http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090204/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iran

US puzzled by Iran's rejection of badminton team
Buzz Up Send
Email IM Share
Digg Facebook Newsvine del.icio.us Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 4, 3:05 pm ET
Featured Topics: Barack Obama Presidential Transition AFP/File – Iranian technicians remove a container of radioactive uranium from the Uranium Conversion Facilities …
Slideshow: Iran Nuclear Issues Play Video Iran Video: Pakistan frees nuclear weapons proliferator AP Play Video Iran Video: Missing in Iran FOX News WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Wednesday expressed disappointment with Iran's refusal to issue visas for an American badminton team and said it did not bode well for possible similar outreach programs in the future.

As the administration continues with a broad review of U.S. policy on Iran that may include the appointment of a special envoy and direct contacts with Iranian officials, the State Department said Tehran's batdown of what some have termed "shuttlecock diplomacy" was troubling.

"This is a very unfortunate situation," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters, adding that the U.S. had not received any official notification of the reason for the visa refusal. He noted that both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton remained committed to engaging with Iran under the proper circumstances.

"It's not a good sign," Wood said. "You know, as the secretary and others have said, when the Iranians unclench that fist, there will be a hand waiting to greet them."

Obama has signaled a willingness for dialogue with Iran, particularly over the nuclear program that U.S. officials believe is aimed at developing an atomic weapon. On Wednesday, senior diplomats from the six countries leading the drive to resolve those concerns met in Germany and welcomed the new U.S. approach.

"The readiness of the new administration to reach out to Iran was explicitly welcomed by all," German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said after the session among officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. "We hope that this outstretched hand will not be seen as a sign of weakness in Tehran."

U.S. officials declined to draw any links between the failure of the badminton trip and other initiatives, but acknowledged that the visa refusal was problematic.

"It's hard to say what the Iranian motivation is here," Wood said. "I would just say that this is a people-to-people exchange program. We are very interested in trying to improve relations between the American people and the Iranian people and this is not a good step forward in terms of trying to promote people-to-people exchanges."

He said the badminton team, which had traveled to Dubai to pick up the visas, would return to the United States. He could not say whether the State Department would follow through on plans to issue visas for the Iranian national badminton team to come to the United States in July.

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the Islamic Revolution and hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

The badminton team's planned participation in an international tournament in Tehran was to have been the first educational, cultural or sports exchange between the United States and Iran under the Obama administration.

Under the Bush administration, more than 250 Iranian artists, athletes and medical professionals have participated in exchange programs in the United States since 2006. The U.S. has sent 32 athletes to Iran under a sports exchange program launched in 2007, and 75 Iranian athletes and coaches have visited the United States, State officials said.

However, in late December, the Bush administration expressed grave concern about the detention and interrogation in Iran of a prominent American academic who was participating in an exchange. The incident led the National Academies of Science to suspend educational exchanges with Iranian institutions.

Iran's foreign ministry said the women's team from USA Badminton, which had been invited to the tournament by the Iranian Badminton Federation, would not be allowed to play due to a "lack of enough time to process" the applications. It was not clear when Iran invited the 12-member team or when they had applied for their visas — usually a long bureaucratic process that is complicated for U.S. citizens by the lack of diplomatic relations.

USA Badminton said in a statement, however, said all members of the team had completed their visa applications more than two months ago "in plenty of time to meet all deadlines."

"We were told our visas had been approved and were asked to secure them in Dubai," said the organization's chief executive officer Dan Cloppas. "It's unfortunate that we will not be able to compete and sincerely hope we will be extended another invitation in the near future."

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/04/russia-says-it-wants-to-help-us-in-afghanistan-6/

Britain seeks new talks on nuclear disarmament

Russia says it wants to help US in Afghanistan

Russia's Medvedev appears to link help in Afghanistan to US policy changes

VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
AP News

Feb 04, 2009 15:56 EST

President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies wanted to cooperate with the United States on stabilizing Afghanistan but he appeared to link any help to changes in Western policy.

Saying Moscow and its allies "are ready for full-fledged, comprehensive cooperation," the Russian leader seemed to imply that Moscow's help on Afghanistan was contingent on a broader list of changes it wants from the new U.S. administration.

These include a halt to NATO enlargement in Europe and the cancellation of plans for a U.S. missile-defense system on Russia's western borders.

Medvedev spoke less than a day after Kyrgyzstan got billions in new Russian aid and announced it was evicting the U.S. from an air base key to Afghan operations. His mix of conciliatory language and implicit demand for U.S. concessions may represent a risky attempt to pursue conflicting strategic goals at a moment when U.S. policy on Afghanistan is being remade by President Barack Obama.

Russia has long been irritated by the U.S. military presence in what is considers its natural areas of influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Kremlin is widely believed to be behind the move against the U.S. by Kyrgyzstan's government, which submitted a draft bill to parliament Wednesday that would close the Manas air base.

But Moscow, which fought its own bloody and unsuccessful 10-year war to control Afghanistan, also does not want the country's instability spreading north toward Russia. The Kremlin has said it is open to aiding U.S. and NATO efforts in Afghanistan by helping to find alternatives to Pakistani supply lines that are increasingly threatened by militant attacks.

Medvedev spoke after a meeting of presidents from the seven-member Collective Security Treaty Organization — a loose, Moscow-dominated alliance made up of Kyrgyzstan and other ex-Soviet states. The group announced the creation of a joint rapid-reaction force that would boost the military dimension of an alliance that has until now served mostly as a forum for security consultations.

"Russia and other CSTO members are ready for full-fledged, comprehensive cooperation with the United States and other coalition members in fighting terrorism in the region," Medvedev told reporters. "This fight must be comprehensive and include both military and political components. Only in this case will there be a chance to succeed."

He said Obama was right in making Afghanistan's stability a priority, but he also appeared to criticize U.S. efforts there, saying it would be impossible to defeat terrorism only using military means.

"It is necessary to form a full-fledged political system, keeping in mind, cultural and historic traditions. Democracy cannot be forced upon (a country). It must grow from within," he said. "It's not the number of bases that matters. It would be good if that would help reduce the number of terrorists, but the fight against terrorism is not limited to building up military forces."

Russia announced a $2.15 billion aid package for Kyrgyzstan Tuesday hours before Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev's statement about ending the U.S. presence. Russian officials have denied any connection between the two.

Losing Manas would pose a serious challenge to Obama's plan to send up to 30,000 more American forces into Afghanistan this year to fighting surging Taliban and al-Qaida violence.

The United States set up Manas and a base in neighboring Uzbekistan after the September 2001 attacks to back operations in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan expelled U.S. troops from the base on its territory in 2005 in a dispute over human rights issues, leaving Manas as the only U.S. military facility in the immediate region.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said the U.S. had not agreed to any new arrangement at Manas and that Kyrgyz officials had not notified U.S. officials about ending U.S. access.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman, meanwhile, said that about 1,000 U.S. troops — and dozens each of French and Spanish — are working at the base to move 15,000 people and 500 tons of cargo monthly through the facility for the Afghan campaign.

"Kyrgyzstan has been a good ally. And we certainly appreciate the arrangement that we have with them right now," Whitman told reporters. "The base does contribute to the security and stability of Central Asia and Afghanistan."

Use of the facility is laid out in a July 2006 agreement that requires the United States. to pay $17.4 million a year, renewable each year through July 2011 — and with the option by either side to back out of the agreement with 180 days notice.

Total U.S. assistance to the country is about $150 million a year for a range of help, including health, police, human rights and economic programs.

___

Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this report .

Source: AP News

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/04/britain-seeks-new-talks-on-nuclear-disarmament/

Britain seeks new talks on nuclear disarmament between 5 world powers

Staff
AP News

Feb 04, 2009 14:27 EST

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband says he wants major world powers to begin new talks aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

The British diplomatic chief says he hopes countries can agree on an international legal framework to reduce their arsenals.

Miliband says tougher anti-proliferation safeguards are also needed. Britain is among the Western countries that suspect Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon.

He said Wednesday that he hopes that the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France can begin talks aimed at the eventual elimination of all nuclear arsenals.

Miliband proposed a five-nation conference later this year to discuss how to work toward the goal.

Source: AP News

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/02/04/us-plan-to-arm-militias-scares-some-in-afghanistan/

US plan to arm militias scares some in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, some fear a US plan to arm militias against Taliban could spawn tribal armies

KATHY GANNON
AP News

Feb 04, 2009 06:03 EST

A U.S.-backed plan to create militias and give them guns to fight the Taliban is drawing criticism from local authorities in areas where the first units are being rolled out, raising questions as to whether the effort can succeed in Afghanistan.

The militias have been compared to the U.S.-fostered Awakening Councils in Iraq, which have often been credited with reducing violence there, and are similar to neighboring Pakistan's tribal armies which also have been touted as a success.

On Saturday, Afghanistan's interior minister announced the program had begun, and that the United States would be paying for all aspects, including buying Kalashnikov automatic rifles for members of the Afghan Public Protection Force.

One skeptical Afghan official said only criminals would join because most citizens wouldn't want to face the Taliban in combat. And critics question the wisdom of handing out weapons to Afghans when the government and U.N. have been trying to reduce the number of arms in the country. They fear the plan could stoke rivalries between ethnic groups with a bloody past.

"One of the causes of violence in Afghanistan is because most people do not give up their weapons. Now you want to again give weapons to the villages?" said Mohammed Hussain Fahimi, the deputy of the provincial council in Wardak, where officials say the units will be first deployed. "We never learn our lessons."

Wardak lies southwest of the capital of Kabul and is increasingly falling under Taliban control, illustrating the growing influence of the Islamic insurgents in the years since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Fahimi was one of several government officials and residents interviewed in Wardak by The Associated Press last week, all of whom expressed skepticism about the plan.

President Barack Obama has said stabilizing Afghanistan will be a U.S. priority and plans to nearly double the number of American troops from the roughly 34,000 in the country today.

He has not commented on the militia plan, but it has been endorsed by Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former top commander in Iraq whose outreach to Sunni sheiks helped oust militants from key areas and sharply decreased attacks.

Officials say the force will be guarding highways, schools, clinics and other government institutions. It is still not clear how large and widespread the militias will be.

Col. Greg Julian, the U.S. military's spokesman in Afghanistan, said the United States will mentor, train and give back-up to the new village forces, but Afghanistan's interior ministry is in charge of the program.

While Iraq's Awakening Councils are made up along tribal lines, officials say the militias in Afghanistan are to be drawn up by the local councils who are being told to make their choices based on character, not tribal affiliations.

Yet few Afghans believed tribal loyalties can be avoided, with many fearful the new force would fall under the control of local warlords who could even join with the Taliban.

Another council member, Mohammed Mukhlis, predicted only thieves and criminals would join the force, mostly because no one would risk being killed by the Taliban to defend the discredited government.

"For the last seven years, the government didn't do anything for the nation, so people in the districts don't trust them," he said.

Mukhlis's home of Saydabad will be one of the first areas to get the militias he opposes. Overrun by Taliban, Mukhlis can no longer go to his home and has moved to a walled compound closer to Kabul.

"Right now I am safe here, but I don't know if in another few months I will have to move again, even closer to Kabul, to escape Taliban," he said.

Wrangling by Afghanistan's various non-Pashtun ethnic groups has also marred the establishment of the village militias, officials said.

The tribes in Afghanistan's east and south — where the militias will be needed the most — are almost exclusively Pashtun, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan.

Non-Pashtuns balk at arming ethnic Pashtuns while disarming the rest of the country.

Saleh Mohammed Registani, an ethnic Tajik member of parliament, warned that a newly armed Pashtun militia would create deeper fissures between Afghanistan's Pashtun and non-Pashtun people, who are struggling to heal from decades of retaliatory attacks and discrimination.

"If this goes ahead, the south will become a no-go place for non-Pashtuns and it will encourage other people to find weapons to defend themselves," Registani said. "As a non-Pashtun, if I know someone has weapons, I won't go there. These militias will eventually come together with Taliban because they are all Pashtuns and they will not fight against each other."

History also suggests the militias may not work.

In the 1980s, the communist government of President Najibullah, besieged by U.S.-backed mujahedeen fighters, put the job of securing villages in the hands of village militias. That backfired because villagers, frustrated by the heavy-handedness of the militias, turned to the mujahedeen for security.

The United Nations has been struggling since the collapse of the Taliban to disarm Afghanistan's myriad militias, many of the gunmen loyal to warlords. The U.N. has spent millions of dollars on its Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration program, which was launched within months of the Taliban's ouster — although some say it really got going two years late.

The plan included collecting weapons and integrating warlords' private militias into army and police units. But while thousands of pieces of weaponry have been handed in, much of it is said to be antiquated. Many warlords, meanwhile, have retained their militias.

"When you give everyone weapons, everyone will think they are king," said Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "It's not just a mistake, it is stupid."

Joanna Nathan, an Afghan analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, called the militias a "quick fix" to a deteriorating security situation by both the international forces and the government of President Hamid Karzai.

A similar project in 2006 armed thousands of "auxiliary police." It was soon disbanded, Nathan said, with a third joining the police and the rest disappearing — along with their weapons.

"It's a constant cycle of quick fixes," she said.

Part the problem is the regular turnover of international officials who want to show some improvement during their watch and offer up new proposals.

"Every few years, another set of foreigners come in and they all need to demonstrate real change in their time."

Nathan said money and training should be invested in Afghanistan's police as the "absolute priority at the district level."

She also said there should be an effort at "really cleaning up the Interior Ministry."

"We are going to have to grit our teeth and focus on the long term," Nathan added. "There are no quick solutions."

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/02/06/kyrgyzstan-base-closure-decision-final/

Kyrgyzstan Base Closure Decision ‘Final’
US Scrambles to Find Alternatives: Can Tajikistan Fill the Void?
Posted February 6, 2009

While the United States has continued to express hope that it would retain its base outside of Bishkek, the government of Kyrgyzstan has reiterated that their decision to oust the US from the base is final, and that there are no discussions on them keeping the base.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has expressed “regret” at the decision, and the United States is left scrambling to try to find other alternatives to the increasingly important overland supply route to Afghanistan. Russia has said they will cooperate, as has Tajikistan which has said it would allow humanitarian supplies into Afghanistan.

Many fingers have been pointed at Russia over the base closure, with reports that they offered Kyrgyzstan an enormous amount of aid to oust the US. Russia has been aiming at creating a military alliance in Central Asia called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The alliance will include both Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Belarus, giving them effective control over the northern border of Afghanistan.

Related Stories

http://www.slate.com/id/2210084/

http://www.slate.com/id/2210084/

HOME / politics: Who's winning, who's losing, and why.
Elizabeth Cheney, Bush Legal Counsel
What a 1988 college thesis by the former vice president's daughter tells us about the Bush presidency.
By Zac Frank
Posted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, at 1:00 PM ET
When I worked at the library at Colorado College, I quickly discovered the job had few perks. The free book loans on demand were little better than subprime mortgages when you realized anyone could get them. The only "exclusive" benefit was the chance to keep manuscripts the library threw out. Usually, I had a limited selection of titles, like Proceedings From the Third Workshop on Genetics of Bark Beetles and Associated Micro-Organisms. But occasionally I stumbled across a gem. Rummaging through a bin of discarded books one day, I saw an unusual spine: "CHENEY The Evolution of Presidential War Powers 1988."

In 1988, while Dick Cheney was Wyoming's sole representative in the House of Representatives, his daughter's senior thesis was quietly published in Colorado Springs. The 125-page treatise argued that, constitutionally and historically, presidents have virtually unchecked powers in war. Thirteen years before her father became vice president, she had symbolically authored the first legal memorandum of the Bush administration, laying out the same arguments that would eventually justify Guantanamo and extraordinary rendition, wiretapping of American citizens, and, broadly, the unitary theory of the executive that shaped the Bush presidency.

PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
SINGLE PAGEYahoo! Buzz FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSEThe Eisenhower Executive Office Building may be bereft of Dick Cheney, but his steadfast efforts to consolidate power around the president have left the scales of power tipped toward the executive. Then there is the force of Cheney's grim, blunt personality, felt even as he attended the inauguration in a wheelchair: His name will stand for the ideas he promoted well into the future, and his daughter's thesis offers an eerily prescient image of the presidency as Cheney believed it should be.

Though less known to the public than her sister, Mary, arguably the most prominent gay Republican, Elizabeth is the elder daughter of Dick and Lynne Cheney. After graduating from Colorado College, she took a job in the State Department before going to law school, and was eventually appointed as one of the chief diplomats for the Middle East in 2002.

Elizabeth Cheney begins her survey at the Constitutional Convention. Contrary to today's middle-school mythology, she tells us, fear of enabling a tyrannical monarch was not foremost in the Founding Fathers' minds. Rather, they did not want to repeat the failure of the Continental Congress' attempts to manage the war for independence. Our constitutional architects, she argues, believed they could not "foresee every possible future use of American armed forces" and, as a result, wanted a commander in chief endowed with great latitude in wartime.

Share this article on DiggBuzz up!Share this article on BuzzFor Cheney, Thomas Jefferson established the path presidents would and should take when dealing with Congress. In engaging American warships against Barbary pirates, Jefferson "chose to inform Congress of his actions at his own convenience." When he did, he fabricated an attack on an American ship to secure their support.

Cheney sides with the president whenever he clashes with Congress over war powers. Following an escalation in the Vietnam War ordered by Lyndon Johnson, she notes, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based on questionable information, to provide cover for the president. Nevertheless, both he and Richard Nixon after him believed that the resolution provided no "legal basis for their action because they presumed all the authorization they needed was in the Commander and Chief [sic] clause."

Time and again, Cheney contends that in times of war, presidents since Washington have justifiably redefined their authority to preserve the country, and she is scornful of any who challenge that authority. As Congress challenged presidential authority toward the end of Vietnam, she casts them as scapegoating the executive. "As public support dwindled so did congressional willingness to accept responsibility," she writes, "Congress set about to blame the only two men who couldn't escape responsibility." For someone who has vested so much faith in executive wisdom, she is surprisingly unwilling to hold it accountable.

zzzzzzzzzzzz

Elizabeth Cheney, Bush Legal Counsel
What a 1988 college thesis by the former vice president's daughter tells us about the Bush presidency.
By Zac Frank
Posted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, at 1:00 PM ET
(Continued from page 1)

PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
SINGLE PAGEYahoo! Buzz FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSEFrom beginning to end, it's clear that Cheney looks upon the model of the powerful executive approvingly. Her most forceful conclusion is that the Founders "certainly did not intend, nor does history substantiate, the idea that Congress should legislate specific limits on the President's power." To ensure American security, it needs to recognize that the "nature of military and foreign policy demand the 'unity of a singular Executive.' "

One cannot help but see echoes of this conclusion in the administration in which her father was so influential. The Bush White House repeatedly embraced the philosophy of acting first and asking for approval later, especially on issues that involved the power of the purse. They embraced a position that Cheney found repeatedly in history: "The president's duty to protect national security sometimes come before his responsibility to keep Congress informed."

This crusade against oversight was not new to Dick Cheney. In November of 1987, just six months before Elizabeth submitted her thesis, a report he commissioned following the Iran-Contra affair argued that "[c]ongressional actions to limit the president in this area therefore should be reviewed with a considerable degree of skepticism."

For Cheney, apparently, the Constitution and rule of law are no more of a check on this unitary power than Congress. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and imposition of military tribunals present no legal dilemma to her. "To assert that the Constitution is a shield of protection 'for all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances,' " she writes, "is to deny the nation the right of self-preservation. There have been and will be times in the experience of the country when constitutional provisions will of necessity be suspended to guarantee the survival of our democracy." The Supreme Court's chief justice was wrong in declaring his actions illegal in Ex Parte Merryman because his power "was actually an assertion of the power of the people."* How he divined that will of the people, Cheney does not explain.

On the first page of her paper, above a neat signature in blue ink, she attests, "On my honor I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this thesis." Her father may not have written her thesis, but before and after its publication, he held unwaveringly to its ideas. As a report on an exit interview the outgoing vice president gave with CBS notes:

While Cheney could not say whether any action by a president in wartime should be considered "legal," he pointed to historic precedents for presidents taking extra-legal measures in order, he said, to protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Share this article on DiggBuzz up!Share this article on BuzzThat statement could well have been printed on the cover of his daughter's thesis.

Correction, Jan. 30, 2009: This article originally referred to Ex Parte Merryman as a Supreme Court case. It was a circuit court order written by Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who was sitting on the circuit court at the time. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2423

Commentary
The Offensive Side of Missile Defense
January 26, 2009
Mike Moore

William Lynn, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of Defense, vowed to make the Pentagon’s missile defense system “cost-effective” during his confirmation hearing earlier this month before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Indeed, missile defense strikes a lot of national security analysts as a frightful waste of money.

Money is not the central issue, though. The pros and cons of missile defense are endlessly complex, and men and women in the national security community understand these subtleties. Some are pro-missile defense; some are not; others say the current system won’t work, but another kind would. Still others question the assumption that a rogue nation would ever send a nuclear-armed missile our way—with its return address effectively written all over it—knowing that U.S. retaliation would be swift and devastating. Vans or trucks would be a more likely means of delivery, with weapons components smuggled in and assembled in garages.

Such subtleties are missing from the manner in which missile defense advocates market their cause. Case in point: the teaser for the Heritage Foundation’s forthcoming documentary film, 33 Minutes, part of a new and extensive pro-missile defense campaign. The teaser features Arabic music, missile launches, and nuclear explosions. At one point we watch a teeming-with-vitality montage of New York City street life. “Less than 33 minutes away,” intones Dr. Edwin Feulner, president of Heritage, “their whole city, their whole life could be annihilated.”

Scare tactics have long been used to persuade the American people to side with missile defense. During the 1980s, it was the Soviet Union that was threatening nuclear Armageddon; now it is rogue nations and even terrorists. China, which for years has supported the U.S. economy by helping to “cover” our annual budget deficits through the purchase of hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury notes, is depicted as a Missile Menace. The Middle Kingdom, says Frank Gaffney, a hugely influential missile defense advocate, “is inexorably building up ever-larger numbers of missiles. Increasingly, these are capable not only of intimidating Taiwan but also of attacking the United States.”

Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, and the Heritage Foundation are not alone in championing ballistic missile defense: hardline think tanks favor it, as do many editorial writers, columnists, TV talking heads, and—for that matter—ordinary people. And why not? How could anything labeled “defense” be anything but a Good Thing?

In the real world, though, labels and promotional materials are often misleading. Missile defense is widely perceived elsewhere in the world, even by U.S. friends and allies, as dangerously provocative. The infrastructure for a ballistic missile defense system is, in large measure, the same as that needed for an offensive anti-satellite system.

Meanwhile, the United States is the only nation that says it intends to develop the means to militarily dominate space—according to international law the “province of all mankind.” Given that, U.S. missile-defense systems capable of offense look a little sinister, particularly in the light that the United States has vetoed, since 1981, any serious attempt to negotiate a treaty designed to prevent a space-related arms race.

What is the world’s hyperpower really up to? The cover of the March 12, 2001, issue of The New Republic said it best: “Missile defense isn’t really meant to protect America. It’s a tool for global dominance. And that’s why we need it.”

If missile defense systems can be made reliable, goes the argument, America’s ability to militarily intervene anywhere at any time will be greatly enhanced. War games have demonstrated time and again that the United States can be deterred from military intervention if the target state has the ability to retaliate with nuclear weapons. A workable missile defense system would cure that defect. As Lawrence F. Kaplan, the brilliant neoconservative author of The New Republic story, said: missile defense is mainly about the ability to “project” military force globally.

That is not an idiosyncratic observation. The link between missile defense and military intervention is part of the intellectual mix when national security experts get together behind closed doors. That insight needs to be part of the public discussion, too. Our propensity for military intervention—as in, for instance, Iraq—touches upon the very meaning of America.

Can anyone spell “global hegemony”?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mike Moore is Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, former editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and author of the book, Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------