councilor.org
| Source | D. Ohmans |
| Date | 99/11/03/02:44 |
| The Nation, November 8, 1999 THE UNTHINKABLE by JONATHAN SCHELL ...A recent speech by George W. Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is of great importance. In domestic affairs, Bush has shown that, for reasons of political advantage as well, perhaps, as conviction, he knows how to distance himself from the radical Republican right that has taken control of the party in Congress. Just a few weeks ago, he famously rebuked them for trying to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor." There is so far no counterpart in foreign affairs. In a prepared speech given at the Citadel on September 23, he painted a dire picture of the world. It is "a world of terror and missiles and madmen," he said. He added, "We see the contagious spread of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction." "This era of American pre-eminence," he elaborated, "is also an era of car bombers and plutonium merchants and cyber terrorists and drug cartels and unbalanced dictators." What solutions did he offer? The value of international treaties went unmentioned. Rather, it was "American armed forces" that "have an irreplaceable role in the world." Painting a picture of an earth seemingly at the mercy of the US military, he called for forces that were deployable anywhere in the world "in days or weeks rather than months." They must identify targets by "a variety of means" and "destroy those targets almost immediately, with an array of weapons." America's Air Force must be able to "strike from across the world with pinpoint accuracy." "Stealthy" ships "packed with long-range missiles" should be built to "destroy targets from great distances." Weapons should be built to "protect our network of satellites." Unspecified "diffuse commitments" and "uncertain missions" would be avoided, and "focused ones" embraced. But what was needed above all was "homeland defense" against "biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism"--defense to be provided chiefly by "anti- ballistic missile systems, both theater and national." If Russia did not agree, the United States would unilaterally withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in force since 1972. A few weeks later, during the test ban debate in the Senate, Bush completed the picture by quietly joining his party in opposing the treaty. President Clinton and others have, with some justification, called this emerging Republican view neo-isolationism--a "Fortress America" policy--but it is in truth something different. It engages the world, but solely on the basis of unchallengeable force. In this vision, the United States, impervious to any attack yet itself capable of striking at a moment's notice anywhere on earth, seems to preside, withdrawn yet omnipotent, over a world otherwise left to stew in its own anarchy. If there is a role in it for alliances, negotiations or arms control treaties--not to speak of the United Nations--it goes unmentioned. It is in the embrace by the Republican Party of this policy, on which Bush and his Congressional colleagues are at one, not in the style in which the goals are pursued in the Senate and elsewhere, that the deepest roots of the defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty lie. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho