sustainability, and preserving access to natural resources.

Peace parks provide a collaborative alternate solution to barricaded borders, thereby mitigating tensions. ey have been used successfully in regional areas either prone to conict or in a postconict 

condition, such as the border between Kuwait and Iraq.24 e Korean 

demilitarized zone is a nature corridor untouched for 50 years and an 

opportunity for engagement in collaborative eorts to maintain habitats 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 159

and reintroduce species, promote novel cooperation in international 

relations, and symbolize peace.25 e Siachen Glacier region has been 

and continues to be a region of conict between India and Pakistan;

“combat over a barren, uninhabited nether world of questionable 

strategic value is a forbidding symbol of their lingering irreconcilability.”26 A “Transboundary Peace Park,” to be bilaterally managed by 

both India and Pakistan, has been proposed that could end the ongoing “low-intensity border war between the two nations.”27 A frontier 

peace park in the Mesopotamian marshlands between Iran and Iraq 

is in the preliminary stages. e goal is to bring Shia and Sunni together and to restore sensitive marshlands necessary for biodiversity 

and agriculture damaged by decades of conict.28 e boundary land 

between Afghanistan and Pakistan also has been proposed for a series of TFCAs.29

e development of TFCAs featured peace parks in early 1990s 

Africa.30 Peace parks came into being through discussions of common interests, rst between South African WWF president Anton 

Rupert and Mozambique’s president Joachim Chissano in 1990, with 

later support of the newly elected South African president, Nelson 

Mandela. e Peace Parks Foundation was established in 1997. e 

foundation was a collaboration of the governments of Mozambique, 

Zimbabwe, and South Africa and NGOs such as the WWF of South 

Africa and the World Bank.

ere are several successful peace parks in southern Africa, including the GLTP, Kibira National Park, Virunga National Park, and 

the Volcanoes National Park, which make up the Great Lakes TFCAs 

of Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda. e ambitious Kavango–Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Peace Parks Initiative 

includes ve African countries—South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Angola.31 e KAZA has remained in the 

planning stage for several years due to the political instability of some 

members leading to internal conict. e implementation of such an 

initiative only underscores the potential benets of TFCAs to nations 

and their neighbors. While analysis is ongoing, organizations such as 

the Peace Parks Foundation in South Africa continue to promote 

peace parks, leaving the potential for engagement in partnership 

building open.32
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Community-Based Conservation Programs—A Unique 

Opportunity for Building Partnerships 

Community-based conservation programs represent a new conservation ethic in Africa as elsewhere in the last two decades.33 e colonial conservation ethic, “protectionist (fortress) conservation,” was 

state-controlled, “top-down” management and has given way to a management approach based on “inclusive, participatory, communitybased endeavors.”34 Initially labeled as CBNRM projects when rst developed in Africa in the 1980s, programs were established in countries 

under dierent acronyms but with the common goals of community 

participation leading to natural resources management, recovery and 

sustainment of at-risk wildlife, and community development. In 

Namibia, the CBNRM program was labeled “LIFE” (Living in a Finite 

Environment), and in Zimbabwe it was labeled “CAMPFIRE” (the 

Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources).35

Today these programs are found in many African countries and are 

subject to growing pains specic to local, national, and international 

governments. Also, the national and international NGOs that represent powerful and competing interests may or may not promote con-

ict resolution, attenuation, and management.

Top-down approaches of national and state governments in the 

development and sustainment of national parks now create diculty 

in adapting to the community-based conservation ethic and translation of that ethic into successful community development and sustainment of local natural resources to the benet of community residents.36 e heart of making CBC programs successful requires 

allying the twin goals of conservation (including biodiversity) and 

economic development (socioeconomic benets to local communities). Likewise, these goals must be reconciled with those of all stakeholders. Eorts of NGOs such as the WWF and e Nature Conservancy can promote conservation through limited land use that 

marginalizes the benets to the local communities.37

Other diculties lie in articulation between the eorts and management of government organizations and the participation of the 

local communities. is is apparent in the operation of national parks 

and refuge areas where the needs of indigenous peoples are not considered. Lately, national governments in countries such as Kenya and 

Tanzania have promoted the development of conservation areas that 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 161

have incorporated those indigenous traditional land users in the 

management and sustainment of parks.

e Ngorongono Conservation Area (NCA) in Tanzania oers indigenous populations residence within and adjacent to park boundaries. Even though limiting their traditional subsistence strategies—

for example, pastoralism for the Masai—the NCA park development 

and sustainment can oer employment, experience, and training/

education.38 Yet there is also evidence that the Masai culture and specically its relationship to wildlife have dramatically been altered, 

and the local indigenous cultures and life ways—herding and grazing 

cattle—fragmented. Even though local Masai have been included in 

park management in some capacities, they are not active or meaningful participants. In addition, Masai ecological knowledge, including 

“geographical understanding of the landscape . . . to ecological 

knowledge and resource management process” honed over centuries 

of local subsistence, is not taken into consideration in the discourse 

shaped by the hegemony of Western conservation approaches. is 

local knowledge is based on a continuing ecological repository of 

orally compiled observation and interaction with natural resources 

that lies beyond the “science” of conservation and must be integrated 

into CBC to be an eective program.39

In Tanzania, as elsewhere (South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, Zimbabwe, 

and outside of Africa), there is a problematic dialogue between the 

more “ocial” entities of government, NGOs and donor agencies/

organizations that represent the power brokers, and the local communities themselves. Oentimes there is a lack of adequate representation to establish or reconcile an eective management that considers 

both goals of conservation and economic development. An eective 

CBC program requires that the resource brokers consider “how to 

reshape their own institution and agendas to really t communities—

with their diverse needs, knowledge, and complex social and ecological structures—into conservation” (emphasis in the original).40

e Western notion of “community” may also bias the application 

of CBC. Western notions of geopolitical boundaries, such as villages, 

applied to seasonal transhumance subsistence, mobile agricultural, 

or food forager cultures (these strategies are most likely those practiced by indigenous populations in and around CBC lands) constrain 

the consideration of conservation approaches and limit the application of natural resources for economic development. Conservation 

zones oer a multitude of engagement points that could be utilized in 
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developing partnerships through promotion of human and environmental security. At the same time, AFRICOM, other DOD, or DOS 

eorts to frame the activity and the relationships in terms of promoting sustainable African success in conservation zones must apply 

caution to partnership activity.

Contemporary CBC Programs: Land Trusts and 

the Kenya Land Conservation Trust

In 2005, the Kenyan government incorporated the Kenya Land 

Conservation Trust (KLCT). e trust encompasses CBC programs 

that “extend beyond protected areas” and the acquisition of critical 

pieces of land integral to national conservation eorts.41 Protected 

areas in Kenya account for only 8 percent of its land. is leaves large 

parcels of wildlife habitat outside the protection of governmental 

agencies such as the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and the Ministry 

of Lands and Housing when it comes to protecting against “incompatible” land use practices “emanating from population increases . . . 

and the consequent conversion of land for agriculture, subdivision, 

settlements and livestock loss” and potential use by criminal or terrorist organizations.42 Leaders from national and local private sectors, civil 

society, and landowners join a diverse trust board featuring African 

Wildlife Foundation (AWF), KWS, and the Ministry of Lands and 

Housing. is provides a venue for “active” participation in communities where the KLCT will be operating. Various mechanisms are 

used to ensure conservation, to include land purchases, easements, 

leases, and management agreements.

Besides facilitating the KLCT, the AWF has initiated the African 

Heartlands Program that emphasizes conservation of African wildlife through protection of “large, cohesive conservation landscapes.”43

As indicated above, many of the critical ecological “corridors” that 

help sustain wildlife through migratory routes as well as necessary 

tracts of habitat are not under protection aorded by national governmental agencies. Local communities or even state agents without 

means to protect or sustain conservation of natural resources falling 

within individual or community boundaries or designated land tenures mostly own these corridors. e development of land trusts has 

brought private lands under conservation and facilitated development of natural resources management plans that promote synchroni-
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 163

zation of multiple land uses that benet both biodiversity and human 

livelihood. e African Heartlands Programs as of 2005 had initiated 

CBC programs to benet communities in Mozambique, Tanzania, 

and Botswana.

CBC programs oer a unique partnership-building opportunity at 

community levels to address environmental and, in general, human 

security at the ground level. e partnerships are developed in a complex coalition that would include national government agencies; the 

more grounded the community, the more viable the relationship between community and national government. Strengthening this frequently tenuous relationship between government and communities 

in many African nations promotes stability.

Another example of a CBC program in Kenya is the Northern 

Rangeland Trust (NRT). e NRT was prompted by support from the 

Lewa Conservancy, a private land trust in northern Kenya. e success of the NRT suggests a potential model of CBC that could be exported to other areas of Africa, and AFRICOM could be a means to 

assist in the development and sustainment of these programs.

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy and 

Northern Rangeland Trust

A Case Study

Arguably one of the most successful CBC programs in Kenya, perhaps on the continent, is the partnership between the nonprot Lewa 

Wildlife Conservancy (LWC), a 62,000-acre former privately owned 

cattle ranch, and the Northern Rangeland Trust, a collection of local 

communities north of the conservancy that have designated communal land for wildlife preservation. e former owners of Lewa Downs, 

now the LWC, primarily herded cattle until 1983 but also operated a 

successful wildlife “ecotourist” program fueled by the now-endangered 

black rhino and Grévy’s zebra, as well as elephant, lion, leopard, and 

African bualo. With the black rhino approaching extinction due to 

poaching in the early 1980s, the owners set aside and fenced part of 

the ranch as a rhino sanctuary. A decade later the sanctuary was expanded and converted to a general wildlife sanctuary to include the 

entire ranch and adjoining Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve.
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e LWC has also addressed social and health issues within local 

communities as well as those adjacent to its boundaries. It has created 

a very ecient wildlife “security” force that cooperates with the Kenya 

Wildlife Service and features a variety of security technologies to 

maintain an eective deterrent to poaching. Occasionally, the LWC 

security partners with the KWS and community conservation programs in antipoaching missions.

e northern rangelands contain a precarious environmental situation; “the long-term conservation of wildlife in Kenya’s northern 

rangelands is inextricably linked to the fate of the local pastoralist 

communities.”44 e LWC has taken an active role in northern Kenya, 

fostering a conservation and wildlife preservation ethic to combat the 

negative eects of human intervention from overgrazing and livestock, poaching, and ethnic violence. ere is a connection between 

the conservation of wildlife and preservation of biodiversity in northern 

Kenya with the development of the local pastoralist communities. 

CBC initiatives in Kenya, as elsewhere in Africa, rest on the development of wildlife and habitat, with ecotourism as a driver of economic 

development. e eorts and resources supplied by governments and 

NGOs are crucial to these initiatives. e drive for economic sustainability oen overshadows the absolute need to involve the local community at every step of the developmental process. e evolution of 

the NRT is an example of a CBC initiative that weaves into its expression the critical piece of community governance and management.

Land ownership is a dening attribute of the NRT and supports 

the notion of conservancy independence. Ownership empowers 

communities to make informed decisions that relate to community 

needs. However, the majority of Kenya’s CBC initiatives tend to focus 

on generating economic benets for the community through ecotourism. e real needs—to establish a solid foundation for local governance and sustainability of that initiative—come second. As a result, community participation from the outset is largely passive and 

tends to become overly dependent on long-term support from the 

government and NGOs. e NRT has approached development with 

goals customized to each conservancy and based on the needs of local 

communities. is approach promotes a solid and accountable foundation for investment from a variety of sources into the conservancies and cultivates independence from the specic interests of each of 

the organizations. Investment is applied to directly support conservation and to community institutions that may indirectly support 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 165

conservation and the development of the community. In others 

words, success of the conservancy fosters community development.

In 2004, LWC personnel collaborated with national and local governments and conservation groups to establish the NRT. e main 

problems and their solutions in development of the NRT followed the 

three pillars of conservation zones discussed earlier: sustainability of 

biodiversity, economic development, and conict resolution. e NRT 

encompasses 1.5 million acres and is home to “approximately 60,000 

pastoralists of dierent ethnic origin including Samburu, Rendille, Laikipiak Maasai and Meru.”45 e trust stretches across a large swath of 

traditional African megafauna habitat, yet each of the trust’s conservancies contains a unique constellation of animal and plant species that 

require specic conservation and local economic development.

 Goals of the NRT are to

• ensure the conservation, management, and sustainable use of 

the natural resources within the trust area;

• promote and develop tourism and all other environmentally 

sustainable income-generating projects within the trust area;

• promote culture, education, and sports of the residents of the 

trust area;

• promote better health of the residents of the trust area through 

the provision of better health services and facilities;

• alleviate poverty of the inhabitants of the trust area through improved social services, provision of employment, and establishment of community-based enterprises; and

• promote and support trusts, corporations, NGOs, and other charitable organizations with similar objects to those of the trust.46

e NRT has organized around a governance structure that relies 

on representation of individual conservancies through a democratically elected council of elders and a board of trustees with a set tenure 

of service. An executive director coordinates trust operations by funneling decisions through the community development department, 

the research and monitoring department, the livestock and rangelands manager, and the business and enterprise manager. Individual 

conservancies allocate almost 50 percent of their ecotourism income 

toward an annual operating budget, with the remainder going to 
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community institutions and services for community development 

(e.g., education, social services, health care, etc.).47

Individual conservancies follow a similar administrative structure, 

with the traditional community leadership empowering a community conservancy board that directs operations through the four departments similar to those mentioned above. Conict resolution 

teams reconcile resource use when grazing and other disputes arise. 

e teams consist of respected elders led by a retired chief who 

“maintain peace through mediation, dialogue and advice.” Team 

members receive formal training in an array of conict resolution 

techniques as well.48

e northern rangelands are unique in Kenya, perhaps in all of 

Africa. ere are no physical boundaries or fencing that would impede the natural movement of wildlife. e NRT acts to secure this 

area through individual conservancies that work locally in concert 

with other conservancies to maintain wildlife and a broader ecological mosaic strategy that guarantees the necessary wildlife migration 

through the rangelands.

e success of the individual conservancies depends on eective 

management of the NRT and external support from a variety of organizations. is also depends on eective ecological monitoring and a 

sound security program that support the wildlife, habitat, and communities. Tools necessary for ecological monitoring and a viable security program include “radio communications equipment, a direct communication channel, weapons (dependent on government policy), uniforms, 

binoculars, GPS units, camping equipment for mobile security teams, 

computer and oce resources, airstrips, and other infrastructure.”49

A sound ecological strategy can rely on the resources of the conservancy managers, governmental organizations, and nonprot ecological conservation organizations for evaluation of the ecological 

management program to provide exibility in adapting to changing 

conditions and to coordinate management strategies with developmental potential. Inherent in the NRT and its individual conservancies is a community “participation” monitoring program that combines both quantitative ecological monitoring and localized 

participatory qualitative monitoring. is prioritizes species monitoring, promotion of trust and individual conservancy collected data, 

and initial analysis by NRT technicians. Satellite remote sensing and 

aerial survey data complement the conservancy-collected data.50

Monitoring programs consist of ground and aerial monitoring and 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 167

surveys of wildlife species, habitat vegetation, rangeland conditions, 

and game bird species to promote sustainable management practices. 

is straightforward approach provides communities with information for critical decision making on conservation and development activities.

e northern Kenyan rangelands have struggled with the eects of 

political instability in neighboring Somalia and Ethiopia in the form 

of terrorism. e Kenyan government and local communities have 

resolved some of the human insecurity; however, activities such as 

poaching continue to plague the ecological security and success of 

the NRT itself. e trust engages a security network that spans the 

entire range, including an active, well-trained, and well-resourced security team. e operations of the security program are also closely 

allied with organizations such as the KWS and Kenyan police. For 

security operations that require additional support, resources such as 

aerial reconnaissance, dogs, and armed forces are available from the 

Lewa Conservancy.

e NRT and AFRICOM/USAF: 

A Model for Building Successful Partnerships

Air and space capabilities can aid in meeting human security needs 

through eective governance, promoting national and local security, 

and meeting the sociocultural needs of the people. e modern standards that ensure safe and eective air and space operations require 

infrastructure development that benets both civil and military use. 

Aiding the development of air and space capabilities can include a 

range of activities that includes military-to-military, military-tocivilian, and civilian-to-civilian contacts. Activities could include 

civil (human security) operations through civil aviation training, humanitarian response activities, promotion of medical assistance in 

rural and marginalized communities, assistance in building the necessary infrastructure to support both civil and military aviation, development of training exchange programs for personnel in both civil 

and military aviation, peacekeeping, and other activities. USAF partnership building could involve robust application of air and space 

assistance in the development and sustainment of aviation capability 

to both partner nation governments and local communities.
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AFRICOM could provide support in seven specic areas to TFCAs 

and peace parks to promote partnership building. ese areas directly 

support environmental security in those conservation areas developed 

and supported primarily by governmental and NGO agencies:

1. Provide environmental security education/training and regional cooperation training to African militaries.

2. Assist African governments and militaries in creating security 

for TFCA (e.g. the Botswana Defense Force).51

3. Assist with knowledge sharing related to piracy, poaching, traf-

cking, terrorism, and other illicit transboundary activities.

4. Assist with knowledge sharing to identify and maintain areas 

suitable for designation as a TFCA.

5. Facilitate the TFCA programs with the assistance of DOD environmental and natural resource managers.

6. Assist Africans in environmental remediation programs to mitigate and return natural environments to sustainability following 

human impact such as post-demining environmental mitigation.

7. Provide cross-cultural education/training programs to all involved stakeholders. Develop program assessment measures to 

include short- and long-term ethnographic studies to ensure 

that development and sustainment of conservation zones is 

both eective and sensitive to the local peoples and culture in 

and around the conservation zones.52

e NRT oers opportunities where AFRICOM could apply support to localized and community-based conservation programs. 

AFRICOM support would allow individual communities/conservancies 

to be primary stewards of the ecological and human security. As has 

been argued, environmental security can promote human security 

for those far from the eective reach of their national government. 

e NRT conducts partnership-building activities at low levels of security assistance or civil-military operations, and standard interagency coordination at the country–team level should be adequate. 

is does not minimize the eectiveness of such activity. e populations aected may not be large or sophisticated in the means of economic development, but the vast area in the NRT and the need to 

guarantee “ownership” of that land as a barrier/buer to the violence 
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 169

from bordering nation-states and organized criminal activities such as 

poaching are critical for human security in Kenya. For this security to 

be realized, the local populations need to be fully engaged in control 

of the land and be able to make a living o the land.

Aviation and USAF Support

Aviation and aviation support infrastructure are key to many of 

the operations, development of the NRT, and the individual conservancy programs. Northern Kenya, like so many other rural areas on 

the continent, lacks the infrastructure of basic local roads as well as 

national or international highways. Aviation becomes a necessary 

means of travel and transport connecting local communities, such as 

the community conservancies of the NRT, and also connecting them 

to services from national agencies and organizations. ere are several areas where AFRICOM/USAF could provide assistance.

Security Assistance

Aerial support would be critical for developing and maintaining 

an eective security program for wildlife, residents, and visitors. Aviation enables reconnaissance for identifying poachers and other 

criminal and terrorist activities. e Lewa Conservancy has developed this capability, and aerial reconnaissance support over the vast 

area of the NRT would be very benecial. Transport of security forces 

can be done more eectively and rapidly through aviation resources. 

Providing equipment such as light aircra, maintenance programs 

and parts, and training for security forces to develop and maintain 

human and technological resources would also be benecial. Local 

security forces could benet from programs along the lines of International Military Education and Training through DOD professional 

military education programs across the services and, for aviation, 

through Air University.

Ecological Management

Ecological monitoring programs would also benet from an increased use of aviation and space. Aerial surveys of wildlife (speci-

cally the migration routes), of grassland usage, and of the maintenance of livestock-free zones are essential to sustaining viable 
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populations. Since the NRT’s ecological monitoring is done through 

the local conservancies, land “truthing” wildlife populations requires 

coverage on foot. Aviation can provide transportation to and from 

monitoring areas. e use of satellite remote sensing can provide survey data across the entire NRT that will complement monitoring at 

an individual conservancy level.

Economic Development

Aviation would promote economic development of the NRT and 

individual conservancies through wildlife-based enterprises that 

would include transportation of tourists and resources to and from 

wildlife areas and transport into facilities that support tourism.

Humanitarian and Emergency Care

Localized humanitarian crises as well as emergency care and medical response capability can also benet from aviation resources. 

Transport of medical personnel and supplies and patients would be 

more eective with aviation.

Technology and Research Transfer

e USAF, through its environmental management programs and 

adherence to sound stewardship principles and application of innovative science, can also provide cutting-edge technology to apply to 

trust and individual conservancy programs. Providing educational 

opportunities/internships to NRT and conservancy employees 

through exchange programs with environmental management programs and/or partnership programs with academic programs would 

be useful to sustaining the success of conservancies.

Conditions for Success

ere is ample opportunity for partnership building to assist local 

communities in stabilizing their own human security needs, which 

ultimately will allow the solidication of a sovereign government to 

meet and sustain human security over the long term. For environmental security based and directed at local communities’ partnership 

programs to be successful, certain conditions need to be met. ese 

include cultural awareness of the African people and education/
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training of US/DOD personnel in cross-cultural competence.53

Cross-cultural competence would facilitate mapping the necessary 

relationships to engage a pilot project like the NRT; identifying the 

human, technological, and material resources that might be useful to 

the NRT; and producing the “lessons learned” for future projects 

similar to the NRT.

Cross-Cultural Competence

Implicit in developing and sustaining partnerships with African 

nations and the many ethnic and tribal groups that make up the cultural landscape of the continent is successful cross-cultural interactions. e USAF promotes cross-cultural competence as an applied 

suite of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that prepare Airmen to operate successfully in culturally complex situations without an extensive 

regional or culturally specic experience and linguistic competency.54

Knowledge of the foundational concepts and domains of culture and 

enhancing behaviors such as cultural relativism will promote and 

sustain communicating, relating, and negotiating skills necessary to 

work across cultural barriers.

Mapping the Relationships

AFRICOM continues to dene its scope and nature of operations 

on the African continent as well as develop an internal “rhythm” for its 

three components, DOS, DOD, and USAID, to work together to build 

partnerships. Identifying and mapping the necessary organizations/

agencies critical for success of an NRT partnership are necessary prior 

to the planning phase of such an endeavor. Initially, those departments within AFRICOM that would play a role in planning and implementation would need to coordinate their eorts through the ambassador and the country team. e country team would initiate the 

outreach necessary to Kenyan governmental organizations and agencies responsible for contacting local community/conservancy ocials 

to query on initial in-country visits that would begin to explore the 

potential for applying human and other resources to the NRT. Clearly, 

the sensitivity of the role of AFRICOM in supporting such projects 

would best be facilitated by a coordinated eort worked through the 

country team.
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Modeling CBC Programs

CBC programs like the NRT oer a means for developing and sustaining human security in large areas with relatively low population 

density. Community conservation programs promote stewardship by 

local communities with a dual benet of promoting biodiversity and a 

sustainable local economy in areas that are usually marginal in both 

agricultural value and economic development. In the case of the NRT, 

the benets accrued by individual conservancies are magnied by the 

relationships each has with the larger trust and with the Lewa Conservancy. More land, especially more contiguous land, is brought under 

community control, while human and material resources needed by 

individual conservancies can be pooled to minimize cost. AFRICOM 

could then play a pivotal role in helping identify and develop CBC programs in other areas of Kenya and the rest of the continent.

Further Study

e complexity of agencies and organizations that would be instrumental in brokering a successful program of assistance to the 

NRT is indeed a labyrinth and must be mapped to nd the most effective pathway. is study has established the foundation for considering an approach to partnership building through the need for environmental security in Africa. It has examined conservation zones as 

a possible avenue toward partnership building, specically a recently 

established CBC program that might aord a pilot study of engaging 

AFRICOM. Further research and analysis should be accomplished to 

ascertain the value of whether this type of partnership in Africa can 

be successful and mutually benecial. A study directed at the feasibility of a project like the NRT as a model for building partnerships 

through similar environmental security/sustainability projects in 

other regions of Africa would be benecial and should consider the 

following goals:

1. identify stakeholders for establishing the viability of such projects;

2. conduct capability needs assessment to identify the potential 

human, technological, and material resources that the DOD 

and AFRICOM could provide that would benet the NRT and 

other CBCs; and
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3. initiate/participate in preliminary discussions with US governmental agencies and NGOs that would play important roles in the 

success of such projects (e.g., Kenyan Wildlife Services, Kenyan 

Land Trust ocials, Lewa Conservancy, and the NRT board).

Conclusion

Promoting African stability through development and eventual sustainability of human security by Africans is a necessary condition for 

successful promotion of US foreign interests. Environmental security 

eorts such as CBC programs oer positive and viable partnership 

building opportunities for AFRICOM. Using the NRT as a feasibility 

model and/or pilot program should be explored to include further research on the types of human and technological resources that would 

benet it with an eye on developing sustainability by the local conservancies and building initial relationships between AFRICOM and 

country teams and with those Kenyan local and national ocials and 

other necessary personnel. Such a model or pilot would also provide its 

own case study of how such engagement would occur and identify conditions such as education and training in cross-cultural competence 

that would be necessary.

Notes

1. Burgess, Air Force Symposium 2009.

2. Initially, human security was dened in the United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 1993, 2; and later in 2003, United Nations Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now.

3. United Nations Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now, 1.

4. Ferreira and Henk, “‘Operationalizing’ Human Security,” 1. See also Sands, 

“Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 27–40; and United Nations Development Program, 

Human Development Report 1994. e latter states on page 22, 

e concept of security has far too long been interpreted narrowly: as security 

of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in 

foreign policy or as global security from the threat of a nuclear holocaust. It 

has been related more to nation-states than to people. Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people. . . . For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conict, political repression and environmental hazards.
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5. Adapted from the March 2009 LeMay Center Building Partnerships (BP) 

Symposium, 6–8 January 2010, session 1. is denition acts under the premise that 

“Airmen” are active duty, reserves, civilians, etc. (see Air Force Doctrine Document 

[AFDD] 1). e reference to Airmen in the denition supposes that they are performing aviation-related activities.

6. Adapted from dra AFDD 3-20, Building Partnerships.

7. Mosher et al., Green Warriors.

8. United States Africa Command, “About U.S. Africa Command.”

9. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 98–117.

10. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 27.

11. Ibid., 30.

12. Hardin’s notion of the “tragedy of the commons” describes how multiple stakeholders can negatively impact a shared ecology if their self interest overrides shared 

management and eorts toward sustainability. Hardin, “Tragedy of the Commons.” 

13. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3,” 31.

14. Henk, “Environment, the US Military.”

15. Brock, “Peace through Parks.”

16. See Conca and Dabelko, Environmental Peacekeeping.

17. e many denitions of the “protected” zone or areas that cross some formal or 

political boundary are in reality very closely allied in concept. See Hsiao, “Peace Parks.”

18. Southern African Development Community Protocol on Wildlife Conservation, 2. 

See also Sandwich et al., Transboundary Protected Area.

19. Weed, “Central America’s Peace Parks,” 177.

20. Timothy, “Cross-Border Partnership.” 

21. Ramutsindela, “Scaling Peace and Peacemakers”; and Ali, “Introduction.”

22. Hsiao, “Peace Parks,” 1.

23. Sandwich et al., Transboundary Protected Area. See also Ali, “Introduction.”

24. Alsdirawi and Faraj, “Establishing a Transboundary Peace Park.”

25. Healy, “Korean Demilitarized Zone”; and Kim, “Preserving Korea’s Demilitarized Corridor.”

26. Kemkar, “Environmental Peacemaking,” 3.

27. Ibid., 23.

28. Stevens, “Iraq and Iran in Ecological Perspectives.”

29. Fuller, “Linking Afghanistan with Its Neighbors.”

30. Brock, “Peace through Parks.”

31. Henk, “Human and Environmental Security.”

32. Peace Parks Foundation, http://www.peaceparks.org/Home.htm.

33. Bajracharya, Furley, and Newton, “Impacts of Community-Based Conservation”; 

Hulme and Murphree, “Communities, Wildlife, and the ‘New Conservation’ in Africa”; and 

Hulme and Murphree, eds., African Wildlife and Livelihoods.

34. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature,” 1.

35. Henk, “Environment, the US Military,” 108–9; and Metcalfe, “Campre.”

36. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature”; Campbell and Vainio-Mattila, “Participatory 

Development and Community-Based Conservation”; and Balint and Mashinya, “Decline of a Model Community-Based Conservation Project.”

37. Benjaminsen, Kepe, and Bråthen, “Between Global Interests and Local Needs.”
TOWARD A STABLE AFRICAN CONTINENT │ 175

38. McCabe, Perkin, and Schoeld, “Can Conservation and Development Be 

Coupled among Pastoral People?”

39. Goldman, “Partitioned Nature,” 856.

40. Ibid.

41. “Kenya Land Conservation Trust Formed.”

42. Ibid.

43. Gichohi, “From the Desk of the Vice President for Programme.”

44. Northern Rangeland Trust, http://www.nrt-kenya.org.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. See Henk, “Environment, the US Military.”

52. Sands, “Letters to AFRICOM No. 3.”

53. Cross-cultural competence (3C) can be dened as “the ability to adapt eectively in cross-cultural environments.” Sands, “Cultural Relativism,” 13. e DOD has 

identied 3C as a necessary enabler for mission success in culturally complex environments such as deployments. In today’s changing military engagements, as represented 

by counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and building partnerships, and specic to the 

engagements proposed to aid in environmental security, 3C would be a critical set of 

knowledge, skills, and abilities to develop and engage. Services across the DOD are 

instituting education and training programs in 3C, and 3C is and will be advanced to 

civilians within the DOD.

54. Air Force Culture and Language Center, http://www.culture.af.edu.
178 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

area of the state of Israel—30 percent of state lands are used for military exercises, 4 percent are military installations, 1 percent comprise 

defense system installations, and security restrictions are imposed on 

12 percent. Restrictions such as limiting the height of construction or 

xing a ight path prevent full land use.1

 e MPE and the IDF began 

to institutionalize the links between them in 1997. At the ministry, 

the deputy director of supervision and public relations is in charge of 

liaison with the IDF. In the IDF, the environmental section in the 

General Sta ’s Planning Division, established in 1997, is in charge of 

coordinating all IDF activities with the MPE. As an indication of the 

importance the ministry assigns to its link with the IDF, it nanced 

the position of head of the environmental section until 2002.

e IDF began to give greater attention to environmental issues in 

the 1990s. In December 1996, the Planning Division established a 

steering committee to coordinate the IDF’s environmental activities. 

e deputy head of the Planning Division established the scope of the 

committee’s activities in November 1997, determining that the membership of the committee would represent the services, the territorial 

commands, and other entities. e head of the Strategic Planning 

Branch in the Planning Division serves as committee chair, outlining 

the policy of the IDF in this matter, instructing military commands 

with regard to long-term planning, following up on application of the 

decisions, and initiating and promoting projects.

e Planning Division set up ve secondary committees in 1998 

that are subordinate to the steering committee: oils and fuel, waste 

and recycling, hazardous materials, commands, and procedures. Signicant progress began in February 1999 when the vice chief of sta 

ocially approved the document outlining the environmental policy 

of the IDF, detailing the objectives, and providing the operational 

means to attain them. It begins:

e IDF is aware of the potential environmental eects of its ongoing activities, and undertakes to act on the matter from a national standpoint, and according to the directions developing in the eld of quality of the environment 

in Israel. Out of concern for quality of the environment that is a component of 

the quality of life in Israel, the IDF has decided that environmental aspects 

will constitute an integral part in the totality of considerations on military action, and on condition (emphasis in original) that they do not harm the operational ability of the IDF to fulll security demands; the IDF will initiate activity to increase awareness of the values of environmental protection among 

ocers and soldiers, while creating a change in the current image of the army 

in this sphere; it is important to convey this message to the commanders, to 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 179

furnish them with relevant knowledge and to awaken in them the desire and 

commitment to act to protect the environment that is the quality of our life; 

within the IDF’s work program a planned integration of environmental considerations will be carried out in order to avoid harming the environment in 

IDF installations and to reduce their harmful eect on the environment in 

Israel, out of a commitment and persistent eort to observe all the laws and 

regulations with regard to environmental protection that apply to the IDF.2

ese policies were not put into practice, and disputes arose between the IDF and the MEP. e ministry frequently complained to 

military authorities about the lack of information about possible 

sources of pollution. In general, the IDF did not act methodically to 

pass on information about various pollutants that were discovered in 

its facilities that could have a real eect on the environment.3

 Due to 

this lack of information from the IDF, the MPE was forced to locate 

hazards in military bases from sampling and observation posts outside the bases or from citizens’ reports. Its ability to test in the bases is 

restricted. Even aer MPE inspectors received permission to carry out 

inspections, the military frequently refused them entry to the bases.4

e partial realization of IDF environmental policy is reected in 

the corps’ annual project schedule. e policy required that each service and command be required to prepare an annual project schedule 

concerning protection of the environment that would determine how 

it would advance the environmental objectives of the IDF. As of 

March 2004 the IAF had an “environmental master plan” for the years 

2001 to 2005. is was in contrast to the other services that did not 

formulate a perennial master plan. e IAF planned to allocate approximately 6.5 million new Israeli shekels (NIS) in 2001. In practice, 

the service spent only 4.4 million NIS (75 percent) that year. In 2002 

the service planned to allocate 5.30 million shekels but spent only 

2.67 million (50 percent).5

 e main reason for the underallocation 

in practice was large cuts in the Israeli defense budget that began in 

2000. ese cuts were necessitated by the economic crisis that affected Israel due to the Second Intifada (that started in December 

2000) and the world hi-tech crisis in the year 2000.

Among the IDF services, there is special importance regarding 

protection of the environment in the IAF, for better or worse, due to 

the potential scope of its eects. e IAF aects the environment in 

three ways. First, the physical infrastructure of the service has signicant environmental implications. One reason is that, due to the 

small scale of Israel, most of the bases are located near large concentrations 
180 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

of population. In the event of war, IAF bases would be primary targets of the enemy. erefore, there is a danger that civilian communities close to the bases would suer signicant environmental damage.

Second, IAF activity in the national airspace has environmental 

implications. e small area of the state of Israel and the plethora of 

aerial threats against it imbue the IAF with considerable inuence on 

the policy determining use of Israeli airspace. is policy, particularly the xing of military and civilian ight paths, has signicant 

environmental implications. ird, the Israel Defense Forces is a 

“people’s army” and not a professional force. Accordingly, it carries 

out an extensive array of educational activities intended to enrich the 

world of its soldiers as citizens in a democratic state. For well over a 

decade, the IAF has been carrying out courses about the environment 

as part of its educational activities. is has a great potential for inuencing the attitudes of the soldiers and ocers regarding quality of 

the environment.

As noted, the present study focuses on the rst aspect—the eect 

of the physical infrastructure of the IAF on the environment in Israel. 

is topic is of special interest because most of the primary bases in 

northern or central Israel were built during the British Mandate period and used by the British Royal Air Force. As a result, they suer 

from antiquated infrastructure that does not comply with modern 

standards. Two of the air force bases, Ramat David in northern Israel 

and Hatzor in the center of the country, were discovered to be main 

sources of surface and underground water pollution. e Hatzor base 

had been a major pollution source for many years. In 1983 a leak of 

20,000 cubic meters of jet fuel caused pollution measuring 300 meters long, 2,000 meters wide, and 90 centimeters deep in the Coastal 

Aquifer, one of the three main water sources in Israel. e Ramat 

David, the central base in the north, has documented repeated fuel 

leaks since 1974. ese leaks were caused by overlling underground 

fuel tanks, bad maintenance of the fuel pipes, ooding of the fuel 

tanks on rainy days, spilling of surplus jet fuel from planes to the 

ground, cleaning of planes with jet fuel and ushing the waste to the 

ground, leaks from the fuel lines, spillage from fuel tanks, and ushing of the surplus fuel into absorbing pits.6

 ese leaks caused pollution in the Kishon River and its streams and also in reservoirs in the 

settlements of Nahalal and Kfar Yehoshua.7

e cases of pollution led to talks between the IAF, the IDF, the 

Defense Ministry, the Water Commission (the regulatory authority 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 181

of the water system in Israel), and the Mekorot Company (a governmentowned company holding the monopoly on developing the water 

system in Israel). e discussions dealt with ways of solving the pollution in the Coastal Aquifer caused by the Hatzor base. e prolonged discussions led to conclusions that there had not been proper 

treatment of the jet fuel tanks and installations, both in Hatzor and in 

Ramat David. In both bases corrosion was found in the underground 

pipes used to transport huge quantities of jet fuel. Accordingly, the 

corrosion was the main source of the many leaks. e IAF was aware 

for many years that the solution to the problem was installation of 

cathodic protectors on the jet fuel tanks to help prevent corrosion. 

However, in practice they were installed only aer 2003.8

e slowness of the IAF and the IDF to treat the sources of pollution caused anger among governmental supervisory and law-enforcing 

elements in charge of environmental quality. In 2006, Baruch Weber, 

head of the Polluted Industrial Areas and Land Department in the 

MPE, stated, “e IDF needs to map the pollution, x priorities and 

begin to deal with the matter. We held discussions and talks with 

various elements in the armed forces, and I regret to say that no real 

progress has been made, not at a satisfactory pace.” Weber also 

claimed that the IDF made it dicult for the MPE to enforce the law. 

“We know about problems in a number of bases, but when our inspectors want to check what is going on in other bases, they don’t 

succeed in passing the guard at the gate.” He claims that the IDF used 

out-of-date equipment and control systems when more-modern 

equipment could have prevented this pollution. He says, “e problem in the IDF is chiey awareness. A soldier that spills fuel is not 

aware that the fuel seeps into and reaches springs.”9

ese claims were correct, partially, with regard to the IAF. It preferred to avoid investing in local solutions that would have prevented 

some of the pollution. Instead it invested in building new alternative 

infrastructure based on lasting development principles. e head of 

the quality control branch at the IAF sta in 2006, Lt Col Shai Kidon, 

claimed, “In the past they used to spill the oil into the channels in the 

area of the Hatzor base and it seeped into the earth and reached underground water.” At that time the question of pollution was not dealt 

with in the force as it is nowadays. During recent years the base has 

been approved by the Standards Institution of Israel, and today there 

are no cases of environmental pollution. e matter of treating the 
182 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

damage that was caused earlier is being examined at present by Mekorot and the Defense Ministry.10

Transferring the hub of the service’s activity to the new bases in the 

Negev included the potential for solving several main problems involving the environment. First, the infrastructure that the service established in the Negev was built from the start in accordance with 

progressive standards. Unlike the antiquated infrastructure at bases 

in the north and center of the country, the new infrastructure was 

built with an awareness of the need to avoid pollution. Second, although the Negev constitutes 60 percent of the area of the state of 

Israel, only about 10 percent of the country’s population lives there. 

e air force bases in the Negev, unlike those in the north and center 

of the country, mostly are not located near civilian population centers. Accordingly, they enjoy a greater freedom of action since they 

do not disturb the civilian population with noise.11 ird, the redeployment of the IAF in the Negev has the potential in the long term 

to remove some of the restrictions on airspace in the north and center 

of the country. In addition, reduction of IAF activity in these areas 

reduces, in itself, environmental damage.

Deployment of the Israeli Air Force in the 

Negev aer Withdrawal from the Sinai

Israel’s victory in the 1967 war dramatically expanded its airspace 

area. ese areas, specically the Sinai Peninsula, opened up training 

areas for the Israeli Air Force. e force hurried to use this opportunity, preparing to use Egyptian airelds abandoned during the war 

and setting up air control units.12 Aer the 1973 war, the IAF even 

built modern bases in Sinai. e peace agreement signed between 

Israel and Egypt in 1979 mandated that Israel remove all civilian and 

military presence in the Sinai Peninsula by April 1982. e treaty not 

only ended the dispute between Israel and Egypt, but also this idyll of 

open ying spaces. e IAF recognized that it would have to return 

and train in the limited airspace of Israel, within the 1967 borders. 

Pressure on Israeli airspace also was expected to be greater than before the war of 1967 because the lessons of the 1973 war pointed to 

the need to expand the IAF.

e IAF began to plan its redeployment within Israel immediately 

upon the signing of the peace agreement. One of the rst decisions 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 183

was to build a high-quality infrastructure that would serve the force 

for many years to come. e service avoided as much as possible using temporary buildings. e redeployment was called the Ramon 

Operation, aer the Ramon Crater in the Negev, and was carried out 

in two stages. Operation Ramon A included the evacuation of IDF 

forces from Sinai, transferring the area to the Egyptians, and redeployment of the IDF within Israel. Operation Ramon B included 

the redeployment of IDF forces in the Negev and in Judea and Samaria. 

is was carried on over a number of years and ended in the mid 

1980s.13 e main issues that the service dealt with concerning Operation Ramon are reected in the words of the IAF’s tenth commander, 

Gen Amos Lapidot (December 1982 to September 1987): 

Today we y, more or less, within the Green Line and a little over Judea and 

Samaria. is is a very narrow area, making exercises dicult and causing 

congestion in air activity, and as a result there occur exceptions to ight safety 

rules, exceptions likely to cause an increase in the number of accidents. To a 

certain extent disturbance of the civilian population increases; for example, 

sonic booms over residential areas. In this respect the return of the Sinai Peninsula was for the IAF the loss of an ideal training ground. . . . I regard the 

withdrawal and contraction with the connes of the Green Line as one of the 

most dicult challenges, for the reasons I have stated. e second challenge is 

the resettlement and redeployment in new bases and the third challenge—the 

absorption of sophisticated and modern equipment.14

e focus of the IAF’s redeployment was, as stated earlier, in the 

Negev, which served as the principal reserve land of the state of Israel. 

As such, it was the only area where one could build the extensive infrastructure of new airelds. Even before the start of the Ramon Operation, the IAF had many units in the Negev. However the Ramon 

Operation was expected to increase the military presence there signicantly. It was feared that the dramatic growth in the scope of military activity would adversely aect the fabric of civilian life in the 

Negev. e Israeli government prepared in advance to deal with the 

matter. e Ministry of Defense initiated a number of interministerial committees to coordinate the redeployment of the IDF in the Negev. e IDF and government ministries decided that the military 

project would be a tool for the advancement of civilian development 

of the region. Atypically, civilian regional planning objectives of various 

government ministries were integrated into military programs. However, it is possible that the main environmental eect of the Ramon 

program was that it fixed, irreversibly, the military and civilian 
184 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

allocations of land use in the Negev. Most of the area assigned to the 

IDF was used as training grounds and not for building infrastructure.15

e main involvement of the IAF in Operation Ramon was in Ramon 

B. In this operation the IAF managed a giant construction project 

that included the establishment of three new airelds: Ramon, Uvda, 

and Nevatim. e Ramon and Uvda bases had been established by 

the United States and were already operative during the withdrawal 

from the Sinai Peninsula in March 1982. e Nevatim base was built 

by the Israeli defense system. e IAF also enjoyed the allocation of 

training areas in the Negev. It received live-re training ranges in areas of the western Hanegev Mountain and in the northern Arava.16

e IAF was also involved in another aspect of the redeployment at 

the borders of the Green Line. e redeployment in the Negev obligated the closing of airspace to civilian aircra and a revision of civilian ight paths. e IAF cooperated with the Ministry of Transport 

and Road Safety and the Civil Aviation Authority in the revision of 

Israeli airspace.17

Redeployment of the IAF in the 

Negev from the Year 2000

In the 1990s the IDF and the IAF were under growing pressure to 

transfer army camps from the center of the country to the periphery. 

is pressure stemmed partially from the desire of civilian elements 

to use the land that the IDF would vacate for civilian purposes. However, it also reected a growing awareness of the pollution caused by 

military bases to the soil and underground water, decreasing toleration of noise nuisance, and lastly, air pollution caused by the activity 

of the IAF. To a lesser extent was the fear of damage to the population 

concentration in the center of the country in the event of ground-toground missile attacks against the military bases in the region.18 With 

the passing of time, this pressure partially bore fruit when the defense 

system agreed to vacate some of its bases. Most of the units involved 

were slated to move to the Negev. e IDF prepared plans for redeployment under the name “e IDF Goes South.” e IAF part in the 

plan was called “IAF to the South.” ese plans were integrated into 

the civilian development plan for the Negev—Negev 2015. e main 

points of the plan, which set a strategic vision for the development of 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 185

the Negev for the years 2005 to 2016, were approved by the Israeli 

government on 20 November 2005. 

e transfer of thousands of families of career ocers to the Negev 

due to the military redeployment was a central component of the 

plan. Moving families of IDF ocers, belonging to the upper-middle 

class in Israel, to the Negev was perceived as benecial to economic 

activity and physical development there.19 Together with its contribution to the promotion of civilian development objectives, the IDF regarded the IDF Goes South as a chance to create a military center of 

gravity in the south of the country—a new center of gravity that 

would improve the operational capabilities of the IDF should its bases 

in the center of the country be attacked.20

e IDF Goes South plan was dierent in a number of aspects 

from Operation Ramon, in which the IDF set up expansive new infrastructures. In IAF to the South, the IAF focused on extending the 

existing military infrastructure. Almost no new bases were established. Each one of the services established a special administration 

to plan the redeployment in the Negev. Similar to the military-civilian 

cooperation in Operation Ramon, the planning process took into account the possible eects on the way of life, infrastructure, and economic life of the citizens in the Negev. e IAF administration was 

the rst to implement plans for redeployment. e rst step was the 

closure of the base in Lod, in the center of the country, and the transfer of its units to the southern base at Nevatim. e IDF invested a 

huge amount of money, in Israeli terms, in extending the infrastructure 

at Nevatim: approximately 1.6 billion NIS (350 million US dollars).

According to Col Zvi Tweezer, head of the administration of IAF 

Goes South,

e Lod base is very old fashioned, having been built bit by bit over the years, 

and from the standpoint of infrastructure that we built in Nevatim, there is no 

doubt that we have made a great improvement over what the unit has been 

used to till now. e change begins with a long, state-of-the-art, runway, progresses to upgraded parking slots for planes plus advanced communications 

infrastructure, ending with an extensive improved defense cover that will be 

built in the base.21

e construction work in Nevatim began in June 2004. e units 

from the Lod base, the main base for the IAF’s transport squadron, 

transferred to Nevatim in August 2009.22

e extension plan of the infrastructure at the Nevatim base paid 

special attention to quality of the environment. Among other things, 
186 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

a power station powered by natural gas will be built in the base with 

a production capacity that exceeds the anticipated needs of the base. 

e surplus electricity created is intended to serve also the nearby 

civilian settlements. Similar to many IDF bases, the base had internal 

sewerage prone to leakage. e IAF administration planned to connect the base to the regional sewage treatment facility to reduce the 

risks of polluting soil and underground water.23

e increased emphasis on environmental considerations in the 

IAF plans reected a greater change in the service’s perception of the 

subject. e service began to understand that environmental damage 

has negative implications in operational, economic, and even social 

terms. Toward the end of the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, 

the IAF invested a great deal in its contacts with the MPE, answering 

a call from the ministry to the IDF to increase cooperation between 

them. e ministry demanded that the IDF, as the largest consumer 

of resources in Israel, help by reducing its harmful eects on the environment. Among other matters, the ministry called for improved 

coordination in allotting money from the defense budget to protect 

nature and to reconcile the goals of the ministry with military development plans. According to a senior source in the ministry, 

We have a solution for each environmental problem that arises and we would 

be happy to deal with it. e complexity is caused when there is a lack of reporting of damage. e amount of requests from commanders nowadays is 

greater than in the past but still not enough. Reporting straight aer an incident has occurred enables reduction of damage, even when it is a question of 

water or ground pollution. 

In his view the greatest stumbling block when working with the IDF 

is the lack of budget coordination. “ere is readiness on behalf of the 

commanders responsible for projects in the eld. Allocation of resources for that purpose is more complicated.”24

A meeting took place between then-commander of the IAF, Brig 

Gen Eliezer Shakedi and the then-director of the MPE Shai Avital in 

December 2007 that turned out to be a historic milestone. Also attending the meeting were personnel of the MPE, IAF base commanders from the south, and relevant ocers from IAF headquarters. e 

top echelons of the IAF proposed strengthening its activity in the 

environmental eld and pointed out several possibilities, such as 

recycling of sewerage and solid waste, reusing drain water, creating 

solar electricity, building drain water systems for irrigation, and 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 187

implementing green building, environmental education, and the 

transition from diesel fuel to natural gas, among others.25

e increasing cooperation between the MEP and the IAF led to 

positive results in the southern IAF bases. For example, in the Ramon 

base in 2007, one of the ocers was put in charge of treating the environmental damage. On his initiative the base began to recycle the 

waste it created extensively. e command of the base actively helped 

and set up a site designated for sorting the waste. It also issued a directive ordering the soldiers to evacuate the waste in the base to the 

sorting site and set up a recycling goal of 80 percent of the base’s 

waste. e recycling was expected to yield nancial prot, since the 

recycling companies began to buy the sorted waste. According to the 

Ramon base commander, Col Avishai Halevi, 

ose that serve in the base do not perceive recycling to be a burden, but as a 

small investment that contributes to the protection of the environment, and 

which also helps us to make a prot that helps us to improve the welfare of the 

soldiers. In almost every place on the base there is a Green corner where waste 

for recycling is sorted and oils drained. We understand that we have the obligation to the soil, and we have to nd new ways to recycle and not to return 

harmful substances.26

e focus of environmental considerations in planning the redeployment of the IAF in the Negev was reected in educational activities 

in the service’s bases in the south. From its inception the IDF considered itself, as the people’s army, obligated to investing in the promotion 

of the education of its personnel, and traditionally, these programs 

dealt with love of the land and the history of the Jewish people and of 

the state of Israel. During the 1990s, these educational programs began 

to deal also with environmental topics.27 is was especially prominent 

in the southern IAF bases where educational programs were developed 

that were meant to raise the awareness and broaden the knowledge of 

soldiers regarding quality of the environment.

e IAF base at Uvda developed a range of programs demonstrating the potential in educating conscripted soldiers (aged 18–21) to 

promote awareness of the environment in Israeli society. It was decided in 2006 to establish an ecological park integrating mud buildings in the base. In the park sitting areas, a tabun (clay oven) for baking, environmental benches, and statues were designed and all 

constructed from mud and recycled materials. e park was built under 

the leadership of six women from the families in the base, who had 

learned to build from mud in Kibbutz Lotan. e kibbutz residents 
188 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

are experts in ecological subjects and run projects on the matter. In 

the words of Tahal Biran, the project’s coordinator at the time and 

resident of the military families’ neighborhood, “We have for a long 

time been looking for a project connected to the environment. In the 

kibbutz we took a course on building from mud, and right now we 

are applying what we learnt in a rst attempt to build the ecological 

park.” She argues that the clay earth and the weather of the Negev enable the creation of mud buildings in a particularly ecient manner. 

According to her, the project succeeded to enlist all the families living 

in the neighborhood during 2006. “e children in school and the 

families provide the domestic waste, and thus help the environmental 

sculpture.” Aer the end of the rst stage, the soldiers at the base took 

responsibility for the project.28 Another educational initiative that 

crystallized at the base in 2007 was the “Sabbath of Values.” Each 

weekend, military and civilian rabbis alternately gave lessons on Judaism, Zionism, love of one’s country, and protection of the environment.29

As part of the eort of the IDF and the IAF to aid civilian authorities in the Negev, a program was formulated called “Sites and Values.” 

e program was developed at the initiative of the Educational and 

Youth Corps and the Beit Morasha of Jerusalem (literally, “Home of 

Tradition”), a civilian educational center. Within the framework of 

Sites and Values, soldiers at the base adopted the cover sands in the 

eastern Uvda valley. e cover sands are chalk sand dunes constituting the habitat of rare plants and many species of animals. e soldiers helped the inspectors of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority 

southern district to maintain the site. Likewise, the base planned 

workshops on values at the site. In the words of the then-education 

ocer of the base, 2nd Lt Noa Kenan, “We regarded the cover sands 

as a source for acquiring values for the soldiers of the base. e adaptation of animals to the desert environment and the aridness is impressive, and it is comparable to values such as the adaptation of the 

ghter to his/her environment and to self-discipline.” According to 

her, the site will be used for instilling love of homeland and the importance of settling the Negev and for the creation of a link between 

those serving at the base and the environment in which they live. e 

base command also planned to help maintain and protect a nearby 

archaeological site called Mikdash Hanamerim (Temple of the Tigers). 

In the temple, 16 illustrations of tigers were found, made from small 

tablets of local limestone. is rare nd, which is estimated to be 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 189

thousands of years old, was not protected against all-terrain vehicles. 

e base command, in cooperation with inspectors and ecologists 

from the southern district in the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, 

intends to fence the site.30

Operational Implications of Environmental 

Considerations on IAF Activity

e growing awareness in the IAF of environmental considerations also had implications on its operations. ese implications 

found expression in several areas.

Damage to the Civilian Environment in the Event of 

Attacks on Bases

In most of Israel’s wars there were hardly ever attacks on IAF bases 

within the 1967 borders. e environmental damage likely to be 

caused in the event of ground-to-ground missiles being red at IAF 

bases was exposed during the Second Lebanon War (July–August 

2006). During this war thousands of rockets were red at northern 

Israel, including at several main IAF bases. One of those hit was the 

northern aerial control unit located on Mt. Meron. e unit is situated in the heart of a nature reserve that constitutes a natural habitat 

of rich vegetation and many animals. Rockets falling in the reserve 

ignited blazes that destroyed many thousands of square meters (or 

dunams, which are the area of 1,000 square meters) of natural forest. 

Aer the war ended, during the months of August and September 

2006, several dunams of natural forest were felled next to the base to 

minimize potential damage in a future war. Although this was likely 

to harm the animals and plants existing in the nature reserve, the Israel 

Nature and Parks Authority deemed it a necessary step. Guy Cohen 

then Israel Nature and Parks Authority inspector in charge of the Mt. 

Meron Reserve said, “During the war we visited the base several 

times because we wanted to comprehend the extent of the base’s responsibility and also to minimize the damage that such a felling 

would cause to nature, and to us, who protect it.” e IAF hired a 

contractor that carried out the work of thinning the trees. All in all, 

about ten dunams of natural forest were felled inside the base and up 

to a distance of 15 meters from the base fence.31
190 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

Increase in Restrictions on Exercises

At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the 

twenty-rst, the IAF was required to prepare for action on a wide 

range of missions. It played a crucial part in the military action in the 

Second Intifada, 2000–2005, and in the Second Lebanon War. In 

these conicts the IAF was required to operate in urban environments densely populated with civilians. Simultaneously, it prepared 

for the possibility that it would be required to act against countries far 

away from Israel and even for the event of a conventional war. However, the IAF is being increasingly restricted in its ability to train. e 

proximity of the bases to civilian population centers in the north and 

the middle of the country created severe noise disturbances. In several cases the IAF decided to limit the hours of activity in the bases.32

In other cases, certain training contours, such as low-level ights, led 

to angry complaints from civilians. As a result, it is possible that its 

ability to train in an optimal way was harmed.33

Development of Simulators and Cooperation with 

Foreign Air Forces

e lack of training areas led the IAF to invest in two kinds of partial solutions. e rst was the development of advanced simulators.34

e investment was expressed both in the systems themselves, meant 

to be as realistic as possible, and in the training of the simulator operators.35 e simulators enabled IAF pilots to train on contours they 

were forbidden to y because of safety and environmental protection 

restrictions. e IAF aspired to develop systems that would enable 

communication between dierent simulators. is capability, when 

achieved, would enable joint training in the simulator for combat, 

helicopter, and transport pilots.

e second partial solution was creating cooperation with foreign 

air forces, beginning in the 1990s. One of the main aims was to attain 

the opportunity to train in foreign countries. us, the IAF could 

train, for the rst time since the withdrawal from Sinai, in vast spaces. 

As opposed to Sinai, where it was only possible to train under desert 

conditions, IAF squadrons began to train overseas in varying environments.36 Together with training in recognized international exercises such as Red Flag in the United States or Maple Flag in Canada, 

the IAF trained in states such as Italy and Turkey.37 e cooperation 

between the Israeli and Turkish air forces was especially fruitful.
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 191

In the words of Brig Gen Ram Shmueli, who played a central part in 

his capacity as head of the Combat Training Branch at IAF Headquarters, “In my rst job as Head of Branch for Combat Training I managed 

to lead the IAF to one of the most important strategic connections—

cooperation with the Turkish Air Force. When I began my post I made 

it my mission to bring about combined exercises with a foreign air 

force. Not that I had an inkling of how to do this but I felt that this was 

important.” At that time, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin decided 

to establish diplomatic ties with Turkey, and Shmueli notes, 

Suddenly the opportunity we had been looking for arose. At the highest echelons it was decided to send a group from the General Sta to the Turkish Air 

Force to build a foundation of cooperation. As Head of the Branch for Combat Training I was chosen to be head of the delegation sent to Ankara. . . . e 

rst talks were characterized by suspicion and tension on both sides. Both we 

and the Turks did not know what the other side thought and what exactly the 

aim of this idea was. Little by little, meeting aer meeting, the chilly atmosphere thawed.38

e cooperation between the Israeli and Turkish air forces was quite 

close and included joint exercises in both countries. Over the years it 

expanded to multinational exercises with additional air forces. e cooperation ran into diculties in October 2009 aer the Anatolian Eagle exercise was cancelled. e planned American, Turkish, and Israeli 

air force combined exercise was cancelled by the Turkish government.39

e incident illustrated the growing security importance that Israel attributes to cooperation between the IDF and foreign armed forces and 

the resulting dependence created on foreign states.

Conclusions

Since the 1990s, the IAF has shown increasing sensitivity to the 

eects of its bases and their activities on the environment in Israel. 

is is part of a growing awareness by the IDF of its inuence on environmental quality as Israel’s largest consumer of resources. e 

present study found that the IAF devoted considerable attention to 

environmental topics in two spheres: physical infrastructure and education. e IAF is aware of the environmental implications of its 

physical infrastructure due to pollution damage resulting from the 

antiquated infrastructure in the Ramat David and Hatzor bases. As 

early as the Ramon Operation in the 1980s, the IAF recognized the 
192 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

advantages of a high-standard, permanent infrastructure. Nevertheless, at that time the main attention was devoted to nancial gains 

resulting from ignoring this need. e planners of the IAF Goes 

South project paid a lot of attention to environmental issues. e IAF 

made a conscious decision to avoid as much as possible the renovation of its out-of-date infrastructure in its bases in the north and center of the country. Instead, projects were integrated that were intended to minimize damage to the environment and to bring about a 

reduction in the consumption of energy in the redeployment to the 

southern bases. e growing recognition by the IAF of the implications of its activities on the environment constitutes a large part of the 

changes in the civil-military relations in Israel. In the past, Israeli society revered the IDF as the realization of Zionist values. Aer the 

debacle of the 1973 war and, even more strongly, since the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli society began to show growing criticism toward the 

IDF.40 is criticism enabled the formation of pressure groups that 

demanded the IDF change its policies on specic matters.41

e IDF succeeded over the years in adopting policies intended to 

reduce possible criticism. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, parents who had lost their sons in training accidents criticized IDF safety 

procedures and methods of inquiry into training accidents.42 As a result, the IDF improved safety procedures in exercises and succeeded 

in dramatically reducing the number of accidents. e military even 

took care to publish these facts in the media to avoid future criticism. 

e attention that the IAF directed at environmental issues in the 

project IAF Goes South is similar to the IDF’s policy in other areas 

with a high public prole. e IAF probably would not have given 

attention to environmental issues had the Israeli public not shown 

increasing awareness of the economic, social, and health damage 

stemming from environmental pollution.

Proof of the IAF’s utilitarian attitude toward handling the environmental damage it caused was expressed by the negligible nancial 

allocation to the issue. As previously mentioned, the IAF did not even 

use its entire meager environmental budget allotment in the years 

2001–2002. It even refused to extensively treat the damage caused by 

fuel leaks in the bases at Ramat David and Hatzor. Ocially, the IAF 

declared that the out-of-date infrastructure in the bases would be 

renovated within the framework of a multiyear plan. e practical 

significance of this declaration was that many years would pass 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 193

before the rehabilitation of the antiquated infrastructure that continued to be a possible source of pollution.

e second eld in which the IAF acted extensively to promote 

environmentalism was that of education. It initiated a range of creative activities to promote awareness of quality of the environment in 

its soldiers and ocers. It is possible that the principal inuence of 

the IAF’s operations will be in this eld. Since the beginning of the 

decade, many thousands of enlisted soldiers who have been exposed 

to these activities have been released from the IAF. If the educational 

programs were eective, these young people internalized the need to 

become aware of environmental issues and have been instructed how 

to contribute to environmental protection. e traditional educational elements in the IDF and in the IAF derived, as pointed out 

previously, from the IDF being a “people’s army.” e essence of the 

activity was in promoting those values regarded as having a national 

consensus. e changes in civil-military relations and the widening 

schisms within Israeli society resulted in some educational activities 

in the IDF becoming controversial. From this angle, environmental 

issues that are a “consensus” in Israeli society helped educating elements in the IAF prove that they could contribute to developing the 

manpower of the service and its image.

It seems that the IAF did not clearly recognize the connection, indirect but signicant, between growing Israeli environmentalism and 

the growing restrictions on its operational activity within the state of 

Israel until recently. is may be the main reason for the lack of consideration of the environmental implications of IAF operations. Because the Israeli Air Force has been ghting constantly since its establishment, its organizational culture inclines toward consideration of 

force employment at the expense of force generation. Accordingly, 

the role of environmental considerations is limited if they are not included in the planning and execution of operations. is approach 

contradicts the growing attention of the international community to 

environmental considerations in attacking infrastructure targets such 

as fuel tanks or power stations.

In spite of the reservations mentioned, the very fact that environmental considerations had a practical eect on the largest IAF infrastructure project in decades is a signicant innovation. e activity of 

the service in this eld is demonstration of a possible contribution of 

armed forces to improving the quality of life and development of the 

whole of society.
194 │ MAKING THE DESERT GREEN

Notes

1. Israel State Comptroller, “Treatment of the Ministry of Defense,” 78.

2. Ibid., 88–89.

3. Ibid., 80–82.

4. Ibid., 83.

5. Ibid., 89–90.

6. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 426.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Weiss and Salome, “Ministry of the Environment Claims.”

10. Ibid.

11. Despite the sparse population in the Negev, during extensive activity such as 

annual exercises, the residents of the Negev complain about the noise of the planes. 

See Buchbut, “Training for Long Runs.”

12. Habakuk, “First Sixty Years,” 69.

13. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 102–3.

14. Lapidot, “Special Interview,” 6–9.

15. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 104–5.

16. Ibid., 105–9.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 168.

19. Ibid., 187.

20. Ibid., 181.

21. Arden, “Conquering the Negev,” 6.

22. Oren and Regev, Land in Khaki, 186.

23. Arden, “Conquering the Negev,” 6.

24. Karni, “In the Ministry for Protection of the Environment,” 9.

25. “IAF Will Promote Environmental Issues.”

26. Wol, “Soldiers Recycle,” 15.

27. Israel State Comptroller, “Treatment of the Ministry of Defence,” 93–94.

28. “Uvda Base: Deep in the Mud,” 16.

29. Wol, “Uvda Base,” 17.

30. Karni and Avior, “Uvda Base,” 18.

31. Karni, “Aer the Fighting,” 18; and Karni, “Animal, Plant and Vegetable,” 13.

32. Ashkenazi, “Grounded due to Ceramics Class,” 28.

33. Ibid. 

34. On the importance of simulators in the IAF, see Pfeer, “Under Simulated 

Fire”; and Yehoshua, “New in the Air Force.” 

35. Concerning the simulator systems, see Sharon, “New,” 9–11. Electronic version 

available at http://www.iaf.org.il/454-18564-HE/IAF.aspx. For the training of simulator 

operators, see Pfeer, “Under Simulated Fire.” 

36. e IAF utilised exercises in foreign countries for training long-range squadrons. 

e growing threats against the state of Israel from distant countries such as Iran magni-

ed the importance of the IAF’s ability to operate at long range. See Shuval, “Italian Job.” 

e IAF does not normally practice for long-range ights in simulators. See Pfeer, “Under 

Simulated Fire.” 
MAKING THE DESERT GREEN │ 195

37. e IAF participated in Red Flag in 1988 as an observer. In 1998 the IAF renewed 

its participation as an observer and even participated later on. See Peled-Fleischer, 

“Israeli Pilots Took Part,” 8–12; and Shuval, “Italian Job.” Shuval claims that cooperation between the Israeli and Italian air forces began in 1999 and that they include 

periodic joint exercises.

38. Rosenberg, “Man, Earth and the Heavens.” Electronic version available at 

http://www.iaf.org.il/1102-18386-he/IAF.aspx. 

39. At the time of writing, no one knows for certain why it was cancelled. In Turkey 

they claimed that the exercise was cancelled due to the negative Turkish public opinion 

toward Israel as a result of the IDF activity in the “Cast Lead” operation in Gaza at the 

beginning of 2009, or due to the anger of the Turkish defense system about a problematic arms deal with Israel. For example, see Eichner, “Turkey Soothes.” 

40. Concerning changes in civil-military relations in Israel, see in particular Cohen, 

Israel and its Army.

41. In fact, the activities of feminist pressure groups led to the integration of 

women in the ying course of the IAF during the 1990s. Cohen, Israel and its Army, 76.

42. Peri, “Civil-Military Relations in Israel in Crisis.” 
198 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Moreover, the West’s ethical framework for understanding armed 

conict, “just war,” forms a sizeable chunk of its warrior code. Within 

this code, warfare is a regrettable activity directed against the culpable, 

undertaken only when a better state of peace is the likely outcome 

and if the good accomplished outweighs the harm done. Deeply 

embedded within just war are concepts of proportionality and discrimination. In terms of jus in bello (the criteria for ghting wars 

“cleanly”), proportionality means that military forces must not undertake any actions in which the incidental harm would be excessive 

in relation to the likely military benet. roughout my own career 

of teaching military ocers, I have ordinarily summarized this concept by encouraging them never to use more force or to cause more 

damage than is necessary to guarantee the attainment of just military 

goals. Similarly, discrimination means that military forces may only 

wage war on combatants and military objects and must act purposely 

and painstakingly to ensure that civilians suer no more harm than 

military necessity demands. It is thus eminently logical that, as Western 

warriors are framing their use of force in terms of minimizing suering while doing good—all the while protecting the innocent, including those on the other side—they should understand the importance 

of minimizing harm to the very environment and habitat that sustain 

the innocent. It is equally reasonable that, as the purpose of military 

activity is a better state of peace, it would be incongruous to inict 

damage upon the innocents within the opposing state, and possibly 

within neighboring states, that lasts well beyond the end of conict 

and complicates the restoration of harmony.

Lastly, I strongly disagree with those ecologists who assert that we 

need to take an absolutist stance against all military activities that 

result in any ecological harm. Our just war criteria are adequate as a 

guide for military planners and practitioners. Both proportionality 

and discrimination involve careful calculations that render some regrettable harm acceptable when balanced against the greater good 

being achieved. I accept this line of reasoning and argue, not for absolutist prohibitions, but for the inclusion of ecological protection in 

all military planning and for it to be weighed expertly, along with the 

likely need for postwar remediation activities, among the factors that 

will ultimately determine the justiability of military actions.

is chapter draws on the Kosovo conict as its central case analysis 

to give readers something recent upon which to reect that does not 

involve the emotionally charged “war on terror.” (Equally powerful 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 199

examples of environmental harm caused by airpower and other forms 

of military force can also be found during that so-called war.) e 

chapter is not intended as the last word on the subject of the real and 

potential ecological ramications of modern airpower but merely as 

a rst word. It aims to demonstrate some complexities within the 

closely intertwined relationship between defense and security priorities, international humanitarian law, the Western just war framework, 

and environmental ethics. It oers several observations and asks a set 

of questions in the hope that readers will feel prompted to seek their 

own answers. It is my belief that air forces should engage these issues 

proactively, addressing them on their own terms with judgment and 

at a realistic tempo before public pressure and special interest groups 

might compel defense ministries to make sweeping changes, some of 

them possibly rushed and unhelpful.

Since ancient times armies have oen consciously used the natural 

environment as a weapon against opponents. ey have poisoned 

wells, salted elds, burned crops, and done other ecologically harmful things. In 1945, for example, German ocers who feared an Allied attack intentionally ooded 20,000 hectares of agricultural land 

in the Netherlands, leaving it unusable for crops until the Dutch -

nally reclaimed the land four months later aer a massive rehabilitation program. I began thinking about the ecological implications of 

modern air warfare when, as an undergraduate, I studied the environmental damage caused by the RAF bombing of the Möhne and 

Edersee dams in May 1943 and the USAF atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. I was surprised most of all to 

learn the full extent of the American defoliation program during the 

Vietnam War, which represented a watershed in the relationship between warfare and the environment. Between 1962 and 1971, US aircra sprayed 3,640 square kilometers of South Vietnam’s croplands, 

deep vegetation, and jungles with 55,000 metric tons of herbicides 

and defoliants to destroy the plant-based ecosystem for the purpose 

of disrupting agricultural food production and destroying plant cover 

for the Vietcong.2

 Its eects were dreadful for Vietnam’s ecosystems 

and, most infamously, for human health.

My thinking about the relationship between warfare and the environment began to focus in March 1999 when NATO airpower began 

wrecking Yugoslavian (especially Serbian) infrastructure in a wellintended but poorly conceived attempt to coerce Slobodan Milosevic’s 

government into protecting and granting more freedom to the beleaguered 
200 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Albanian ethnic majority of Kosovo and Metohija. I felt disappointed 

that, even in our era of eects-based operations and precision-strike 

capabilities, NATO chose to wreck almost all major oil reneries, petrochemical installations, and fertilizer works, as well as their tankage 

areas. NATO thereby spilled harmful oil and toxic chemicals into the 

soil, aquifers, and waterways—including into the Danube River, the 

crucial economic artery of several uninvolved nations—and created 

carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic, and perilous airborne pollution. 

ese acts were widely publicized and highly controversial. Like 

many concerned observers, I wondered why, in a war fought for 

humanitarian purposes, with a highly commendable, almost obsessive desire to ensure the totally accurate placement of ordnance to 

minimize immediate civilian deaths, NATO nonetheless seemed 

reckless with Yugoslavia’s natural environment.

I began researching this particular issue in July 2006 aer feeling 

equally disquieted when Israeli Air Force airstrikes created a dreadful 

six-mile-wide and 100-mile-long oil slick along the Lebanese coast 

by striking an oil storage depot at the Jiyeh power plant, about 19 

miles south of Beirut, ooding 15,000 tons of oil into the Mediterranean and causing the worst-ever oil spill in that sea. A further 25,000 

tons burned for 27 days, reportedly “spewing a toxic cloud into the air 

and causing a rain of toxic oil downwind.”3

Targeting oil infrastructure from the air is not new. During the 

Second World War, for instance, both Allied and Axis air forces considered oil production, renement, storage, and transportation facilities, and systems as integral to their enemies’ viability and survivability. Even the Luwae, which was designed and utilized primarily for 

battleeld interdiction and attack, bombed Caucasian oilelds in 

1942 in an angry attempt to punish the Soviet Union.4

 During the last 

three months of the Pacic War, the USAAF conducted a weighty 

campaign aimed at destroying Japan’s oil infrastructure.5

 e greatest 

counter-oil campaigns occurred during 1943 and 1944, when the 

USAAF struck the Romanian oilelds and reneries that supplied a 

large portion of Germany’s oil and both the RAF and the USAAF 

wrecked synthetic fuel plants across Germany.6

e targeting of oil sharply divided senior Allied air commanders, 

but only because some of them passionately argued against its purported strategic eectiveness and not because anyone felt gravely 

worried about the natural environment.7

 Decades before scientists 

began expounding concerns about “acid rain,” “sustainability,” “carbon 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 201

emissions,” and the “greenhouse eect,” and during a war in which 

neither side worried much about the suering of enemy populations, 

these great campaigns caused levels of local environmental harm that 

were not analyzed in any of the major postwar bombing surveys and 

which would be unacceptable in any of today’s limited wars.8

I would not dream of casting stones at our valiant forebears. It 

would be wrong to impose the widespread ecological values of today 

onto previous generations. Moreover, we cannot attribute responsibility for large-scale oil pollution during the Second World War solely 

to air forces. For example, navies, equally unaware of the long-term 

harm likely to occur, targeted and sank not only fuel-laden warships, 

but also each other’s merchant ships, including oil tankers. Indeed, 

the combined gross registered tonnage of the oil tankers sunk was 

1,235,097, with a total oil-carrying capacity of as much as 17,171,183 

barrels or 2,592,380 tons.9

 at is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez–

size spill occurring every month of World War II.

Petroleum, oil, and lubricants (oen simplied as “POL”) infrastructure remained a primary target set for airpower planners 

throughout the Cold War and following decades and featured prominently, for example, in the USAF and USN Rolling under and 

Linebacker bombing campaigns against North Vietnam.10 In 1988 

the most celebrated airpower thinker of recent times, John Warden 

III, maintained that the “petroleum chain . . . still remains a potentially key target simply because a modern military machine cannot 

function without fuel.”11 Indeed, Warden argued that, along with 

electricity, oil was a major center of gravity (one of his ve “rings”) 

and that carefully focused attacks on the oil chain would denude the 

enemy of energy. Warden’s ideas inuenced the Gulf War of 1991, 

during which coalition air forces wrecked Iraqi oil storage and distribution installations—but not all long-term export infrastructure—as 

part of a campaign aimed at paralyzing Saddam Hussein’s state and 

forces.12 (e Iraqis created far more devastating environmental harm 

when they detonated more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, igniting over 

600 of them, and discharged more than six million barrels of crude oil 

directly into the Persian Gulf. Happily for airpower advocates I must 

note that precision airstrikes by USAF F-111Fs against pumping stations and manifolds actually stemmed that horric ow.13

Warden and other air strategists of his generation did not analyze 

(and to be fair probably gave no thought to) the key problem with 

destroying or damaging oil infrastructure as opposed to merely 
202 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

disrupting distribution. ey ignored the fact that liquid hydrocarbons and the chemicals utilized in their renement are potentially 

extremely damaging to ecosystems. e explosive or incendiary force 

of ordnance either burns the petroleum upwards, creating potentially 

deadly air pollution which may cause dreadful health problems in the 

short term (but thankfully seldom causes lingering harm aer the 

pollution dissipates), or spills it into the ground, with the potential 

for long-lasting and calamitous contamination of soils, aquifers, and 

waterways. e Commentary on the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 

Geneva Conventions states, “As regards the destruction and setting 

alight of reneries and petroleum storage facilities, it is hardly necessary 

to stress the grave danger that may ensue for the civilian population.”14

NATO’s 1999 attacks on Yugoslavian reneries and petrochemical 

and fertilizer installations at Pančevo, Novi Sad, and elsewhere created such demonstrable environmental pollution—with the wreckage, spills, res, and billowing clouds being captured on the camcorder of local inhabitants as well as more expertly by journalists—that 

when the Serbian government accused NATO of creating an environmental catastrophe, it was not a lone voice. Even the relevant watchdog agencies within the United Nations and other reputable and nonpartisan interstate bodies expressed strong concerns about the 

attacks. Neither they nor Western media could brush aside the Serbian governmental allegations (which exaggeratedly described the 

violence as “ecocide”) as merely unveriable and unwarranted antiNATO propaganda.15 With many scores of thousands of Serbians 

evacuating towns and villages to ee clouds of toxic chemicals, with 

slicks in the Danube, and with smoke plumes moving eastward over 

Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Black Sea,16 it was impossible to deny that, even if only in the short term, the attacks had 

an adverse and widely dispersed environmental impact.17

NATO argued emphatically that the 100 or so industrial facilities 

it bombed throughout Serbia were “dual-usage” installations and 

thus legitimate targets according to sections of the 1977 Additional 

Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva conventions. For example, NATO described the Pančevo renery and works, the largest petrochemical 

complex in the Balkans,18 as a “strategic target” that “provided oil and 

other elements to support the Yugoslav Army. By cutting o these 

supplies [NATO] denied crucial material to the Serbian forces ghting in Kosovo.”19 Although civilian facilities are ordinarily strictly o 

limits, Article 52(2) does indeed permit attacks on those facilities 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 203

“which by their very nature, location, purpose, or use make an eective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at 

the time, oers a denite military advantage.”

e moral “double-eect” principle embedded within jus in bello

also permits the targeting of dual-usage infrastructure and makes allowance for incidental civilian deaths if those deaths are unavoidable. 

Yet, it permits this targeting only if it is solely intended to aect the 

capability of the opponent’s armed forces. If NATO’s intent was also 

to demoralize the Serbian population to generate additional pressure 

for the Milosevic regime to capitulate, then the double-eect principle no longer justies these actions.20

Unfortunately, this seems to have been the case. Even if one 

chooses to argue that oil reneries were providing fuel for military 

operations as well as for civilian consumption, and were thus reasonable dual-usage targets, it is harder to make an equally strong case for 

pharmaceutical factories, car factories, and even fertilizer plants.21

e view that NATO wanted to put pressure on Milosevic through 

squeezing and scaring his people by wrecking things around and 

among them gains support from the US military’s own reported admission to Human Rights Watch that NATO destroyed some targets 

that were not legitimately “dual-usage” and did so because they were 

“symbolic” and “psychologically lucrative.”22 Human Rights Watch 

found that such actions were “done more for psychological harassment of the civilian population than for direct military eect.” is 

conclusion is reinforced by an ironic source: the NATO joint air component commander, Lt Gen Michael C. Short. “If you wake up in the 

morning,” he told the Globe and Mail on 26 May 1999, “and you have 

no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you 

take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 

years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo[dan], what’s this all about? 

How much more of this do we have to withstand?’ ”23 Perhaps with a 

boast, he later said that he had wanted the Serbian leadership “to 

wake up to a city that was smoking.”24 He even admitted that he had 

warned Serbian air force commanders, “e speed and the violence 

and the lethality and the destruction that is going to occur is beyond 

anything that you can imagine. . . . If you force me to go to war against 

you, Belgrade will never look that way again—never in your lifetime, 

or your children’s lifetime. Belgrade and your country will be destroyed if you force me to go to war.”25
204 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

Even ignoring this unusual ethical position, NATO failed to explain convincingly why its remarkably precise and thus potentially 

highly discriminate air force needed to destroy the storage tanks, thus 

burning or spilling staggering quantities of liquid hydrocarbons and 

chemicals, rather than less harmfully targeting the adjacent but separate renery installations, or, far better still, precisely hitting the more 

discrete river port, road, and rail nodes to stop loading, transportation, and distribution of the oil and chemicals.26 NATO did publicly 

explain on 3 May 1999 that it had damaged Serbia’s main electricity 

stations and thus robbed the Serbian population of 70 percent of its 

electricity. Spokesman Jamie Shea even publicly stated that Milosevic 

would thus know that NATO “has its ngers on the light switch. . . . 

We can turn the power o whenever we need to and whenever we 

want to.”27 Yet NATO’s information campaign included no real eort 

to explain why it was setting ablaze and ooding oil and chemicals in 

reneries and storage facilities instead of merely “switching o ” those 

installations by accurately targeting their internal and external 

sources of electricity. Aircra did target and destroy local transformers at the sites, interrupting their functionality, so it is less clear why 

NATO still chose to inict such heavy and dangerous damage to the 

plants, oil, and chemical tanks. Further, NATO did not explain why, 

aer a European Union total oil embargo of Yugoslavia came into effect on 30 April 199928—NATO’s chief spokesman claimed on that 

date, “the tap is being turned o all across Europe,”29—it continued to 

burn and spill huge quantities of oil and chemicals right up until the 

conict’s last days.

During the war NATO responded to accusations of grave environmental harm in a very strange fashion. Aware that the world rightly 

felt horror at the expulsion and panicked ight of 850,000 Kosovars, 

NATO exaggerated the physical harm being done to their abandoned 

dwellings by the Serbian army and by Serb paramilitaries. It maintained at one point that there were then “200 burning villages, town 

and cities” across Kosovo.30 Aer presenting exaggeration, it then 

relativized the environmental harm being committed by both NATO 

and the ethnic cleansers.

We see a lot of smoke, the smoke is coming from all of these burning villages 

in Kosovo and if you’re talking about environmental damage, I think the 

“scorched earth” policy applied to Kosovo, the destruction of livestock, the 

destruction of rivers and roads and communication routes, the destruction of 

the agriculture, the slaughtering of a large percentage of the cattle and the 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 205

livestock, is going to be much more signicant in the long term and incidentally require a lot more money to x than the repair of some oil reneries.31

is tu quoque defense (“You can’t criticize us for our wrongdoing 

because you’re doing it too!”) was disingenuous at best and dishonest 

at worst. Some Serbian regular army units and paramilitary groups 

did atrocious, murderous things in Kosovo, but they did not apply a 

“scorched earth” policy to the province, let alone cause or threaten a 

long-term environmental catastrophe involving the destruction of 

permanent natural features and resources. And the complaints leveled against NATO related to the imperilment of human life and 

widespread and potentially enduring damage to fragile ecosystems, 

not to the cost of repairing oil reneries.

NATO’s inadequate explanations and attempts at justications did 

little to assuage concerns all over the world about its jus in bello proportionality. Even worse, NATO’s actions and media ops failures resulted in accusations—and even formal charges presented at the International Court of Justice—of willful and criminal contravention of 

Articles 35(3) and 55(1) of the Additional Protocol I explicit prohibition against “widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural 

environment.” Unlike other provisions of the same protocol, no exception can be made for “military necessity.”32

Convincing critics that the level of wreckage remained proportionate was always going to be far more dicult for NATO than justifying the inclusion of the installations in its target sets. People believe what they see, and in 1999 they saw colossal destruction. I use 

the word colossal here with no hyperbole. It may surprise some readers to learn that in total, NATO burned far more oil and dangerous 

chemicals into the air or spilled far more into the Serbian soils, aquifers, and waterways in its 1999 air war than the 10.8 million gallons 

(257,000 barrels or 38,800 tons) of crude oil that the Exxon Valdez

had spilled following its highly controversial grounding o the Alaskan coast in 1989.33

At Pančevo alone, NATO air attacks caused the release of 80,000 

tons of oil and oil products,34 most of which burned wildly from ruptured tanks, poisoning the air only 12 miles from Belgrade’s 1.5 million inhabitants with deadly substances including sulphur dioxide, 

nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and 

lead. e Pančevo raids also spilled over 2,000 tons of toxic dichloroethane into soils and groundwater, burned around 250 tons of vinyl 
206 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

chloride monomer (which would have produced toxic dioxins and 

hydrochloric acid), and ooded around 250 tons of liquid ammonia 

and eight tons of metallic mercury, some of which entered a canal 

leading straight into the Danube.35 Desperately weighing the lesser 

and greater of two evils, the site managers themselves released the 

liquid ammonia, knowing that a direct hit on stored ammonia had 

the potential to kill large numbers of people.36 Another 73,000 tons of 

crude oil and oil products burned or seeped into the groundwater in 

the northern city of Novi Sad.37 Elsewhere throughout Serbia (and 

Kosovo itself), heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, ammonia, and other 

caustics escaped from burning industrial facilities into the air, soil, 

groundwater, and rivers, causing large-scale evacuations and leaving 

many experts convinced that the impact of the toxic releases would 

reach—as they did—far beyond Yugoslavia’s borders.38

is is not to suggest that the long-term ecological consequences 

of the destruction at Pančevo and other sites exceeded those of the 

infamous Exxon Valdez spillage. e latter occurred in a highly fragile ecosystem in an area along the Alaskan coast so remote that 

cleanup proved tragically slow, dicult, and incomplete. Little of the 

spilled oil could be burned. While the unburned oil produced airborne toxins, burning would have reduced the destruction of ora 

and fauna caused by the concentrated surface “slick.” is evaporated 

and decomposed far more slowly in the low temperatures than it 

would have under similar circumstances in a more temperate climate.39

One cannot deny, on the other hand, that the environmental contamination at and around NATO’s Serbian industrial targets was, at 

least in the short term, so obviously severe that it greatly reduced 

NATO’s positive press from being extremely successful at minimizing 

civilian deaths caused directly by bombing.40 Moreover, the environmental destruction alienated many inuential observers, including 

former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and others, who had 

agreed with NATO’s aims of ending ethnic violence and caused very 

unhelpful domestic controversy in NATO nations.41

Serbia employed a clever media strategy to draw the world’s attention to the level of its environmental suering. ey were aware that 

no objective scientic teams were in country who could verify or 

challenge its claims during the conict and that NATO would have 

few options for countering its information (or misinformation) strategy.42 is is something important for military planners nowadays to 

ponder. If their campaigns or missions cause even what appears to be 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 207

large-scale ecological damage, their political leaders will nd it di-

cult to mount a credible defense against charges of catastrophic harm. 

Garnering and maintaining popular support for wars of choice that 

involve no direct threats to sovereignty or key interests are not easy, 

even within apparently reasonable contexts. But in this era of widespread public concern for the environment, politicians will nd it 

easier to maintain support for their actions if they do not seem to be 

doing harm while claiming to be doing good.

In response to continued reports of widespread environmental 

harm, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern 

Europe, assisted by a variety of specialist-contracted experts, undertook the very rst objective study of environmental conditions in 

Serbia.43 It reported that, while thankfully there was “no evidence of 

a large-scale ecological catastrophe . . . the environment in the whole 

territory of Yugoslavia was aected as a result of the military conict.” 

It also found that pollution was “very severe in the vicinity of targeted 

industrial complexes . . . and many valuable ecosystems were disturbed.”44 It considered it too early to oer evidence-based opinions 

about the long-term eects, but warned that the environmental damage that had occurred or that might in the future included threats to 

ecosystems (especially river systems) and human health caused by 

exposure to toxic or carcinogenic substances.

At almost the same time, the very concerned UN Environment 

Program took the unprecedented step of hastily forming a Balkans 

task force to assess the environmental consequences of NATO’s air 

campaign. is was the rst time that the UN had ever integrated 

environmental issues as a central part of a postconict humanitarian 

eort. Led by former Finnish environment minister Pekka Haavisto, 

the task force visited the wrecked reneries and industrial complexes 

in the weeks immediately aer the cessation of violence and released 

its ndings four months later. It detected four major ecological “hot 

spots” of grave concern that needed urgent attention (Pančevo, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, and Bor), but added that permanent degradation 

of soils and waterways seemed unlikely. e UN team recognized 

that some of the environmental pollution apparently predated the 

NATO strikes, while some of it resulted from them. e task force 

nonetheless added that urgent attention would be needed, irrespective of the cause, “if further damage to human health and the environment is to be avoided.”45
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e task force’s report was not accepted by all scientists and interested bodies. Many considered it a “political” report supporting a 

predetermined conclusion and relying on hasty and imperfect research and an inadequate methodology.46 Better studies, the critics 

asserted, contradicted the task force’s ndings. ey pointed to a parallel short-term study by the World Wide Fund for Nature that highlighted the broader transboundary and ecosystem implications of the 

discharged toxic chemicals and oered the less-positive summation 

that “toxic contamination in Yugoslavia is spreading.”47 e politically neutral Swiss-based FOCUS team of humanitarians and scientists that spent several months in 1999 assessing postwar damage 

throughout Serbia also oered this somber assessment: “Destruction 

of many potentially dangerous objects on FRY [Federal Republic of 

Yugoslavia] territory caused the threat of ecological catastrophe.”48

Likewise, focusing especially on Novi Sad, two Belgrade scientists 

identied “catastrophic pollution.”49 ey reported that, although airborne pollution was “extreme but short-lived,” the pollution of the 

soil and surface and groundwater was long term. “e pollution in 

these zones,” they asserted, “especially in the Danube river basin, is a 

hazard for the further degradation of the environment, and a risk for 

the human health.”50 Similarly, and perhaps most notably, the USbased Institute of Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) expressed serious concerns in its 2002 assessment.51 Particularly at 

Pančevo, chemical releases occurred “which pose potentially longterm threats to the local population and local environment.”52 e 

IEER noted that, while it was impossible to be precise or to predict 

future circumstances with certainty because of a lack of available prewar baselines, persistent toxins, carcinogens, and other pollutants 

entering the ecosystems looked likely to have long-term negative 

consequences, including for human health. e IEER was very careful to apportion responsibility fairly and even criticized Serbia for its 

prewar record of industrial pollution at some sites. It nonetheless reserved its strongest criticism for NATO for its inclusion of some of 

the petrochemical infrastructural targets and the excessive level of 

their physical destruction, reporting, “persuasive evidence indicates 

that humanitarian law may have been violated in the NATO bombing 

campaign, notably with respect to the bombing of Pancevo.”53 e 

IEER went so far as to recommend:
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 209

e entire issue of bombing civilian facilities to accomplish military objectives 

needs to become the subject of a rigorous public inquiry. Such an inquiry 

should include consideration of immediate and/or environmental and health 

damage that could be inicted on the country or in neighboring countries 

sharing ecosystems with the countries at war.54

Given that NATO undoubtedly intended Operation Allied Force 

as a positive humanitarian intervention—with the ending of ethnic 

violence as the primary objective—even on balance, such environmental degradation and explicit criticisms of it can only be considered ultimately counterproductive. It weakens moral positions. Ethicist Alex J. Bellamy argues that humanitarian interventions place 

additional burdens of justice upon political leaders and military commanders more than many other expressions of warfare. He notes that 

planners must pay particular attention to the selection of targets involving civilian objects and that “in humanitarian interventions, failure to exhibit due care casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of the 

operation as a whole.”55

Just as any physician is morally obliged to cause no harm while 

seeking to remedy a patient’s malady, or at least to minimize all possible harm created by the treatment, responsible government institutions need to balance their security priorities and moral considerations with other inuential factors, which nowadays include 

environmental ethical considerations. It is not beyond reason to foresee a near future in which ecologists will sit alongside lawyers in campaign planning stas and air targeting cells to oer advice or direction on the potential harm likely to be caused in specic missions. 

eir expertise in helping air planners to minimize harm to the very 

people they are trying to support should be welcomed, not feared. 

e moral shi away from old-fashioned concepts of collective responsibility, in which populations are punished or permitted to suer 

harm because of the actions of their governments, as well as the 

strengthening of international legal protections of civilians, greatly 

increases the onus upon air planners to minimize every form of socalled collateral damage.

I disagree with some ethicists and lawyers who argue that, because 

of the likely release of “dangerous forces,” attacks on oil and petrochemical installations should be prohibited in the same ways that 

dams, dykes, and nuclear generators are protected under the provisions of Article 56 of the Additional Protocol I. Because meticulously 

planned and very precise attacks on oil targets need not cause “severe 
210 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

losses among the civilian population,” as dened by Article 56, I cannot accept the position that air planners must never target oil or petrochemical installations. When balancing competing priorities, particularly when a patient’s life is threatened, even the most compassionate 

of physicians may judge it necessary to dispense a treatment—

chemotherapy, for example—that will kill peripheral healthy cells 

even as it targets the source of the threat to life. Of course, no doctor 

would prescribe these terrible treatments unless the patient’s illness 

was grave. Likewise, continuing with this analogy, the implementation of any signicant environmentally risky or destructive measures 

should only be contemplated in military contexts involving tremendous 

need, such as tipping-point moments in struggles of national survival. Ethicist Michael Walzer argues that during such “supreme 

emergencies,” a fear exists beyond the ordinary fearfulness of war, 

caused by dangers beyond the ordinary dangers of war (he means the 

imminence of defeat and enslavement),56 and that such fear and danger 

may well require extreme measures that override ethical norms and 

may even contravene law.57

NATO made a reasonable case in 1999 that the world community 

should not tolerate Serbian maltreatment of Kosovars. It represented 

a grave aront to Western core values. Yet the scale of ethnic violence, 

while suciently distressing to merit eorts to end it, did not constitute enough of a grievance—let alone anything close to a “supreme 

emergency”—to warrant the scale of violence by NATO to inadvertently pose serious health risks to both Serbian and Kosovar civilian 

populations and thereby cause much short-term and some long-term 

harm to the environment and its ecosystems of the Balkans.

Even without the gravity of the disputed issues of legality and morality, NATO’s destruction of Yugoslavian oil infrastructure did not 

even accord with sound military strategizing. Planners who target an 

enemy’s cardinal energy systems must know that, with the exception 

of electricity, which can be quickly interrupted, it will take a relatively 

long time for the desired eects of a counter-oil campaign to kick in. 

Destroying petrochemical installations, reneries, and storage facilities will inevitably reduce the enemy’s ability to operate its armed 

forces eectively, but it will not do so swily, much less immediately, 

especially if the enemy armed forces are (as Yugoslavia’s were) adaptable, lying low, and not engaged in signicant fuel-consuming movements or maneuvers. Destroying enough oil infrastructure to paralyze armed forces will necessitate a massive and focused attack, or a 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 211

lengthy and constant series of attacks. Even aer 78 days of increasingly powerful attacks, NATO had only destroyed around 40 percent 

of Serbia’s military fuel stocks.58 While a counter-oil strategy might 

supercially seem eminently sensible for campaigns predicted to be 

protracted—and my view is that any such campaigns should be undertaken only with tremendous care, proportionality, precision, and 

thought for the future—it is not an especially useful modus operandi 

for brief coercive strikes, particularly those with humanitarian goals.

We should not forget that the NATO planners intended Operation 

Allied Force to be a short and sharp coercive mission along the lines 

of Operation Desert Fox against Iraq in December 1998. Indeed, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon announced on the eve of the rst 

strikes on Serbia, “We have plans for a swi and severe air campaign.”59 Likewise, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright herself 

stated on 24 March 1999, “I don’t see this as a long-term operation. I 

think it is achievable within a relatively short period of time.”60 e 

fact that Operation Allied Force lasted 78 days cannot disguise the 

fact that it was intended to coerce Milosevic into changing his mind 

on the violence in Kosovo within two or three days. As Tom DeLay, 

the US House majority whip, commented one-third of the way 

through the campaign, “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Sta told us that this 

was no big deal, that we were going to bomb for a couple of days, 48 

hours, and then stop bombing, and Milosevic would come to the table.”61 Permanent destruction of oil renement and storage facilities 

and other chemical works was thus at odds with the original rationale 

of the mission and makes little sense unless one attributes to NATO 

air planners a recognition sometime in April—as I do—that their coercive strategy had failed and that the campaign had changed from 

coercion, to denial, and then to punishment.62

Moreover, astute and politically smart strategists and planners 

might want to reect on the likelihood that in today’s ecologically 

aware world, massive or sustained attacks on petrochemical installations—

especially on their tank farms, which will cause sizeable poisonous 

spills and huge toxic res—will generate politically destabilizing arguments about proportionality, and thus the operation’s justice. Refuting public allegations over proportionality is not something a 

military wants to nd itself doing. It will have few objective and easily 

understandable criteria upon which to build a defense. e just war 

concept of proportionality pertaining to noncombatants is complex 
212 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

and not helpfully dened in international humanitarian law. e legal explanation of proportionality is codied in Articles 51.5(b) and 

57.2(a) (iii) of the Additional Protocol I, which states that it is prohibited for the military to engage in any action “which may be expected 

to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to 

civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive 

in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”63

A breach nowadays constitutes a war crime under the Statute of the 

International Criminal Court.64 Unhelpful ambiguity exists on how 

anyone can objectively determine when an attack crosses the threshold and becomes “excessive” (it is a comparative concept, not a measurable absolute concept) and how anyone can compare and evaluate 

such dissimilar values as civilian harm and military gain. Yet the consensus view and the jus in bello norm is that when waging war on 

combatants and military objects, military forces must act painstakingly, deliberately, and carefully to ensure that civilians suer no 

more harm than military necessity demands. Suggesting that the 

draers of the Additional Protocol I also meant ensuring that the 

quality and habitability of the environment are not degraded would 

be hyperbolic. e environmental movement was far less motivated, 

powerful, and ubiquitous in 1977 than it is now. Yet, it is not unreasonable to foresee that (as I believe and recommend) a strengthening of 

both ethical and legal denitions will come to include these concepts.65

Tightening legislation is necessary. Opponents of any attacks that 

purportedly cause environmental harm and who desire to see prosecutions made against the perpetrators are currently not helped by the 

ambiguity of the wording in the Additional Protocol I, which prohibits 

“widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment,” regardless of the military objective.66 e problem with this 

prohibition, of course, is that currently it is almost impossible to 

measure that sort of damage in specic and objective terms. Moreover, the adjectives “widespread, long-term and severe” are joined by 

the conjunction and, implying a cumulative triple standard that must 

be fullled. In other words, even an attack on a petrochemical plant 

that caused widespread and horric ecological harm might fail to 

meet this standard unless critics could demonstrate that its eects 

could also be measured in years, if not decades.67

Some critics of environmental degradation caused by air attacks 

have attempted to reduce this timescale by drawing upon the 1977 

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 213

of the Environmental Modication Techniques (ENMOD), written 

as a consequence of widespread criticism of the disastrous US defoliation program in Vietnam. e ENMOD was promulgated in 

1978 and was ratied by the United States in 1980.68 e ENMOD 

bans “military or any other hostile use of environmental modication 

techniques having widespread, long lasting or severe eects as a means 

of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party” (emphasis 

added).69 e Conference of the Committee on Disarmament dened 

these terms for the purpose of the ENMOD treaty in an Understanding Regarding the Convention:

a) “Widespread”: encompassing an area on the scale of several 

hundred square kilometers;

b) “Long-lasting”: lasting for a period of months, or approximately a season; or

c) “Severe”: involving serious or signicant disruption or harm to 

human life, natural and economic resources or other assets.70

Interestingly, the three criteria mentioned in the ENMOD are 

joined by the conjunction or, rather than the and of the Additional 

Protocol I, meaning that it may not be necessary to fulll a cumulative standard. Moreover, the Committee on Disarmament’s explanation that long-lasting might mean “a period of months, or approximately a season,” seems to suggest a more readily dened and 

reasonable threshold that would make prosecutions for environmental harm during wartime more likely. Indeed, if these criteria were 

applied to NATO’s targeting selection process, the worst of the aforementioned attacks on petrochemical installations in Serbia, especially the destruction of Pančevo, might have been prohibited. Aaron 

Schwabach, an American law professor who has written extensively 

on the NATO campaign, concluded that it seemed “likely” that the 

damage at Pančevo would meet “at least one of these requirements.”71

Unfortunately for critics of NATO’s war, the ENMOD prohibitions 

do not automatically include all attacks leading to environmental 

harm, but only those activities undertaken deliberately to manipulate 

the environment’s natural processes (e.g., by changing weather patterns or by widespread defoliation). Even more unhelpful for those 

who seek to minimize environmental harm during wartime, the 

Committee on Disarmament’s denition was not intended as a de-

nition of the Additional Protocol I (in addition to the ENMOD), and 
214 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

it is not even formally incorporated into the terms of the ENMOD. In 

other words, the denition actually serves to confuse matters, not to 

clarify them.

Given this lack of clarity over timescales, making a compelling legal 

case that a state has committed excessive harm to the environment is 

always going to be highly problematic immediately aer the cessation 

of any hostilities, at least without new laws or a strengthening of existing laws. Compounding this problem is the fact that demonstrable—as 

opposed to merely threatened or even likely—human health problems (e.g., unusual cancers) or damage to ecosystems may take years 

to appear. Also, within contexts in which little baseline public health 

and environmental information exists, such damage may never be 

readily measurable, let alone placed within an objective and provable 

analysis of causation. e emotions surrounding warfare, with inevitable nger pointing from both sides, also make this type of analysis 

particularly problematic.

is was precisely the problem that Yugoslavia and various NGOs 

faced when they tried to bring a case against NATO before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). To the 

dismay of many international legal experts and human rights groups, 

who accused her of accepting unbalanced evidence in favor of 

NATO,72 Carla Del Ponte, the ICTY prosecutor, informed the UN 

Security Council on 2 June 2000 that she had decided not to open a 

criminal investigation into any aspects of NATO’s 1999 air campaign.73 She specied that although NATO undoubtedly made mistakes, she felt “satised that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the campaign.” 

More importantly for the purposes of this study, while accepting a 

nding that NATO had caused “some” damage to the environment, 

Del Ponte rejected assertions that the tribunal should prosecute 

NATO for causing excessive ecological harm. e main problem was 

not that the United States and France had never ratied the Additional Protocols of 1977. (is was of course true. e United States 

has still not ratied them, and France only did in November 2001.) 

Rather, Del Ponte accepted a review committee’s nding that the “imprecise” phrasing in the Additional Protocol I meant that it was extremely dicult to determine when any attacks during any wars had 

caused environmental harm exceeding the protocol’s threshold, especially as “long-term” would (despite the ENMOD-related advice) 

need to be “measured in years rather than months.” e committee 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 215

noted that, while it had “led to criticisms by ecologists,” the vagueness 

of the standard meant that, “on the basis of information currently in 

its possession, the environmental damage caused during the NATO 

bombing campaign does not meet the Additional Protocol I threshold.”74 e issue of intent also created a problem:

e requisite mens rea [measure of intent] on the part of a commander would 

be actual or constructive knowledge as to the grave environmental eects of a 

military attack; a standard which would be dicult to establish for the purposes of prosecution and which may provide an insucient basis to prosecute 

military commanders inicting environmental harm in the (mistaken) belief 

that such conduct was warranted by military necessity.75

e current vagueness of international humanitarian law is also a 

problem for critics of air forces that use ordnance that the public considers extremely ecologically harmful, such as white phosphorus 

bombs, cluster munitions, and depleted uranium (DU) rounds. All 

three of these ordnance types have undeniably eective military roles 

when used only against enemy combatants. Yet, for dierent reasons, 

each one causes such highly controversial unintended secondary effects that many people consider any use to be reckless. Most environmentalists condemn them all as environmentally harmful. I also tend 

not to like their usage, especially in close proximity to civilians, but 

that is mainly because I recognize that the use of any contentious 

weapons will create destabilizing controversy and add to unwanted 

propaganda battles. Moreover, I am not convinced that an adequate 

scientic consensus exists to allow me to argue with certainty, for 

example, that even the 30,000 DU shells red at 112 locations in and 

around Kosovo by USAF A-10s caused (or will cause) serious and 

long-term environmental harm and that DU-contaminated areas 

should be treated with anything more than the “precautionary approach” recommended by the UN’s environmental watchdog organization.76 Science may in time demonstrably undermine the UN’s position, and I am mindful that the defoliation of Vietnam by Agent 

Orange and other defoliants has caused severe human health and environmental harm despite early US beliefs that no long-term harm to 

humans would occur.77

Cluster bombs are dierent from white phosphorus and depleted 

uranium shells in that they produce no secondary toxins that can 

cause chemical actions on life processes that might kill or harm humans, animals, or other living things. Yet they have a worse and more 

clearly proven inuence on the natural environment. Cluster bombs’ 
216 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

primary harm comes when widely spread and highly volatile unexploded submunitions cause the death and maiming of innocent people 

aer—sometimes long aer—the cessation of hostilities. Ninety-eight 

percent of the 11,044 recorded and veried casualties of cluster munitions in recent wars have been civilians.78 In terms of the environment, 

cluster munitions have a very deleterious eect. Hundreds of thousands of fearful farmers in modern warzones avoid tilling submunitioncontaminated elds, irrigating contaminated groves or orchards, and 

raising livestock on contaminated grasslands. is has a seriously 

negative impact on local economies and on ecosystems. Cluster munitions also cause health and hygiene problems by creating malnutrition and denying safe access to water. In these ways they cause foreseen but unintended harm similar to, although individually far more 

lethal than, antipersonnel landmines. During NATO’s war on Serbia, 

USAF and RAF (and a small number of Dutch) aircra dropped a 

conrmed minimum of 1,254 cluster bombs in Kosovo (531 by the 

RAF, which mainly targeted elded forces and their weapons).79 ey 

scattered no fewer than 234,123 submunitions.80 With a failure rate 

calculated at 7.8 percent, this means that NATO le 18,261 unexploded submunitions in or on the ground in Kosovo, none of them 

having self-destruct fuses. ankfully, nearly all have now been located and cleared,81 although 2,500 remain in Serbia proper,82 and 

Kosovo’s litter of USAF and RAF cluster submunitions has caused 

152 postwar civilian casualties.83

Within the rst year aer the war’s end, elements within the British government were unhappy with the RAF’s heavy use of cluster 

munitions. On 23 May 2000, a report of the Foreign Aairs Select 

Committee of the House of Commons concluded: “We recommend 

that the UK Government consider carefully the experience of the use 

of cluster bombs in the Kosovo campaign to determine in future con-

icts whether they are weapons which pose so great a risk to civilians 

that they fall foul of the 1977 Protocol and should not be used in areas 

where civilians live.”84 Likewise, on 23 October 2000, a report of the 

Defence Select Committee of the House of Commons concluded that 

“our major contribution to the bombing campaign was in the form of 

unguided cluster bombs—a contribution of limited military value 

and questionable legitimacy.”85 It is therefore unfortunate that the 

RAF used them again (although nowhere as prolically as the British 

Army) in Iraq in 2003, alongside the USAF, which had also used 

them in Afghanistan in and aer 2001. Israel’s air force, but especially 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 217

its army, likewise used staggering quantities of cluster munitions in 

its 2006 campaign against Hezbollah insurgents and terrorists, leaving one million unexploded submunitions across southern Lebanon.86 e unintended death and maiming rates of civilians in all 

three campaigns have been high and regretted and have seemed to 

undo some of the good that the various air forces and armies were 

trying hard to achieve.

A widespread Western consensus has quickly emerged that cluster 

munitions violate the jus in bello principles of proportionality and 

discrimination so grievously that they must be classed as weapons 

mala in se, which means “bad in themselves,” irrespective of any legal 

prohibitions. e logic framing this consensus is consistent with both 

international humanitarian law and just war principles. It argues that, 

because military forces nowadays can reasonably determine from objective analyses of recent conicts that almost all cluster-bomb victims will be civilians who will suer death, maiming, and environmental harm for many years aer their initial use for military 

purposes, their harm cannot reasonably be balanced against any 

good achieved.

Modern wars have included many things mala in se, such as rape, 

torture, ethnic cleansing, and chemical and biological weapons. Cluster munitions are the most recent addition to this category. In February 2007, 46 national representatives met in Oslo to endorse a call by 

Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre to conclude a new legally binding instrument that will prohibit the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of cluster munitions and to provide adequate 

resources to assist survivors and clear contaminated areas. Subsequent International Oslo Process meetings occurred in Peru (May 

2007), Austria (December 2007), New Zealand (February 2008), and 

Ireland (May 2008). In Dublin, 107 countries adopted the treaty text, 

and they opened a signature process in Oslo on 3 December 2008. 

e convention will enter into force six months aer 30 states have 

submitted their instruments of ratication to the secretary general of 

the United Nations. Four states have now done so. e United States 

has neither signed nor ratied the convention, although in March 

2009 President Obama took a highly commendable rst step by permanently banning the US sale of all cluster munitions except those 

(which is a tiny amount) that leave behind less than 1 percent of their 

submunitions as duds.87 e United Kingdom has gone even further. 

It responded to the emerging mala in se consensus on cluster munitions 
218 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

responsibly and decisively by banning them in three stages: rst, on 

20 March 2007, by withdrawing all of the RAF’s 3,650 RBL755 “dumb” 

cluster bombs and their 536,550 submunitions as well as the British 

army’s 43,200 multiple-launch M26 rockets and their 27,820,800 submunitions; second, in May 2008, by withdrawing the remaining army 

cluster munitions which had (inadequate) self-destruct fuses; and 

third, in December 2008, by signing the convention outlawing all 

cluster ordnance.88

Even if we accept a jus in bello argument that in any particular 

conict a belligerent may foresee but not intentionally cause some 

environmental harm, we should also accept the jus post bellum argument that aer the end of hostilities and the restoration of what we 

hope will be a better state of peace, the restoration of the quality of life 

of the aected innocents should occur as fully as swily as possible. 

As the UN explains, this is not only a moral obligation; it is a practical 

part of peacemaking and nowadays extends to the human habitat and 

even beyond. “Environmental conditions—from the air that people 

breathe and the water they drink, to the ecosystems that support forestry, farming and shing—have a crucial inuence on the success of 

eorts to rebuild shattered communities and livelihoods. Only by ensuring environmental security can the wider goals of postconict reconstruction and human development be sustained.”89 In the case of 

the Kosovo conict the infrastructural damage was substantial and the 

environment harm severe in places. Swi remediation was crucial.

e United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) took the unprecedented step of assuming responsibility for postwar remediation, 

concluding that “it was evident that, not only had people been 

through untold pain and suering, but that the environment had suffered as well.”90 It therefore immediately undertook to create a strategy to unite concerned nations in a program to clean up the worst 

pollution and contamination to minimize long-term risks to Serbs, 

Kosovars, and others. Its own 1999 task force, which had identied 

the four heavily polluted “hot spots” around Pančevo, Kragujevac, 

Novi Sad, and Bor, served as the basis of its feasibility study to dene 

the exact scientic and nancial requirements for urgent cleanup 

projects at those and maybe other locations. In March 2000, cleanup 

measures for the four worst hot spots featured prominently as priority projects at the funding conference organized under the auspices of 

the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. By the late summer of 

2000, following positive initial responses from many governments 
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 219

and pledges from several European countries to support additional 

activities, the UNEP commenced a major environmental cleanup 

project at conict-caused contamination sites in Serbia (including 

Kosovo). Over the next four years the UNEP mitigation and remediation project helped to secure fresh drinking water, remediated 

contaminated soil and groundwater, removed and treated scores of 

tons of extremely hazardous chemicals and waste, rehabilitated 

wastewater treatment capacities, installed environmental monitoring 

stations, and strengthened national and local environmental management capacities.

Donor countries had pledged a total of $20 million, but several 

reneged altogether or reduced their contributions. e UNEP had to 

make do with $12 million and could not do everything it had wanted.91

Its eorts nonetheless made a highly positive dierence. Aer four 

years of intense industrial site, soil, and groundwater remediation 

work at the worst sites, the UNEP announced in May 2004 that, while 

the cleanup programs had only addressed the most urgent issues, 

they had made such substantial progress with them that the ecological hot spots no longer warranted that label and that the programs 

could be turned over to the Serbian government.92 ere was, and 

still is, much work le to Serbia to do before anyone can reasonably 

conclude that all environmental damage has been entirely negated.

It has now been 10 years since NATO airpower destroyed Serbian 

reneries and petrochemical installations and ve since the UNEP 

ended its partial environmental cleanup campaign. Yet, Serbia is still 

deeply troubled by NATO’s ostensible disregard of ecological responsibility. Unusually higher cancer rates, for instance, are still attributed 

to the eects of NATO’s bombing campaign and even to its use of 

depleted uranium.93 Establishing the verity of such claims is beyond 

my professional expertise and might not even be possible for an oncologist or a public health expert because of a lack of both baseline 

evidence and objective, thorough studies and because of Serbia’s continuing poor record of industrial pollution.94

Conclusions

is study has demonstrated that modern airpower has unequalled 

capacity for destructiveness within the human habitat and interrelated ecosystems of an opponent’s state. Traditional target sets still
220 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

include a lot of industrial plants and infrastructure that contain 

highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals which can, if discharged 

through attacks, cause severe damage to the natural environment and 

its ora and fauna, not to mention human health. Any such environmental harm nowadays has far greater potential for causing destabilizing 

controversy within the environmentally aware public than ever before. Existing international humanitarian law is not yet adequate to 

discourage protagonists during the heat of war from attacking some 

things that perhaps should only be targeted under unique circumstances, with extraordinary care, and aer weighing potentially wider 

implications. Existing conventions should be strengthened or new 

laws created. Yet, the jus in bello concepts of proportionality and discrimination embedded within our just war code already are—or 

would be if more widely understood—an eminently reasonable basis 

for constraining the injudicious use of force against objects that have 

the potential for environmental harm. Western warriors already conceptualize their use of violence in terms of minimizing suering 

while doing good, all the while protecting the innocent, including the 

opponent’s. It is a short and easy step of logic that they should understand the importance of minimizing harm to the habitat of the innocent. It is equally logical that, as the purpose of armed violence 

should always be a better state of peace, warriors will want to avoid 

inicting damage upon the innocents within the opposing state, and 

possibly within the wider region, that might last well beyond the end 

of conict and therefore complicate the restoration of lasting peace. 

One of the lessons we should learn from the Kosovo conict—indeed, 

from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon as well—is that most military 

commanders and planners are not adequately familiar with the key 

environmental sciences and are therefore not best placed to foresee 

all unwanted consequence as they plan operations and missions to 

achieve wanted eects. e inclusion of ecologists alongside lawyers 

in campaign planning stas and air targeting cells to oer advice or 

direction on the potential harm likely to be caused in specic missions will at least partially strengthen the way that environmental factors can be “brought in from the cold.” eir expertise in helping 

planners to minimize harm to the very people they are trying to support should be welcomed, not considered intrusive.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 221

Notes

1. Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property, Art. 1(a).

2. Leaning, “War and the Environment,” 278.

3. Steiner, “Aer the Bombs.” See also United Nations Environment Program, 

Lebanon Post-Conict Environmental Assessment, especially 42–46; Carassava, “U.N. 

Pledges $64 Million”; Black, “Environmental ‘Crisis’ in Lebanon”; and Milstein, 

“Lebanon Oil Spill.”

4. See Hayward, “Too Little, Too Late.”

5. United States Strategic Bombing Survey (Pacic War), Crude Oil Production 

and Rening.

6. For Germany’s reliance on oil and the wartime consequence of this dependence, 

see Hayward, “Hitler’s Quest for Oil.” See also Pearton, Oil and the Romanian State; and 

Stout, Fortress Ploesti.

7. Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, 163; and Jacobs, “British Strategic 

Air Oensive,” 147, 150, 167.

8. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 120.

9. Stephens, Vulnerability of Total Petroleum Systems, 42–44.

10. Mark Clodfelter, Limits of Air Power; and Frankum, Like Rolling under.

11. Warden, Air Campaign, 39.

12. Davis, On Target; and Keaney, “Surveying Gulf War Airpower.”

13. Hallion, Storm over Iraq, 231.

14. Sandoz et al., eds., Commentary on the Additional Protocols, 669.

15. is colorful phrase even made it into mainstream publications. See, for example, 

Joksimovich, “Militarism and Ecology.”

16. Vukmirovic et al., “Regional Air Pollution,” 741.

17. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 25; United Nations 

Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat), 

e Kosovo Conict, 32; and Carter and Turnock, eds., Environmental Problems of 

East Central Europe, 403. 

18. Booth, “NATO Bombs Le a Toxic Slough.”

19. Hedges, “Serbian Town Bombed by NATO.”

20. Reichberg and Syse, “Protecting the Natural Environment,” 463; and Ceulemans, 

“NATO Intervention in the Kosovo Crisis.” Also see Meyer, “Tearing down the Façade,” 

172–73, 176–77, 181.

21. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 76.

22. Meyer, “Tearing down the Façade,” 100; and “Un cahier spécial sur le Kosovo.”

23. Short also said, “At some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb 

machismo . . . to thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues.”

Drozdiak, “Commander of Air War Says Kosovo Victory Near.”

24. Tirpak, “Washington Watch.”

25. Public Broadcasting Service, “War in Europe.” 

26. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 652.

27. NATO Brieng, 3 May 1999. Shea’s speech can be found in Shea and Jertz, 

“Press Conference.”

28. Cortright and López, eds., Smart Sanctions, 95.

29. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 30 April 1999.
222 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

30. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 19 April 1999.

31. Shea and Marani, “Press Conference,” 30 April 1999.

32. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 651; and Operational Law Handbook 2000, 17–18.

33. Figures published on the website of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, 

“Oil Spill Facts.”

34. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 31, 34.

35. Assessment of the Environmental Impact, esp. § 4.1.1 and 4.1.2; Popovska and 

Sopova, “Pollution of the Balkans”; Carter and Turnock, Environmental Problems of East 

Central Europe, 403; and Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences, 649.

36. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 32, 33; United Nations 

Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat), 

Kosovo Conict, 34.

37. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 47.

38. Ibid.; and C. Morgan, “Collateral Damage.”

39. An excellent early study of pollution caused by warfare in arctic regions can 

be found in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Warfare in a Fragile 

World, 114–25, 151.

40. According to the International Criminal Tribunal’s Final Report to the Prosecutor,

NATO’s campaign killed 495 civilians and wounded a further 820. See § V(53).

41. For an example of Gorbachev’s concerns, see Gorbachev, “Poison in the Air.” 

A trawl of the Internet will produce hundreds of archived mainstream media reports 

of the ecological damage caused by NATO’s campaign. 

42. Bacevich and Cohen, eds., War over Kosovo, 15.

43. Assessment of the Environmental Impact.

44. Ibid., “Executive Summary.” 

45. United Nations Environment Program and United Nations Center for Human 

Settlements (Habitat), Kosovo Conict, 9, 11.

46. See C. Morgan, “Collateral Damage.” In her 2000 paper, the late Dr. Janet M. 

Eaton, a Canadian biologist and activist, typied these critics, noting that the task 

force, “although composed of many expert scientists from around the world, was 

very limited in duration, lacked breadth and scope, failed to have within its mandate 

assessment of the impact on human health and lacked the cooperation of NATO 

authorities to either locate or assess the impact of depleted uranium weapons in spite 

of widespread concern and warnings about the ecological and health implications.” 

Eaton, “Ecological and Health Consequences.”

47. World Wide Fund for Nature, “Danube Carpathian Program.”

48. FOCUS Assessment Mission. 

49. Martinovic-Vitanovic and Kalafatic, “Consequences of War.”

50. Ibid.

51. Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm.

52. Ibid., 85.

53. Ibid., 86.

54. Ibid., 13.

55. Bellamy, Just Wars, 213.
AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS │ 223

56. See Orend, “Is ere a Supreme Emergency Exemption?”

57. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 251–62.

58. Bacevich and Cohen, War over Kosovo, 24.

59. See Hayward, “NATO’s War in the Balkans,” 2. 

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 3. See also Daalder and O’Hanlan, Winning Ugly, 91–93, 209; and Henriksen, 

NATO’s Gamble, 5, 199.

62. Observing the conict as it unfolded, I noticed a dramatic change of operational 

intensity and tempo in the fourth week of April 1999, coinciding with the NATO Summit 

in Washington. See Hayward, “NATO’s War in the Balkans,” 10. Eminent British defense 

commentator John Keegan saw the same shi, noting that NATO began to “visit a true 

blitz on the Serb homeland.” Keegan, “Please Mr Blair.”

63. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions, Art. 51 (5)(b) and Art. 57 (2)(b).

64. United Nations, Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 8(2)(b)(iv). 

e statute modies “excessive” with the adjective “clearly” and “military advantage” 

with “overall,” thereby emphasizing both the need for clarity and the importance of 

avoiding assessments of individual attacks in total isolation.

65. Rodin, “Ethics of Asymmetric War,” 162.

66. Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 651.

67. International Criminal Tribunal, Final Report to the Prosecutor, § I (15); and 

Austin and Bruch, eds., Environmental Consequences of War, 652.

68. See Dieterich, “ ‘Law of War’ and Ecology,” 137–60.

69. Convention on the Prohibition, Art. I.

70. Quoted in Gopal and Deller, Precision Bombing, Widespread Harm, 75.

71. Schwabach, “Environmental Damage,” 129.

72. For example, see Benvenuti, “ICTY Prosecutor”; Ronzitti, “Is the Non Liquet

of the Final Report?”; and “Amnesty International’s Initial Comments.”

73. International Criminal Tribunal, Final Report to the Prosecutor.

74. Ibid., § 4 (A)(17).

75. Ibid., § 4 (A)(23).

76. United Nations Environment Program, Depleted Uranium in Kosovo; and 

United Nations Environment Program, Depleted Uranium in Serbia and Montenegro.

77. Cf. “Defoliating Viet Nam.”

78. Fatal Footprint, 41.

79. Secretary of State for Defence Geo Hoon, House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 19 January 2000; Minister of State for the Armed Forces Adam Ingram, House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 16 November 2001; Cluster 

Munitions in Kosovo, 9, 10; and Norton-Taylor, “US Deploys Controversial Weapon.” 

80. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 9. See the very close NATO gures quoted by the 

International Committee of the Red Cross in Cluster Bombs and Landmines in Kosovo, 6.

81. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 43.

82. “2,500 NATO Cluster Bombs”; and Fawkes, “Scars of NATO Bombing.”

83. Cluster Munitions in Kosovo, 46.

84. House of Commons, Foreign Aairs Select Committee, Fourth Report.

85. House of Commons, Defence Select Committee, Fourteenth Report.

86. Secretary of State for International Development Hillary Benn, House of 

Commons Hansard Written Answers for 18 December 2006; and Fatal Footprint, 35. 
224 │ AIRPOWER AND THE ENVIRONMENT: IMPLICATIONS

87. “Obama Takes US Closer to Cluster Bomb Ban.”

88. Hewson, “Cluster Weapons Ban Leaves Gap in UK Inventory”; and Norton-Taylor, 

Walker, and agencies, “Cluster Bomb Treaty.”

89. From Conict to Sustainable Development, 7.

90. Ibid., 6.

91. Marković, “Serbia.”

92. United Nations Environment Program, Press Release, 7 May 2004.

93. Cf. Zimonjic, “BALKANS: Fallout of Bombing.”

94. Cf. “Serbs Call for Restrictions on Noxious Factory Emissions.”
226 │ ABBREVIATIONS

IDF Israeli Defense Forces

IEER Institute of Energy and Environmental 

Research

IUNC International Union of Conservation of 

Nature

JCS Joint Chiefs of Sta

JDAM joint direct attack munition

KAZA Kavango–Zambezi

KLCT Kenya Land Conservation Trust

km kilometer

KWS Kenya Wildlife Service

LIFE Project Living in a Finite Environment

LWC Lewa Wildlife Conservancy

MPE (Israeli) Ministry for Protection of the 

Environment

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCA Ngorongono Conservation Area

NGO nongovernmental organization

NIS new Israeli shekels

NPL National Priority List

NRT Northern Rangeland Trust

OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom

OPEC Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries

PDA Project on Defense Alternatives

PGM precision-guided munitions

POL petroleum, oil, and lubricants

PP peace parks

RAF Royal Air Force

SAC Strategic Air Command

SPP state partnership programs

SS Schutzstael

TCE trichloroethylene

TFCA transfrontier conservation areas

TNA e National Archives, Kew, UK

UN United Nations

UNEP UN Environment Programme

UPT Undergraduate Pilot Training

USAAF United States Army Air Forces

USAF US Air Force

USAID US Agency of International Development
ABBREVIATIONS │ 227

USGS US Geological Service

USSBS US Strategic Bombing Survey

UST underground storage tank

WAP Western Area Plan

WWF World Wildlife Fund

WWII World War II
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266 │ INDEX

CAMPIRE. See Communal Areas 

Management Program for Indigenous Resources 

carbon dioxide, 10, 18, 205

carbon emissions, 200

Carpenter, Chuck, 31–32

CBC. See community-based conservation 

CBNRM. See community-based natural 

resources management 

China, 55, 115

Chissano, Joachim, 159

Churchill, Winston S., 1, 6, 10, 17–18, 

22, 113

von Clausewitz, Carl, 85

Clinton, Pres. Bill, 2

cluster munitions, ix, 5, 108, 117, 

215–18

coercion, 86, 211

Colorado, 30, 34, 39

Columbus AFB, MS, 28

Combat Training Branch, Israeli Air 

Force, 191

Combined Chiefs of Sta, 49

Command of the Air, e (Douhet), 

44–45

Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources 

(CAMPFIRE), 160

community-based conservation 

(CBC), 149–50, 155–56, 160–64, 

168, 172–73

community-based natural resources 

management (CBNRM), 149, 157, 

160

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability 

Act, 36

Congo, 136–38, 159

Congo basin, 136

conservation, 90, 94, 137, 140, 149–50, 

155–58, 160–2, 164–68, 172

conservation zones, 149–50, 155–57, 

161–62, 165, 168, 172

Convention on Biological Diversity, 3

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of 

Environmental Modication Techniques (ENMOD), 212–14

Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant, 

NE, 30–31

Corps of Engineers, 25, 31, 34, 36, 38

Cottbus, Germany, 17

Coventry, UK, 1, 3, 113

Cronon, William, 39

Dambusters, 14–16, 20

Danube River, 200, 208

Daura, Iraq, 57

DCDC. See Development, Concepts 

and Doctrine Centre

Defence Select Committee of the 

House of Commons, UK, 216

Defense Plant Corporation, 30

defoliation, 25, 74, 76, 199, 213, 215

DeLay, Tom, 39, 211

Del Ponte, Carla, 214

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 

136–37

Denver, CO, 30, 34

depleted uranium (DU), 4, 215, 219

desertication, 92, 99, 134–35, 138–40, 

142

Development, Concepts and Doctrine 

Centre (DCDC), British Ministry 

of Defence, ix

Global Strategic Trends, ix

disposal of ordnance, ix, xii

DOD. See US Department of Defense 

DOE. See US Department of Energy 

Dortmund-Ems Canal, Germany, 17

Douglas Aircra Company, 29

Douhet, Giulio, 44–45, 86, 110–11

e Command of the Air, 44–45

Dresden, Germany, 2–3, 17, 107, 119

DU. See depleted uranium 

Dunkirk, France, 1, 11–12, 112

Dust Bowl, 26–27

DynCorp, 77

Eighth Air Force, 48–51

energy infrastructure, 43, 45–46, 52, 

54–55, 58, 60–62
INDEX │ 267

ENMOD. See Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Modication Techniques

Environmental Consequences of War, 

e (Austin and Bruch, eds.), xi

environmentalism, 18, 193

EPA. See US Environmental Protection 

Agency 

European Union, 204

Exxon Valdez, 201, 205–6

Fieenth Air Force, 49

First Lebanon War, 192

Foreign Aairs Select Committee of 

the House of Commons, UK, 216

forests, 11–13, 135–37, 156

Fort Worth, TX, 27, 29–30

France, 1, 11–12, 19, 44, 110, 112, 114, 

144, 214

Fray, Frank, 48

Friedrich, Jörg, 14, 16, 19

Gahr Støre, Jonas, 217 

Garlasco, Marc, 127

General Motors, 29

Geneva Agreements, 1954, regarding 

Vietnam, 70, 77

Geneva conventions, 19, 21, 108, 202

Geneva Disarmament Conference, 

1932, 109

Georgia, 28, 75

Gerber, Michele, 32

Germany, 1, 3, 9–21, 25, 46–52, 61, 

109–10, 112–15, 119, 126, 199–200

Gibson, Guy, 15

Global Positioning System (GPS), 118, 

123, 166

Global Strategic Trends, (DCDC), ix

global warming, 4, 18

GLTP. See Great Limpopo Transfrontier 

Park 

Goebbels, Joseph, 14

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 206

Gore, Al, ix

GPS. See Global Positioning System 

Grand Island, NE, 30–31

Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park 

(GLTP), 158–59

Great Plains, 25–30, 34–35, 38

Greenpeace, 116

Guernica (Picasso), 1, 3, 112

Gulf War, 43, 55, 57–61, 116, 201

Haavisto, Pekka, 207

Hafvenstein, Joel, 66, 79

Hague Convention for the Protection 

of Cultural Property, 197

Haiphong, Vietnam, 53–55

Halevi, Avishai, 187

Hamas, 117

Hamburg, Germany, 2–3

Hanford Nuclear Site, WA, 32

Hanoi, Vietnam, 53–54

Harris, Arthur, 9–10, 13–20, 22, 113

Hastings, NE, 34

Hastings, Tom H., xiii

Hatzor, Israel, 180–81, 191–92

Hawaii, 3, 34, 43

health, 1–2, 5–6, 27, 31, 38, 57, 87, 89–

90, 94, 96, 100, 116, 124, 164–66, 

192, 197, 199, 202, 207–10, 214–16, 

219–20

Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 76, 79

Henk, Dan, 83, 154

Hezbollah, 117, 217

Hiroshima, Japan, 2, 4, 18, 107, 119, 

199

Hitler, Adolf, 107, 112

Hon Gay, Vietnam, 53

Human Rights Watch, 117, 123, 127, 

203

Hussein, Saddam, 56, 126, 201

IAF. See Israeli Air Force 

IBC. See Iraq Body Count Project 

ICBM. See intercontinental ballistic 

missiles 

ICTY. See International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 

IDF. See Israeli Defense Force 

IG Farben (Interessengemeinscha 

Farbenindustrie Aktien-gesellscha), 

51

Imperial Japanese Navy, 43

industrial pollution, 208, 219
268 │ INDEX

Institute of Energy and Environmental 

Research, 208

intercontinental ballistic missiles 

(ICBM), 26

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change, ix

International Court of Justice, 205

International Criminal Tribunal for the 

Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), 214

International Union for Conservation 

of Nature (IUCN), 137, 158

Iran, 76, 159

Iraq, 2, 4–5, 13, 43, 55–61, 72, 87, 116–

18, 122, 124, 126–27, 158–59, 201, 

211, 216, 220

Iraq Body Count Project (IBC), 117

Iraq War, 43, 57, 60–61

Israel, 117, 125, 177–93, 200, 216

Israeli Air Force (IAF), 117, 179–93, 

200

Israeli Defense Force (IDF), 177–81, 

183–88, 191–93

IUCN. See International Union for 

Conservation of Nature 

Iwo Jima, Japan, 114

Japan, 2–4, 18, 25, 32, 43, 61, 107, 114–

15, 119, 199–200

Jason Summer Study, 54

JCS. See US Joint Chiefs of Sta 

JDAM. See Joint Direct Attack Munition 

Johnson, Pres. Lyndon, 53–54

Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), 

118

jus ad bellum, 121–22

jus in bello, 6, 121–22, 198, 203, 205, 

212, 217–18, 220

Just War, 3, 6, 108, 121-22, 198–99, 

203, 205, 211–12, 217–18, 220

Kabulov, Zamir, 124

Kansas, 27, 29–30, 32–37

Kansas Army Ammunition Plant, 30

Karzai, Ahmed Wali and Hamid, 74–

76

Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), 159

KAZA. See Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area 

Kenan, Noa, 188

Kenya, 150, 15657, 160, 162–64, 166–

67, 169, 171–73

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), 162, 

164, 167

Kfar Yehoshua, Israel, 180

Kibbutz Lotan, Israel, 187

Kidon, Shai, 181

Kishon River, Israel, 180

Komer, Robert, 71

Korean War, 32, 115

Kosovo, 2, 117–20, 122, 198, 200, 202, 

204–6, 210–11, 215–16, 218–20

KWS. See Kenya Wildlife Service 

Kyoto, Japan, 3

bin Laden, Osama, 121

Lake Chad, 136

landmines, 66, 93, 108, 126–27, 216

Lapidot, Amos, 183

Laughlin AFB, TX, 28

League of Nations, 109

Lebanon, 109, 117, 189–90, 192, 200, 

217, 220

Leuna, Germany, 51

Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (LWC), 

163–65

Lewy, Guenter, 115–16

LIFE. See Living in a Finite Environment 

Lindemann, Frederick, 18

livestock, 13–14, 33, 93, 99, 162, 164–

65, 204–5, 216

Living in a Finite Environment (LIFE), 

160

Lockheed-Martin, 30

Lod, Israel, 185

London, UK, 1, 3, 78, 112

Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant, 

TX, 30

Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, 

TX, 30

Low Countries, 11, 46

Lowry AFB, CO, 34

Luwae, 47, 112, 200
INDEX │ 269

LWC. See Lewa Wildlife Conservancy 

mala in se, 217

Mandela, Nelson, 159

Manual of Air Tactics (RAF), 13

Mao Zedong, 107

megafauna, 90, 92, 96, 165

Mekorot Company, 181

Metohija, Kosovo (former Yugoslavia), 

200

Mikdash Hanamerim (Temple of the 

Tigers), Israel, 188

Milosevic, Slobodan, 117, 120, 199, 

203–4, 211

Ministry for Protection of the Environment (MPE), UK, 177–79, 181, 186

Mississippi, 28

Mitchell, William “Billy,” 44–45, 57, 86

 Winged Defense, 45, 57

Mogadishu, Somalia, 117

Möhne River, Germany, 14–16, 48, 199

Mongols, 2

Moody AFB, GA, 28

morale, 1, 9–10, 13, 46–48

Mozambican navy, 96

Mozambique, 85, 96–97, 158–59, 163

MPE. See Ministry for Protection of 

the Environment, UK

“Munitions Requirements of the Army 

Air Forces,” 47

Munk, Erika, 116

Nagasaki, Japan, 2, 4, 18, 199

Nagoya, Japan, 2

Nahalal, Israel, 180

Namib Desert, 134

Namibia, 160

Nanjing, People’s Republic of China, 

115

National Defense Strategy, June 2008, 

152

national parks, 149, 156–57, 160

NATO, 21, 76, 79, 85, 117, 120, 124, 

199–200, 202–11, 213–16, 219

navy, 110

Navy of the Republic of Poland, 59

NCA. See Ngorongono Conservation 

Area

Nebraska, 29–31, 34

Negev region, Israel, 177

Netherlands, 1, 3, 20, 112, 199

Nevatim air base, Israel, 184–85

Newall, Cyril, 46–47

“New Deal,” 27

Ngare Ndare Forest Reserve, 163

Ngo Dinh Diem, 70–71, 75–76

Ngorongono Conservation Area 

(NCA), 161

Niger, 138, 140, 142–43

Nile River, 137

Nobel, Alfred, 6

Northern Rangeland Trust (NRT), 

150–51, 163–73

Novi Sad, Serbia (Former Yugoslavia), 

202, 206–8, 218

NRT. See Northern Rangeland Trust

Obama, Pres. Barack, 124, 217

Outt AFB, NE, 29

oil consumption, 44, 50

oil infrastructure, 57, 59, 200–1, 210

Okavango Delta, Botswana, 136

Okinawa, Japan, 114

Oklahoma, 27–29, 34–35, 37

Oklahoma City, OK, 27, 29, 35

Operation Allied Force, 58, 117, 209, 

211

Operation Desert Fox, 58, 211

Operation Desert Storm, 116, 118

Operation Iraqi Freedom, 118

Operation Linebacker, 201

Operation Ramon, 183–85, 191

Operation Ranch Hand, 70, 77

Operation Rolling under, 53, 201

opium, 65–70, 72–80

Oppenheimer, Robert, 4

ordnance, 10, 30, 34, 117, 200, 202, 

215, 218

Orville Wright, 6

Osaka, Japan, 2

Oslo Process, 217

Pakistan, 76, 159

Pancevo, Serbia (Former Yugoslavia), 

202, 205–8, 213, 218

peace parks (PP), 150, 157–59, 168
270 │ INDEX

Pearl Harbor, HI, 3, 43

Peirse, Richard, 47

Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission, 94

PGM. See precision-guided munitions

Picasso, Pablo, 1

Guernica, 1, 3, 112

Pinyon Canyon, CO, 39

Planning Division of the Israeli General Sta, 178

Ploesti, Yugoslavia, 49–50

Poland, 1, 3, 50, 59, 110, 112

poppies, 65–70, 72–80

Portal, Charles, 11–12, 18, 47

PP. See peace parks

precision-guided munitions (PGM), 

57, 107, 118, 120, 122

Rabin, Yitzhak, 191

RAF. See Royal Air Force, UK

Ramat David air base, Israel, 180–81, 

191–92

Regional Environmental Center for 

Central and Eastern Europe, 207

Rocky Mountain Arsenal, CO, 30

Romania, 49, 200, 202

Roosevelt, Pres. Franklin, 27–28

Rotterdam, Netherlands, 3, 112

Royal Air Force, UK, 1–2, 9–13, 19, 44, 

46, 48–51, 110, 112–13, 115, 180, 

199–200, 216, 218

Manual of Air Tactics, 13

Royal Australian Navy, 59

Royal Navy, 59, 110, 112

Ruhr River dams, Germany, 14, 20

Rumpf, Hans, 115

Rupert, Anton, 159

Rwanda, 137–8, 159

Sahara Desert, 136

Saigon, Vietnam, 74, 76

Schilling AFB, KS, 35–37

Schutzstael (SS), 15

Schwabach, Aaron, 213

Sebald, Winfried Georg, 9

Second Intifada, 179, 190

Second Lebanon War, 189–90

Serbia (former Yugoslavia), 21, 58, 117, 

199, 202–8, 210–11, 213, 216, 218–

19

Seventeenth Air Force, 150

Shakedi, Eliezer, 186

Shannon, David, 16

Shea, Jamie, 204

Sheppard AFB, TX, 28

Shmueli, Ram, 191

Short, Michael C., 203

Sinclair, Archibald, 49

Somalia, 117, 167

South Africa, 94–97, 136, 158–59, 161

Southern African Development Community, 94

Soviet Union, 32, 55, 65, 113, 124, 156, 

200

Spaight, J. M., 109, 113

Spanish Civil War, 1, 112

Speer, Albert, 50, 112

SS. See Schutzstael

Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, 

218

storage tanks, 35, 43, 57, 204

Sudan, 138–40, 142–43

Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1981, 36

sustainability, 83, 90, 144, 146, 152–53, 

156, 158, 164–65, 168, 172–73, 200

Sutner, Bertha, 6

synthetic fuel, 200

synthetic oil, 46–47, 49–51

Taliban, 65–66, 68–70, 76–79, 124

Tan Son Nhut air base, Vietnam, 73

Tanzania, 157, 160–61, 163

Texas, 27–30

TFCA. See transfrontier conservation 

areas

Tinker AFB, OK, 29, 35, 37

Tokyo, Japan, 2–3, 107

Townshend, Charles, 13

transfrontier conservation areas 

(TFCA), 149, 157–58, 168

Trenchard, Hugh, 44, 86

Tulsa, OK, 27, 29

tu quoque, 205
INDEX │ 271

Turkey, 57, 125, 190–91

Tweezer, Zvi, 185

U-boats, 47

Umm Qasr, Iraq, 59

UN. See United Nations

United Kingdom, 1–4, 9–22, 19, 44–51, 

59, 76, 78, 86, 108–15, 124, 144, 

177–81, 186, 199–200, 216, 218

United Nations (UN), 2, 22, 66, 85, 95, 

116, 124, 126–27, 138, 151, 158, 

202, 207, 214–15, 217–18

United Nations Children’s Fund, 116

United Nations Environment Program, 

138, 218

United Nations General Assembly, 22

United Nations University for Peace, 

158

United States (US), 2, 4, 18–19, 25–39, 

43, 45–55, 57–59, 61, 65, 69–80, 

86–87, 97, 107–8, 110–11, 113–18, 

120, 122–27, 133, 140, 142–47, 

149–55, 162–63, 168–69, 171–73, 

178, 185, 187, 189, 199–201, 203, 

205, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217, 219

US. See United States

USAAF. See US Army Air Forces

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), 97, 

133, 138, 142–47, 149–50, 153–55, 

162–63, 167–69, 171–73

US Agency of International Development (USAID), 143, 154, 171

USAID. See US Agency of International Development

US Army Air Corps, 28, 45

US Army Air Forces (USAAF), 2, 25–

26, 32–35, 48–50, 110–11, 114–15, 

200

US Army General Sta, Planning Division, 178

US Army Ordnance Corps, 30

US Defense Intelligence Agency, 54

US Department of Defense (DOD), 4, 

25, 31–32, 34, 36–39, 149–150, 152, 

154, 162, 168–69, 171–72

US Department of Energy (DOE), 25, 

32

US Environmental Protection Agency 

(EPA), 30–31, 34, 36–37

US Geological Survey (USGS), 140, 

143

USGS. See US Geological Survey

US Joint Chiefs of Sta (JCS), 53–54, 

211

USN. See US Navy

US Navy (USN), 34, 59, 201

US Pacic Fleet, 43

US Strategic Air Command, 29, 111

US War Department, 28

Uvda air base, Israel, 184, 187–88

V-1 (Vergeltungswae eins), ram-jet 

cruise missile, 17

V-2(Vergeltungswae zwei), ballistic 

missile, 17

Vance AFB, OK, 28

Vauthier, Pierre, 44

Veale, F. J. P., 18

Verne, Jules, 109

Vietnam, 2, 5, 18, 25, 31, 43, 52–55, 61, 

65, 70–78, 80, 115–16, 118, 126, 

199, 201, 213, 215

Vietnam War, 18, 25, 52, 61, 118, 199

Viorst, Milton, 116

Virunga National Park, Democratic 

Republic of the Congo, 137–38, 159

Walcheren Island, Netherlands, 20

Wallis, Barnes, 15–16, 20

Walzer, Michael, 113, 210

War Cabinet, UK, 12, 17

Warden, John, 201

Warsaw, Poland, 3, 112

Washington State, 32

water, 3–4, 10, 13–16, 18, 30–33, 35–

38, 48–49, 57, 66, 89–90, 92–94, 

116, 133–38, 140, 147, 156, 180–81, 

184, 186, 216, 218–19

Weber, Baruch, 181

wells, 30–31, 37, 59, 199, 201

Wells, H. G., 109

Western Area Plans, 46

Wichita, KS, 27, 29

Winged Defense (Mitchell), 45, 57

World Conservation Union, 137
272 │ INDEX

World Health Organization, 116

World War I, xi, 44, 86, 108, 126

World War II, x, 1–3, 10, 13, 25, 32–33, 

38, 43, 46, 52, 55, 61, 86, 100, 107, 

110–12, 115–16, 119, 126, 200–1

World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 96, 158–

160

Wright, Orville, 6

WWF. See World Wildlife Fund

Yugoslavia, 4–5, 21, 49–50, 58, 117, 

199–208, 210, 213–14, 216, 218–19

Zeppelin raids, xi

Zimbabwe, 158–161

Zuckerman, Solomon, 18, 21