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July
16, 2001
By
Jon Christian Ryter Copyright 2000 - All Rights Reserved
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Feeling what had to be intense diplomatic pressure from America’s “former” deadly enemies (now our “friendly” trading partners) the Bush-Cheney Administration kept a major campaign promise on Saturday, July 14. At 11:09 EDT an enormous white flash exploded 144 miles above the Earth as a rocket launched from Vanderberg Air Force Base in California 29 minutes earlier was hit by an interceptor missile fired from an island in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. According to military sources, it was a direct hit.
Despite the
direct hit, less was riding on the July 14 launch than the failed attempt
by former President Bill Clinton over a year ago, since President George
W. Bush had already made it clear that regardless of the outcome
of the test, he was going ahead with an accelerated testing program to
provide the United States—and its 
allies
if they ask—with an umbrella shield to protect them from nuclear
missile attack not only from their “former foes” in the “former”
Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (which
were “practicing” just such a sneak nuclear attack against America
and its western Europe allies last February) but from any rogue nation
that has a nuclear arsenal.
Even before the launch took place, Senate Democrats expressed their opposition to the program, arguing that it would violate two prior Salt Treaties and the Start Treaty which was made with the Soviet Union. (Start II was drafted after the “collapse” of the Soviet Union. The Bush-Quayle Administration restructured the treaty for the Russian Federation in January, 1993 since the Soviet Union no longer existed, and any treaty made with it was null and void.) Everything which has been said by liberal Congressmen and Senators that any attempt by the United States to create a missile shield over the United States would violate our anti-ballistics missile treaties is, like just about everything that comes down off of Capitol Hill, just so much hot air and meaningless political rhetoric.
What is most interesting about the Start II Anti-ballistics Missile Treaty between the United States and Boris Yeltsin’s Russian Federation on January 3, 1993 is that the new Clinton-Gore Administration and its diminutive Secretary of State Warren Christopher did no follow up with the Yeltsin government to see its completion. Without the American Secretary of State, who is responsible for such action, pushing first Yeltsin and then his successor, Vladimir Putin, to sign the agreement, there was no urgency on their part to do so—since James Baker, George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of State had already signed it—and had committed the United States government to its terms.
Control of Soviet detenté was given to Vice President Al Gore, Jr. He was the “man-in-charge” of Russian relations. Warren Christopher was merely the Administration’s diplomatic “go-fer.” Not only was Al Gore not overly aggressive in pushing his friends in the Kremlin to sign the Start II Treaty, he cut a secret deal with Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin on June 30, 1995 that would allow them to continue trafficking in high-tech advanced conventional weapons sales to rogue nations—selling diesel submarines, torpedoes, anti-ship mines, tanks and armored personnel carriers to terrorist nations like Iraq and Iran that ostensibly could have put America and its allies at risk. Russia agreed to stop selling weapons systems to terrorist nations in 1999—five years after the agreement went into affect. In exchange for the Russian promise to stop breaking the law (a promise which was worth just about as much as a $3 bill) Gore promised not to seek penalties against Russia under a 1992 law that mandated sanctions be placed against any nation that sold advanced high-tech weaponry to any rogue nation. Iran and Iraq are both on the list of nations which sponsor terrorism. If America got anything out of the deal other than an increased risk of terrorist attacks, nobody in Washington knew about it.
The law Gore waived was the Iran-Iraq Arms Nonproliferation Act (also known as the Gore-McCain Act of 1992). Senator Albert A. Gore, Jr. [D-TN], still posing as a moderate conservative so the good folks in Tennessee would re-elect him, co-sponsored an aggressive piece of legislation that would punish any nation that trafficked in arms sales with a rogue nation. Apparently Gore figured that since he had technically “invented” the law, he could waive it whenever he, as Vice President of the United States, wanted. And, at the same time, because neither he nor Bill Clinton had engineered the Start II Treaty, he saw no need to push the Kremlin to ratify it. When Senator John McCain learned about the secret deal with Chernomydrin on October 12, 2000—less than a month before the national election—he was shocked because the “deal” that was struck between Gore and Chernomydrin was classified as “Secret” and became one of those documents that only Clintonites and Gorites had access to. McCain, his liberal followers during the primaries notwithstanding, qualified as neither.
The tragedy is, while the Democrats in both the House and Senate held America’s feet to the fire on the terms of the Start II agreement, Russia was not in the least hindered by its terms. After all, they never signed it. It was not until the Republican Congress got very serious about building a missile shield over the United States that, on September 26, 1997, the Putin government hurriedly signed the Start II Treaty in order to prevent the United States from building a defense system against the missiles being built not only by Russia but by the People’s Republic of China as well.
Whenever the Republicans talked about Strategic Defense Initiatives or missiles shields, the Democrats obligingly beat them over the head with the unsigned Treaty. And, as the United States reduced its nuclear weapons stockpiles and the number of “advanced conventional weapons” within its arsenal to comply with the terms of the treaty, Russia was building one new nuclear missile for each old one they destroyed—and the taxpayers of the United States were footing the bill. (If you ever wondered where all of the missing plutonium cores vanished to, they were not stolen by rogue satellite nations. Those missing cores became the fissionable material in the more advanced, newly-constructed nuclear arsenal the Russians were secretly building.)
If America had only one nuclear enemy—particularly one in which the logic advanced by the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) made sense, Salt I, Salt II, Start I or Start II would likely be an ideal caveat from which to negotiate a lasting global peace. That is, providing any one nation was not perpetually seeking a military edge that would allow it to threaten its counterpart into submitting to a “peace” not to their “national” liking (such as forcing that nation to surrender its sovereignty for the “greater good of mankind”). The Salt and Start treaties made sense when America had only one nuclear enemy with whom it would likely be forced to retaliate against in the event of a surprise nuclear attack.
That is no longer the case. Today, America faces two deadly superpowers whose global political ambitions would be best served if North America was a radioactive cinder. (Forget the political rhetoric that America is the only surviving super power. Any nation with nuclear weapons and an adequate delivery system is a super power.) Of course, the economic best interests of both the People’s Republic of China and the “former” Soviet Union are currently best served by performing lip service to the rear end of America as both nations milk the American economy for the cash they need to upgrade their weapons systems in order to destroy us. China is miking and bilking the American people with cheap trade goods (pretty much like the Europeans who bought Manhattan Island for $24 worth of baubles and beads). The “former” Soviet Union, on the other hand, is borrowing us to death in deals guaranteed by the taxpayers of the United States through the World Bank and the IMF. Most of the Russian millionaire oligarchs became billionaire oligarchs by stealing IMF funds that were designed to infuse the Russian economy with life. Once again, we have Al Gore, Jr., the “man-in-charge” of Russian policy throughout the Clinton-Gore years, to thank. After Gore’s friends in the Kremlin stole one IMF loan, Gore encouraged the United States to “co-sign” for another one—which likewise disappeared. Some of those funds were laundered back through United States banks.
Like China, which is using the consumers of the United States to fund its military build-up, the “former” Soviet Union is engaged in the same type of upgrading, enhancing its nuclear capabilities as the United States continues to downgrade its own. It didn’t take the Joint Chiefs of Staff to see the problem. Any “contractor” in the Pentagon with a pocket calculator could have done the numbers. Every nonproliferation treaty or disarmament treaty we have ever signed with the Russians has assumed them to be our singular enemy. Every nonproliferation treaty or disarmament treaty we entered into with the Soviet Union was based on that assumption. We no longer possess the means to adequately protect ourselves from two nuclear enemies who decide to attack us at the same time.
The People’s Republic of China and its growing arsenal of nuclear weapons was never added into the equation. The weapons systems experts in the Pentagon, in the NSA and in the CIA assumed that China was light years behind us, and that even if they had our technology it would still take them two or three decades to become a real threat. The reality is, anyone who can launch a nuclear missile into your backyard—even if they were aiming at a city 500 miles away—is a threat. China is, and always has been a threat. They are a threat because they have told us, repeatedly, that they are a threat. They have not minced words over the fact that they will, within a decade, be involved in a nuclear exchange with the United States. It will take them a decade because we haven’t purchased enough cheap goods from them yet to have a sufficient stockpile of nuclear weapons to get the job done. But, when they do, it won’t be cheap cigarette lighters, bamboo rugs or cheap knock-down furniture they will be sending to America—it will be very sophisticated multi-head nuclear missiles. We can thank the Clinton-Gore Administration for that as well. In eight short years Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Jr., exchanging illegal campaign contributions for access to Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, have helped the Chinese government whittle those three decades down to one. We also have Clinton and Gore to thank for allowing key campaign contributors like Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics to provide the People’s Republic of China with the high tech data they needed to perfect the guidance systems on their rockets (and to gain a highly sophisticated military-spy satellite system), and for allowing China to purchase over 600 supercomputers they needed to make the technology they stole or legally or extralegally purchase work.
None of this has been lost on the Pentagon or, for that matter, on Congress. During the Clinton-Gore years, the administration believed the job of protecting the world belonged to the United Nations. The United States, in Clinton’s mind, was to function as part of a multi-lateral force controlled by the UN or by NATO. It’s role was peace-keeping. Forever the flower child of the 60s, Bill Clinton still believes that peace-keepers do not need massive military strength and that global peace will be won by submission rather than by overwhelming strength. He has ignored the fact that America won the Gulf War because it overwhelmed its enemy so immensely with such an awesome display of 21st century military technology that not only did that enemy concede within a week, the walls of Iron Curtain, which had been rusting for years, collapsed from socialist decay. The Berlin Wall was broken apart and sold as souvenirs. Peace is never achieved through weakness because sovereignty is always the chit on the bargaining table.
Over the past decade America has surrendered its superiority. Not just its military superiority, but its industrial superiority as well. Thanks to the passage of NAFTA in 1993—the Clinton’s first assault on the economy of the United States—America is losing 14,000 to 18,000 jobs every month. Factories are closing because we have allowed American corporations to divest themselves of their American identities and move their factories into the emerging nations where labor is cheap and regulations are nonexistent. With each factory closure, the threads of liberty get just a little thinner.
In 1917 and again in 1941, America was called upon to “rescue” a world pitted in a global war. America sent her sons to die on foreign soil. And America supplied all of its allies with the machines and materials they needed to survive and win each of those wars. The next war, however, will not last five years, nor will it last one. The nation who is not prepared to win it overnight will lose it, because that war will be fought—and won or lost—overnight. A nuclear holocaust will rain on civilization; and overnight, fully one-third of the population of this planet will perish. Within a year, another third will die from radiation-related causes. If we are not prepared to deflect the missiles that are launched at American soil, we will be counted among the victims of that brief but horrible holocaust.
When he campaigned for the White House, George W. Bush promised the American people he would build a missile shield over this nation. On July 14 he took the first step to keep that promise. The enemies of the United States—even those who have somehow been elected to the House and Senate of the United States—have denounced this first step as a violation of a treaty the Russians never signed until they saw America was going to create an umbrella to protect this nation. The Russians and Chinese, of course, don’t want to see a missile shield constructed since it will bankrupt them as they strive to create enough sophisticated weapons to breach it. The doves in Congress don’t want it built either because they believe that peace is best achieved through weakness and not strength. None of them realize that even if every weapon in the world was dismantled, the nation with the largest clubs and biggest rocks would still dominate those with twigs and pebbles.
George W. Bush was not only morally correct in his determination to build a missile shield over the United States, he was legally correct as well. His right to do so is contained within the Treaty itself. Article VI, Section 4 of the Treaty says: “Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests. It shall give notice of its decision to the other Party six months prior to withdrawal from this Treaty. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events the notifying Party regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.”
Clearly, the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons by both the People’s Republic of China and the former Soviet Union—combined with equally believable threats of nuclear attack from second and third world terrorist nations who have promised to destroy the United States of America is, I believe, sufficient justification for the actions taken by the President of the United States.
President Bush is further correct in assuring our allies and “former” enemies—and those members of Congress who want to use our tax dollars for utopian dreams—that none of us, if we really want peace, need to initiate a new arms race...and the United States does not have to participate in a renewed arms race if our enemies decide they must. All we have to do is create a wider umbrella for peace. If that shield protects all men who wish to live in peace and prosperity, peace will prevail.
