NATO held its first-ever top-level meeting - attended by its secretary general, its two top military commanders and the chairman of its Military Committee - on the Arctic seventeen days after the U.S. National Security Directive was released and also broadcast in no equivocal terms interest in expanding its presence into what it called the High North.
A plan that was outlined yesterday by Rogozin as follows:
"The ice would retreat, it would melt, which means that NATO would definitely be present in the Arctic. They have been planning it for a long time, and under very bad circumstances the U.S. strategic missile defense would arrive there on board these ships." [17]
An insightful and penetrating commentary appeared in The Nation of Pakistan on September 26 which linked U.S. President Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 23 with his statements on missile defense six days earlier.
The author, Shireen M. Mazari, wrote that "many of us have been living with these periodic highs at the declaratory level on the issue of nuclear arms control and disarmament - till we realize they are merely a rhetorical facade to hide away the growing nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapon states."
And if White House pledges to reduce or even eliminate nuclear weapons sound something less than sincere - Ronald Reagan's 1983 Star Wars speech included a proclaimed commitment "to lower the level of all arms, and particularly nuclear arms" - than so do American pronouncements that the nation's global missile interception system will eliminate or even diminish the threat of dangerous and perhaps catastrophic confrontations.
The Pakistani writer added:
"So there will be no BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] placements in Poland and the Czech Republic but there will be BMD systems placed on highly mobile sea platforms to counter a largely imagined threat to Europe and the US from Iran.
"Of course, these ships can be moved easily from the Mediterranean to the Gulf or Indian Ocean so Pakistan would also come into this BMD target loop - again with India being helped in the development and acquisition of BMD as part of its strategic military alliance with the US.
"BMD has also undermined deterrence which was sustained through mutual vulnerabilities.
"Now BMD has focused attention on nuclear war fighting, thereby increasing the danger of nuclear weapons being used in war.
"Unfortunately, while Obama may call for nuclear disarmament, his policy on BMD betrays this rhetoric." [18]
The preceding paragraphs are as terse yet comprehensive a summation as can be found of the threat the U.S.'s new flexible, mobile and technologically advanced international missile shield strategy presents for raising rather than lowering world tensions, for dropping the threshold of a U.S. and allied missile war being launched because of the perceived invulnerability of the aggressor and, the ultimate worst-case scenario, for nuclear war whether intended or not. A nuclear war which would transform Europe and much of the rest of the world into a gigantic necropolis.
1) Navy Times, September 28, 2009
2) U.S. Department of Defense, September 17, 2009
3) Reuters, September 24, 2009
4) Polish Radio, September 25, 2009
5) Reuters, August 20, 2009
6) Izvestia, September 22, 2009
7) Russia Profile, September 25, 2009
8) Reuters, February 12, 2008
9) Navy Times, September 28, 2009
10) Defense Procurement News, September 18, 2009
11) Navy Times, September 28, 2009
12) Ice News, September 27, 2009
13) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009
14) Stop NATO, September 17, 2009
15) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009
16) http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-66.htm
17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 28, 2009
18) Shireen M Mazari, The facade of nuclear disarmament
The Nation, September 26, 2009
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