Well, With the Week He's Had Who Wouldn't Want to Let Off a Little Steam?

The United States has launched missile strikes against government targets in Syria. This time Britain and France tossed in a few missiles of their own, brothers in arms sort of thing, I suppose.

Trump announced the strikes in an address to the nation Friday evening. “The purpose of our action tonight is to establish a strong deterrent,” he said, against the production and use of chemical weapons, describing the issue as vital to national security. Trump added that the United States is prepared “to sustain this response” until its aims are met.

Trump asked both Russia and Iran, backers of Assad, “what kind of nation wants to be associated” with mass murder and suggested that someday the United States might be able to “get along” with both if they change their policies.

Details of the attack are still sketchy at best. There's no word on any action by the Russians either. They had threatened to use their S-400 systems to shoot down incoming American missiles. Russia had also warned it would retaliate against US installations should its bases in Syria be targeted.

Trump's remarks indicate that the US and perhaps the French and British are preparing for a sustained air and missile campaign.

A Blast From the Past. Remember the "Peace Dividend"?

The world but especially the Western alliance breathed a huge sigh of relief at the collapse of the former Soviet Union in late 1991. Over the following years, nation after nation dialed back their military preparedness, declaring what was then called a peace dividend. Defence budgets fell from about 4% of GDP to around 1.5%, in some cases (Canada) even less. The future would be one of fewer guns and ever more butter. The nuclear Sword of Damocles had been sheathed.

Yet, instead of being appropriately grateful for our blessing, we did little to build a lasting peace. What we did was to siphon up the former Warsaw Pact states into our alliance, NATO, and then march our armies literally up to Russia's doorstep. Yeah, that Russia, the nation and people who still had vivid memories of the last time armies from Western Europe massed their tanks along the borders of the Rodina.

Triumphalism was the order of the day, especially in Washington. We, i.e. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, had crushed the Soviet menace until it collapsed under its own weight. Instead of being grateful for having averted a war we celebrated having won a war.

This is a too common failing of the United States. They're pretty good at winning battles, campaigns, but they've been utterly inept at the next step, the important phase, winning the peace. Once the smoke clears and the barrels cool, they go all ADHD.

There's a price to be paid for this neglect. Ours has been a resumption of that Cold War we talked ourselves into believing had been won. Now the emphasis is on every one reinflating their military budgets, again practicing Armageddon-grade warfare, and feverishly re-arming.

For America, this has taken the form of an additional $300-billion of military funding. That's just to top it off. We're told that money will go to refurbish an American military worn out by its endless wars in the Middle East/South Asia. That doesn't sound especially alarming but maybe that money is earmarked for something less benign.

An op-ed in Aviation Week by US defence analyst Robert Stallard contends that $300-billion is going elsewhere - into preparations for waging war with China and/or Russia. Stallard suggests the big winners will be space warfare (the ability to defend your own space assets while obliterating your adversary's), cyber-warfare (you'll just have to wait to see what the three players have in mind), and black projects, stuff that won't even be showcased to Congress. Some of these programmes such as hyper-velocity and directed-energy (set phasers to "obliterate") are already under development and have been considered in a few published articles of unknown reliability.

I would like to call it Cold War II but it doesn't seem to be a noticeable departure from the thinking of Cold War I. It may be merely a continuation of our incredibly dangerous past following a quarter-century of relative dormancy. One thing is certain. Whatever it is, "it's on."

Shame on us for having so negligently bequeathed this future to our kids and grandkids. This did not have to be.

Vlad Putin - NATO's Indispensable Enemy

Vlad Putin has given NATO - well, nothing less than a reason to exist a little longer.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO was a headless chicken, running around aimlessly, still on its feet but just.  The North Atlantic alliance pretty much took whatever gig it could get.

NATO bombed Serbia to "liberate" Kosovo.  Don't ask how well that has gone for the Kosovors.  45% unemployment, rampant crime, a hopelessly corrupt government, that sort of thing.

NATO upped its game to jump into Afghanistan.  No need to ask how well that turned out.

NATO went back to bombing in Libya. a drawn out fiasco that helped oust Qaddafi, eventually, but also gave al Qaeda a golden window of opportunity to get established in North Africa and they made the most of it.  Today Libya is reeling, on the cusp of becoming a true failed state.

Now NATO's real members are busy playing aerial "whack-a-mole" in Iraq, lobbing bombs on ISIS which, according to some observers, is something of a replay of our campaign in Libya.

If NATO is becoming a bit gun shy it's for good reason.  Fortunately it has a friend in Vlad Putin.  The Russian has allowed NATO to do what it does best - glower menacingly.  No guns, no bombs.  We're not that stupid.  It's Ukraine after all or the remaining part of it.  Who in his right mind really wants a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine?  It's right on Russia's border.  They can pour in any time.

If NATO can't actually liberate Ukraine, it can use it as a pretext for a brand new Cold War, the very thing NATO does best.  Experience shows that's a very extended-run gig.  It can last for decades, the military equivalent of Wayne Newton in Vegas.  We get to patrol with our jets.  They get to patrol with theirs. We get to mass our tanks in their vicinity and they mass their tanks along ours. Our subs go here, theirs go there.  We're all getting new missiles, subs and nuclear warheads anyway so the timing is near perfect.

Let the games resume.

Keeping Score in Cold War II

When it comes to Cold War II, we're limited to snippets of information; an incident here and there, accusations and counter-accusations.  It's hard to get a meaningful picture of what's going on.

Enter the European Leadership Network, a think tank made up of former senior political and diplomatic types.  They've released a report, "Dangerous Brinkmanship, Close Military Encounters between Russia and the West in 2014."  The report makes for pretty chilling reading.

Here are just some of the 40-major incidents chronicled in the report.

April 12: An unarmed Russian aircraft makes 12 passes over the US warship the USS Cook, stationed in the Black Sea. 

June: Russia simulates an attack on the Danish island of Bornholm as it plays host to 90,000 guests at a political festival. It is regarded as the most aggressive simulation against Denmark since the end of the Cold War. 

August 30: Putin tells a youth camp that other countries should realise "it's best not to mess with us". "I want to remind you that Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations," he says. "This is a reality, not just words. We are strengthening our nuclear deterrence forces and our armed forces."

September 4: As NATO members meet in Wales, Russia simulates an attack on the US, flying its strategic bombers to within striking distance of [Ottawa, Montreal] New York, Washington, and Chicago.

September 20: Six Russian airplanes, including two fighter jets and two long range bombers, come close to US airspace off the Alaskan coast. Two US F-22 fighter jets scramble to intercept the planes. 

October 2: Russian sends a fighter jet to trail a Swedish signals intelligence plane, which photographs the Russian jet 30 metres away. 

October 16: Putin says further sanctions against Russia would amount to "blackmail". He warns sanctions could create "discord between large nuclear powers".

October 17: The Swedish military begins scouring the Stockholm archipelago for an underwater vessel, smaller than a conventional submarine, rumoured to be Russian. The search for the "plausible foreign underwater operation" is called off a week later. 

November 13: Russia sends its "Leopard" radar unit to an eastern Ukrainian battlefield near Donetsk. The 1RL232, an armoured, weaponised surveillance system with a 40-kilometre range, gives Russian weapons greater accuracy.

This week, as Russian warships sailed toward Queensland waters, a new report found Russia's behaviour fuelled "dangerous brinkmanship" at Cold War levels. 

"The intensity and gravity of incidents involving Russian and Western militaries and security agencies has visibly increased," the European Leadership Network, a policy group, found.

"These events add up to a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs, and other dangerous actions."

It's a dangerous game, fraught with peril and unintentional outcomes, that both sides are playing.  Our own sandbox warrior, Harper, seems to have a genuine appetite for it.  Today, the sort of statesmanship needed to keep these dangers in check is in dreadfully short supply.

Gorbachev Warns of New Cold War and Lays the Blame At Washington's Feet

Former Soviet premier, Michael Gorbachev, has had the past quarter century to live with the legacy of betrayal.  Now he's returned to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to warn that we're on the verge of a new Cold War, one of the West's making.

“Instead of building new mechanisms and institutions of European security and pursuing a major demilitarisation of European politics … the west, and particularly the United States, declared victory in the cold war,” said the man behind the Soviet Union’s glasnost and perestroika reforms.

“Euphoria and triumphalism went to the heads of western leaders. Taking advantage of Russia’s weakening and the lack of a counterweight, they claimed monopoly leadership and domination in the world.”

The enlargement of Nato, Kosovo, missile defence plans and wars in the Middle East had led to a “collapse of trust”, said Gorbachev, now 83. “To put it metaphorically, a blister has now turned into a bloody, festering wound.”

Previously an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, Gorbachev backed the current Russian president’s stance over Ukraine, urging western leaders to “consider carefully” Putin’s recent remarks at the Valdai forum : “Despite the harshness of his criticism of the west, and of the United States in particular, I see in his speech a desire to find a way to lower tensions and ultimately to build a new basis for partnership.”

As Remembrance Day approaches it's astonishing how few people seem to recall the dark days of the Cold War, the subterfuge, the proxy wars that claimed so many lives, an awareness that even a technical failure could trigger nuclear Armageddon. 

That has no currency to Stephen Harper or the other two stooges of Parliament Hill.  They've got historical amnesia.

Well I sure remember.  I served in it at a time when tensions were high, well before Glasnost and Perestroika.  I have never forgotten that the reason I'm writing this and you're able to read it is not thanks to cool heads alone.  A lot of luck was also involved.

Why are we so intent on returning to those days?  Have we gone mad?  Do we really believe that it's going to make the future better for Ukraine or Georgia?  Of all the things we can fight and, en masse, die over should it really be the Ukraine?  Not as far as I'm concerned.

What will it tell Moscow when we show up on Russia's doorstep not with relatively non-threatening CF-18s but with truly offensive weapons like the nuclear-capable, "first strike", stealth attack bomber, the F-35?

If It's Cold War You Want, It's Cold War You'll Get

Wasn't one enough?  Really?

For almost a half century we, the West, and the Russians/Soviets poured mountains of money down the drain preparing for a war none of us would have survived had it come to that.

Underground missile batteries, fleets of nuclear missile submarines, strategic (nuclear) bombers, nuclear-capable strike fighters, mobile battlefield (tactical) nuclear missiles, massive tank armies ready to mix it up in the Fulda Gap on short notice.  An ocean of gasoline just looking for a match.

How many trillions of dollars were squandered on this global, nuclear make-work project?  What might we have accomplished with that vast fortune?

Make no mistake, that money was squandered.  Pissed away.  It didn't have to be that way.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, we could have taken a well-earned reward from the investment of all that money and all those lives.  We could have turned sacrifice into peace.

Lasting peace. It was ours for the taking. We could have implemented peaceful approaches to East Europe and Russia. That didn't happen. Instead we treated Russia as a vanquished foe.  As the Warsaw Pact dissolved, we eagerly snapped up its member states, brought them into the NATO fold, and marched triumphantly to Russia's very borders.

We said we were going to be peaceful, at least that's what we told Moscow.  But they've heard that from the West before and, instead, what they got was war. Napoleon, Hitler - real object lessons.

We said we wanted peace.  George H.W. Bush promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond the borders of a unified Germany.  They believed it. We lied. That sort of thing left scars and primed Russia for strongman rule.

We let Russia know we wouldn't hesitate to attack.  We even positioned anti-missile batteries on their borders with the unconvincing cover story that they were to protect Europe from an Iranian attack.  And all this stealth technology? It's aimed at two countries, China and Russia. It's intended to take down their sophisticated air defence networks to pave the way for their aerial subjugation. The Americans have even done full-scale dress rehearsals that revealed our willingness to strike without notice, pre-emptively if you like.  We've shown the Russians - and the Chinese - they need their own stealth squadrons.

Today the Cold War that never really ended, not really, is returning to business as usual.  Putin has commissioned the deployment of new, long-range ballistic missiles; a new strategic bomber; new warheads and new submarines.  As Vice reports the undersea arms race is really heating up.

Last week what was believed to be a Russian sub had the Swedes chasing their tails in the Stockholm archipelago.   This week it's Latvia's turn.  They've got the wind up after spotting what appears to be a Russian sub tender in their waters.

It's a good thing we've got six CF-18 jets defending the airspace over the Baltic nations, again on Russia's doorstep, because Moscow is giving them plenty of warplanes to keep them hopping.  Let's just hope those RCAF Hornets never have to go head to head with Russia's Su-35s.

When the White House discovered in recent weeks that its unclassified computer systems had been breached, intelligence officials examined the digital evidence and focused on a prime suspect: Russia, which they believe is using its highly sophisticated cyber capabilities to test American defenses. But its tracks were well covered, and officials say they may never know for sure.

They have no doubt, however, about what happened this week on the edges of NATO territory in Europe. More than two dozen Russian aircraft, including four Tu-95 strategic bombers, flew through the Baltic and Black Seas, along the coast of Norway and all the way to Portugal, staying over international waters but prompting NATO forces to send up intercepting aircraft.

Taken together, they represent the old and the updated techniques of Cold War signal-sending. In the Soviet era, both sides probed each other’s defenses, hoping to learn something from the reaction those tests of will created. In 2014, cyber is the new weapon, one that can be used with less restraint, and because its creators believe they cannot be traced and can create a bit of havoc without prompting a response.

From Bush to Clinton to Bush and, now, Obama, we've kept the embers of Cold War burning and now, quite predictably, we're back in business.  All that danger, all that money, all those lives - and it was all for nothing.  I know, maybe we can tell ourselves all this is "noble."

When Confidence Fails

Few who lived through the Cold War with its constant threat of nuclear annihilation realize the role confidence played in preventing an outbreak of apocalyptic hostilities.  Even at times when we thought the "other side" might be nearing the point of pre-emptive attack, we had a sufficient degree of confidence that they would do no such thing.  The Red Telephone that connected the White House to the Kremlin was specifically intended as an instrument for maintaining confidence.

The Cuban missile crisis demonstrated the leadership needed to maintain confidence - and peace - in stressful circumstances.  Kennedy was being pulled by contradictory advice given by competing forces some of which demanded a shooting war.  In the end, Kennedy's confidence in Khrushchev prevailed and a diplomatic result was obtained but it was a very close call.

Today I sense that we have discounted the importance of confidence and confidence-building between major powers.  Under Bush/Cheney, America drove NATO right up to Russia's doorstep.  That was an act of diplomatic aggression that showed no interest in maintaining, much less building, confidence between west and east. It was both a threat to Russia and a humiliation of Vlad Putin. Imagine if Russia reached a pact with Mexico and wound up parking tanks, surface to air missile batteries and mobile rocket artillery along the south bank of the Rio Grande.

What has the Ukraine conflict become?  It resembles a proxy war reminiscent of the Cold War era.  We support the west-leaning government that ousted the previous democratically-elected (yet horribly corrupt) government in a coup. Putin sees us as interlopers, meddlers, once again wreaking mischief at Russia's doorstep.  That he took Crimea should have been expected.  That he should support pro-Russia rebels seeking to pry loose the Donetsk region is equally predictable.

It's probably safe to say that the confidence level between Putin and western leaders has fallen into an abyss.  We have imposed successive waves of sanctions against Russia and its leaders.  We have actually threatened Russia with dire consequences that await if it doesn't leave Ukraine alone.  NATO Secretary General Anders "Foggy" Rasmussen, an avowed and bellicose neoliberal, is using the final months of his tenure to get straight into Putin's face.  He gives the impression that he's just itching to see NATO jets over the Ukraine before he's put out to pasture.  There are plenty of other prominent hawks in Rasmussen's camp including our own warrior-prince, Stephen Harper.

The German financial newspaper, Handelsblatt, recently warned that the people of the west are being "mentally mobilized" for war by our corporate mass media cartel.  This could hardly have gone unnoticed by the Kremlin.

And what happens when confidence plummets?  Rearmament is one usual result. Rearmament that further undermines confidence.  Russia is rearming with a new strategic bomber, a new ballistic missile that may breach one or more of its treaty obligations, two new submarine designs and a dandy new stealth fighter designed to turn F-35s into lawn ornaments.  Is this a Russian provocation? Hardly.

America kicked off today's arms race when Bush/Cheney introduced the incredibly bellicose Bush Doctrine that threatened friend and adversary alike with the use of pre-emptive and overwhelming military force against any country or group of countries that should deign to rival America militarily or economically.  That was accompanied by a massive increase in military spending focused on achieving enormous technological advances that would leave all other nations so far behind that they couldn't catch up.  Out of that depraved mentality emerged the F-35.

For Beijing, a real confidence-buster came with the staging of "Operation Chimichanga", a full scale, dress rehearsal of a pre-emptive "first strike" stealth attack on China to render the Peoples Republic defenceless.  Provocative, yes. Confidence building, plainly not.

America is doing no end of sabre-rattling and we're playing our part in it also.  Our foreign policy has been subsumed into America's.  The F-35 is our admission ticket into America's Aerial Foreign Legion.  There's a reason American commanders refer to it as their "kick in the front door weapon."

On this, the centenary of World War One, it's important to remember that not all wars are intended or even desired.  History shows it's remarkably easy for leaders to back us into wars of durations and dimensions that were never foreseen.  It doesn't take much - an arms race here or there, sabre-rattling and other provocations, a power vacuum real or perceived, the "mental mobilization" of society - go ahead, light the fuse.

Without seeming to recognize it, we're creating an incredibly dangerous world packed with stressors such as arms races; geo-political transitions with contested spheres of influence; power vacuums and the rise of failed states; militarized foreign policy; economic, resource and territorial rivalries; and, of course, early onset climate change impacts, all under the umbrella of western neoliberalism. What could possibly go wrong?

The China Dream

Prominent Chinese military officers are speaking of an east Asia from which the U.S. has been forced out.  And they're hoping to see that reality within 20-years.

Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, at the People's Liberation Army's National Defence University, told Fairfax Media this week that American strategic influence would be confined ''east of the Pacific midline'' as it is displaced by Chinese power throughout East Asia, including Australia.

Colonel Liu's interpretation of one facet of what the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, calls ''a new type of great power relationship'' adds to the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding China's strategic ambitions.

On January 31 James Fanell, intelligence chief for the US Pacific Fleet, which commands six aircraft carrier groups, told a San Diego conference that China's ''expansion into blue waters is largely about countering the Pacific Fleet''.

''And I can tell you, as the Fleet Intelligence Officer, the PLA Navy is going to sea to learn how to do naval warfare,'' said Captain Fanell. ''Make no mistake, the PLA Navy is focused on war at sea and about sinking an opposing fleet.''

"It's the most dangerous strategic crisis that the US has faced, that the world has faced, since the end of the Cold War,'' said Hugh White, former deputy secretary of the Department of Defence, saying China and Japan were drifting closer to a war that could draw in the US.

Colonel Liu, who has warned Australia not to support the Japanese ''wolf'' or American ''tiger'' in a military showdown, does not hold the rank of general or act as an official spokesman.

But his views have been taken more seriously since his fiercely nationalistic book, The China Dream, was allowed back onto the shelves after Mr Xi's elevation in November, when Mr Xi began talking about his own nationalistic ''China Dream''.
 

Why NATO?

China's Next Cold Warriors?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization made a lot of sense when it was an alliance of North Atlantic nations to mutually defend the security of North Atlantic nations.   Notice the emphasis on "North Atlantic"?

With the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO's raison d'etre, the alliance lost its focus.   It opened its membership rolls to most of Eastern Europe, the old Warsaw Pact states, advancing its frontiers right to the Russian border.  

NATO moved on to Balkanization, waging a bombing campaign against Serbia.   There was nothing particularly defensive about that.   Then came 9/11.   Under Article 5 of the NATO Charter, the founding members, or most of them, came to the defence of the United States by supporting the conquest and occupation of Afghanistan although most declined America's invitation to do the follow-up conquest and occupation of Iraq.

More recently NATO air forces intervened in Libya to bomb Gaddafi forces and enable the rebellion to topple their murderous dictator.   Again nothing particularly defensive about that.

Now there's a move afoot to cajole NATO into joining the Pentagon's "pivot" into Asia, a polite way of describing poking China's panda with a sharp stick.   That's part and parcel of the F-35 deal but we'll leave that for another day.

Perhaps this is a good time to ask if we're setting ourselves and our alliance up for a global military version of Groundhog Day?  Are we backing ourselves into another American led fiasco or maybe even a series of them?   We know how Iraq turned out.   We know all too well where Afghanistan's heading.   We have seen how much and how very little "all the King's men and all the King's horses" can deliver.

There's a faint whiff of "1984" in all this.   The first true, Permanent Warfare State (PWS), in which military force has replaced diplomacy as the principal instrument of foreign policy, lining up its minions (us) like ducks in a row, to perpetuate conflict in the remotest corners of the world.   Did Orwell write this script?   An ascendant oligarchy, corporate media implementing a form of mind control, pervasive public surveillance.  I dunno, sounds eerily similar to me.

We must also bear in mind the legacy of the Bush Doctrine.  It stood for unilateralism, "preventative" war (i.e. illegal war), and regime change.   Thus spake Incurious George:

 "...the first duty of the United States Government remains what it always has been: to protect the American people and American interests. It is an enduring American principle that this duty obligates the government to anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack."

Recall that this perverse doctrine prescribed that America would not tolerate and expressly reserved the right to use military force to prevent any other nation or group of nations achieving economic or military superiority to the United States.   Hmm, what nation would be on the verge of achieving economic superiority to the United States?   And what is "military superiority" anyway?  Perhaps you should ask some defiant Afghan tribesman armed with a Korean War vintage assault rifle and a RPG.

Are we going to sign on to that?   And if you think Obama has rescinded the Bush Doctrine, think again.  I'm pretty sure President Mitt would find it to his liking too.

And then there's the matter of money.   Canada is being criticized for failing to meet the NATO member committment to spend 2% of GDP on our military.   We currently come in slightly below 1.5%.   Yet we're hard pressed to find the funds necessary to meet our "Canada First" defence priority.   Money spent on equipment, personnel and operations as part of America's Foreign Legion is money we don't have to provide for the security and defence of Canada.

It may have passed unnoticed by the Canadian public but Washington's Asian sabre-rattling has been heavily escalated by the Obama administration.   The military leaders of China and the United States now wargame battles between themselves.   And, by all accounts, the Chinese are decidedly hostile and in the mood for a scrap.  Quite recently US forces staged Operation Chimichanga,  a live-fire stealth bombing campaign simulating a first strike to obliterate Chinese air defences.   It's sort of like Japan putting on, in public, a full dress rehearsal of its attack on Pearl Harbour.  And next month we'll have RimPac2012, a multi-national (i.e. America and the Seven Dwarfs) naval and air exercise staged right in China's maritime back yard.   And the Chinese aren't taking this lying down either.   In fact we may be about to unpack a new Cold War.

It might just be too late to arrest this transformation of NATO.   Canadians are certainly not alive to the issues.   Their image of NATO is fixed in the alliance of half a century ago.   Now when we most need the NDP to take up the challenge, that NDP is, like the NATO we once respected, a thing of the past.

Arms Race Update - Brand New Cold War? Surprise!

I'm telling you, you need to watch everything that's happening when you connect the dots in that region from Afghanistan to India, Russia, Pakistan and China. It's like watching something growing in a Petrie dish.

Remember Pakistan, Mr. Bush's most important ally in The War on Terror? Things have changed. A key factor was the Bush initiative to give nuclear science and assistance to Pakistan's main military rival - India. Then the Wall Street meltdown shockwave apparently hit Islamabad's markets and things went critical.

So where does Pakistan's president Zardari go when he needs a measly $6-billion to salvage his own economy? Why, to China of course. He goes for a four day visit. And what else does the Prez come home with? Nothing less than a nuclear technology transfer deal with the Chinese.

Now it's not the sort of comprehensive nuclear gift basket that India just received from the U.S., not openly. Rather it's a piecemeal sort of agreement, at least what's being presented for public consumption. CBS News, however, got this:

A senior Pakistani government official, familiar with discussions between Zardari and Chinese officials, claimed Thursday that China had agreed to “consider further nuclear power reactors to fulfill our needs. The relationship (on the nuclear issue) remains intact”. Speaking to CBS News on condition of anonymity, the official added, “there is now a complete understanding on our future cooperation”.

Oh great. Now we're creating bi-polar proxies again, only this time we might just be giving them advanced technology critical to their nuclear arsenals. Say that to yourself three times. This is probably a good time to learn a bit about the theory of the use of nuclear weapons. An exchange of weapons over there could trigger an irresistable spread within hours. And that would be that. So can somebody remind me why we're just going along with this, even increasing the possibility of this turning the lights off?

And that, ladies and gents, is exactly what's starting to happen there.

Here are a few of the cards that have already been dealt:

America's global economic domination appears to be winding down. It's being gradually squeezed by ascending economic superpowers including China and India and, to a lesser degree, Russia and Brazil.

America sees its key rival as China which is also America's biggest creditor. America and other nations have outsourced a great deal of their manufacturing capability to China which has given the Chinese the needed spark of stimulus to make huge leaps in education, technology and, yes, military expansion. China now produces its own rockets, jet fighters and nuke submarines and they're said to be surprisingly good.

China is flush with cash, nearly two trillion dollars of reserves, much of it American. America is flush with debt, about 11-trillion dollars worth of federal debt alone (closer to 55-trillion if you include unfunded obligations according to the US Comptroller General) with a financial sector in meltdown.

There now exists an intense, although understated, rivalry between the United States and China for global resources with particular focus on the Middle East and Africa. India, too, must compete for resources, especially oil.

China has become dependent on Middle Eastern oil. That gets shipped to China via tankers. The Chinese bound oil tankers ply sea lanes that pass right by India.

India is furiously expanding its "blue water" navy. It's adding a new generation of its own submarines as well as new surface vessels including aircraft carriers. The Indian Navy has already proclaimed its intention to secure the oceans east of India to the Russia's Kamchatka peninsula. That blankets China's entire seacoast, all of it.

The United States appears to have drawn India into its camp to aid in the containment of China. India and China are, after all, natural rivals who have clashed before.

The India-US nuclear deal increases the insecurity of China's tanker access to Middle Eastern oil and, for that matter, its access to just about every other resource. It also has sparked consternation and genuine insecurity in Islamabad.

China, too, is embarking on an enormous rearmament campaign. So, too, is Russia. China, in particular, is focusing on its own "blue water" navy, one that will contest the same oceans and sea lanes that the Indians have said they will control.

The capability of China's subs was demonstrated about a year ago when one of its new boats popped up in the middle of a US Navy carrier battle group, just five miles from the carrier. Until they eyeballed it the American ships had no idea it was there. Popping to the surface was tantamount to saying, "Bang, you're all dead." That was much more than a stunt

China knows that it can't risk relying on its new navy to keep open its access to Middle East oil. Hence it's looking for overland routes and those pipelines would have to flow through Pakistan and, in particular, the Balochistan territory in the south.

The Americans, too, are eyeballing pipeline routes through this region that would bring oil and gas resources across Afghanistan into Pakistan and then on to India or south through Balochistan to the Arabian Sea and onward to the Good Guys

Pakistan is the perfect blocker to thwart Western and Indian access to these oil and gas reserves and divert them, instead, to China.

Pakistan, and Iran with which it shares a border, are both seeking membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SCO, which is, among other things, a military mutual defence alliance and now includes China, Russia and Khazakstan.

Are you beginning to get the picture? The world has been plunged into a state of flux geopolitically, economically and militarily. Some nations are on the way up, some nations are ebbing a bit. This creates a great deal of insecurity, suspicion and, to some degree, anger.

You know, we should be in high dudgeon over the ludicrous plunge into this. We're sitting by as the United States, by its nuclear suppport of India, is allowing the Chinese to cut an offsetting deal with the Pakistanis. If we can't stop this at our end, there's not a chance in Hell we'd be able to get the other side to back down. And, if we don't stop this in time, what do you end up with? A brand new, vastly more unstable and dangereous, Cold War.

This isn't wild speculation or fantasy. It's about the only coherent narrative you can extract from these circumstances. We have to start to think about just what is going on, where these things are headed.

Keep in mind how the Soviet Union and its superpower days came to an end. America drove it to financial ruin (thanks to a handy collapse in world oil prices when the Sovs most needed that revenue). It didn't end in a shooting war. It ended with the collapse of the Soviet economy that also brought the collapse of its military apparatus.

Now it's America that's economically vulnerable and China that is poised to exploit that weakness, wherever it can, while the window of opportunity remains open. American diplomacy during the Bush years has been an utter catastrophe, a succession of blunders that were never foreseen by an administration blinded by an insane ideology and hubris.

Wheels spinning within wheels. You may just be getting your first glimpse at the new Cold War.

Cold War Nostalgia

Call it a "blast from the past." Yesterday the Royal Air Force scrambled a pair of Tornado fighters to intercept a Russian Bear bomber as it approached Scotland.

This sort of thing was almost routine back in the Cold War days but it's been a rarity ever since.