Arms Race Update – Russia to Upgrade Nuke Arsenal

The insanely bellicose Bush Doctrine continues to stoke the world’s arms races (in case you didn’t know, there are several underway).

Russian president Medvedev says his country will have a “guaranteed nuclear deterrent system” up and running by 2020. BBC reports that Medvedev is calling for a new fleet of nuke subs to go along with the missile shield programme.

He said it was necessary to build “new types of armaments”, and to “achieve dominance in airspace”, according to quotes carried by the Itar-Tass news agency.

“We plan to start serial production of warships, primarily nuclear-powered submarines carrying cruise missiles and multifunctional submarines,” Mr Medvedev said.

Before he stepped down to become prime minister, Vlad Putin, announced Russia would develop its own new generation of nuclear weapons and an advanced missile designed to defeat the latest American anti-missile systems.

Can somebody tell me why we’re starting this Cold War thing again? Just who is getting precisely what out of this? Or is it just bloodyminded idiocy?

 

The Battle of the Black Sea

Yes, it is about oil.

Westerners have been left pretty much in the dark about what really lurks behind the recent Russia-Georgian war. In particular, we’ve heard almost nothing about Washington’s diplomatic campaign to effective oust Russia from the oil riches of the region, even from the Middle East itself.

The goal has been to get Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO. Once under the protection of the Alliance the idea was then to have both countries close their ports to the Russian navy, eliminating the Russian’s access to the Meditteranean and the Middle East. It looks like that has backfired.

The Ukraine may yet give the Russian navy the boot but, with access to Abkhaz ports, especially Poti, which are now firmly under Russian protection, it won’t matter much.

Russia’s moves in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are expected to be endorsed at the September 5 meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a mutual defence alliance along the lines of NATO comprising Russia, Belarus, Khazakstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. They may sound like small potatoes but they hold large reserves of oil and natural gas which the White House, Cheney in particular, has been attempting to secure and wrest out of Russian control.

Worse yet is the prospect of a new member to the CSTO – Iran. If Iran is admitted it would effectively acquire Soviet military protection. This would present a huge complication to the Americans and the Israelis. If the Russians deployed their latest, S-400 SAM batteries to Iran, it could make an American or Israeli air strike a very bloody affair. It could also bring Russia and America into a shooting war.

I’ve always felt that the biggest risk from NATO’s seemingly pointless march to Russia’s borders would be the prospect of strengthening the Russian-Chinese alliance through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. That appears to be just what is happening.

Russia is pushing back – hard. This may result in a speed up of Russian negotiations to establish a naval base in Syria. This would create a Russian military presence just north of Lebanon and little more than a heartbeat away from Israel.

There’s great truth in the old adage about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. The West had a grand opportunity to engage and embrace Russia in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead that genius in Washington responded with a relentless campaign to contain, isolate and threaten Russia. Like everything else that Bush and his diseased, bald sidekick have done, there was no apparent awareness of or preparations for the ramifications of their actions, even consequences that should have been obvious.

Look at it this way, Russia really didn’t create most of these opportunities it’s now exploiting. We did that for them. Unfortunately the Kremlin remains (and may well stay) two steps ahead of us. Thanks George, you clot!

 

West Playing Into Putin’s Hands

Unlike all of our leaders, Vlad Putin is not a nice man. Unlike most of our leaders, Vlad Putin is a shrewd character adept at pulling the levers of power.

When Russia goaded that idiot Saakashvili into bombarding South Ossetia and then retaliated by invading Georgia and, later, recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, our leaders turned bright red and damn near blew up. Russia wasn’t going to get away with that, no sir. Why, Russia would feel the sting of our sanctions and, better yet, we were going to boot it right out of the G8 too! That’d set Moscow a reeling.

Or not.

Putin, it seems, has the measure of Russia’s vulnerability to Western retaliation – right down to the last kopek. He knows that the consequences, if they materialize at all, will be insignificant compared to the popularity he’ll enjoy at home – where it matters.

This isn’t just about Georgia or the autonomy of these two, small states. No, it’s much bigger than that. It’s about Western solidarity and how far that can be stretched.

Europe doesn’t want to get caught in the middle of a BushChehney pissing match with the Kremlin. Winter isn’t far off and the Euros know that their supply of Russian oil and gas could be the first casualty of American adventurism.

The European Union made the requisite threats of sanctions against Russia but The Guardian reports the EU is now backing away from any action.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokesman, Andrey Nesterenko, …lambasted Nato for “putting pressure” on Russia and said that there could be “irreversible consequences” for stability in Europe. Nato had no “moral right to lecture Russia,” he added.

The Kremlin’s defiant and unapologetic tone comes ahead of a special EU summit in Brussels on Monday, called by France, to discuss the EU’s future relations with Russia. On Thursday, France’s foreign minister, Bernard Coucher, intimated that sanctions against Moscow would be discussed.

Yesterday, though, the EU appeared to be rapidly retreating from this position.

Moscow has made clear it will respond to any punitive measures from Brussels, which could include the suspension of a new EU-Russia partnership agreement. “The time to pass sanctions has certainly not come,” said a senior diplomat from France, which holds the EU presidency.

Analysts in Moscow today said that Russia’s leadership was relatively relaxed about the threat of EU sanctions. “I don’t think the contemporary west has any means to punish a state that is not quite a rogue state,” Yulia Latynina, a commentator with the independent Echo of Moscow radio station told the Guardian.

She went on: “The Kremlin didn’t take Tbilisi and didn’t shoot (Mikheil) Saakashvili. What the west can really do — expelling Russia from the G8 or the World Trade Organisation — isn’t important.’

Like it or not, the East-West game is only getting started. Yesterday Russia successfully test-fired its new, long-range “stealth” missile, the Topol RS-12M specifically designed to defeat the anti-missile batteries Bush intends to deploy in Poland.

China also stands to get dragged into this standoff via the SCO or Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Putin is seeking SCO support for his gambit on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Iran is also looking to take advantage of the tensions to strengthen its ties with Moscow and seek entry into the SCO. Iran would also like to get its hands on Russia’s latest-generation S-400 surface to air missile batteries. The mere rumour of that has already given Washington and Israel fits.

There’s a lot at stake in this brinksmanship including the fate of NATO. Without unity the Alliance makes little sense and yet the interests of Western and Central Europe are not in harmony with those of Eastern Europe. In a mutual-defence alliance you should never admit nations you really aren’t willing to fight to defend if it comes right down to it.

I think NATO is hopelessly overextended and I think Vlad Putin thinks that too. If I’m right, this problem is bound to get worse before it gets any better.

 

Rot At The Top – Eight Years of Awful Leadership

Well, we did it again. Washington wanted to play hardball with Moscow and succeeded only in exposing the weakness of the NATO alliance. As a symbol of Western solidarity, NATO has been left bloated, battered and bruised, largely by American bullheadedness since September, 2001.

NATO’s Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has been a total dud. He’s great at making grandiose pronouncements that are best quickly forgotten if only to avoid embarrassing the Alliance and Scheffer himself. He failed to rally the member states to make a meaningful commitment to the mission in Afghanistan. Those nations that have shouldered the burden – Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany – have pretty much acted on their own rather than as a NATO force. That is reflected in the way each fights (or doesn’t) by its own rules on its own turf. That’s five out of twenty-seven member nations (how many can you name?). Doesn’t sound very impressive, does it? Scheffer, a rotten leader.

There was Tony Blair, Washington’s lap dog, its poodle. Blair’s career can be summed up with the epitaph, “He went along to get along.” He not only vouchsafed Washington’s outrageous lies on Iraq, he tossed in his own for good measure. A rotten leader but a good judge of when it was time to get out with his hide intact.

Then, of course, there’s the Wrecking Crew. No, I didn’t lift that reference from the just released book. I coined it for a photo album I posted on this very blog on 21 September, 2007. If you want an amusing stroll down Memory Lane, check it out. http://the-mound-of-sound.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Wrecking+Crew%22

Ah yes, the Wrecking Crew. Leadership at its very worst. Consistently rotten to the point of perversion. They’ve squandered their nation’s strength and its wealth, harming many to abet the already privileged few. Abroad they took their nation’s prestige and goodwill and sold it cheap in pursuit of a radical ideology fomented from a viral hubris. It was a twenty-first century adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes played on a global stage. Applied delusion on a mass scale. Like all such folly it wasn’t long before it collapsed under its own weight.

Bush, aided by the sycophant Scheffer, treated NATO as a child might treat a balloon – constantly blowing it up and squeezing it. With no effort to rationalize the Alliance or clarify and redefine its role in a post-Cold War era, Bush just kept on trying to toss in one Eastern European nation after another, a protracted campaign of passive-aggression against Moscow.

History has shown that alliances work best when there exist strong bonds, shared interests and common purpose. In Cold War NATO those elements were obvious and strongly-shared. It was actually a very large alliance, as these things go, and, despite that, it functioned quite well. Post Cold-War NATO is a bloated, clumsy thing progressively expanded through Central and Eastern Europe. There is nothing “North Atlantic” about the ex-Warsaw Pact states now relabelled as our own and very little that could pass for strong bonds, shared interests and common purpose, something evident in all the “no shows” in Afghanistan.

What are the strong bonds and shared interests between Canadians and Romanians or Slovenians? The question answers itself. Are we really willing to send our young men and women to fight over them? Of course we’re not and our adversaries, real or potential, know it.

NATO has come to exist more as an extension of American foreign policy than anything else. This may be the undoing of NATO itself for it conflicts with the whole notion of shared interests and common purpose needed to maintain a healthy alliance. It represents the clash of Washington unilaterialism with a supposedly multilateral coalition.

Afghanistan may have marked the beginning of the end for NATO for it demonstrated the Alliance to be a square peg that couldn’t be made to fit the round hole. With NATO members shirking “the mission” on a ratio of four to one, it’s hard to depict this as a NATO venture at all.

Throughout the Bush years the West has consistently overplayed its hand. Bush overplayed his hand by going into Iraq unnecessarily with entirely predictable and yet, for the supposed leader of the free world, wilfully unforeseen consequences. American military power was never greater than before the first American tanks rolled across the Iraqi border. The occupation of Iraq showed little states that once dreaded America’s military prowess that they had less to fear than they had imagined. By using force needlessly, Bush allowed the rise of Iran and the Shiites as the dominant regional force in the Middle East.

Now we have Georgia. Any guesses why Putin and Medvedev are dragging their feet on withdrawing their forces from Georgia? It’s because we, once again, have overplayed our hand. Putin has been given a no-risk opportunity to see just what resolve NATO can truly muster when Condi Rice shows up in Brussels to crack the whip on the Alliance underlings. He has so much to gain and so very little to lose by delay and we’ve played right into his hand. Summer is almost over and Europe is anticipating an urestricted supply of Russian gas to heat its homes this winter. You do the math.

This game isn’t over and we can’t wish it away. If NATO is to be salvaged it will have to be rationalized with clearly defined purposes and equally clear commitments from its members. There is already talk of a two-tier Alliance – NATO Classic and NATO Lite if you like – which makes more sense as the days, and failures, go by. Organize the member states by commonality of interests and you will inevitably get back to a North Atlantic group (old NATO) and a Central and Eastern European group (new NATO) acting cooperatively but not in lockstep. That, at least, might restore some credibility to Article 5 of the Charter.

Make no mistake about it, the West needs NATO or some similar alliance, to confront the threats and challenges looming this century. There’s plenty of trouble coming, everything from resource wars to climate-driven mass migration – enough that we don’t have to provoke needless conflicts. We need to take an inventory of what we’re about to face and craft a new understanding of what we’ll need in an alliance for this cetury.

Our world is undergoing upheaval – environmentally, economically, and geo-politically – that will call out for new leadership. The ideologues have shown themselves unfit to navigate these shoals. We have an urgent need for new leadership with a clearer vision, steadier hand and a lighter touch.

 

McCain’s Spin Cycle

The crisis over South Ossetia is no laughing matter. It’s believed that thousands have died in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Georgia at the hands of the Georgian and Russian armies.

There is some wry humour, however, in the way the right-wing pundits have been flailing about, spinning furiously, before landing in a spent heap. They’re incensed at Vlad Putin and damn well want something done about it but, when it comes to that certain “something,” they keep coming up empty.

I’m sure the White House wishes it had some leverage over Moscow but it doesn’t. American influence is at an all-time low. It’s skint. It’s worse even than the aftermath of Vietnam.

That may just be the real Bush legacy, the idea that global power is a weapon that works best when it’s unused and that, above all else, even a mighty nation needs to pick its fights carefully.

WWJMD? Yes, indeed, What Would John McCain Do in this situation? Judging by his addled rhetoric of recent months, Johnny boy would probably find some means of unilateral action, some way to give Putin one upside along the head. Oh he’d sure as hell demand that Russia be kicked out of the G8 and he might even get his way. He’d certainly keep Russia out of the WTO. He might even try to reinstate the Cold War.

In other words, John McCain might damage America more than he could ever damage Russia. Why? McCain’s gunslinger views aren’t shared outside America (of course there’s always Harper). The Euros aren’t interested in playing McCain’s game. They need Russian energy and, almost as importantly, access to Russian markets. So, if McCain can’t swing Europe, maybe he could get the Asians to bite? Sorry, no. NATO? Not a chance (see Europe ante). Maybe a “coalition of the broke and needy” might rope in a few eastern European states but, no, they’re all too familiar with the Bear on their doorstep.

Put simply, John McCain might just be the guy to isolate his own country in a weird sort of rebound containment. And an isolated America might find it a lot tougher dealing with its international creditors, particularly China.

George w. Bush has done a pretty effective job of hammering America on the anvil of his delusions. Maybe McCain will finish the job.

 

Okay, Hit Him With Your Purse

Western nations are keen to find some tangible role in unwinding the conflict between Russia and Georgia. One right-winger writing in The Times advocated giving Georgia quick admission into NATO. Another pundit, writing in The Guardian, suggests threatening to pull Russia’s seat at the G8 – a tactic already endorsed by John McCain.

What to do, what to do? Here’s a suggestion (and you knew I’d have one). How about we start by realizing that we’ve overplayed our hand? We (that is to say our Leader of the Free World, George w. Bush) decided to ram NATO’s borders right up to Russia’s doorstep. The logic behind that was always pretty fuzzy as was the actual committment behind it. Putting anti-missile missiles and radar systems on Russia’s doorstep while pretending they were intended to defend against rogue missiles from Iran was another silly, red-meat provocation.

You have to work extremely hard to ignore the history of warfare over the past two centuries enough not to realize that certain actions tend to have quite predictable and proven results. One of these actions is to encircle and contain a major power. By turns, this sort of thing has sparked wars in Europe and elsewhere. A major player, seeing itself being hemmed in, turns paranoid and lashes out. Call it human nature if you like.

And that’s exactly what Bush has been attempting – the encirclement of both Russia and China. Driving the world’s paramount military alliance headed by the world’s sole superpower right up to Red Square is an act of provocation and nothing but. Enlisting India to flank and contain China and threaten her oil routes to the Middle East is another blatant act of provocation. Maybe if the United States was looking at another half-century as the dominant industrial economy on the planet these options might be somewhat more viable. But America is in decline while the BRIC nations are in ascendancy.

Then there’s the rationale for NATO. Did we really need Slovakia or Romania in NATO? What on earth for? Are they rushing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in Afghanistan? Of course not. They get let into NATO, NATO issues an urgent plea for help from its member states, and they say “forget it.” Huh?

My guess is that the eastern European states will be as reliable as NATO members as they were as members of the Warsaw Pact. Worse yet, this Georgian stunt demonstrates that they can do some rash, even dangerously stupid things that could have serious repercussions for a mutual-defence alliance like NATO.

We’ve overplayed our hand and the Russians have seen our bet and called.

Sometimes there are no miracle solutions. This is one of those times.

Washington accuses Russia of trying to force regime change on Georgia. Memo to Washington – that’s not such a bad idea. The increasingly authoritarian Saakashvili blew it. It’s not just the Russians who can never trust him again. On the trust issue, we’re in the same boat. We need to send a clear message to the Georgians and to the leaders of the newly-minted NATO membership that there’s no room within the alliance for adventurism (except, of course, the American type).

As for Moscow, well there’s not a lot we can do. Sending forces into Georgia is so stupid even Cheney won’t go there. Forget about the Security Council. Sanctions? It turns out the West needs Russia more than they need us. The last thing we need to do is to drive Russia away from the West and more closely into economic, political and military co-operation with the Chinese.

No, the outcome of the Georgian-Russian conflict won’t be of our making. Nor will it resolve our provocations of Moscow or Russia’s suspicion of Western intentions. Worse yet, America still has the Frat Boy while Russia sends Putin to the chess table.

If there are any lessons to be learned from this debacle, any gain to be had, maybe it’s to understand the urgent need to defuse tensions between Russia and the West, even if that means backing down a notch.

 

Russia To Step Back Into Afghanistan?

The biggest news to come out of the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest may be an announcement of Russian participation in Afghanistan.

The story has been kicking around for a few weeks, largely treated as rumour, but now, according to Asia Times and other journalistic sources, this seems to be turning into reality:

Russia may be about to join hands with NATO in Afghanistan. A clearer picture will emerge out of the intensive consultations of the foreign and defense ministers of Russia and the United States within the so-called “2+2” format due to take place in Moscow from Monday through Tuesday next week. From the guarded comments by both sides and the flurry of US diplomatic activity, it appears highly probable that Russia is being brought into the solution of the Afghanistan problem, along with NATO.

According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant and the Financial Times of London, the initiative came from Russia when its new ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin – erstwhile Russian politician with a controversial record as a staunch Russian nationalist who routinely berated the West – signaled a strong interest in this area at a recent meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at Brussels. The plan involves Russia providing a land corridor for NATO to transport its goods – “non-military materials” – destined for the mission in Afghanistan. Intensive talks have been going on since then over a framework agreement.

From the feverish pace of diplomatic activity, the expectation of the two sides seems to be that an agreement could be formalized at NATO’s Bucharest summit. In an interview with German publication Der Spiegel on Monday, Rogozin confirmed this expectation, saying, “We [Russia] support the anti-terror campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I hope we can manage to reach a series of very important agreements with our Western partners at the Bucharest summit. We will demonstrate that we are ready to contribute to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.”


The implications are obvious. Russia would be willing to cooperate with NATO, but on an equal and comprehensive basis, and, secondly, the sort of selective engagement of Russia by NATO that the US has been advocating will be unacceptable to Moscow. Significantly, Putin frontally questioned the standing of NATO’s monopoly of conflict resolution in Afghanistan.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also separately signaled Russia’s readiness to provide military transit to Afghanistan for NATO provided “an agreement is concluded on all aspects of the Afghan problem between NATO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO]”. Significantly, Lavrov was speaking immediately after the 7th session of the Russian-French Cooperation Council on Security Issues in Paris on Tuesday. He asserted that “most NATO members, including France”, favor Moscow’s idea of a NATO-CSTO cooperative framework over Afghanistan. Lavrov all but suggested that Washington was blocking such cooperation between NATO and the Russian-led CSTO.”

But cooperation with Russia involves NATO embarking on cooperation with CSTO and possibly with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well. (Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, addressing the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, proposed that for effectively combating drug trafficking originating from Afghanistan, a system of security rings promoted by Russia in the Central Asian region in recent years would be useful and that the potential of CSTO and SCO should be utilized.)

What worries the US is that any such link up between NATO and CSTO and SCO would undermine its “containment” policy toward Russia (and China), apart from jeopardizing the US global strategy of projecting NATO as a political organization on the world arena.

The most damaging part is that Russia-NATO cooperation will inevitably strengthen Russia’s ties with European countries and that, in turn, would weaken the US’s trans-Atlantic leadership role in the 21st century. “

Completely by chance, this story neatly dovetails with (and corroborates) the following opinion piece concerning US dependence on NATO to maintain its global stature.

 

Without NATO, America’s Global Standing Plummets

The United States has been ranting lately about the very future of the NATO alliance hinging on the willingness of its European members to send more troops to fight America’s castoff war in Afghanistan.

Washington may have been trying to shake up the European states but it’s a policy that carries potential risks to the US that may be even more threatening.

America posits itself as “Leader of the Free World,” a fairly grandiose but shallow, even tenuous claim. What is the Free World if not the Western world?

Since the end of WWII, America’s prestige has been framed as the leader of the developed world. It was Washington’s ability to lead Europe and harness their combined industrial engines and military might that elevated it to leadership globally.

Without a NATO to lead, America is reduced to a powerhouse dependent on ad hoc coalitions of states that typically need to be bribed or cajoled into joining and that flit in and out as it suits their interests. Bush, himself, on trying to gather a meaningful alliance to legitimize his conquest of Iraq spoke of the future as one to be shaped by “coalitions of the willing.”

These coalitions, however convenient, lack precisely what America needs most – permanence and constancy. They’re “one off” affairs that can rapidly turn into embarrassments as once true blue underlings get bored or are driven out in elections at home. That ain’t no way to lead the world.

Without NATO, what remains save for the United Nations, a body increasingly hostile and suspicious of the United States? The UN is also the place where America cannot avoid looking into the faces of its future economic rivals – China and India, Russia and Brazil – and their demands for recognition and power sharing.

The European Union itself has emerged to rival the United States in population and combined GDP but NATO isn’t structured as a US/EU partnership. Within NATO, America remains very much first among notional equals. Within NATO America can still leverage its considerable strengths.

It is no fluke that the United States appears much more worried about the potential demise of NATO than its European partners. Their 21st century reality is much different than the past, more divergent from America’s.

In America’s heyday, Europe was delineated by a concrete wall and barbed wire. To the East lay nothing but threats. The Soviet Union and its vast thousands of tanks stood poised to smash through the Fulga Gap and swallow the West. The wall is finally gone and the barbed wire and tanks are gone too. Europe has swelled to Russia itself and now has become dependent upon Russia for essentials such as natural gas.

Europe sees itself today more connected to Russia than at any time since the First World War and Old Europe finds itself increasingly at odds with New Europe and the United States over how it will deal with Russia. Washington is intent on driving NATO straight to the Russian borders by inducting Georgia and the Ukraine even as it negotiates to plant anti-missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic, virtually on Russia’s doorstep.

American belligerence is fueling an arms race with Russia that is directly contrary, even harmful to Europe’s interests. European leaders are more or less playing nice at the moment, hoping that November will bring a level of maturity and vision to the White House not seen since 2000.

NATO still has an important role to play in the futures of both the US and Europe but the next American president will have some real fence-mending to do. That’ll mean toning down American unilateralism and exceptionalism, giving Europe a greater say in the leadership of the Alliance and no longer treating NATO as America’s Foreign Legion.

The stresses that threaten the Alliance are more American than European. And, if NATO does fall apart, America stands to lose more than anyone else.

 

Dragging Russia Back Into Afghanistan

NATO’s really up against it in Afghanistan. It’s so desperate that it’s considering appealing to the Russians for help. No, really.

A supply of Russian troops is out of the question. Our side wouldn’t tolerate that any more than would the Taliban although the insurgents would love the symbolism of it. According to the CanWest news service, NATO is interested in Russian logistical assistance:

The transatlantic alliance will stop short of asking for Russian troops or the dreaded attack helicopters used in Afghanistan during the 1980s, since that would represent a huge propaganda coup for the Taliban insurgents.

But NATO is interested in Russian help in transporting equipment and troops into Afghanistan through Russian territory, officials said Wednesday.

The Russian government could make contributions that would include “regular use of Russian transport means to get supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan [and] possible Russian contributions to the re-equipment of the Afghan army,” said Robert Simmons, NATO’s special envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

So, let’s see now. With NATO membership now stretching to Russia’s doorstep and with newly minted NATO partners Poland and the Czech Republic establishing bases for an American anti-missile battery, also on Russia’s borders, and in all places, Afghanistan, where the west played such a key role in the Soviet defeat, NATO thinks the Russians will chip in to help now that we’re in a bad way?

Good luck with that fellas.

 

First The Guns, Then The Paranoia

Nothing like a good old-fashioned arms race to spice up the world’s problems.

It’s curious how they always seem to follow the same course – first the guns, then the paranoia and then… well, let’s leave that for a moment.

Guns. Nobody likes them more than the United States of America. Its economy may be in decline, it may be struggling to breathe under a suffocating blanket of debt, but there’s nothing known to man or earth that’ll stop it from spending more on its military than every other nation combined. Think about that. Five per cent of the world’s population, twenty five per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, fifty per cent of its military spending. Wowee, zowee!

It’s a scary world when the hillbillies have all the guns.

Imagine you live in a big, old house with a big verandah where you like to sit to catch the cool evening breezes in the height of summer. In the big, old house across the street your somewhat strange neighbour also sits out in the evening. But one day you notice something different. Lined up along the porch railing you see the neighbour has leaned a couple of rifles and a shotgun. It’s enough that you notice it but you don’t react. Then the following night you see that he’s added an automatic assault rifle. The next night it’s a sniper rifle. About this time you might be getting a little worried about all this firepower and just what the guy has in mind. When you see him actually pointing a cannon at you, just that once, you realize you can’t keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Now take that situation to the global stage. You have one country that has served notice that it reserves the right to launch “pre-emptive” war against any nation that it perceives as an emerging rival, militarily or even economically. That’s right. If your economy stands to surpass his economy, he claims the right to attack you. If your military or your military and that of other countries with which you may ally yourself threaten to surpass his military might, he claims the right to attack you. On what basis? Because he can. Because might is right.

That little bit of madness is enshrined in today’s Bush Doctrine. It’s a perverse form of American exceptionalism that has other nations paying a lot of attention to the goings on in Washington. So, what do they see when their gaze shifts to the Potomac?

They see a nation that has gone for its guns, arming itself as though it was already in a total war and preparing for another. They see a nation bent on achieving superiority, on a generational scale, in everything from ships and submarines, to aircraft, to nuclear weapons and the militarization of space itself. They see a nation that has commercialized not just its armaments industry but warfare itself, a government whose elite friends (outfits such as Halliburton) now rake in unconscionable profits from actual warfare, an industrialized mercenary cash cow.

Bush/Cheney & Company cherish fear. It’s a weapon they use on everyone, including their own people. To them, it’s far easier and infinitely more effective to use fear as a motivator than to employ legitimate means of persuasion. Get’em afraid enough and they’ll do anything. The trouble is, other nations aren’t as easily intimidated as the American people.

As America has gone for its guns so have others. Russia, China, India, the Koreas, even Japan are all in the midst of one or more arms races. It’s even rumoured Brazil may seek to establish a nuclear hegemony in South America. What else do all these countries have in common? They’re all emerging economic superpowers. They’re all looking to expand trade with each other. And, with the exception of Brazil, they’re all geographically contiguous.

Asia Times Online has a good article on the Asian arms race: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JB14Ad02.html

Russia’s Vlad Putin has been outspoken about his nation’s insistence that it will not be cowed by American threats. Recently Putin said that Russia will soon field its own advanced weaponry and its own next-generation nuclear weapons with new missiles specifically designed to defeat Bush’s anti-missile defence systems. He has scrapped the Coventional Forces treaty and has promised to target Russian missiles at any nation that participates in the Bush anti-missile system.

First the guns, then fear, then more guns and, inevitably, the paranoia. This is the potentially lethal cocktail produced by mixing fear, a lack of confidence, and a powerful shot of suspicion.

Here’s the latest example. The United States has announced it will use a missile next week to destroy a defective spy satellite. Washington claims the satellite was launched just over a year ago, failed immediately, and now threatens to smash into earth with a deadly cargo of hydrazine fuel.

Russia, however, suspects an ulterior motive. From BBC:

Russia’s defence ministry said the US planned to test its “anti-missile defence system’s capability to destroy other countries’ satellites”.

“Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon,” a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.

“Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons,” it added.
“The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space,” the statement continued.

The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries’ spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, and many countries used toxic fuel in spacecraft, but this had never before merited such “extraordinary measures”.

It troubles and perplexes me that, as far as our leaders seem to be concerned, these arms races aren’t even on their radar. No one on our side speaks out demanding this be stopped and I can only assume that’s because it is the United States that is driving this lunacy. The good news is that not every arms race leads to major power war. The Cold War is an example, although there was a lot of luck involved and it had an abundance of troubles of its own. However the First and Second World Wars clearly did trace back to arms races.

There are political and economic shifts underway of a tectonic scale. It’ll be tough enough travelling that rocky road without everyone pointing guns with hair triggers.