First The Guns, Then The Paranoia

Nothing like a good old-fashioned arms race to spice up the world's problems.

It's curious how they always seem to follow the same course - first the guns, then the paranoia and then... well, let's leave that for a moment.

Guns. Nobody likes them more than the United States of America. Its economy may be in decline, it may be struggling to breathe under a suffocating blanket of debt, but there's nothing known to man or earth that'll stop it from spending more on its military than every other nation combined. Think about that. Five per cent of the world's population, twenty five per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, fifty per cent of its military spending. Wowee, zowee!

It's a scary world when the hillbillies have all the guns.

Imagine you live in a big, old house with a big verandah where you like to sit to catch the cool evening breezes in the height of summer. In the big, old house across the street your somewhat strange neighbour also sits out in the evening. But one day you notice something different. Lined up along the porch railing you see the neighbour has leaned a couple of rifles and a shotgun. It's enough that you notice it but you don't react. Then the following night you see that he's added an automatic assault rifle. The next night it's a sniper rifle. About this time you might be getting a little worried about all this firepower and just what the guy has in mind. When you see him actually pointing a cannon at you, just that once, you realize you can't keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Now take that situation to the global stage. You have one country that has served notice that it reserves the right to launch "pre-emptive" war against any nation that it perceives as an emerging rival, militarily or even economically. That's right. If your economy stands to surpass his economy, he claims the right to attack you. If your military or your military and that of other countries with which you may ally yourself threaten to surpass his military might, he claims the right to attack you. On what basis? Because he can. Because might is right.

That little bit of madness is enshrined in today's Bush Doctrine. It's a perverse form of American exceptionalism that has other nations paying a lot of attention to the goings on in Washington. So, what do they see when their gaze shifts to the Potomac?

They see a nation that has gone for its guns, arming itself as though it was already in a total war and preparing for another. They see a nation bent on achieving superiority, on a generational scale, in everything from ships and submarines, to aircraft, to nuclear weapons and the militarization of space itself. They see a nation that has commercialized not just its armaments industry but warfare itself, a government whose elite friends (outfits such as Halliburton) now rake in unconscionable profits from actual warfare, an industrialized mercenary cash cow.

Bush/Cheney & Company cherish fear. It's a weapon they use on everyone, including their own people. To them, it's far easier and infinitely more effective to use fear as a motivator than to employ legitimate means of persuasion. Get'em afraid enough and they'll do anything. The trouble is, other nations aren't as easily intimidated as the American people.

As America has gone for its guns so have others. Russia, China, India, the Koreas, even Japan are all in the midst of one or more arms races. It's even rumoured Brazil may seek to establish a nuclear hegemony in South America. What else do all these countries have in common? They're all emerging economic superpowers. They're all looking to expand trade with each other. And, with the exception of Brazil, they're all geographically contiguous.

Asia Times Online has a good article on the Asian arms race: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JB14Ad02.html

Russia's Vlad Putin has been outspoken about his nation's insistence that it will not be cowed by American threats. Recently Putin said that Russia will soon field its own advanced weaponry and its own next-generation nuclear weapons with new missiles specifically designed to defeat Bush's anti-missile defence systems. He has scrapped the Coventional Forces treaty and has promised to target Russian missiles at any nation that participates in the Bush anti-missile system.

First the guns, then fear, then more guns and, inevitably, the paranoia. This is the potentially lethal cocktail produced by mixing fear, a lack of confidence, and a powerful shot of suspicion.

Here's the latest example. The United States has announced it will use a missile next week to destroy a defective spy satellite. Washington claims the satellite was launched just over a year ago, failed immediately, and now threatens to smash into earth with a deadly cargo of hydrazine fuel.

Russia, however, suspects an ulterior motive. From BBC:

Russia's defence ministry said the US planned to test its "anti-missile defence system's capability to destroy other countries' satellites".

"Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon," a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.

"Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons," it added.
"The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space," the statement continued.

The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries' spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, and many countries used toxic fuel in spacecraft, but this had never before merited such "extraordinary measures".

It troubles and perplexes me that, as far as our leaders seem to be concerned, these arms races aren't even on their radar. No one on our side speaks out demanding this be stopped and I can only assume that's because it is the United States that is driving this lunacy. The good news is that not every arms race leads to major power war. The Cold War is an example, although there was a lot of luck involved and it had an abundance of troubles of its own. However the First and Second World Wars clearly did trace back to arms races.

There are political and economic shifts underway of a tectonic scale. It'll be tough enough travelling that rocky road without everyone pointing guns with hair triggers.