In article <21s0lvce6kqjc5s936r16sqr7qfnq11ent@4ax.com>, David Patrick says...

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 06:36:18 GMT, Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers
A.S.A. <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote:

In article <zAs3b.1867$wY3.112@news02.roc.ny>, Hugh says...

Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A. wrote:
Maybe it isnt closed. But your mind sure is!

Hughe/Sucke,  please refrain yourself from posting your
brand of garbage in this newsgroup.  Even Anal-Sham and
Patty gives it a rest from time to time!!

I do wish you'd practice what you preach sometimes. Switch off your
computer and go outside once in awhile.

Patty, your "slip" is showing again!!!

Future of a Delusion//Disband NATO

WHEN THE NATO MINISTERS packed their bags and left the Washington summit in late
April, they had no reason to rejoice over the job they had just completed. They
had committed the Alliance to continue to wage its ill-conceived and illegal war
against Yugoslavia. And they had revised the "strategic concept" of NATO in such
a way as to make further such wars more likely.

NATO is now entering the future of a delusion. The delusion of the past was that
NATO kept the peace in Europe. But as Gore Vidal and historian Carolyn Eisenberg
have pointed out, the Alliance came into being only because the United States
and Britain decided to renege on the Yalta and Potsdam agreements they made with
the Soviet Union. The breaking of those pacts helped lead to the perilous years
of the Cold War and the four decades of nuclear terror that gripped the world.

Basic to NATO doctrine was a first-strike nuclear option. If the Soviet Union
put a toe into West Germany, NATO would drop the bomb on Moscow. Nuclear war
didn't erupt. But it came close, more than a dozen times. To say the Alliance
successfully preserved the peace is like a drunk driver
bragging that he went 100 miles an hour down the highway without crashing his
car.

Now, eight years after the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has no reason for
being, and yet it has been fighting a war in Yugoslavia to save the credibility
of this organization's afterlife.

To justify that war and to invent a new purpose, NATO ministers came to
Washington. They had to work quickly to modify NATO's strategic concept because
the war against Yugoslavia violated the one that was in force up until April.
The old strategic concept, which was approved in London in July 1990, stated:
"The Alliance is purely defensive in purpose: None of its weapons will ever be
used except in self-defense." In the new strategic concept, adopted on April 23
and April 24, NATO quietly dropped this clear and encumbering language.

In its place, the ministers agreed to language that basically will allow NATO to
intervene anywhere in the world at any time. In classic bureaucratese, the new
strategic concept speaks of "crisis management through non-Article 5 crisis
response operations." Article 5 is part of NATO's charter, adopted on April 4,
1949, and it states: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more
of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them
all." So a military action that is "non-Article 5" means that it is not in
response to an attack against a NATO member.

For instance, there's the war in Yugoslavia. The Alliance "has committed itself
to essential new activities in the interest of a wider stability," the current
document states. "It has shown the depth of that commitment in its efforts to
put an end to the immense human suffering created by conflict in the Balkans."
(The document somehow failed to acknowledge that NATO's war against Yugoslavia
contributed to this immense human suffering, however.)

The open-endedness of the new strategic concept is startling. While it continues
to pledge to counter "any armed attack on the territory of the Allies," it will
not stop there. "Alliance security must also take account of the global
context," it says. "Alliance security interests can be affected by other risks
of a wider nature, including acts of terrorism, sabotage, and organized crime,
and by the disruption of the flow vital resources."

This new concept foresees some far-flung affairs. "The size, readiness,
availability, and deployment of the Alliance's military forces will reflect its
commitment to collective defense and to conduct crisis response operations,
sometimes at short notice, distant from their home stations, including beyond
the Allies' territory."

If a nation like Iran or North Korea is said to have nuclear, biological, or
chemical (NBC) weapons that could threaten any NATO country, the new strategic
concept gives NATO the right to act preemptively. "The Alliance's defense
posture must have the capability to address appropriately and effectively the
risks associated with the proliferation of NBC weapons and their means of
delivery, which also pose a potential threat to the Allies' populations,
territory, and forces."

Washington can now cite NATO's new strategic concept to justify virtually any
attack it wishes to wage against any nation. Take note: We are here at the
creation of a global NATO interventionary force.

Where the United Nations should be intervening, now there shall be NATO.

There is one little problem, though. The new strategic concept states that these
"crisis response operations" have to be "in conformity with Article 7 of the
Washington Treaty" of 1949, which recognizes "the primary responsibility of the
Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security."

Alas, NATO's war against Yugoslavia already violates this provision, since the
Security Council never granted NATO permission to bomb Belgrade. Details,
details. (By the way, you can access this document, "The Alliance's New
Strategic Concept," on the Internet at: www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999).

RUSSIA BEWARE. While parts of NATO's new strategic concept make nice to Moscow,
the document on the whole has menacing overtones. "Russia plays a unique role in
Euro-Atlantic security," the document states. "A strong, stable, and enduring
partnership between NATO and Russia is essential to achieve lasting stability in
the Euro-Atlantic area."

Whereas the 1990 strategic concept recognized that the threat from Moscow had
passed, the current one seems prepared to resurrect it. In 1990, NATO stated:
"The monolithic, massive, and potentially immediate threat which was the
principal concern of the Alliance in its first forty years has disappeared."

But now the Cold War is back on the horizon. The new 1999 NATO document states:
"Notwithstanding positive developments in the strategic environment and the fact
that large-scale conventional aggression against the Alliance is highly
unlikely, the possibility of such a threat emerging over the longer term
exists."

NATO shows more concern now than it did nine years ago about the possibility of
nuclear conflict with Russia. "The existence of powerful nuclear forces outside
the Alliance also constitutes a significant factor which the Alliance has to
take into account if security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area are to be
maintained," the new strategic concept states.

Russia may also be alarmed by the ever-expanding nature of NATO. When the Berlin
Wall came down and Mikhail Gorbachev allowed Germany to become reunified, he did
so only after the Bush Administration promised that NATO would not push
eastward. So much for that promise. Not only has NATO brought in Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, it is now looking for more takers. "The
Alliance remains open to new members," the document states. "It expects to
extend further invitations in coming years to nations willing and able to assume
responsibilities and obligations of membership."

From Moscow's perspective, this must look ominous, as NATO creeps closer and
closer to Russia's borders. And it is especially foreboding, since NATO is still
clinging to its nuclear first-strike doctrine. "To protect peace and to prevent
war or any kind of coercion, the Alliance will maintain for the foreseeable
future an appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces based in Europe. .
 . The Alliance's conventional forces alone cannot ensure credible deterrence.
Nuclear weapons make a unique contribution in rendering the risks of aggression
against the Alliance incalculable and unacceptable."

FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of the arms companies, the expansion of NATO means money in
the bank. Any country that joins NATO is urged to commit to spending at least 3
percent of its budget on the military. While we here in the United States might
view that as a pittance, for many countries--including Poland, Hungary, and the
Czech Republic--getting to this level will not be easy, nor will it be a
rational allocation of resources. Each country's military must be compatible
with NATO's forces. This usually translates into contracts for the likes of
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Brown and Root.

U.S. arms companies stand to gain $35 billion over the next ten years as a
result of NATO expansion, William Hartung of the World Policy Institute pointed
out in these pages last year (see "NATO Boondoggle," May 1998). No wonder, then,
that corporations were pleased to cough up
money for the Washington summit. "Boeing, TRW, and United Technologies .. .
donated $250,000 each," Joel Brinkley reported in The New York Times. "Intelsat,
Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon donated $50,000 to $100,000 each"

Brinkley pointed out the direct connection between some of these companies and
NATO's war in Yugoslavia: "Boeing and Raytheon produce the cruise missiles that
have devastated Belgrade; Raytheon also makes HARM anti-radar missiles, while
Boeing makes the Apache helicopter. Northrop Grumman is one of the leading
producers of jet fighters and other warplanes. Like other defense contractors,
they do business not just with the Pentagon, but with most of the defense
ministries of NATO."

From its inception, NATO may have been as much about preserving Europe as a
place for U.S. corporations to turn a profit as it was about deterring Soviet
expansionism. And now without a Soviet Union as a justification, the
profiteering purpose seems all the more brazen.

IF NATO EVER had a legitimate purpose, that purpose has long since passed. The
Soviet Union has vanished. NATO should vanish, too. It has arrogated to itself
vast new global interventionary powers that rightly belong to the United
Nations. It has tested these powers already in Yugoslavia and has failed
miserably. It is antagonizing Russia and threatening to refrost the Cold War.
And it is still making the old and reckless threat of nuclear attack.

We need to recognize that NATO is a danger to peace. If we really want peace, we
should urge our elected officials to give NATO the hook. In April in Washington,
we heard the dreary encore of a lousy concert. The last thing we need is to send
NATO on a world tour.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
'No wonder twelve big military manufacturers have ponied up $250,000 each to
underwrite NATO's big shindig in Washington. How convenient to meet the leaders
of NATO "democracies" and sell them more weapons of mass destruction.'--Russell
Mokhiber, author of 'Corporate Predators: The Hunt for Mega-Profits and the
Attack on Democracy'

This page, and all contents, are Copyright � 1999 by The Progressive,  Madison,
WI.
- - - -
The US Nuclear Arsenal - A Terribly Costly Legacy

Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, maintaining the U.S. nuclear
arsenal of over 10,000 strategic warheads (of which 7,200 are operational)
remains an enormously expensive proposition. Movement towards deep reductions or
elimination of the U.S. nuclear stockpile could save tens of billions of dollars
annually. Even modest steps like stopping procurement of Trident II
submarine-launched ballistic missiles could save taxpayers hundreds of millions
of dollars annually.

Below are a few examples of the costs of our current nuclear arsenal:

1) Costs Since 1940 (to build, deploy, maintain, cleanup) $5.6 trillion (<#11)

2) Current Annual Costs, total U.S. nuclear arsenal $35 billion (<#22)

3) Annual Costs of Stockpile Stewardship Program (a Department of Energy program
to maintain the existing nuclear stockpile and develop new nuclear warheads)
$4.5 billion (<#33)

4) Cost of additional Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles (in FY
2000 budget, produced by Lockheed Martin) $535 million (<#44)

5) Cost of maintaining 550 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles
(1997-2012, contract to TRW, Inc.) $3.4 billion (<#55)

6) Estimated costs of environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons research,
testing, and production
sites $227-410 billion (<#66)

1. Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution, 1998), p. 4  ($5.5 trillion for 1940-1996, plus $35 billion per
year for 1997-1999).

2. Schwartz, Atomic Audit, op. cit., p. 1; includes $25 billion for directly
maintaining the arsenal plus $10 billion for associated costs of clean-up,
missile defense, and victim compensation.

3. Greg Mello, Andrew Lichterman, and William Weida, "The Stockpile Stewardship
Charade," Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 1999, available at
www.nap.edu/issues/15.3/mello.ht m.

4. Conference report on the F.Y. 2000 Department of Defense budget. Data
supplied by the Center on Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

5. Robert S. Norris and William M. Arkin, Natural Resources Defense Council
"U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces, End of 1998," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
January/February 1999.

6. Atomic Audit, op cit., Chapter 6, p. 355 (extrapolated from Dept. of Energy
estimates).

William D. Hartung--World Policy Institute--65 Fifth Ave. Suite 413
New York, NY 10003--(212)-229-5808, ext. 106--(212)-229-5579 (fax)
<mailto:hartung@newschool.edu
http://www.zmag.org/Bulletins/pnarcost.htm 11-22-99