The Cold War. It's been less than two decades since the world started feeling a little more upbeat about itself - leaving behind those grab-a-mask-and-run-under-the-desk days and marching into a bright new future full of hope, peace, and security - but already, we're told, moves are afoot to take us right back there again.
The U.S. military, intelligence agencies, and conservative think tanks and news organizations are exaggerating China's nuclear weapons capability to justify developing a new generation of nuclear and conventional weapons, according to a report issued today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).You'd think, after our experience with Russia, that we'd have learnt something. But then, when the world was experiencing it's darkest Cold War hours - wasn't that the heyday of U.S. military? This was when they were the most needed, supported, and financed. Generals, bless them, have ambitions too. The leaders of our economy and our war machine inhabit offices just across the hall from each other, both sharing a dangerous passion for growth and development.Likewise, the report found that the Chinese have been citing U.S. weapons upgrades as a rationale for modernizing theirs, locking the two nations in a dangerous action-and-reaction competition reminiscent of the Cold War.
"The Pentagon has been sounding the alarm about China's nuclear intentions for a long time, but our analysis shows that they are overstating the threat," said Robert S. Norris, an NRDC nuclear analyst and co-author of the report. "Now that the Soviet Union is gone, the military needs a new threat to justify buying new missiles, destroyers, submarines and fighter planes. So they're hyping China." - National Resources Defence Council
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