-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: @thequest.net Subject: What's This About World War III? - _______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ http://www.MiddleEast.Org WHAT'S THIS ABOUT WORLD WAR III? MER - IF YOU DON'T GET IT, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! --------------- To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] WEEKEND READING: The MAD World Marches On MER - Washington - 12 June 1999: While the Clinton folk try to micro-manage things in various parts of the world -- in most cases so far making a mess of things from Somalia to Haiti to Rawanda, from Iraq to Wye Plantation to Kosovo -- the really big and crucial matters are not only being neglected, they are being inflamed. Daily headlines and TV clips are giving Clinton and Albright accolades for their "victory" and the "peace". Underneath there's much that's rotten and mushy, though the casual observer might see just the surface luster, things purposefully polished on top to deceive. As Russian and Western troops converge on Kosovo -- with far different visions and far different priorities -- this article by Robert Scheer about the nuclear dangers of our world deserves careful contemplation. General Lee Butler use to be the man who had his fingers on the American nuclear arsenal -- but in retirement he's horrified and trying to be a modern-day Paul Revere. It was only a few weeks ago that a Russian General -- a three-star in fact who commands Russian ground forces -- actually uttered the term "World War III", as did his commander in chief, Boris Yeltzin in Moscow. Be assured, however, that with Clinton and Madeleine in charge, the MADness will be continuing. Propelled on by American militarism and the "might makes right" mindset that goes back to the days when the American Indians were massacred and Mexico dismembered, soon into the 21st century we will be living in a world where far more nations have arsenals of mass destruction -- biological and chemical as well as nuclear. And that's where all of our attentions should really be focused -- certainly not on Bill and Monica, nor for that matter on Kosovo where today's outcome could have been had at far less cost, with far fewer deaths, with much less destruction, and with far less risk. Cold War's End Leaves Danger of Nuclear War Russia's disintegration threatens our security more by inadvertence than by design. By ROBERT SCHEER [LATimes, 4/13/99] Back in the days of the Bush administration, Gen. Lee Butler, commander of the Strategic Air Command, would once a month go through a practice phone conversation with the White House concerning the end of the world. "Gen. Butler, what is your recommendation?" the Bush stand-in would ask upon receiving an alert from NORAD that the Soviets had launched a nuclear strike against the United States. Butler had to answer fast, because, in a real attack, the president would have had only 12 minutes to decide whether to launch thousands of nuclear missiles in retaliation. "Use them or lose them" would be the refrain running through Butler's brain, well-versed in elegant nuclear deterrence theories of ladders of escalation. "I had to say the words recommending the death warrant of tens of millions of people, of civilization--20,000 weapons on both sides exploding within 12 hours--knowing the planet can't withstand that." It still can't. Butler, a 33-year military veteran who rose to be director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is retired now, and the Soviet Union is but a memory. Yet what haunts him, and what occasioned his rare willingness to be interviewed, is that the Cold War's end has increased, not decreased, the prospect of accidental nuclear war. Twenty-thousand nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War still stand poised for launching, and the MAD doctrine that guided them is very much in force. Neither the U.S. nor Russia has abandoned nuclear war fighting as the cornerstone of their respective national defense policies. "We still target them with nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert," Butler observed. "The world truly has been transformed, but what has not been transformed is our thinking about it." Russia's political and economic disintegration now threatens our security more by inadvertence than by design, prompting key Cold War military establishment veterans like Butler to sound the alarm: "The Russian command and early warning system is in a state of great decline; about two-thirds of the satellites they relied on for early warning capability are inactive or failing. They're experiencing false alarms now on almost a routine basis, and I shudder to think about the morale and discipline of their rocket forces. There are worrisome aspects to all of that. That's why people like myself are so puzzled and dismayed that our government won't even address the problem." Addressing the problem requires bold leadership on nuclear disarmament that's been sadly lacking in the Clinton years. There have been some cosmetic arrangements with the Russians as to nuclear safety and targeting issues but no real follow-up on arms control measures aggressively pursued by George Bush. Give credit where due: Bush recognized that the end of the Cold War permitted--nay, mandated--that the U.S. set an example by reducing the size and lowering the alert status of its nuclear force. As Butler recalls, "The single most important arms controls were George Bush's unilateral measures back in 1991, which took all of the tactical nuclear weapons off the ships and brought many back from Europe, took the bombers off alert and accelerated the retirement of the Minuteman II force. And Mikhail Gorbachev followed suit. It's ironic that today we have a Republican Congress that thwarts arms control progress, and yet it was a Republican administration that really moved the ball down the field." Clinton has never been very interested in nuclear disarmament, and these days seems bent on alarming the Russian leadership by expanding NATO's membership and military role in Eastern Europe, including a NATO- led war against Russia's neighbor, Yugoslavia. This has strengthened the hand of hard-line communists and nationalists who control the Duma, undermining chances for nuclear arms control progress. Those elements also point to Clinton's endorsement of the harebrained effort to revive the "star wars" Strategic Defense Initiative as further evidence that the U.S. is not committed to arms control. Boris Yeltsin has his flaws, but humiliating him and undermining more moderate forces in Russia is the path of disaster. In 1995, Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night because one branch of his crumbling military had failed to inform another of prior knowledge of a Norwegian rocket launch, which they confused with a U.S. Trident missile. Fortunately, this error was corrected before Yeltsin's 12 minutes of decision-making passed. No wonder Butler is concerned. ______________ M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S For past MER articles go to: http://WWW.MiddleEast.Org (c) Copyright 1999 COMMENT OR MESSAGE FOR MER? 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