AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

BUSH POSSIBLE NO-SHOW AT APEC MEETING IS A BIT OMINOUS!!??

According to Greg Sheridan, neocon commentator with ‘The Australian’, President Bush might well be a no show at the up-coming APEC meeting in Australia early next month. One can only assume that he has something better to do – like maybe conduct a war?!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392502811&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Thoughts?

Damian Lataan said...

Sorry for the late response.

It is a misnomer for one to assert that the US today is the worlds only ‘super power’. Power, contrary to the ideas of those that use the misnomer, is not measured purely by the size and power of the armaments operated by ones armed forces; there are many other variables that must also be considered, not least of which is the ability and resolve to use that available power. This inability to fully use the available power has been classically demonstrated three times by the US since the end of the Second World War; firstly in Korea, then in Vietnam and lately in Iraq. In all three cases the US, despite its potentially overwhelming military might, was unable to prevail and in one case, Vietnam, the ‘enemy’ prevailed, despite its comparative lack of power, over the US.

The reason for this has been a combination of fear and the existence of another power which is able to produce that fear. Truman feared the retribution of the combined communist world if he had allowed McArthur to have his way and nuke China during the Korean War. A string of Presidents could have told Ho Chi Minh to kiss Hanoi good bye with one bomb but they didn’t; again, because they feared the retribution of a combined communist world. During both of those periods the various nations of the communist world were having their own relationship problems but the use of an American nuclear weapon, even just one, on any of them would have united them against their common enemy – America.

Since the end of the so-called ‘Cold War’ the perception has been; one, that the US ‘won’ the Cold War and, two, that having ‘lost’ the Cold War, there was a ridiculous notion that Russia was not anymore in a position to wage nuclear war against the US. The problem here is that the US has misread the perceptions. Despite the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia still had, and always has had, the ability to launch an attack against the US. This means that the situation with regard to Mutually Assured Destruction in any war between the US and Russia had never really actually changed. But, because the perception had changed, it left the US with a superiority complex, a superiority complex which has now caused the US much strife as it shows yet again that not only is it unable to live up to the grand expectations that it has proclaimed for itself but it actually has lower values than those they attacked.

Recently, however, the US has woken up to the fact that Russia could, indeed, should it so choose, be a threat to the US; hence the missile defence system for the new NATO countries in Eastern Europe. The US claims that this new missile defence system is in place to protect Europe from Iranian attack but the Russians aren’t quite as dumb and gullible as many in the Western world are who believe this nonsense; Russia is very much aware of the true nature of the Iranian ‘nuclear threat’, after all, they are the ones building much of the plant for them.

This has now brought us full circle as far as Russia’s interest in Syria in concerned. Basically they are establishing a balancing power in the Middle East against US and Israeli hegemony. In short, we are back more or less where the world was in the Cold War years with both US and Russian powers now having client states in the Middle East.

Whether or not it will deter the US and/or Israel from attacking Iran and/or Syria remains to be seen.