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By Rick Rozoff (about the author)
Become a Fan (12 fans) -- Page 4 of 5 page(s)
"The radar in turn will be a component of the integrated system of the anti-missile shield alongside the interceptor missiles deployed in Alaska.
"[M]ore than ten countries are involved in the formation of the US anti-missile shield, including Australia, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic Denmark, France, Japan, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Taiwan and Ukraine."
All of the above are NATO members or partners except for India and Taiwan - it would be too overt a challenge to China to formalize partnerships with them - but the latter two are also being progressively integrated into the US/NATO international nexus.
This past September the Pentagon began its first-ever permanent military deployment in Israel, to man an X-Band missile radar site with a range of 1,240 miles; that is, able to operate throughout the Middle East and into Southern Russia.
In addition, outgoing US Missile Defense Agency director Lt Gen Henry Obering has over the past eighteen months either alluded to or been accused of laying plans for deploying Star Wars missile and radar bases in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine.
At the last summit of NATO in Bucharest, Romania in April of last year, all 26 member states endorsed US missile system plans in Poland and the Czech Republic.
That support was reiterated at a NATO defense ministers meeting last November (with the attendance of the military chiefs of over sixty nations, over a third of the countries of the world) and the following month at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, evoking this response from Russia Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov:
"The deployment of a U.S. missile shield in central Europe would disrupt the strategic balance among the world's nuclear powers."
With the upcoming NATO sixtieth anniversary summit on April 3-4 of this year, and with the incoming Obama
administration naming former Bush administration NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones as its National
Security Adviser, all indications are that US and allied missile plans for Europe may expand yet further.
While in Prague three weeks ago California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Strategic Forces Subcommittee, was described by the Czech News Agency as having "long
been demanding that the system protecting the USA and its allies against possible hostile missiles be fully included in the NATO complex of defence."
The same agency reported the previous month that "Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek..said the approval of the treaties would crucially influence the defence capability of NATO."
And Polish Minister of Defense Radoslav Sikorski said that the elements of the air defense shield which will be deployed in Poland will become part of the air defense shield of the entire NATO bloc.
A sentiment shared by NATO Spokesman James Appathurai last April in also calling for the integration and
expansion of the US interceptor sites into a broader, continent-wide Alliance system.
Even more ominously, last month current NATO Supreme Allied Commander General John Bantz Craddock affirmed:
"[T]he fact is there is strategic need and advantage for nuclear weapons....The alliance has made the
decision to have them. There has been no debate to retrograde them out."
And in reference to the 400 U.S. B-61 tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in several NATO countries, including Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom, a Pentagon report released on December 8, 2008 stated:
Become a Fan (12 fans) -- Page 4 of 5 page(s)
"[M]ore than ten countries are involved in the formation of the US anti-missile shield, including Australia, Britain, Germany, the Czech Republic Denmark, France, Japan, India, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Taiwan and Ukraine."
All of the above are NATO members or partners except for India and Taiwan - it would be too overt a challenge to China to formalize partnerships with them - but the latter two are also being progressively integrated into the US/NATO international nexus.
This past September the Pentagon began its first-ever permanent military deployment in Israel, to man an X-Band missile radar site with a range of 1,240 miles; that is, able to operate throughout the Middle East and into Southern Russia.
In addition, outgoing US Missile Defense Agency director Lt Gen Henry Obering has over the past eighteen months either alluded to or been accused of laying plans for deploying Star Wars missile and radar bases in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Ukraine.
At the last summit of NATO in Bucharest, Romania in April of last year, all 26 member states endorsed US missile system plans in Poland and the Czech Republic.
That support was reiterated at a NATO defense ministers meeting last November (with the attendance of the military chiefs of over sixty nations, over a third of the countries of the world) and the following month at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, evoking this response from Russia Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov:
"The deployment of a U.S. missile shield in central Europe would disrupt the strategic balance among the world's nuclear powers."
With the upcoming NATO sixtieth anniversary summit on April 3-4 of this year, and with the incoming Obama
administration naming former Bush administration NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Jones as its National
Security Adviser, all indications are that US and allied missile plans for Europe may expand yet further.
While in Prague three weeks ago California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, chairwoman of the House of Representatives Strategic Forces Subcommittee, was described by the Czech News Agency as having "long
been demanding that the system protecting the USA and its allies against possible hostile missiles be fully included in the NATO complex of defence."
The same agency reported the previous month that "Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek..said the approval of the treaties would crucially influence the defence capability of NATO."
And Polish Minister of Defense Radoslav Sikorski said that the elements of the air defense shield which will be deployed in Poland will become part of the air defense shield of the entire NATO bloc.
A sentiment shared by NATO Spokesman James Appathurai last April in also calling for the integration and
expansion of the US interceptor sites into a broader, continent-wide Alliance system.
Even more ominously, last month current NATO Supreme Allied Commander General John Bantz Craddock affirmed:
"[T]he fact is there is strategic need and advantage for nuclear weapons....The alliance has made the
decision to have them. There has been no debate to retrograde them out."
And in reference to the 400 U.S. B-61 tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in several NATO countries, including Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom, a Pentagon report released on December 8, 2008 stated:
Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years.
He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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