by Valentin KUNIN, political observer
RIA Novosti
Moscow, June 14, 2002.
Following the concepts of "humanitarian intervention" and
"limited sovereignty" invented in Washington the United States seems to be about
to "please" the international community with a new innovation. The George Bush
administration is presently developing a new strategic doctrine stipulating the
possibility of making "preventive strikes" against those states which, according
to Washington, threaten to use weapons of mass destruction against the USA.
Referring to sources in the Bush administration, the Washington Post
reported that the new US national security doctrine will be published in a few
months. According to some consultants from the US Department of Defence, by
working out the new doctrine George Bush attempts "to prepare the US people for
a certain preventive step" against Iraq. However, strategists from the White
House and the Pentagon are hardly likely to reduce the "defensive intervention"
concept to such a limit.
By provoking the North Atlantic Alliance to stage an
unsanctioned aggression against Yugoslavia the Americans clearly demonstrated
what the "humanitarian intervention" concept means in practice.
The result
is world-known-thousands of civilians were killed, a severe damage was done to
the Yugoslav economy, Albanian nationalists and militant leaders from the
terrorist organisation Kosovo Liberation Army came to power and the situation in
neighbouring Macedonia got destabilised.
However, the concepts of
"humanitarian intervention" and "limited sovereignty" just like the notorious
thesis about the "axis of evil" are becoming too "tight" for Washington.
Now
the US should give more universal grounds for military operations against any
state if its policy does not for some reasons suit the US administration. In a
broader sense, foundation is needed for the US policy aimed at taking the
world's power lead. It has been increasingly clear of late that the incumbent US
administration is prosecuting this very policy without taking into consideration
that it contradicts the interests of the international community and the global
strategic stability.
The events of the past 18 months the George Bush
administration has been in office of the White House are convincing of that. The
first signal was the 2003 draft federal budget Bush submitted to Congress past
January. It marked a sharp militarisation spiral of the country's economy. The
President proposed the largest over the past 20 years increase in assignments
for defence. Next year the Pentagon is to be given $379 billion. This sum is to
reach $451 billion in 2007. Bush's decision to abrogate the 1972 Soviet-US ABM
Treaty and to develop a national missile defence system is also aimed at
enhancing the US military power. Indeed, this May the United States signed an
agreement with Russia on strategic offensive arms cuts under which both sides
should reduce their warheads to 1,700-2,200 by the year 2012. However, next year
the Pentagon is to receive tens of billions of dollars for the purchase of new
armaments, including high-precision arms, which, according to experts, might in
the future replace ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. By 2010 the US
Department of Defence plans to develop a few tens of thousands of cruise
long-range missiles which experts classify as high-precision weapons.
It's an
open secret that the Bush administration has refused to submit the comprehensive
nuclear test ban treaty for ratification to Congress. In this context, the
Pentagon's repeated allegations concerning an urgent need to resume nuclear
tests and develop low-power nuclear munitions, which are quite likely to be used
in regional conflicts against countries without nuclear potential, sound
increasingly alarming. It's hardly worth proving that such plans are fraught
with lowering the level of the possible use of nuclear arms as a result of which
the very approach to this problem might change. If that happens, the new
strategy may change the status of nuclear weapons from deterrence means to
tactical munitions.
Together with regional instability, this approach of
Washington to the nuclear weapons use poses a great danger to the whole
international security system.
All these facts make the danger of the US
administration's intention to include provisions stipulating possible
"preventive strikes" and "defensive intervention" in the new strategic doctrine
being drafted now only too evident.
