Europe Features
US missile shield plans stir eastern Europe
By Wolfgang Jung Jan 21, 2007, 17:31 GMT
Prague - The United States is pressing ahead with plans for a transatlantic missile defence system despite international misgivings.
The Czech Republic confirmed for the first time over the weekend that it had received a formal request from Washington to set up an anti-missile radar base on its territory.
The base, together with a missile interceptor silo said to be earmarked for Poland, would form the European pillar of the controversial shield and be the first such installations outside of the United States. There are anti-missile bases in Alaska and California.
Russia is particularly critical of the plans. Both the Czech Republic and Poland were members of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact.
Czech Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova received a telephone call on friday evening from Washington. American diplomat Eric Edelman, an attache at the US embassy in Prague during the 1990s, said the Pentagon would like to speak with her.
'On behalf of his country, a member of the Defence Department offered us participation in the U.S. antimissile system,' Parkanova, a Christian Democrat, said Sunday.
Naturally, the matter is 'sensitive,' she said, adding: 'But the danger of a ballistic missile attack is, unfortunately, real.'
The proposal came just a week after a Chinese medium-range missile destroyed an orbiting Chinese satellite in a successful test.
Less than eight years after joining NATO, the Czech Republic and Poland now face one of the most important political decisions affecting security in Eastern Europe since the fall of communist regimes there in 1989.
The Pentagon's plans have sparked controversy in Prague and Warsaw and raised eyebrows among military strategists in Moscow. Russian General Valery Dvorkin went so far as to call them 'a return to the Cold War' over the weekend.
Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Republic's conservative prime minister, dismissed the criticism. In view of 'regimes like the one in Iran,' he remarked, an antimissile system should be built without delay. 'It would strengthen security in all of Europe,' he said.
A high-ranking European Union diplomat said in Prague that China's satellite shoot-down on January 11 had probably caused Washington to speed up its plans.
'After all, the U.S. government itself subsequently warned against a possible 'space Pearl Harbor',' (a reference to the Japanese attack in 1941 that brought the United States into World War II) the diplomat said Sunday.
The Czech Republic and Poland may push for a trade-off: Calls are growing in both countries to join the U.S. antimissile system only if Washington abolishes visa requirements for Czechs and Poles wishing to enter the United States.
The telephone call from Washington came, interestingly, just two hours after the new Czech centre-right government won a confidence vote in parliament.
'That's completely normal for new governments,' a Czech radio commentary said Sunday.
'Controversial decisions are made at the start of a term in office. Then they're forgotten by the time the next elections roll around.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
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The defense industry and the companies tied to them need business to report corporate profit. The 401k retirement system requires stock profits for Americans to retire on. If we get out of the Middle East the defense industries have got to make money somewhere. The Chinese have now given them a source to keep the defense industry corporate profits rolling in. And we Americans keep giving the Chinese money to support their military by letting the Wal-Mart model dictate consumer spending.
Now we are to believe that walmart has fueled the cold war? What's next, aliens?
Newsflash...the cold war never ended. The marxists are really monarchists in charge of China. Trade, which you so hate, has actually got them hemmed in, because they need it worse than we do.
The so-called military industrial complex was a giant hoax by the left. They would rather do something else, but are needed, so they are paid huge incentives to stay in the busness.
Companies like Boeing were actually pimped on by the left (Clintons, chinese outsourcing) and then attacked by republicans like McCain, for their indescrections (767 refueler). The Clintons, fed by chinese campaign money, greenlighed MFN for China, GATT, Nafta, WTO, etc.
Sorry to ruin your party, but Walmart is the least of your problems. By the way, Hillary Clinton once sat on Walmart's board.
SP4
The individual that needs to wake up is the one that does not understand that the Chinese are taking over this country economically. They are doing it through being the major supplier of goods to this country. The business model of Wal-Mart, beginning in the 1990's was to increase profits through selling cheap Chinese goods. The need by the American worker through stagnant wages and the high cost of health care premiums brought them in droves to Wal-Mart. The buying of these Chinese goods have closed American factories as the competing manufactors and retailers followed Wal-Mart to Asia. The Chinese have been building factories and proping up their low cost labor to corner the American markets. The Bush adminstration has been in power for the last six years. In this time period the Chinese economic machine has increased vastly through American dollars. The Chinese and India economies are one of the best investment for the stock investor. I made the most money for my 401k from the international funds. The American consumer who buys Chinese made goods is supporting the Chinese military. The building of a misssle defense system to protect us from the Chinese is a protection system against American consumer spending. Wal-Mart has nothing to do with starting the 'Cold War'. There is no 'cold War' there is a economic war and the Chinese are winning big time. The USSR's militarty power fell because of economics, the west was able to out spend them. Who needs to wake up? All Americans.
in this day and age everybody especially the ones in power are still thinking in terms of millitary power,arms,weapons,armies,and so on....
i think its all a big trap,the chinese got it right!, they don't invest in weapons of imperialistic style wars, only for their national defence and they invest in reaserch and development and science far more than the rest, they follow a pacifist policy, of development in economics and social provisions, and they will naturaly advance more than all the rest of us who waste our resources in crazy millitary junk, welcome to the 21st century true battlefield.
SP4,
yeah, 'aliens', sort of, did come up:
In 1990, I studied in a graduate program at UND (Grand Forks, ND), Space Studies, and while the USSR appeared to be imploding as a 'threat', the USAF actually had several articles in SPACECOM, that 'informed' about the danger stemming from asteriods, ... how they could annihilate all life on Earth ... , ... and that massive FUNDING was needed to develop SYSTEMS that would DETECT, and COUNTER any threat to EARTH.
I had to rub my eyes, I just could not believe the stupidity in this suggestion, let alone the stupidity (very likely) of a Congress that might go with it.
After all, the idiots are 'funding' the Missile Defense program (NMD?) ... just anything to waste the national wealth on. If one doesn't have an enemy, we'll create one.
Now it is 'terrorism', which is great, because it can be massaged any which way, it is nebulous enough to be a 'lurking threat' no matter how one looks at it -- it is certainly good to finance massive spending on many idiotic programs.
GW Bush and his gang are nurturing the terrorists, while the terrorists are taunting this so-called 'administration' (AKA a gang of thieves).
What a sick world!
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SP4: Which dick said the cold war is over?Jan 21st, 2007 - 23:14:50
Who was the dumb son-of-a-* that said it?
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