|
Tuesday, 10 October 2006 15:08 |
 | | Mark West |
A little-noticed news item in the publication Defense News shows how blind the current administration has become to the real threats facing the United States.
The news story, picked up by the London Telegraph, is simple enough ¨?ÇƒÓ and frightening. The Chinese military, on several occasions, has fired powerful lasers at U.S. super-secret spy satellites, like the KH-11 "Keyhole" satellites that are the backbone of our intelligence-gathering operations from space.
The lasers, though powerful, donët have enough energy to knock our satellites from the skies. They can, however, blind them by disabling the delicate electronic sensors that the satellites use for imaging.
This
is bad enough. But the Pentagonës threat assessment concerning the
ongoing Chinese military build-up had only one sentence about the laser
targeting of U.S. satellites, and sources told Defense News that the
White House had specifically told the Pentagon to shut up about the
subject.
The reason? The White House wants Chinese cooperation in its "diplomatic offensive" against Iran.
Terrorism is,
indeed, a threat to the United States. But it is a threat that is
inherently limited in scope; the number of people willing to sacrifice
their lives for a cause, and who can also carry out a complex plan
involving some degree of technical sophistication, is limited. No doubt
Osama bin Laden would have loved to have attacked the U.S. by now. But
either our vigilance, or his inability to find people who can execute a
plan of the necessary complexity, has prevented him from doing so.
And, in any
event, terrorism isnët an existential threat, no matter what the Bush
administration claims. Israel has lived ÇƒÓ and prospered ÇƒÓ under the
threat of terrorist attacks since its inception. The Israelis have
learned to go about their lives ÇƒÓ with terrorism as a factor.
Terrorism is a
strategy of the weak ÇƒÓ of those on their last legs. "Islamic
fundamentalism," that great boogey-man of the Bush coterie, is not
really much of a threat. The reason it isnët is that it is often
motivated by material poverty, and thatës something that can be
resolved readily enough ÇƒÏ if the rich cronies of the Bush
administration like the World Bank and the IMF would make it a
priority.
But the Chinese?
A vast nation, with immense human capital, designing high-technology
approaches to disabling our spy satellites? Thatës a problem that
canët so readily be resolved.
The Chinese
clearly see themselves as moving into the strategic role opened up with
the fall of the Soviet Union ÇƒÏ the role of counterbalance to the United
Statesë hegemony of power. Whether we like it or not, they will sooner
or later seek to challenge us. At first, it will be in small ways like
sneak attacks on satellites. But, eventually, the attacks will be
grander and more overt.
That sounds like
a threat to me. Unfortunately, it is a threat for which we are not
preparing under Donald Rumsfeld. We are, instead, fighting another war
ÇƒÏ or set of wars ÇƒÏ which are turning into a very nasty quagmire indeed.
And, as usual,
in its monomaniacal focus on Iran and Iraq, the Bush administration has
taken its eye off the real threat for which they should be preparing.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
|
