[CTRL] Creating a market for Star Wars

[William Shannon]

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Mar. 30, 01:22 EDT
Creating a market for Star Wars

Gordon Barthos
COLUMNIST



SPACE DREAM: The U.S. has been talking about Star Wars since 1983.
GEORGE BUSH can't claim a mandate to rock the geopolitical boat, much less
capsize it.
He barely got elected last fall. He lost the popular vote.
And after 10 weeks his approval rating is sliding fast.
Yet Bush has startled friends and foes alike with the sheer abrasiveness of
his attitudes toward Russia, China and North Korea, and his indifference to
world opinion on issues like global warming.
Last week Bush discovered that the Russians have spies, and gave 50 of them
the heave-ho. He's been cool to meeting Vladimir Putin to talk arms control.
His officials call the Russians "a nation of proliferators;" they complain
about Moscow selling Iran weapons; they meet Chechen separatists.
Eyeing China, they talk about the need to "fight and win a nuclear war," with
Asia as the likeliest battleground. They see China as a "competitor," not a
strategic partner, and lambaste it for selling Iraq technology. They talk of
selling Taiwan powerful anti-missile defences.
Meanwhile, Bush has undercut South Korea's bid to get North Korea to shelve
its missile program, as it has its nuclear program, in exchange for trade and
aid.
The Bush White House calls this "clarity, realism, decisiveness." Critics
call it folly.
As the wreckage piles up, Republican think tanks crank out alarmist studies
to demonstrate that the continental United States is open to attack and
intimidation.
Has the world suddenly gone on a war footing?
Hardly.
But the Cold War era people around Bush Ñ Vice-President Dick Cheney and
Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld, to name two Ñ are truly ambitious patriots.
They know that the U.S. is undefeatable, and has been for a decade or more.
They dream of making it invulnerable as well. They don't want even to be
threatened by pipsqueak powers.
They are convinced that Ballistic Missile Defence can deliver that
invulnerability.
Ronald Reagan dreamed up Star Wars in 1983 as a hedge against Soviet attack.
When the Soviets went away, Iraq became the new threat. Once Iraq was
humbled, North Korea stood in as the villain.
There's no prize for spotting a trend here.
If the Bush administration doesn't play its cards carefully, North Korea will
go cuddly and there won't be a half-credible enemy left to shield against.
Most Americans support the idea of a Fortress North America.
But as the U.S. economy slows and Bush has to trim his $1.6 trillion tax cut
or slash federal health, education and social services, people may think
twice about sinking $100 billion into a missile shield, absent a clear and
present danger.
However, if Washington can make a persuasive case that the U.S. is surrounded
by hostile countries, Star Wars would be an easier sell.
This has implications for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's government, indeed
for all U.S. allies.
We've been lobbied by Washington to keep an "open mind" about missile
defence, at least until Bush rolls out his plans later this year.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials are working overtime to persuade us that (1)
missile defence can work; (2) that its deployment is both necessary and
inevitable; and (3) that allies must sign on, or kiss off defence
co-operation.
Flawed though these premises are, the Chrétien government is choosing not to
question them. It should.
The Bush administration seems bent on creating sufficient friction to make
the world a truly interesting place. Not one in which Canadians can feel
safer.
That's a stiff price to pay for Republican daydreams.
Realistically, do the Americans face a potential threat? Yes. A small one.
Though a regime would be crazy to lob a missile their way.
But working with players like the Russians and Chinese, the U.S. could easily
contain bad actors.
However Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and friends would have to settle for America
being the unbeatable nation, and not the invulnerable one.
The question for Chrétien is this: Why should Canada be stampeded into
supporting a go-alone U.S. program driven by a new global alarmism, and which
will leave the world more dangerous than before?
Rather than be cowed by Republican demagoguery, the Chrétien government
should try to remember what the world looked like before all this began.
Russia was a weak, struggling democracy, tilting West and trying to salvage a
shred of dignity as a faded power. China just wanted to turn a buck. North
Korea was a starving beggar, seeking to come in from the cold.
Iran was struggling with its own internal demons.
Iraq was a broken reed.
Who, exactly, are we worried about?