----- Original Message ----- From: Dick Withecombe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: STOP NATO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 10:06 PM Subject: Rumsfeld: 'fight and win a nuclear war' against China [STOPNATO.ORG.UK] STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The US is not fit to run the world http://www.observer.co.uk/leaders/story/0,6903,466458,00.html Leader Sunday April 1, 2001 The Observer Extract: In the nineteenth century, it would have been regarded as the precursor to a declaration of war. If a powerful state said it must reconfigure its defence and weapons structure specifically in order to fight and win a war on the terrain of a second weaker state, the bellicose message would have been unambiguous. If there were no provocation or excuse, its malevolence would have been evident to all. But this is precisely how George Bush's new government has threatened China. His new Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, a Cold War veteran, says America needs new, long-range nuclear bombers with which to 'fight and win a nuclear war' in the Far East, a plain reference to China. In the delusions of Washington right-wing think-tanks, the battle for global supremacy in the twenty-first century will be between China and America, even though China is decades away from having even the nuclear capacity of the UK. This is the frightening universe inhabited by the key policymakers of the Bush administration and it goes someway to explaining the President's unilateral decision last week to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Not merely does America come first - 'We will do not do anything that harms our economy,' said Mr Bush - but the world in which America is put first is seen through a mist of demagogy masquerading as the new realism. This now threatens the entire fragile fabric of world affairs. In the Bushite world-view, concern about climate change is a socialist plot distorting scientific evidence to justify an assault on the American way of life. Communist China is a growing menace. America is so beset by rogue states like North Korea that international treaties governing missile use must be torn up to allow the US to construct a unilateral missile defence system. Even when the diplomacy of South Korea opens up the possibility of North Korea giving up plans to build missiles in exchange for food and aid, the offer is rejected. It would prejudice the rationale behind the new missile defence system. Mr Rumsfeld has also accused the Russians of being 'a nation of [nuclear] proliferators', disregarding Russia's near exemplary record on proliferation. The Cold War may be over but the Bushites need to ignore Russia's painful path towards democracy and capitalism if it is to remain an arch enemy. This dangerous distortion of reality results not only from the corruption of the conservative mind. Another cause is no less sinister. The Petroleum Club of Houston, Mr Bush's Texan oil backer, is now central in forging American energy and environmental policy. The defence contractors, also large campaign donors, are agitating successfully for the orders that will flow from the national missile defence system. The Business Round Table, another major campaign contributor, is getting immediate payback from suspension of pro-worker legislation and an astonishingly regressive tax reduction package. Continues ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
