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The latest news is that Romania will be hosting the U.S.
Army's ground-based "missile defense" systems. Russia is not
pleased with these developments.
These same Army Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) systems
are going to be deployed in Taiwan as the U.S. continues its
military encirclement of China. U.S. PAC-3 systems have
already been deployed in Japan and South Korea
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| Army
Ground-based "missile defense" interceptors |
The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), already in the Persian Gulf
and soon to be permanently based on Navy Aegis destroyers in the
Baltic, South China, Mediterranean and Black Seas, has a range
of 500 kilometers but can be enhanced for longer distances. The
missile was used by the U.S. Navy to destroy a satellite 130
miles above the Pacific Ocean in February of 2008 in a test
viewed by Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff. "The satellite was unlike any target the system
was designed to go after....The satellite was in orbit rather
than on a ballistic trajectory. Also, the satellite was
traveling at incredible speeds," Mullen said.
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| Aegis destroyers
launching SM-3 "missile defense" systems |
Translation: the SM-3 also has "anti-satellite" (ASAT) weapons
capability. That means the Pentagon can use the Aegis-based
missile to knock out Russian or Chinese satellites as part of
a first-strike attack.
News that the U.S. is about to deploy a PAC-3 missile battery
in Poland led Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, to
recently state: "Do they really think that we will calmly
watch the location of a rocket system, at a distance of 60 km
from Kaliningrad?"
The deployment of SM-3, with several times the reach of the
Patriot, on land and sea in the same neighborhood will only
makes matters more dangerous.
The official authorization of Patriot transfers to Taiwan -
the missiles are produced by Raytheon Company headquartered in
Massachusetts, whose former vice president of Government
Operations and Strategy William Lynn is now Obama's Deputy
Secretary of Defense - resulted in China's vice foreign
minister, He Yafei, saying "We believe this move endangers
China's national security." Luo Yuan, senior researcher with
the Chinese Academy of Military Science, added "The U.S.
action gives China a justified cause to increase its national
defense expenditure, to enhance the development and purchase
of weapons, and to accelerate its modernization process in
national defense....China did nothing to threaten the U.S.,
why should the US challenge our core strategic interests?"
William Lynn delivered a speech in Washington, DC on January
21, where he demanded that Congress "put the Defense
Department on a permanent footing to fight both low-intensity
conflicts to maintaining air dominance and the ability to
strike any target on Earth at any time....The next air warfare
priority for the Pentagon is developing a next-generation,
deep-penetrating strike capability that can overcome advanced
air defenses."
So the strategy is clear. Surround Russia and China with
mobile "missile defense" systems whose job is to take out
their retaliatory capability after a U.S. first-strike against
their nuclear weapons. Russia and China then build
counter-measures to the U.S. missile defense systems and then
the Pentagon in return counters with the new "global strike"
systems that are today under development.
All this means one thing - an extended arms race with Russia
and China which will mean huge profits for the weapons
industry and the very likely reality that no effective arms
control treaties will be negotiated during this
administration. Why would Russia and China negotiate to
seriously reduce their nuclear arsenals when the U.S. is
surrounding them with missile defense and building new global
strike systems?
The U.S. war state (supported and funded by Democrats and
Republicans) has become a pariah on this planet. You can dress
it up nice with a smiling Obama but in the end one has to
judge the U.S. by its deeds.
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