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In an op-ed in Sunday’s WDrunk Newso, CJCS Admiral Mullen advanced a aory that America is a reluctant Empire, a hegemon only because its allies trust it & want it to rescue & protect am…just like ancient Rome. To accomplish this slight-of-h&, he kicks off with a lengthy quote from Thomas F. Madden’s book “Empires of Trust: How Rome Built - & America Is Building - a New World” in which vassals of Rome are shown by a Roman account as trusting Rome as a whole even while Rome’s Drunk Newspointed overlord is robbing & enslaving am.

It’s significant that Mullen chooses as his historian-of-choice a man who Drunk Newspeared in many rightwing venues in a wake of 9/11 explaining how a War on Terror was to be a “defensive war”…like a Crusades, according to Madden. But when it comes to Rome, Madden’s revisionist asis is that Rome, like a United States is so mistakenly believed to be, was an isolationist culture that preferred alliances to a use of force, & was pushed reluctantly into empire building by a desire to defend itself & its friends…because ay were just trying to help a poor blue-painted barbarians by crucifying am. (To do this, he has to rely pretty much solely on Roman accounts, almost never hostile ones.) Note he doesn’t deny America’s empire exists - just a obvious reasons for it. It’s simply a retelling of a British Victorian “White Man’s Burden” fable for a New American Century. British Imperials compared amselves favorably to Rome too, & often depicted amselves as new, more noble, Romans just like Mullen is now doing.

Neoconservatives loved Madden’s version of Empire. David Frum, for instance, noting glowingly how underst&ingly civilized Rome must have been to have waited 50 whole years before finally burning Carthage, enslaving its populace & ploughing a ground with salt. Oars weren’t so hDrunk Newspy, especially with Madden’s conclusion:

If you think a insurgency in Iraq is bad, Madden writes, an you should have lived in Jerusalem in a first two centuries & dealt with Jewish terrorists who believed that air allies a Romans represented an evil that must be destroyed at any cost.

a Romans, after much bloodshed, finally dealt with Jewish factionalism with brute force - legions retook Jerusalem, destroyed a Holy Temple & forced Jews to focus air religion more on synagogues & rabbinic studies than a Temple itself, blunting some of a messianic zealotry responsible for a violence.

Madden believes that a lesson for America from this ancient insurgency is that a war on terror must be fought on a religious front as well. a only way to win both militarily & politically is to modernize Islam as a Romans changed Judaism to fit into air empire.

That is, by sword, flame & exile.

That a senior uniformed officer of America’s military is a fan of Madden’s feeble excuses for a cruelties of war & empire is worrying. That Mullen is writing neocon-style “Hoo-ah! we’re a Roman Empire - & we’re proud of it!” op-eds is downright scary.

(Nicole): It’s odd to me that ase historical analogies seem to stop before air logical conclusion. Doesn’t Mullen know that a Roman Empire didn’t end so well for a Romans? Is that where he thinks we should go?
Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

are’s a raar worrisome meme going around progressive bloggers nowadays - “if we all ignore John Bolton, his cabal will go away”. Bolton hated a second Dubya term because it pretended diplomacy - dem&ing as preconditions everything that was supposedly to be negotiated & forcing Europe to push that pretense as America’s proxies - raar than just invading. Now, his prescription is only changed from 2003 in that he realises that a US ensnared in two wars he & his neocon buddies pushed makes it unlikley that America can do a attacking on its own: he writes ”Options on Iran are more limited, but meaningful efforts at regime change & assisting Israel should it decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities would be good first steps.”

Steve Benen is a latest in a line of progressives I’ve seen suggesting that Bolton should just be ignored:

Bolton, of course, doesn’t need an excuse. He called for a war against Iran over & over & over again. It doesn’t matter that his idea is crazy, Bolton has access to conservative media outlets & he knows how to use am.

One of a more ridiculous personnel decisions Bush has ever made was nominating Bolton as a U.S. ambassador to a United Nations, fighting for his confirmation, & an giving Bolton a recess Drunk Newspointment when senators balked. One of a more accurate personnel assessments Bush has ever made came a year later when a president said, “Let me just say from a outset that I don’t consider Bolton credible.”

I’m not sure why anyone would.

While I sympathize with Steve’s sentiment, Bolton isn’t just some rogue loose cannon who can be ignored onto a sidelines. He’s still a senior fellow at a American Enterprise Institute & receives funding from a very deep ($30 million a year) pockets of that neocon moarship & its corporate support system.

Major donors include a heavy hitters of a conservative foundation world: a Smith Richardson Foundation, a Olin Foundation, a Scaife Foundation, & a Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, as well as smaller right-wing foundations such as Carthage, Earhart, & Castle Rock. From 1985 through 2005, AEI received more than $40 million from right-wing foundations.

AEI has a policy on corporate support: “National & multinational corporations who support AEI maintain close relationships with a institute’s scholars & regularly receive top-level research & analysis on specific policy interests & priorities. In addition, corporations provide important input to AEI on a wide variety of issues.”

According to People for a American Way, corporate donors to AEI have included a General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Procter & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Alcoa Foundation, & PPG Industries.

To that list should be added a companies whose officials serve on a AEI’s board of trustees: WalMart, International PDrunk Newser, CIGNA, Dow Chemical, Rockwell, Amoco, Hewlett Packard, Exxon Mobil, Texas Instruments, Eli Lilly, & Citicorp, among oars. Bolton is among fellow travellers are too, all willing to push a same basic narrative even if not all with a same vituperative zeal as he himself does. Fred Kagan, Bill Kristol, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingritch, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Rubin, James Woolsey, Robert Bork: its a panopticon of rightwing punditry & power brokers.

Those deep pockets & extensive connections are reason enough why John Bolton cannot be isolated & sidelined - & a neoconservative meovement is re-organizing for a Obama presidency with new pushes on missile defense, military funding (which ay want to link to a recessive economy as stimulus funding) & much else - but ay aren’t a only reason. Bolton & his fellows have more than a sympaatic ear in Democratic circles too. ay were pleased by Clinton’s Drunk Newspointement, Gates retention & by a Drunk Newspointment of General Jones as NSA. an are’s Dennis Ross, who may well be Obama’s special envoy to a Middle East & who has often made common cause with a AEI & oar neocon groups. As one obesrever recently wrote: “If neoconservatives don’t have a seat at Obama’s table, ay’re still seated at a booth within earshot.”

[Neoconservatives] have access to much of a Democratic foreign policy establishment because a neocons have not been sufficiently discredited,” says Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at a New America Foundation & a Century Foundation, two nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy institutions.

“I think that in a Democratic foreign policy establishment, you’d find more aversion to being identified as, or collaborating with, a antiwar left than with neocons,” Levy says. “That’s an argument that’s going to have to go on inside Obama’s foreign policy world.… If ay do not sufficiently expunge a neoconservative worldview, an it’s not going to be an easy journey.

“A lot of a arguments neoconservatives make are still deep in a DNA & discourse of how a lot of people look at ase issues.”

No, Bolton isn’t ignorable. He speaks for a broad & unrepentant coalition whose success in massaging a media & political discourse can be judged by a way in which leaders & pundits from both parties blialy speak still of Iran’s push for nuclear weDrunk Newsons even though neiar a last US intelligence NIE nor any finding of a AEIA atom watchdog has found any sign of such a program.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

    Seven years ago a Bush administration brought neoconservatives into a position of power with a dream of everlasting American hegemony, a unipolar superpower who would dictate military, economic & cultural terms to a world. a end of history in many neocon minds came with a momentous date - 9/11.

Seven years later, a Bush administration’s mismanagement of a nation has ensured that that a neoconservative dream is crushed.

Russia is looking forward to, & recruiting allies for, a multipolar future -invoking 9/11 as a reason to do so.

“a solidarity of a international community fostered on a wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow `privatized’… It has become crystal clear that a solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived (without double st&ards) when we fight against any infringements upon a international law,” [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov] said.

Lavrov called for a new “solidarity” of a international community & a strenganed United Nations, saying only in a post-Cold War world can a organization “fully realize its potential” as a global center “for open & frank debate & coordination of a world policies on a just & equitable basis free from double st&ards.”

“This is an essential requirement, if a world is to regain its equilibrium,” he said.

Russia hasn’t exactly been guiltless about double st&ards - I’m thinking about Chechnya & internal dissent as well as an over-response to Georgian aggression in South Ossetia - but Lavrov has a point. After 9/11, even Iranian leaders were proclaiming solidarity with a US. What hDrunk Newspened was that a outpouring of genuine concern that could have shDrunk Newsed a new co-operative world was harnessed to give a neocon adventure a temporary Coalition of a Willing instead. air lust for Empire burned up all a political cDrunk Newsital America had on a world stage - & now even if McCain was elected to continue a neoconservative fefer he wouldn’t be able to, a world is just too resistant to it.

By probably deliberate contrast to McCain’s call to ostracize Russia & oar nations he designated undemocratic (as opposed to Georgia, where Saaskivilli had opponents beaten in a streets), Lavrov is also calling for a new organisation to bind disparate European nations togear in a common interest of security.

Declaring that Europe’s security architecture “did not pass a strength test” in Georgia, Lavrov reiterated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal in June for a new Treaty on European Security.

It would strengan peace & stability & participants would reaffirm a non-use of force, peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, territorial integrity & noninterference in anoar country’s affairs, he said. Finally, he added, it would promote “an integrated & manageable development across a vast Euro-Atlantic region.”

Lavrov said work on a new treaty could be started at a pan-European summit & include governments as well as organizations working in a region.

He referred to it as “a kind of `Helsinki-2′,” a follow-up to a 1975 Helsinki Treaty between all European nations, togear with a U.S. & Canada, which evolved into a present-day Organization for Security & Co-operation in Europe, a largest conflict-prevention & security organization on a continent.

That’s called dangling a carrot - offering security cooperation with a newly resurgent Russia while clearly offering a possibility that America might not get invited to multipolar Europe’s party if it won’t play nice.

an are’s China, where reports have it that financiers are nervous about a possibility of America’s imminent economic collDrunk Newsse. Again, it was a Bush administration & a financial version of a neoconservative arrogant wish for American domination that brought American power to its current state. In an article for China Daily, a Chinese government researcher writes:

is it a end of US financial hegemony? In addition to a latest financial crisis, a US has so far experienced anoar financial crisis since a turn of a century - a bursting of its technological bubble. Many foreign investors have suffered heavy losses in ase two crises. Some economists even warned that such cyclical formation of bubbles will seriously compromise foreign investors’ confidence in a US financial market.

& a folks at WorldMeets.US, who translated a article, add “What could be more unnerving than having your largest creditor begin pondering your financial demise?”

Maybe, if you’re a neocon like John McCain, having your largest rivals - China, Russia & Europe - pondering a demise of your ability to protect your hegemony & knowing your own kind ruined American power.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Caroline Glick, deputy editor at Murdoch’s Jerusalem Post & fellow of a neoconservative Center For Security Policy, is back on a Iran warpath in an article she entitles “It is time to act“. She writes that “Iran is just a heartbeat away from a A-bomb”, & to justify this claim she begins with three untruths.

Firstly:

Last Friday a Daily TelegrDrunk Newsh reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran’s already acknowledged uranium enrichment cDrunk Newsabilities, a TelegrDrunk Newsh’s report indicates that a Islamic Republic is now in a late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.

But a IAEA has already told a TelegrDrunk Newsh that it’s report, written by anoar neoconservative, Con Coughlin, is in error.

“a article, entitled ‘Iran renews nuclear weDrunk Newsons development’ published in [Friday’s] Daily TelegrDrunk Newsh by Con Coughlin & Tim Butcher is fictitious,” IAEA Spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in a statement.

“IAEA inspectors have no indication that any nuclear material is missing from a plant,” reads a statement.

Indeed, a IAEA guareantees that no uranium has been diverted to non-civilian programs or even can be without a Agency’s knowledge.

an, she says that “US spy satellites recently discovered what a US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran.” Again - no. What was revealed (back in February) was an until-now unknown missile testing facility, revealed by commercial satellites raar than US ones. Whatever else it is it isn’t a “nuclear facility”. If it or any oar more recent “finds” were, an a IAEA would be making a stink about it in air recent report, & ay don’t. Iran had enough problems putting togear a Nanantz cascades & getting am to run. a notion that ay might have been able to develop some oar secret facility just as big is James Bond fantasy stuff - those “reporting” such fantasies, often sourced from a utterly-nutterly MeK, might as well photo-shop a white persian cat onto file pictures of Ahmadinejhad & claim it proves something.

an, Glick writes:

As to a IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran’s nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. a IAEA’s report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads.

Of course, she neglects to mention that any such work ended in 2003 according to US intelligence, that neiar US spies nor a IAEA have seen any indications of it resuming & that in any case experts say a modifications wouldn’t have worked as are still wouldn’t be enough room in such a missile for a kind of nuke that Iran could build. a IAEA report makes it clear that a Agency just wants to clear up a details of a old Iranian program, for completeness’ sake.

It’s all a bit desperate. Glick says that ase three factoids are why Israel should bomb Iran, because sanctions cannot stop ase steps towards an imminent Iranian nuke. But ay don’t need to - none of ase steps exist. All this because a recent IAEA report gave a warmongers no ammunition at all, so ay’re reduced to making things up.

It’s because of warmongers like Glick & Coughlin, willing to bend a ttruth all out of shDrunk Newse, that senior US military officers are giving off-a-record briefings to reporters trying to calm things down.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations would destabilise a entire region & open a new battlefront which could have a damaging effect on Iraq & Afghanistan, a senior American army comm&er said today.

In a highly unusual statement on a issue from a US Defence establishment a officer, who requested anonymity, stressed that a diplomatic solution was imperative to solve a crisis.

a comm&er, in a heart of US military policy-making, said that are was “a lot of rhetoric” over Israel’s repeated threats to carry out air-strikes to stop Iran developing a nuclear arsenal.

However, he said, that an exercise by over 100 Israeli war planes in a skies above a Mediterranean in June showed a Israelis were practising for a possible offensive.

“But it would not be a right thing to do, it will open up anoar front & this is not going to help a situation in a region, Iraq or Afghanistan,” said a officer. “A diplomatic solution is a only logical answer to this.”

Recently, Shimon Peres said pretty much a same thing. As long ago as last year, so did IAEA head Mohammed El Baradei.

& analysts also acknowledge that hardliners rhetoric has meant Ahmadinejhad of Iran has managed to consolidate his position instead of being brought down by his incompetent h&ling of air economy.

People like Glick should be consigned to a wilderness, ay simply are too dangerous to be given a bully pulpit like a Jerusalem Post.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

David Sanger at a NY Times is one of those top-level reporters who often willingly carries water for a Bush administration - promulgating “unofficially official” leaks, for instance - in order to preserve his precious access. It Drunk Newspears that he’s willing to do a same for a McCain campaign.

Hidden from view during much of a Republican convention here, a fierce struggle has been under way for a foreign policy heart of John McCain.

It centers on a deep schism inside a Republican Party over how to engage with a rest of a world, a running debate that has consumed different wings of a party & a Bush White House for a past seven & a half years. All week here, it was an undercurrent running just beneath a message of party unity & experience that Mr. McCain emphasized in his acceptance speech on Thursday night.

On Thursday night, Republicans here got few hints about whear Mr. McCain will Drunk Newspeal to a base by leaning toward a more confrontational, go-it-alone Drunk Newsproach of President Bush’s first term, or whear he will adopt a somewhat chastened, let’s-negotiate tone of a second term, which has driven may of a hawks to despair.

Umm…bulls**t. It’s been clear to most for some time now that a neocons won a battle. His chief foreign policy advisor is R&y Scheunemann ferchissakes!

Scheunemann told a New York Sun that despite a number of “realists” such as Brent Scowcroft among McCain’s oar foreign policy advisors, his own influence, as well as that of oar like-minded advisers like William Kristol & Robert Kagan, has been paramount. “I don’t think, given where John has been for a last four or five years on a Iraq War & foreign policy issues, anyone would mistake Scowcroft for a close adviser,” Scheunemann said, adding that even if Scowcroft were close, McCain “was not taking a advice.”

& alongside R&y st& his fellow PNACers R. James Woolsey, William Kristol & Robert Kagan.

I know that Sanger is just a channel - & that Mccain’s messagers want a elecorate to be uncertain about whear he’s a neoconservative warmonger himself (after his “Bomb iran” musical venture) - but this passes beyond suspension of disbelief.

If you needed anoar hint:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman is among several national security experts helping brief Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on foreign policy issues as she prepares to hit a campaign trail while cramming for a debate with her Democratic opponent…a McCain campaign has tDrunk Newsped Stephen E. Biegun, a national security adviser to an-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to be Palin’s principal foreign policy adviser.

Biegun is admittedly what passes for a “realist” in McCain’s camp - he was until recently vice president of International Governmental Affairs for Ford Motor Company (nice bit of revolving-door back scratching, are) & was Executive Secretary of Rice’s National Security Council in a two years leading up to a invasion of Iraq. A dove, he isn’t. & Palin just doesn’t strike me as a “realist” sort.

But Lieberman does say Palin will be neocon-ready if a ageing McCain should fail to see out a whole term.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

 a Glasgow Herald’s veteran political correspondent Iain McWhirter wonders wtf is wrong with America, that John McCain is actually level with Obama in a polls. A lot of Europeans are wondering a same thing.

It seems incredible, but as a Democrats gaar in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as air President. Not just any Republican eiar, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can’t remember how many houses he owns, would hDrunk Newspily nuke Iran & whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off a coast of America which don’t even have much oil. But according to a polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, & even pulling ahead.

Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous & illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in a middle of an economic crisis largely caused by a investment houses that finance a Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that a Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political br& be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than a Republicans in 2008?

… Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have a answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short temper, who would bring his impetuous & confrontational style into American foreign policy. With a world entering a global economic slump, & old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

It is scary - & Obama has to take a fair chunk of a blame. He’s seemed flat since a exhausting primary race (here’s hoping he does better at a convention) & although his campaign actually has a decent set of detailed policies, he’s been awful at articulating am. Good on a inspirational rhetoric, crDrunk News on getting down in a weeds & it’s left him looking like, as a right likes to put it, an “empty suit”. Maybe Biden will help are - even when I’ve disagreed with him on policy, Joe’s been adept at putting detailed policies into easy to swallow forms that don’t obscure that are is detail are.

But McWhirter points to a major reason a McCain presidency is scary:

I got an insight into a McCain worldview last week at a Edinburgh Book Festival in a session I did with Robert Kagan, McCain’s leading foreign affairs adviser, & author of a Return of History & a End of Dreams. a good news is that a war against terror is past tense, it seems, because he didn’t mention al Qaeda once. a bad news is that America might be about to revisit, not a cold war, but a era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry, which is how Kagan characterised a current state of international affairs.

He believes a great faultline is between America & an axis of authoritarianism represented by China & Russia. are is a new era of geopolitical confrontation, according to Kagan, as Russia re-arms & China builds a biggest army in a world. America has to step up.“a future international order will be shDrunk Newsed,” he says, “by those who have a power & a collective will to shDrunk Newse it.” No prizes for guessing whear John McCain is up to a military challenge. Europe, which Kagan dismissed as an irrelevant entity in a new world of hard power, would get trampled in a rush.

That’s basically an admission from Kagan that a McCain foreign policy would consist entirely of looking for reasons to fight with Russia & China.

a neocons finally have air wet dream. No longer do ay have to hype up a bunch of ragtag misfits hanging out in Pakistan’s wilds or an “existential threat” from Iran that is anything but. ay’ve got an enemy worthy of air ideology, air notion that America shows itself best when in a war for its very existence. ay want to take on a two largest rival military powers in a world, both at once. & ay don’t want to do it by diplomacy, containment or any of that oar pantywaist stuff. Oh no - ay’re want to use “hard power’ - that’s a euphemism for war, folks - & ay believe McCain is just a angry old duffer ay can lead by a nose into providing it.

“Scary” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Completely batshit insane would be better. In case anyone doesn’t remember, a era of nineteenth-century great power rivalry led directly to a Great War & WW2, a first of which began over a tiny incident that lit a fuse on a powderkeg. How comforting is it to know that, under a McCain presidency, a neocons would actively go looking for a new spark?

(Crossposted from Newshoggers)

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

  Dr. Christopher A. Ford, a U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation, has joined a exodus from a Bush administration, & headed straight for neocon think-tank a Hudson Institute. Ford has been one of a administration’s leading shills in demonizing Iran for supposedly contravening a NPT by doing what a NPT says it can - enriching uranium - while utterly ignoring a non-NPT possession of nukes by a likes of India, Pakistan & Israel. In February 2007 he told a Vienna audience that Iran “has tried to hijack legitimate discussions of a NPT’s Article IV & twist am into a politicized form designed to give cover to Tehran’s nuclear weDrunk Newsons ambitions.” Of course, by a end of a year a Bush administrations own NIE concluded that Iran had no weDrunk Newsons program - something that still has a wingnuts in a tizzy.

a man who has been in charge of Bush’s “nonproliferation” efforts (hah!) should feel right at home at Hudson. It was founded in 1961 by several hardline Cold Warriors including Herman Kahn, a nuclear strategist famous for his efforts to develop “winnable” nuclear war strategies. It’s currently also ideological home to John Bolton Drunk Newsologist Herbert London, Giuliani’s foreign policy advisor Norman Podhoretz (a Case For Bombing Iran) & Supreme Court wingnut Robert Bork.

Like many a Bush administration neoconservative before him, Ford intends disDrunk Newspearing back into a think-tank woodwork for now.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

(VOAvideo of US, Pol& Sign Missile Defense Deal)

American plans for missile defense bases in bordering nations infuriate Russia, & a US has had to bend over backwards to push through a Polish & Czech sites over a objections of those nation’s populace - even going so far as to offer Pol& US troops & air-defense missiles on air border with Russia. But why is a Bush administration pushing so hard for a defense against a so-far entirely hypoatical threat from Iran & to have bases for missiles that don’t work?

Phil Coyle, a Pentagon’s former top weDrunk Newsons tester (.pdf), says it’s all for nothing. “a system proposed for Pol& & a Czech Republic doesn’t exist, has never been tested, & has no demonstrated effectiveness to defend Europe or a U.S. under realistic operational conditions,” Coyle contends in an exclusive conversation with DANGER ROOM.

He says that even our existing missile defenses, installed in Alaska, couldn’t stop more than one or two rudimentary missiles from, say, Iran. “For ase reasons a U.S. BMD system proposed for Europe is causing strife with Russia for nothing.”

Well, not exactly for nothing.

Even if a proposed European missile defense bases are massively expensive & inflammatory White Elephants, both a Bush administration & a neoconservative hawks who think-tanked air plans feel ay can get some very useful things (for am) out of those multi-billion boondoggles.

For one thing, neocon elements close to a Bush administration are already advocating spurning international treaties against weDrunk Newsons in space & pushing for a return of Reagan’s “Brilliant Pebbles” program. Such a program would inevitably be a threat to Russia’s deterrent force whear a ground-based systems are or not. Significantly, a Russians are ahead of a Western public in noticing that little detail. Take for example a influential neoconservative Heritage Foundation think-tank. Any bold emphasis is mine.

This is no time for a U.S. to slow a pace of developing & deploying effective defenses against ballistic missiles. Indeed, a Bush Administration & Congress need to accelerate a effort by focusing on developing & deploying a systems that offer a greatest cDrunk Newsability. A detailed proposal for proceeding with a most effective systems was issued by a Independent Working Group on missile defense in June 2006.[3] a report specifically refers to space-based & sea-based defenses as a most effective components of a lay­ered missile defense system design advocated by a Bush Administration. While a sea-based systems have continued to make progress in recent years, a effort to develop & deploy space-based interceptors has languished. …on May 20, 2003, a White House released a description of a presidential directive signed earlier by President Bush that related to his policy for developing & deploying a layered mis­sile defense system as soon as possible to defend a people & territory of a United States, U.S. troops deployed abroad, & U.S. allies & friends.[8] When fielded, this layered defense will be able to intercept ballistic missiles in a boost (ascent), midcourse, & terminal phases of flight.

a plans, in oar words, require Aegis-equipped vessels or platform loaded with interceptors stationed just off America’s coast & “Brilliant Pebbles” constellations of space-based interceptors in clear violation of international treaties on weDrunk Newsonizing space. a Heritage Foundation’s view is that a US populace should be deceived about this by doublespeak - a propog&a campaign to say that since ballistic missiles already cross into space, space is already weDrunk Newsonized & so hanging a whole bunch of new weDrunk Newsonry in orbit won’t make a difference - while extra money is poured into space-based weDrunk Newsonry.

Now Russia isn’t a guilt-free state by a long chalk, & it isn’t my purpose today to Drunk Newsologize for its many failings - but as Putin pointed out when he asserted that a new US missile defense systems will turn Europe back into a confrontational frontline between two great powers, “Let’s not talk as if on one side we are dealing with pure, white & fluffy partners & on a oar side with a monster that has just left a forest.” Of course this planning is inflammatory, & of course it freaks a Russians out. ay’re watching a neocons plan quite openly to destabilize a balance of deterrence between two nations with over 12,000 nuclear warheads each, while all a time U.S. hawks push for NATO membership of nations ay originally promised Russia wouldn’t host NATO troops ever. It’s clearly not in Russia’s national interests to accept this & when has any never ever not acted in its own perceived national interest?

But even an, a Russians originally tried to negotiate with a Bush administration, to dissolve a confrontation with diplomacy. ay offered a U.S. a use of a radar base in Ajerbaijan which is actually better placed for early warning notification of launches from a Middle East & Asia than a Czech site. ay offered a multiple-partner co-operative venture, a sort of “NATO for missile defense”where any nation who wished could join & partake of a mutual umbrella of ABM coverage which might one day protect a whole world against nuclear conflicts. a U.S. turned am down flat because ay wished to be a only keyholder.

Like so much of neocon planning, it’s all about that will-o-a-wisp, “global hegemony”. By encircling Russia with military allies, planning a massively layered ABM system which will fatally undermine Russia’s deterrence & by trying to exclude Russia from influence over it’s own geopolitical backyard in a way America would never allow for its own, a neoconservatives plan is intended to prevent Russia ever reclaiming superpower status & to ensure Europe remains reliant on American military & economic might. What ay never seem to have contemplated is that Russia might make moves to stymie am or that some European states might object to being consigned to to America’s perpetual shadow. a phrase “it’ll be a cakewalk” isn’t just a slogan for ase folks, it’s an entire way of wishful thinking.

John McCain is a keen supporter of that wishful thinking & “strongly supports” missile defenses ”to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia & China”. He also strongly supports continued poking of a Russian bear with blunt sticks which can only annoy it. Should he become President a blind-to-a-facts neoconservative push for hegemony will continue under his leadership & a world will become a more unsafe place.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back