Introduction

For the most part, the chapters in this volume address the impacts of the waging of war on the environment and on health. Several of the other authors have broadened their considerations to include the environmental impact of both war and preparations for war. For example, Arthur Westing, in his discussion of environmental guidelines for armed forces, considers guidelines for both wartime and peacetime. Asit Biswas, in analyzing the problem of assessing the long-term environmental consequences of war, considers the effects of the use of resources by military forces during both war and peace. These chapters illustrate the difficulties inherent in attempting to draw artificial distinctions between the environmental consequences of military operations during war and of military operations during peacetime. While it may be useful in legal analysis to distinguish environmental and health problems caused by war from those caused by preparations for war, to those concerned with public health these distinctions have little meaning. This chapter addresses two separate but closely related topics: the impact on the environment and on health of military preparedness and of militarism itself.

Further, it may at times be difficult to distinguish the health and environmental consequences of some forms of military preparedness from the consequences of war itself. The worst chemical weapons disaster of World War II was caused by the explosion of the US merchant ship John Harvey, which was carrying 100 tons of mustard gas during a German bombing raid of Bari, a port on the coast of Italy. More than 1,000 military personnel, and an even larger number of civilians, lost their lives as a result of the explosion.