Milllennium: status and vision

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2002 by Douglas Mattern

It seems it was only yesterday that millennium celebrations around the world were expressing optimism for a new age. Yet already that hopeful mood has changed to disappointment, trepidation, and, in much of the developing world, despair. Furthermore, as we witness the latest conflicts in the Middle East, the world seems haunted by the same ubiquitous violence as in the previous century--the most violent in human history.

No doubt it was an unwarranted hopefulness that led so many to imagine that, by crossing an arbitrary and mythical line in time, humanity would suddenly acquire the ability to leave troubles behind and start fresh with a new beginning. But it appears to have surprised many of the most thoughtful of us that matters would become so much worse so quickly and that rejected concepts left behind would suddenly make a comeback.

Today we look around us to discover trouble growing on a number of fronts. The risk of nuclear as well as conventional war has increased. Environmental degradation is worse than ever before. The gap between haves and have nots grows wider. And through it all is woven the irony of an expanding religious fanaticism in an age of rapidly accumulating scientific discoveries.

Here in the early dawn of our new century, the world remains not only saturated with nuclear weapons but also affected by a return of the Cold War mentality. We have recidivistic national policies, particularly with the United States, and new countries in the nuclear club. Meanwhile, the United States and Russia maintain the Cold War policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). This means we continue to live every day under the threat of nuclear incineration, by accident or design, with only a thirty-minute warning after missile launch. MAD is the ultimate suicide bomber pact.

The weapons industry has so much influence on U.S. politicians through massive campaign donations that it gets just about everything it wants. This includes a $393 billion military budget for fiscal 2003 that, according to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., is equal to the military budgets of the next largest fifteen countries combined. In concert with this, the Bush administration, ignoring world opinion, bas scrapped the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to proceed with the son of the Star Wars antimissile scheme. And the Pentagon's secret Nuclear Policy Review (NPR), ordered by George W. Bush and his team of reconstituted Cold Warriors, includes a nuclear hit list of seven target countries. NPR further calls for the incorporation of nuclear capability into many conventional systems now under development and recommends placing nuclear warheads on cruise missiles.

In July 2002 the Los Angeles Times published details of another secret document that provides further evidence of Pentagon war planning. The Pentagon's document "Defense Planning Guidance" for 2004 to 2009 calls on the military services to develop the capability to launch "unwarned" preemptive strikes. This is the new doctrine that President Bush detailed in his address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on June 1, 2002. The five-year program places emphasis on "high-volume precision strikes" and calls for laser and microwave-powered weapons as well as nuclear-tipped "bunker buster" bombs.

On September 21, 2002, the Bush administration presented to Congress a comprehensive foreign policy document entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States." This document lays out a strategy for pre-emptive military action against any country the United States deems hostile.

No nation will be allowed to challenge the military supremacy of the United States. Bush contends, "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." The new world empire has spoken!

This planned development of new weapons of mass destruction prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the minute hand of its famous "Doomsday Clock" up from nine to seven minutes to midnight. George A. Lopez, chair of the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, which publishes the bulletin, states: "Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces."

Seven minutes before midnight is exactly where the clock was set when it first appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists back in 1947. This is another indication that little has changed in a world where more than thirty thousand nuclear weapons are stockpiled.

And the situation regarding conventional war is no better. On July 12, 2002, members of the United Nations Security Council capitulated to Bush by passing a resolution exempting U.S. military personnel from prosecution by the new International Criminal Court (ICC). The United States accomplished this by threatening to withdraw its money and support to UN peacekeeping operations if the United States didn't get its way. Now, apparently without fear of prosecution, the United States can continue to use cluster bombs at will and more B-52 saturation bombing on small and mostly impoverished countries.