Well, good to log on to the BBC News website this morning and notice that the US and Poland are signing an agreement for the US to station their missile defence system in Poland even against massive popular pressure within that country. Of course what the people want and what governments want are generally going to be polar opposites but nice to see this Polish gov really sign away the interests of the people they claim to represent.
You see, apparently this system has been designed to defend the US and her allies (whoever serves US interests) from ‘rogue states’ such as Iran launching nuclear and non-nuclear warheads that probably don’t even exist (certainly the former). Now as any thinking person should know, this is bullshit, this system has been created to encircle Russia and ensure that the US enjoys complete global pre-eminence. Ok so if you’re a US citizen or live in a country with close relations with the states (as I do) this may sound like a pretty sweet deal. Its likely Europe and the US will never be threatened with a nuclear attack ever again (from the likes of Russia even if the system was designed for Iran etc). The thing is, the US hasn’t used nuclear weapons since WW2 mainly because they knew other nations could hit them back if they did. For this reason, many academics have argued for further nuclear weapon proliferation as once more states have access to such weapons, the less likely they are to be used. I don’t particularly agree with that idea BUT I am quite sure that the general use of nukes by the US and allies such as the UK & Israel (who apparently don’t have them, even though they do) on a lesser scale is not far off. The possibility of their use during the Iraq invasion was very real (the US administration literally claiming to be targeting underground military targets. I remember finding this laughable as a 17yr old kid, but the press duly gave it credence by not pointing out its idiocy) but China and Russia probably wouldn’t have just sat and watched that happen. Now their nukes can be knocked out of the sky (christ knows what effect that has ecologically & on the country it would happen over), the US has carte blanche to use their own where and when they please. Russia will become ever more concerned, and act appropriately as a reaction to a missile system being located 115 miles from its western border.
Just a quick question… if this defence system is designed to deal with threats eminating from the Middle East say… why hasn’t the US forced this whole project on its Iraqi client state?!
As I think human life is just as valuable whether you’re poor, rich, white, brown, black, Hindu, Muslim, Chrisitan, atheist etc, I’m just as concerned about nuclear warheads being used in other countries our govs may deem enemies as I would be if they were used against the north of England (I live in the south, so would probably survive, but assume I’m meant to care about people living in my country more than elsewhere). We know how devestating these weapons are (well, the old ones the US used in Japan during WW2) and I’d be just as distraught if it was Iranian women and children on the wrong end of their powers of destruction as I would be if a nuke hit Washington.
Anyway, the whole missile defence system is part of a wider effort on the part of the US to encircle Russia with enemies, mainly through the NATO alliance. NATO was created as a defensive organization which would DEFEND European borders, but the whole pretence for its existence is now a joke as the body acts ‘out of area’ in Afghanistan and its leadership call for a new mission statement for the 21st century. Btw, NATO wasn’t set up as a reaction to any kind of Russian agression towards western Europe and WW2, it was created BEFORE the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact came into existence.
The Bush admin is continuing the Clinton admins aim of moving NATO further east in a bid to isolate Russia and secure the safe transit of vital energy resources from Eurasia. Ok, so in a zero-sum, realist world, someone’s gotta take the goods and reign supreme, but actually there are alternatives, and they’ve actually been put forward by the Russians who have been brushed aside. They must remain the enemy, otherwise how the hell is such an expensive and dangerous undergoing like the missile defence system (underwritten by US taxpayers of course) going to be sold to the public? Luckily the US gov has been given a helping hand by the western media in general in the past fortnight as they painted the Russians as the agressors in the Georgia conflict when it was the Georgians who sent troops into S ossetia and kicked things off… but hey, that wouldn’t be as juicy a story and endless opinion columns couldn’t be reeled off about the return of the Russian bear as well as scary looking pictures of president Putin and lines of tanks as was seen on the front page of the Economist this week.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is, the world just became an even more unstable place, and neither Russia nor Iran are to blame.
So what is the endgame with NATO? Adopting Russia and encircling China?