In 2000, the Jackson Progressive republished an article by Theodore Postol from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, entitled The Target is Russia. The article began with the following:

The Clinton administration is relentlessly moving toward an ill-informed decision this summer to deploy an untested and fundamentally unworkable national missile defense (NMD) system. The administration claims this technically flawed defense is needed to negate an unproven long-range missile threat posed by "rogue" states.

The cost of this defense will not simply be measured in dollars. It may include an end to further nuclear arms reductions with Russia, an increased Chinese effort to expand its nuclear forces in response to the defense, negative reactions from U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia--who know that their security will also suffer from this ill-thought out American initiative--and an eventual collapse of global arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

The Bush Administration has continued the development and deployment of this unbelievably expensive and highly unreliable system, whose official purpose is to protect against "rogue" states, such as Iran and North Korea. It is hard to escape the conclusion, however, as Dr. Postol did in 2000, that our government has not been entirely candid about its real purpose.

It is difficult to imagine, as Postol pointed out, that a radar facility located near Vardo, on the northern tip of Norway and only 40 miles from the Russian border, is intended for surveillance of only North Korea and Iran.



Perhaps it's just the coincidence of today's headlines in USA Today and the fact that I'm listening to an audiobook version of Gore Vidal's novel, The Golden Age: An American Chronicle Novel, set in Washington, D.C. around the time of this nation's entry into World War II, but it is looking more and more that since the fall of the Soviet Union the power elite has been slowly maneuvering us into a new cold war. The headlines proclaim "Bush says Russia 'derailed' moves toward democracy," although the headlines on the inner page state "Bush: 'Russia is not our enemy.'" Bush made his remarks at a democracy conference in Prague, Czech Republic, prior to leaving for the Group of Eight summit in Germany.

Needless to say, Vladimir Putin has not been happy with either Bush's remark or an anti-missile system obviously designed and deployed against Russia, despite Bush's protestations to the contrary.

Vidal's novel is the remarkable reconstruction of how Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and War Secretary Stimson, together with the help of the mass media and others, deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack the United States. It is fascinating to read Vidal's description of the elaborate web that Roosevelt wove, a web so vast and elaborate that no one else could see just where he was leading the nation, especially as the strands of the web invariably ended in the Oval Office.

Obviously, the invention of nuclear weapons has altered the script. Once Russia had the bomb and a method of delivery, total war was no longer an option. On the other hand, the threat of nuclear war became a fearsome tool to enrich the arms industry, diminish civil liberties. and colonize the third world to keep it free from the "scourge of Communism."^®

The fear du jour technique of the Bush administration is beginning to look ridiculous, because it requires a level of inventiveness seldom possessed by authoritarians like the ones now in power. The cockeyed plan to blow up a jet fuel pipeline leading to JFK Airport by some terrorist wannabes has become the subject of snickering, not a source of terror. After a while, any con game becomes stale and grows mold. Now that the Global War on Terror^® is losing its ability to terrify the guy in Texarkana or Hennepin, a suitable replacement must be found for the GWOT, which is now rancid and must be discarded.

A second Cold War could easily fill the bill. Looking back to the '50s, it is amazing how the the First Cold War subsumed reason, memory and ethics into a mindless, bipolar Manicheanism that justified nearly anything the power elite decided it wanted.

This is not an exclusively Republican project, by any means. Once the security establishment recovered from the surprise of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it immediately began to search for threats. The economics and financial side of the power elite made sure that the "reforms" made in Russia would not lead to a more democratic state, but instead would lead to an oligarchy run by bosses and former Soviet officials who had little or no experience with democratic institutions and even less respect for them. Recall that Boris Yelsin, a democratic hero in the West, settled his dispute with parliament by having his tanks shoot into the building.

This process has continued throughout the Clinton and Bush II administrations. Russia was very unhappy with Clinton's bombing of Serbia, a Slavic nation with historic ties to Russia. Bush has been provoking the Russians, not just with the anti-missile system, but by his continual rhetoric criticizing Russia's internal politics. Putin and the Russian government are reacting predictably, and, I suggest, according to plan. Whenever they push back, the U.S. government and its media mouthpieces can point to it as an indication of Russian intransigence.

A presidential candidate who does not buy into this program cannot be elected. If by some strange twist of fate such a person were elected to the presidency, he or she would be either sidelined, impeached or assassinated.

So the stage is set for a new cold war. The actors are studying the scripts and trying them out on the population and each other.

This is a different kind of drama, however; the audience is required to participate according to the instructions in the script, it can't leave, and the actors try to keep the play going as long as possible.

It's a dangerous play, so sit back and enjoy it while you can.

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Memory: Some readers will recall that in 1999, the Russian army reached the Serbian air base in Pristina before NATO forces, under the command of Gen. Westly Clark, had reached it. When Clark learned of it, he became furious and ordered British General Sir Mike Jackson to order an assault on the Russian troops, whereupon Jackson refused and told Clark "I'm not going to start the third world war for you." The original article appeared in the Guardian but is not available from its web archives but there are a number of existing articles that amplify the dispute among the NATO commanders and their governments:

Gen. Strangelove and the Wimps

Tracing Clark's Military Map

Wikipedia Article on Westly Clark (obviously the contents of this article can change)

Jeff Elkins: When thieves fall out (commentary)