Ill Starred Wars
The Missile Defense Shield (MDS) is back in the news.
As we all know, this is the Bush Brainwave that threatens to put Russian and American missiles on a collision course somewhere over Eastern Europe.
It’s always baffled me how Poland could have been remotely interested in the first place. Although the Red Army has been strapped for cash, Russia’s Rocketchiki teams in Tatischevo were always fairly funded. Their Topol missile, for example. packs over 35 Hiroshimas of horror in its sleek nose. Now, if you were Polish, wouldn’t you be tempted to let one of those just fly on over to somewhere else? Hey, America wouldn’t be too far away.
Since Putin mumbled about putting some of these humdingers in Kaliningrad - a large field next to Poland - the Poles have had second thoughts about MDS. So the US is looking for a likely base in Lithuania. It prompted the Lithuanian political analyst, Kestutis Gernius, to observe, ‘We risk becoming Public Enemy Number One or Two of Russia.’
For sure, Gernius ain’t no Genius. As a political analyst, Gernius might have noticed that Poland and Lithuania are already Russia’s public enemies 1 and 2, ever since their EU affiliation and NATO pretensions effectively blockaded Kaliningrad. When Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) held it’s 750th anniversary in 2005, Presidents of Poland and Lithuania counted the only two world leaders not invited. They’ve been personas non grata ever since.
The only saving grace in all of this is that the Missile Defence Shield probably doesn’t work. Since around 2002, the New World Order has spent billions on test, intercepting state of the art, sophisticated, spin-stabilised missiles. There is however, nothing to suggest that ‘rogue states’ have any such cute kit. And actually, ‘wobblers’ and ‘tumblers’, as Pentagon experts describe low-tech missiles, could just wobble and tumble all the way to New York City. You can only lock on to a missile with a stable trajectory. Rumours of the US military downing a snow goose are wildly exaggerated. This isn’t rocket science.
But if you believe the Missile Shield has nothing to do with military strategy, and that America’s aim is to nuke any kind of rapprochement between the extended EU and its neighbour, Russia, then the whole MDS farce is already worth its weight in Powerpoint presentations.
Welcome back to the world of blogging - you’ve been missed
It’s also nice to see that you are still out there somewhere . . . another voice in the wilderness
[...] comments on the US Missile Defence Shield, Poland and Lithuania. Posted by Vilhelm Konnander Share [...]
The MD system is hardly “Bush’s brainwave” — Poland was tapped on the shoulder back in 1999 during the Washington Summit. Notably, this was during the presidency of pinko Aleksandr Kwa?niewski, who delighted in anything the Americans requested of him.
It reminds me of the AP and BBC stories in April that talked about “Bush’s plan” to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO — even though Ukraine’s “pro-Russian” president Leonid Kuchma signed onto NATO’s Partnership for Peace back in 1994.
I’m not a fan of giving Bush more credit than he is worth.
Being an unwilling pedant, I hasten to point out the the missiles are Topol-M’s, the new version of the Topol.
I should futher add that they have absolutely nothing to do with ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ which the West no longer considers a threat to the civilized world (i.e. the jews, though this may have more to do with europe killing most of them and the rest leaving for fear of an encore).
Back to the banging, why bother with big, fat hairy missiles like the Topol-M? Russia is up to its armpits in tactical nuclear weapons, i.e. <300km and lots of pocket friendly ones too that the West knows even less about. It’s not like Kaliningrad is far away or anything…
What this means for Volkswagen’s Kaliningrad factory I couldn’t possibly know, though it makes it less likely that it will be bombed.
P.S. Welcome back to sanity. To quote Brian Blessed “Gordon’s Alive!” Flash, Aaaaaaaaaahhhh!
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