What if the President of the United States, who's responsible for formulating foreign policy, determines that it is in the best interest of the nation that it establish long range missiles bases, complete with nuclear warheads, in countries within range of China, India and Russia? What if the countries adjudged most suitable aren't willing (unlike Italy, Spain, Turkey, Germany and Britain) to have our weapons of mass destruction stationed within their borders? And what if the President's advisors were uncertain that the American people would appreciate the wisdom of the President's judgement? Would that justify an invasion of the targeted country under false pretenses?
Given that the United States has a long history of spreading its nuclear arsenal around the globe in secret, as recently revealed in documents covering the post World War II period up to 1977, these questions are not entirely hypothetical. Indeed, it is pretty well established that US weapons of mass destruction are located in the above-mentioned nations. The question is where else? And where are they planned to be, but aren't there yet?
The recently revealed side-agreement to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey in order to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis is instructive in this regard. That President Kennedy had no difficulty agreeing to this Soviet demand is not surprising, since he'd already ordered them not to be deployed when he took office in 1961. That the agreement about what, in retrospect, prompted the Soviet placement of missiles in Cuba in the first place was kept secret can probably be accounted for by Kennedy's reluctance to admit that the American military had not been as responsive to civilian direction as most Americans have been taught to expect.
In any event, that the missiles are back in Turkey is not a well-covered story. Certainly not as well-covered as the fact that many Germans aren't at all happy with the missiles still left in their country and will be happy to see them removed. But where are they going to go?
Since the refrain hasn't been nearly as persistent as the one about WMDs in Iraq, most people have probably missed recent references to the growing worry that is China and it's resurrection of relations with Russia. And, as most people have probably forgotten, that was a big concern during the Cold War.
Some people have argued that this problem was addressed by the United States' policies creating a rift between those two powers and, specifically, by Richard Nixon making nice with China. But, that may not be accurate. After all, we have recently discovered in the case of Iraq that the United States making “nice” with a country doesn't necessarily mean a lot. Which suggests that Nixon going to China may simply have been the result of a realistic assessment that the effort to “contain” China by locating permanent military bases on its southern flank in Vietnam, as the American military were planning, was not going to be realized and that the best the United States could hope for was that China would not over-run Vietnam when we left. In other words, just as the United States agreed not to invade Cuba, if the Soviets took out their missiles, China agreed not to invade Vietnam if the U.S. withdrew its forces and gave up its ambition for permanent bases from which to threaten China with its nuclear missiles.
While this would seem to have been an equitable solution, I suspect that the military establishment was no happier with it than it was with Kennedy's. Indeed, if I were a full-fledged conspiracy theorist, I'd suggest that the assassination of Kennedy by a Soviet/Cuban sympathizer makes about as much sense as the break-in at the Watergate having been ordered by Nixon. Considering the people he had working for him, people who are still significant players in the Bush bureaucracy, Nixon's demise may well have been engineered since they really couldn't afford another assassination so soon.
In any event, since Vietnam was out of the question and there were already indications that the Philippines and New Zealand were tending towards the inhospitable, the Arabian Peninsula probably seemed like an acceptable alternative venue. Not to mention that the presence of oil provided a good excuse for American interest. And so the wooing of the countries in the region was begun. Lebanon proved inhospitable. Then Saudi and Yemen didn't work out too well either. Israel, one suspects, can't be too accommodating lest they become a target that can't be resisted. And then there was Iraq, expected to be grateful for any assistance in dealing with the Kurds and the expansionist interests of Iran and Syria. But, Saddam Hussein turned out to be a wily client, ultimately not willing to give up land for bases unless he got better access to the Gulf--i.e. Kuwait-- in return.
That's when greed or the lust for power overtook common sense and George H.W. Bush renegged on his commitment and decided to take with a show of force what hadn't been willingly ceded. And, again, Saddam Hussein, preferred recalcitrance to inviting an unreliable ally in. No matter how much pressure Clinton applied, his success was no better. So, with Bush II at the helm, there was nothing to do but to be bold, move in, and take by force enough land to accommodate at least four, if not the originally planned fourteen, permanent military bases in order to station the assets necessary to contain China.
So, we're back where we started over forty-five years ago.
Posted by Hannah at October 17, 2005 01:23 PM