Return to the Brink?

There's been some worrying events in the world of military affairs recently. Following a deterioration in relations between Moscow and London/Washington over the proposed missile defence shield and the Alexander Litvinenko affair, what began as diplomatic battles have turned into the beginnings of military brinkmanship.

First there was the news that British jets had intercepted Russian bombers over the North Atlantic (timesonline, 18.7.07), then that Russian military planners had chosen to revive the Cold War practice of using flyovers of Allied bases as exercises, a policy announced when US jets scrambled to intercept Russian bombers over the Pacific island of Guam (worlpoliticsreview.com, 10.08.07).

It is not just with Russia that developments are of concern, however. Sino-American relations have taken some knocks recently, with the long-running issue over currency valuation accompanied by tit-for-tat banning of food and other imports (NY Times, 15.7.07). China is known to be developing a 'blue-water' naval capability and chose to demonstrate the extent of this in a very dangerous way. During US naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean in November, a Chinese Navy submarine surfaced in close proximity to the oldest aircraft carrier in the US fleet, the USS Kitty Hawk (news.bbc.co.uk 14.11.06). This was followed in January by a succesful test launch of a missile against a Chinese weather sattelite (cnn.com, 19.1.07). That China might be developing the ability to strike at space based sattelites is of huge concern to the US as it strikes right at the heart of the US military dream of 'full-spectrum dominance'.

Some have tried to play down these incidents, but their danger is all too clear. When, in 2001, Chinese jets tracked a US military spy-plane, the resulting collision caused the spy-plane to crash land in China and caused a major diplomatic incident. How much more major an incident would have occurred if the Chinese submarine had been noticed before surfacing as an unidentified alien vessel incurring into a US military exercise?

The flashpoints exist, Washington's defence pact with the Chinese-claimed territory of Taiwan has long been a source of tension, and wrangling between the Atlantic powers and Russia over Georgia and the Ukraine has the potential to escalate. What is required is a return to the extensive dialogue and cooperation between governments and their militaries which ended Cold War brinkmanship in the first place. There are those who will tell you that we 'have no choice' but to enter into an arms race, or that 'nuclear deterrance' will carry us through just as they believe it did through the Cold War. The fact is that we can choose dialogue and cooperation, that the world avoided the 'mutually assured destruction' (aptly abbreviated to MAD) that is inherant in 'nuclear deterrance' by the skin of its teeth, and that, while civilians from the Cold War powers mostly avoided the horrors of its wars, millions died by proxy.