Posted on 03/08/2005 1:43:01 PM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The latest tempest in a teapot in Canada has been Prime Minster Paul Martin's long-delayed decision not to take part in the U.S. project for ballistic missile defense (BMD).
Canada will share radar information about any incoming missile with the United States through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), but it will not allow anti-missile interceptors on its soil (not that the U.S. wanted to put them there anyway), nor will it have any part in decisions to launch those weapons.
That should have kept everybody happy. The U.S. gets the information it wants, while Canada withholds its formal approval of a weapons initiative that a majority of Canadians (and of Martin's own Liberal Party caucus) think is dangerous and wrong.
But U.S. Ambassador Paul Celucci declared that Canada was forfeiting sovereignty over its own airspace by refusing to participate in BMD. Prime Minister Martin replied that "we're a sovereign nation and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," and the fat was in the fire. What Washington really wanted from Ottawa (and what Martin was being rebuked for failing to deliver) was Canadian approval of the principle of ballistic missile defense. The United States has been isolated on this issue since the Bush administration tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and Canadian approval would have been useful diplomatically.
The controversy will die down in a few days - but it did rouse former Defense Minister Paul Hellyer to speak the truth that no other Canadian public figure was willing to utter: "Missile defense" is not really about defense.
Writing in the Globe and Mail, Hellyer said bluntly that "BMD . . . has about as much to do with rogue missiles as the war on Iraq had to do with weapons of mass destruction." The notion that North Korea might fire one or two ballistic missiles at the U.S., even if it had a few long-range missiles and nuclear warheads to put on them, is ludicrous. The entire leadership and most of the country would instantly be destroyed by a massive U.S. retaliation.
Pyongyang is a very nasty regime, but it hasn't attacked anybody in the past 50 years, it isn't suicidal, and it can be deterred by the threat of retaliation just like Russia or China. So what is BMD really about? In practice, any system designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles that depends on ground-based interceptors can easily be overwhelmed just by building more missiles. The cost to the Soviet Union of building more ICBMs would always have been far less than the cost of the interceptors needed to shoot them down and their supporting systems, so the Soviet Union could always have saturated U.S. defenses in an all-out attack.
But what if it were the victim of a U.S. surprise attack that destroyed most of its missiles on the ground? Then a good American BMD system might be able to deal with the ragged retaliation that was all the Soviets could manage.
Such a BMD system is not a technological reality even now, 20 years later, but that's what it was always about: giving the United States the ability to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union and to survive the inevitable retaliation with "acceptable" losses. It seemed less urgent when the Soviet Union collapsed, but it was never abandoned - and in the later '90s the neo-conservatives revived it as part of a scheme for establishing permanent U.S. military dominance over the planet.
Paul Hellyer quoted their own document, published by the Project for a New American Century in late 2000: "Building an effective, robust, layered, global system of missile defenses is a prerequisite for maintaining American pre-eminence. Unrestricted use of space has become a major strategic interest of the United States."
By "layered" they meant not just ground-based interceptors, but space-based systems that can also destroy space stations and surveillance satellites belonging to any rival power. They intend to militarize space, and they still dream of gaining the ability to carry out nuclear first strikes against other countries with impunity.
The interceptors now going into their silos in Alaska are a (technologically problematic) down payment on this hyper-ambitious project, but they are intended to establish the principle that America has the right, despite the old ABM treaty and the still extant treaty banning the militarization of space, to go down this road.
That was why Canadian agreement to participate in BMD defense, even symbolically, was desirable to Washington. And it is why Canadians refused (though they were wise not to say so officially).
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Hog wash. This is about rougue regimes holding the world, specifically the US hostage.
It would serve this writer and people like her right if the United States decided to stand down from its role on the world stage and allow some of the more enlightened regimes run things...you know, China, Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, regimes like that.
Ptui!
"... they still dream of gaining the ability to carry out nuclear first strikes against other countries with impunity."
Idiot conspiracy theorist lunatic alert!
But what if it were the victim of a U.S. surprise attack that destroyed most of its missiles on the ground? Then a good American BMD system might be able to deal with the ragged retaliation that was all the Soviets could manage.
So that's why the Japanese are joining us in BMD: so they can watch us make a first strike on the Russians? Somehow, just somehow, I find that a bit of a stretch.
I cannot even begin to express how stupid these two sentences are. I guess this reporter has never heard of the concept of Kamikazi or suicide bombers, etc. The threat of retaliation or death does not prevent crackpots from doing stupid things. What a dork!
You'd think the left could afford to retire this old appeaser, but no...
You are right. This is all about national defense against anyone that wished to fire on us.
Good point. Remember right after WWII, when we used our monopoly on nuclear weapons to conquer the world. They were totally helpless against our atomic arsenel, and we .. uh.. oh, wait, we didn't conquer the world, did we? I guess we were waiting for everyone to get them before we tried to take over, right? Wait, that doesn't make sense. Something's not adding up here. Are you sure we're trying to take over the world?
I didn't know Dyer had a sex change operation but I'm not suprised. He was wrong before and she's still wrong.
I actually think it is time we launced a first strike...
against Canada:
Seal the borders.
They'll be starving inside of 6 weeks and the cities will be burning inside of 7. Starting with this guy's house.
"But what if it were the victim of a U.S. surprise attack that destroyed most of its missiles on the ground?" Anyone who has a clue as to what a ballistic missile sub can do can put the lie to that argument. Two well armed SLBM subs could wreck our continent for 50000 years. Each Delta class sub carries 16 SLBM missiles, and each SLBM is armed with up to 7 warheads. The two Delta class subs the Russian navy regularly patrols would then be able to launch 224 warheads (2 x 16 x 7). If they wanted to surge their capacity they have between 23 and 25 Deltas in their fleet IIRC. Do the math yourself. Time from launch to target with a SLBM is approximately 6 minutes (and will vary widely given the set of targets attacked obviously). No way a President is going to risk the potential damage to the US with those kind of odds, even with layered ABM defenses. QED.
The US has the distinction of being the only nation to ever launch a nuclear strike. And frankly I'd like to see us do all in our power to keep it that way.
And as to space. If we are going there I'd prefer we have the better guns up there.
It's a defensive missile system, inherently and entirely. That's a major problem for somebody who wants to smear the U.S. as an aggressor, so what does he do? He simply dreams up a surprise attack and grandly proclaims that defensive is really offensive after all.
Not even a nice try, actually. North Korea and Iran aren't going to produce more ICBMs than we can handle and the old Soviet approach is as old as the Cold War that Dyer is sorry his side lost. This dog don't hunt.
Pre 9/11 thinking. If on 9/10 someone told me that the twin towers would fall the following day after being stuck by an airplane, I would have said that is "ludicrous".
The problem with North Korea and other rogue nations is they are un-predictable.
Does anyone in this nation want to base their defense (or lack of it) on the rationality of the North Korean goverment?
Planning for war not only includes what is the enemy going to do, but what are they capable of doing.
The fact that a rogue nation has not sent a nuclear or biological missile towards the United States does not mean it will never happen, it just means it has not happened yet.
To foster varied, reasoned discussion which many have already done on this thread.
"treaty banning the militarization of space" another fallacy. Given that space is used for communications, guidance and observation by a number of militaries, space is by definition already "militarized."
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