Posted on 05/10/2003 4:42:49 AM PDT by knighthawk
Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. And Canada has always been against nuclear missile defence. Or is it, Canada has always been in favour? Damn.
I have given up trying to keep pace with the twists and turns of Liberal foreign policy. The Chrétien government has a quite unnerving mastery of doublethink: to hold two entirely opposed thoughts in their heads at the same time is child's play to them. So it isn't quite true to say they have done an about-face on national missile defence, merely because at one time they were adamantly opposed to the very anti-ballistic missile system they are now preparing to join. Mr. Chrétien and his ministers can always be found on both sides of every issue.
Nevertheless, it is remarkable how the government's reasons for its position, or positions, have changed. At one time the Prime Minister was insisting that national missile defence (NMD) was dangerously destabilizing. Remember? The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibited such systems, was "the cornerstone of strategic stability," ensuring the great nuclear powers remained inextricably tied to the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), missiles locked on each other's cities, fingers poised over the button, forever. And really, who would ever want to be free of that? Not Russia, certainly, nor China, and if they were opposed, well, so were we.
How long ago it all seems. Actually, it's only been two years. But according to Mr. Chrétien, in that short time everything has changed. Some things, it is true, have: Russia and China are no longer so opposed. The United States has abrogated the ABM treaty, to no discernible effect, while pledging to dismantle two-thirds of its nuclear missiles. But Mr. Chrétien can hardly cite these developments, since to do so would be to remind everyone how wrong he was before. So instead he insists it is not his position that has changed, but the idea of NMD itself.
That would be true, if we were talking about Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, circa 1983, a much more ambitious, space-based system. But the system now is essentially the same one that was up for discussion two years ago. As usual, the Prime Minister is dissembling.
Still, at least he's changed his mind. By contrast, NMD's die-hard opponents among the NDP and the Liberal left seem incapable even of making up their mind, let along changing it. As before, they rely on two lines of argument that so perfectly contradict one another as to wreak their own kind of mutually assured destruction.
On the one hand, the system is condemned as a technological fantasy, inherently unworkable and incapable of protecting the population of the United States (or Canada) from nuclear attack.
On the other hand, it would kick off a new arms race, as China, if not Russia, would feel it had to build more and better missiles to replace those made obsolete by the American missile shield -- you know, the missile shield that didn't work.
Of the first, the only answer is: We shall see. Nothing is possible until it is, but to say that it should not even be attempted on that basis is to subscribe to F. M. Cornford's law, that nothing should be done for the first time.
It is the second argument that is the more revealing. Proponents tend to treat the Chinese response as a given. Of course, they say, of course China would be forced to escalate. Really? Why? Why "of course"? Why "forced"? NMD is, as its name implies, a purely defensive system. It does not add a single missile to the U.S. arsenal. It threatens no one. It affects China only so far as it might prevent China from attacking the United States with nuclear missiles, destroying its cities and slaughtering its citizens. Call me naive, but why exactly would China want to do this? More importantly, why would the United States, and anyone friendly to it, not wish to prevent it from doing so? If China does harbour such intent, wouldn't that rather make the case for NMD than against it?
But never mind China. It's North Korea, and states like it -- unpredictable, irrational, undeterrable -- to whom NMD is most likely addressed. There may once have been a certain logic in preserving the balance of terror, when dealing with states such as China and the Soviet Union -- states with some rational sense of their own best interests, who it was safe to assume could be deterred from attacking the United States by the promise to respond in kind (even if this was always something of a bluff). No such assumption can be made about North Korea.
But that is to reckon without the mounting anti-American paranoia of the left. The futility of deterrence as applied to rogue states like North Korea is of no consequence to them, because it isn't America's adversaries they wish to deter. It's the United States. According to Liberal MP John Godfrey, "if we had missile defence at the present moment, [the Americans] might well be bolder in dealing with North Korea in a way that would be dangerous for the world."
So, if you follow, it's a good thing that North Korea has nuclear missiles pointed at L.A. and Seattle -- because it keeps the Americans from getting "bold." By threatening to annihilate millions of U.S. citizens, the North Koreans are actually helping to keep the peace. And all that stands in their way is a missile shield.
acoyne@nationalpost.com
I never really understood PoliSci. I guess I should have taken a course in it.
Probably wouldn't have helped.
I guess he's afraid that the US would consider invading Canada over cheap drugs, or wheat.
Maybe the Grand Banks too.
I heard a caller to Radio Canada Int'l actually say that since the US just invaded Iraq (this was back in March), the US may invaded Canada over the softwood lumber issue.
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