@@ House nigga is going mad, but why? @@
Arash
February 12, 2005
Condi Desperate to Stop EU-China-Iran Chain Reaction
Dr. James Gordon Prather
Nuclear weapons physicist
Condi Rice's European debut as our second female Secretary of State
provoked – at least amongst the media elite in Paris and London – a
feeding-frenzy. She has become – and may well remain – a media darling.
[You may recall that our first female Secretary of State – Madeline
Albright – was once mistaken for a maid by another visiting diplomat in a
European hotel.]
But as far as accomplishing Dubya's objectives, she appears to have been
"all hat and no cattle," as they say in Texas.
Her most publicized objective was to sabotage the ongoing European-Iranian
negotiations, which, if successful, could lead to Iran being provided firm
guarantees of European "nuclear, technological and economic cooperation" as
well as firm European "commitments on security issues."
These negotiations will also probably result in a EU-Iranian Trade and
Cooperation Agreement and Iranian membership in the World Trade
Organization.
The Europeans evidently believe that if they don't soon establish normal
cooperative economic relationships with Iran – which the U.S. is currently
preventing via the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 – China will, and
they'll be shut out.
And that European fear of being shut off from the Persian Gulf by China is
related to Condi's less publicized objective.
A European Union embargo on major arms sales to the People's Republic of
China was imposed in 1989 in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The European decision – which has been made in principle – to lift the arms
embargo is viewed in some capitals to be a historic shift in global
allegiances, with the EU choosing to cater to the national defense needs of
looming superpower China, even at the expense of the US.
And why not? President Bush has – by bungling the invasion and occupation of
helpless little Iraq, crippled by a decade of economic sanctions, arms
embargoes and more or less continual air attacks – has revealed us to be
something of a paper tiger.
Our troops pinned down in Iraq and in South Korea comprise most of those
available. If the North Koreans were to move South, or the Iranians to move
West, we would have no alternative but to nuke them.
And, of course, if the PRC decides to establish a much closer union with
"breakaway province" Taiwan, there is not much we could do to stop them.
Nevertheless, Undersecretary of State John Bolton – who is unaccountably
still in office – says we absolutely must maintain arms embargoes and other
sanctions on China. And Iran. And North Korea.
You'll never guess why: to send each country a message that its record on
human rights is unacceptable.
Speaking at a seminar last week in Japan – while Condi was in Europe
expressing similar sentiments – Bolton said arms sales by the European Union
and Russia to China are a "very grave concern" and could threaten "strategic
stability" in East Asia.
Bolton's biggest concern is that sophisticated computer and communications
"battlefield management" technology will end up in the hands of our enemies.
"American technology licensed to European companies might also find its way
to China, so that we would, in effect, face our own technology being used
against us," Bolton said.
One wonders where – on the Korean Peninsula, in the Straits of Taiwan, or in
and around the Persian Gulf?
Because China's record on human rights is so unacceptable, President Bush
has already imposed sanctions on Chinese companies 62 times.
By comparison, President Clinton – who also held China's record on human
rights to be unacceptable – imposed sanctions on Chinese companies on only
eight occasions in eight years.
Of course, many Chinese companies are not private sector companies at all.
Many are owned or controlled by elements of the People's Liberation Army.
Unnamed U.S. officials charge that many of these same companies have
re-exported imported technology – that could conceivably be used to make
"weapons of mass destruction" – to such nations as Pakistan, Iran, and
Libya.
Chinese exports to Iran are certainly understandable. Once a net exporter of
oil, China now imports 60 percent of its needs. It's oil imports have more
than doubled over the past five years, growing by 7.5 percent per year,
seven times faster than the U.S.
China's increasing reliance on Iranian energy – including a recent
zillion-dollar oil and gas co-development deal – has certainly put a hitch
in the neo-crazies' plan to destabilize – much less invade and occupy –
Iran.
In fact, it's beginning to look like the American Hegemony of the
neo-crazies lasted about two years.
* Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing
official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal
Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the
Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the
Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for
national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy
Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a
nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in
California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
http://www.antiwar.com/prather