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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

almarst-2001 - 07:41pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1274 of 1296)

What do you think of the following:

http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/NewsST121500.htm

THE WOLFOWITZ FACTOR

The leading light in Bush’s foreign policy team, Paul Wolfowitz, heads the Paul Nitze Center for International Studies. He epitomizes the "neoconservative" wing of the Republican Party. The neocons, many of them former leftists, are inveterate Cold Warriors in search of a new enemy. They are latently Russophobic, but currently also fixated on the supposed threat from China.

Wolfowitz came to national prominence in early 1992 as the author a secret Pentagon memorandum that was leaked to the New York Times. That document unreservedly named Yeltsin’s post-communist Russia as the gravest potential threat to American vital interests. It advocated an all-out, U.S.-led NATO war against Russia if Moscow threatened the security of newly-independent Baltic republics. Wolfowitz called for 24 NATO divisions, 70 fighter squadrons, and six aircraft carrier battle groups to be prepared to keep the Russian Navy "bottled up in the eastern Baltic," to bomb supply lines in Russia, and to use armored formations to expel Russian forces if they entered Lithuania. He boldly stated that Russia would be unlikely to respond with nuclear weapons, but he provided no basis for that assessment.

In addition the Wolfowitz memorandum envisioned provision of American security guarantees to Eastern Europe and permanent global involvement in order to deter "potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

Instead of being taken to a safe, quiet place where he can do no harm to himself or to others, Wolfowitz became the neoconservative hero. His proposals on Eastern Europe were accepted by the Clinton Administration and resulted in the expansion of NATO in 1997. What is best for America and the world — his disciples have been telling us ever since - is that America should remain the only cop in town, possessed of the sole right to deputize posses, or go it alone to discipline evil-doers, wherever American "values" or "security interests" are threatened. The bipartisan hegemonists also accept Wolfowitz’s key tenet that America should never permit any nation, and especially Russia or China, to rise to the status of regional superpower.

almarst-2001 - 07:53pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1275 of 1296)

U.S. Expels Russian 'Spies' - http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,280618-412,00.shtml

Powell Orders Nearly 50 Suspected Spies To Leave Follows Arrest Of FBI Agent On Charges Of Espionage For Russia Unclear If Moscow Will Expel Americans In Retaliation ...

Taken in a context with the rest of recent international developments it seems like US has clearly taken course to the new Cold War.

lunarchick - 08:31pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1276 of 1296)
lunarchick@www.com

http://www.antiwar.com/

PW links: http://www.sais-jhu.edu/faculty/profiles/wolfowitz.html http://www.house.gov/financialservices/ http://www.antiwar.com/justin/pf/p-j082300.html

Note a newsflash re USA downsizing selected foreign workers.

On how DO countries think. With the USA does their dominance economically turn them into Empirial thinkers ... where they want to weaken other who may challenge their wealth. A solution for minnows and former greats is just to pay attention to building strong democratic nations with a quality economy.

lunarchick - 08:56pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1277 of 1296)
lunarchick@www.com

Retaliation .... looks as if the USA is suffering Asian 'loss of face' re 'the tunnel' ... which was world news way back, and yet 'new news' to the USA. Isn't it funny the way diplomacy responses work ... it's all a sort of 'joke'. (The trouble for the lower orders is that sometimes they are wasted in war --- as in Korea -- and when the Dips re-start the pow-wow the ordinary former 'enlisted' guys scratch their heads and wonder .. what was that war all about ?!)

The 'Theory of Diffusion' applies to global distribution from the stone-age upwards. If there is a product with tangibility in whatever form that has value, be it material or informational, then there is a tendancy for the product or knowledge to disperse. Just like a dye powder shaken into a jug of water and stirred.

Interesting regarding secrets. There are always those who have sympathy for an opposing side, as was the recent case of the Eighty Year Old woman in the UK, who 'dispersed' information. That there are secrets in the first place implies that somewhere down the line a life or lives can be put at risk.

The strategies of political manoeverings are a total bore to the majority --- until a quake hits 7+ on the richter scale and their livelyhoods and security are threatened.

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Germany has just put out a statement re violence and insecurity in male youth ... trying to understand why this happens.

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Malcom FRASER, former Oz PM turned Statesman, has given an address today that is critical of inequality, and looks to an improved future.

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On America 'the fifth estate' CentIntAg, (the 4th is the media), seem to be the cowboys of the world, siding intraNationally with the Right-wing bullies of cultures when the general population try to move for improved freedoms. Perhaps the fifth estate have 'unofficial' trading links with these rightwingers ... for most 'wars' seem to have an underlying economic basis ... 'madmen' excluded.

almarst-2001 - 09:03pm Mar 21, 2001 EST (#1278 of 1296)

Pretty depressing picture...

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