The following articles were published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, July, 12th 2000. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au> Subscription rates on request. ****************************** NO to Star Wars Governments, political parties, peace and other organisations, and many individuals have voiced their protests against the Pentagon and the US military-industrial complex as an interceptor missile was test fired last week. It was part of the US preparations for an updated Star Wars missile program, its national missile defence (NMD) system or missile shield. The firing was the second failure out of three test firings so far, and even the one success has been charged with fraud by some of the participating scientists. However, these failures are not likely to deter the war-hawks in the Pentagon and the arms manufacturers who anticipate making trillions of dollars profit from the hugely expensive technology involved in the Star Wars project. Should the program be given the go-ahead by President Clinton or his successor, it will spark a new international arms race and far from making the world a safe place, it will revive an acute danger of a big war fought with the most destructive weapons ever devised, inevitably leading to the massive destruction of all nations. The governments of Russia and China have strongly denounced the test firings by the US authorities and have warned of the consequences. In a statement to "The Guardian", CPA President, Dr Hannah Middleton said: "We condemn the efforts by the US military- industrial complex to introduce another version of Star Wars. It is an offensive, not a defensive system because it is intended to allow the US to attack other countries with impunity. "The people of the USA will pay the $60 billion price tag for NMD in less services, less jobs, less rights. The people of the world will pay the price in billions spent on a new nuclear arms race, in the destruction of the international arms control regime, and in a wave of global insecurity and instability", Dr Middleton said. "Australia is complicit in this threat to the future of our planet and its peoples because the Howard Government is allowing the US intelligence facility at Pine Gap to support the NMD. "This new version of Star Wars is a weapon of Washington's new world order", Dr Middleton said. "It threatens every country that does not capitulate to the USA and it will undermine global and regional peace, security and stability. "Like so many others around the world, we believe it must be stopped. Our members must and will play their part in the international campaign which demands: `No new Stars Wars'", Dr Middleton said. Brereton statement The Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, Laurie Brereton, has called on the Howard Government to use next weekend's talks with US Defence Secretary William Cohen to urge a suspension of moves toward the deployment of its proposed national missile defence system. "While the failure of the latest $US100 million ballistic missile intercept test underlines the widespread doubts about the technical viability of NMD, it would be quite mistaken to think this is the end of the issue", Mr Brereton said. "On the contrary, the $US60 billion NMD program is likely to be a key strategic policy issue in the US Presidential election campaign and the proposed deployment will be the subject of continuing international controversy. A decision to push ahead with NMD clearly has the potential to derail progress towards disarmament and risks fuelling nuclear proliferation. "Such a deployment is prohibited by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which has long served as a keystone of <%-3>nuclear arms control. Russia has repeatedly said that it opposes amending the ABM Treaty to allow NMD and that it will walk away from key arms control agreements if deployment proceeds in violation of the Treaty. China has indicated it will respond to NMD deployment by increasing its strategic nuclear missile force. "The Howard Government has conspicuously declined to make any substantive criticism of NMD. Last year's AUSMIN Joint Communique records `Australia expressed its understanding of US plans to decide on deployment of a limited National Missile Defence to defend against potential threats from rogue states'." The Australian Senate has adopted a resolution urging the US Government not to proceed with a national missile defence system. A wide collective of peace, political and environmental organisations have conveyed their opposition. Representatives of the Greens, Democrats, Carmen Lawrence (ALP), People for Nuclear Disarmament, Anti-Bases Coalition, Australian Peace Committee (APC), Pax Christi, Friends of the Earth and the Environment Centre of WA and the Northern Territory signed a protest. Their message says that "The current National Missile Defence proposal and indeed, any proposal for ballistic missile defence, would be strategically destabilising, costly, and would fail to deliver the security it promises to the American people, while putting the rest of the world, as well as the US, at an increased risk of nuclear exchange." Listing other protests, a statement by the Australian Peace Committee (SA Branch) says that 50 US Nobel prizewinners have written to President Clinton asking him not to proceed with the NMD scheme. The United Nations Secretary-General, the European Union and the governments of Germany, France and Sweden have all spoken out strongly against the proposal. Irresponsibility The APC said in a statement: "The US test has been a gargantuan act of irresponsibility. It is demonstrating that [the US] will not be deterred by the persistent warnings made by almost every nation on earth, including some of its own closest allies, that this system is not only a violation of the [1972] ABM treaty but that it will set back nuclear arms control gains by decades and lead to an increased risk of nuclear war. Moves like this potentially endanger the whole planet." "The Australian Government must express its concern in the very strongest terms to US Defence Secretary, William Cohen, when he arrives shortly for talks in Sydney." ********************************************************************* 2. World against Star Wars At about the time of publication of this issue of "The Guardian", the US will have tested its latest "Star Wars" space technology. In the face of strong opposition from the governments of China and Russia, but with the enthusiastic applause of Tony Blair, the US seems determined to go ahead regardless. by Peter Mac Writing in the "People's Weekly World", Tim Wheeler says that the US Space Command plans to "control space in order to protect US interests and investments". Karl Grossman, media spokesperson for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and an investigative journalist says, "They call this a 'ballistic missile defence' but that is just the entering wedge. Their real aim is to dominate earth from space." Cost billions The ground-based Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), said Karl Grossman, is a full-fledged system of nuclear powered and nuclear armed space weapons that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars with a down-payment of $60 billion to be followed by billions more. "This will open up an arms race in space and eventually a war in space. Everybody is going to be the loser except Lockheed Martin. This is nothing short of astro-imperialism." Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at City University of New York told a protesting crowd in New York: "The time has come for us all to say `No' to the Star Wars system. No to BMD! Shut it down!" Faked test results Kaku cited a front page article in the March 7 <MI>New York Times" in which Dr Nira Schwartz, a former senior Star Wars engineer for TRW Corporation, exposed TRW's faking of test results to make it appear that anti-ballistic missiles successfully shot down a target ballistic missile. Other former employees corroborated her charges. Kaku told the New York demonstration, "We now know the test results were a fraud. This is $120 billion down a rathole." Russian response At a meeting in Moscow with Russia's President Putin, Clinton attempted to talk the Russian government into modifying the ABM treaty ratified in 1972 which limited use of space for such purposes. Mr Putin strongly denounced the US plan saying that the creation of the national missile shield is a "big strategic error that will only increase strategic threats to the US and Russia, as well as other states." The Russian government has made it clear that if Washington withdraws from the ABM treaty, Russia will cancel its obligations not only under the START treaties, but also under the treaty on elimination of medium and shorter-range missiles. A Russian Foreign Ministry statement severely criticised US industrial giants for seeking profits from new military orders, including those relating to the ABM defence system or the Star Wars program. While the Russian Duma recently ratified the long-stalled START II arms control agreement they added a clause that the treaty will be null and void if the US deploys BMD. China rejects A similarly strong rejection has been voiced by the government of China. Speaking at the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Huang Huikang, head of the Chinese delegation said: "Recently, a certain country has accelerated development and testing of an outer space weapon system, or the so-called Tactical Missile Defence (TMD), which risks intensification of an arms race in out space. Such as action is contradictory to the current trends and goes against established international principles. Outer space belongs to all mankind. Therefore, exploration and use of it should proceed on a peaceful basis and serve the economic, scientific and cultural development of all countries. The Chinese representative said that "In order to prohibit testing and using weapons in outer space, an international legal instrument should be negotiated and concluded immediately.'' Justification The US attempts to justify its Star Wars project by referring to the danger allegedly coming from "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Such suggestions are laughable. These states do not possess nuclear weapons and their industrial and technical development rules out any possibility that they could threaten the "security" of the United States either now or in the future. Putin rejected the US allegations about the "rogue states" saying that such a threat "is not going to emerge in the visible future." Michio Kaku the US scientist, also scorned the Pentagon's argument asking: "Who is really the rogue nation? What nation has wrecked the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty? What nation refuses to ratify the Treaty banning land mines? The only rogue nation is the United States of America!" Kaku denounced Star Wars as a grave violation of the 1972 anti- ballistic missile (ABM) treaty with the Soviet Union. "This is a plan to rule the world from outer space. These are not my words. The Pentagon makes no bones about it." Pre-emptive war During the Eisenhower administration the Pentagon appointed a task force to study the feasibility of launching a pre-emptive nuclear war on the USSR under the code name "Operation Off- tackle." The plan called for 735 US strategic bombers to hit the Soviet Union, pulverising the country with nuclear bombs. "This was more than just an option. [The then] Secretary of Defence James Forrestal actually recommended that the attack be carried out," said Kaku. Eisenhower had one question. "How many Soviet Bison and Bear bombers would survive the attack?" The Pentagon's reply: "We do not know. Enough of them might survive to destroy New York City or the Northeast of the US." Eisenhower decided the "window of opportunity" had closed. However, the Pentagon has never given up its Star Wars dreaming and has continued to develop an anti-missile defence system that would reduce US losses low enough to make a nuclear war "winnable". US threats Although Clinton was supposed to have made a decision for or against the missile program in June, he may be leaving a decision to the next US President. Vice President Al Gore is "cautious" and moving slowly on Star Wars but Texas Governor George W Bush the Republican Presidential candidate "would proceed with not one but two missile defence systems at the earliest possible date". In a speech last September laying out his foreign and military policy Bush said that if he is elected president, he would present the Russians with an ultimatum on changes in the ABM Treaty to permit the US to deploy Star Wars. "If Russia refuses the changes we propose, we will give prompt notice under provisions of the Treaty that we can no longer be a party to it," Bush said. Aim Meanwhile, a senior commander of the Russian armed forces, Gen Nikolai Zlenko, warned the Pentagon that Moscow is "well-informed about and alarmed at the USA's Alaska-based R&D and preparatory work on creating a new national ABM network." He said it was an "embryo of a powerful monitoring network which will control the whole world in a matter of 30 to 40 years with satellites and terrestrial radars able to spot any missile wherever it is launched whereas the other side will not enjoy such an advantage bound as it will be by the 1972 Treaty. "Moscow can and must do all to thwart US attempts to revise the treaty. Russia will never take part in and tolerate the gradual modernisation efforts of Star Wars weaponry," said Gen Zlenko. -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink