Noam Chomsky: The Dimming Prospects for Human Survival

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/noam-chomsky-dimming-prospects-human-survival

A previous article I wrote explored how security is a high priority for government planners: security, that is, for state power and its primary constituency, concentrated private power - all of which entails that official policy must be protected from public scrutiny.

In these terms, government actions fall in place as quite rational, including the rationality of collective suicide. Even instant destruction by nuclear weapons has never ranked high among the concerns of state authorities.

To cite an example from the late Cold War: In November 1983 the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization launched a military exercise designed to probe Russian air defenses, simulating air and naval attacks and even a nuclear alert.

These actions were undertaken at a very tense moment. Pershing II strategic missiles were being deployed in Europe. President Reagan, fresh from the "Evil Empire" speech, had announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars," which the Russians understood to be effectively a first-strike weapon - a standard interpretation of missile defense on all sides.

Naturally these actions caused great alarm in Russia, which, unlike the U.S., was quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded.

[aquart]

1. Well, at least another genetic bottleneck.

Between the climate and the idiot billionaires who won't relinquish a dime to save our food chain and habitats, we're dead meat.

[joshcryer]

2. Aegis works. Russia lost that one.

The US has almost 30 ships outfitted with Aegis BMD. It works. They even stopped doing public tests of it because it was succeeding 98% of the time. Russia's disappointment that the US keeps building BMD facilities closer to their territory means little. It's mainly to protect the EU, whose nuclear weapons stockpiles are minimal at best.

I find it amusing how Russia "was quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded," after all, the entire Cold War happened because Russia annexed the East Block and built its own paranoid Iron Curtain.