Bush’s New National Security Strategy
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Posted on March 16, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Ecology of war and peace
From Margaret Swedish today:
The White House released this morning the Bush administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS). It is much the same as the old strategy, except for somewhat more rhetorical acknowledgement of the importance of international diplomacy as one way to promote freedom, democracy, and US interests around the world. It also addresses some issues not covered in its previous 2002 document, like the rise of China as a world power, and the threat of global pandemics, such as AIDS and avian bird flu.
But the emphasis is clearly on the assertion of US power in whatever places it deems “necessary,” and on ensuring US military supremacy without challenge. However the administration tries to cloak the strategy in grandiose terms of freedom and democracy, that is not where this kind of approach to the world is headed.
Bush reasserts the right to preemptive strikes on nations it deems a threat to US security, including hostile nations or terrorist groups with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As in Iraq, this would appear to be irregardless of whether or not there is irrefutable proof that these states have WMD.
As reported in the Washington Post: Bush has “shifted US foreign policy away from decades of deterrrence and containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the United States.”
Also in recent weeks, the Bush administration has been intensifying its rhetorical and diplomatic campaign against the Iranian government, while refusing to rule out the possibility of military action. The new NSS calls Iran the country that poses the greatest danger to the US. The document also indicates no regrets about the decision to invade Iraq, despite the disastrous quagmire and internal strife that has been its result. Iraq remains poised on the brink of civil war. Meanwhile, the media largely ignores the fact that the administration has built permanent bases in the country and has no intention of leaving Iraq, ever. There is simply too much oil there.
Why does this document matter on a blog about ecological hope? Because the strategy poses grave threats to life on this earth on a number of grounds. For one, few things are more devastating to the environment than war. The weapons of war unleash dreadful toxic waste, not least of which is the depleted uranium the US uses to help deliver bombs more efficiently. This uranium has already caused thousands of cancer deaths in Iraq since the first Gulf War, and the threat is now widespread. The US has not considered any plans to clean up the lethal mess.
Iraq seems on its way to being disarticulated as a nation, and the war has helped destabilize a region that holds the greatest share of the world’s oil reserves. The conflicts manifest the commitment of the Bush administration and its energy industry sponsors to use military means to grab control of those reserves, or at least to ensure that the governments in place will keep the oil flowing into the US economy, no matter what political havoc results.
In his State of the Union address, Bush chided this country for its oil addiction. Meantime, he wants us to stand behind him while he goes to war to feed the addiction. Thus does our fossil fuel dependency help feed conflict around the world, at great cost to millions of human beings.
Meanwhile, Bush’s strategy ignores a security threat to the US so grave that even the threat of terror pales by comparison – and that is the threat posed by global warming and climate change, coupled with our arrival at peak oil production (demand will soon begin to outstrip new supply, permanently, meaning dramatic rises in prices and severe oil shortages beginning in the next decade).
It is hard to imagine a government with its head buried deeper in the sand, or one so entrenched in a denial it would like to impose society-wide. While fires rage in the drought-stricken southwest (over 840,000 acres in Texas since Sunday, merely the latest example) and glaciers melt and flora and fauna move north and hundreds of species go extinct every day and many local ecosystems collapse and the threat of a global collapse increases, this administration tells you to worry more about the suicide bomber showing up at your shopping mall or your football stadium.
We must refuse this disastrous distraction from the real problems of the world. We are running out of time to mount a national and international campaign to save the planet from the worst, and to prepare ourselves to adapt to the consequences of the damage already done.
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