By Bruce Gagnon, edited by Chuck Baynton
The latest news is that Romania will be hosting the U.S. Army’s ground-based “missile defense” systems. Russia is not pleased with this development. These same Army Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) systems have been deployed in Japan and South Korea and will be deployed in Taiwan, continuing US military encirclement of China.
The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), already in the Persian Gulf and soon to be based on destroyers in the South China Sea and elsewhere, has a range of 500 kilometers but can be enhanced for longer distances. It was used by the U.S. Navy to destroy a satellite 130 miles above the Pacific 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…traveling at incredible speeds,” Mullen said. Translation: the SM-3 also has anti-satellite 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.
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 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?”
Lynn, in a January 21 speech, demanded that Congress “put the Defense Department on a permanent footing to … (maintain) 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. From that follows the likelihood that no effective arms control treaties will be negotiated during this administration.
(Parts of this were written by Rick Rozoff in a piece called U.S. Extends Missile Buildup From Poland And Taiwan To Persian Gulf)
