[NYTr] Monbiot: Brown's contempt for democracy has dragged Britain into a new cold war

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Guardian - Jul 31, 2007
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2138294,00.html


Brown's contempt for democracy has dragged Britain into a new cold war

The prime minister has broken his word and put us all at risk by
allowing a US missile defence base on the North York Moors 

By George Monbiot

In one short statement to parliament last week the defence secretary,
Des Browne, broke the promises of two prime ministers, potentially
misled the house, helped bury an international treaty and dragged
Britain into a new cold war. Pretty good going for three stodgy
paragraphs. You probably missed it, but it's not your fault. In the 48
hours before parliament broke up for the summer, the government made 46
policy announcements. It's a long-standing British tradition: as the
MPs and lobby correspondents are packing their bags for the long summer
break (they don't return until October), the government rattles out a
series of important decisions that cannot be debated. Gordon Brown's
promise to respect parliamentary democracy didn't last very long.

Thus, without consultation or discussion, the defence secretary
announced that Menwith Hill, the listening station on the North York
Moors, will be used by the United States for its missile defence
system. Having been dragged by the Bush administration into two
incipient military defeats, the British government has now embraced
another of its global delusions.

Des Browne's note asserted that the purpose of the missile defence
system is "to address the emerging threat from rogue states". This is a
claim that only an idiot or a member of the British government could
believe. If, as Browne and Bush maintain, the system is meant to shoot
down intercontinental missiles fired by Iran and North Korea (missiles,
incidentally, that they do not and might never possess), why are its
major components being installed in Poland and the Czech Republic? To
bait the Russian bear for fun? In June, Vladimir Putin called Bush's
bluff by offering sites for the missile defence programme in Azerbaijan
and southern Russia, which are much closer to Iran. Bush turned him
down and restated his decision to build the facilities in eastern
Europe, making it clear that their real purpose is to shoot down
Russian missiles.

Nor is it strictly true to call this a defence system. Russia has around
5,700 active nuclear warheads. The silos in Poland will contain just 10
interceptor missiles. The most likely strategic purpose of the missile
defence programme is to mop up any Russian or Chinese missiles that had
not been destroyed during a pre-emptive US attack. Far from making the
world a safer place, its purpose is to make the annihilation of another
country a safer proposition.

This strategic purpose takes second place to a more immediate interest.
Because it doesn't yet work, missile defence is the world's biggest pork
barrel. The potential for spending is unlimited. First, a number of
massive
- and possibly insuperable - technical problems must be overcome. Then
it must constantly evolve to respond to the counter-measures Russia and
China will deploy: multiple warheads, dummy missiles, radar shields,
chaff, balloons and God knows what. For the US arms industry, technical
failure means permanent commercial success.

But this is not the only respect in which Browne appears to have misled
the house. He claimed to have assurances from the US that "the UK and
other European allies will be covered by the system elements they [the
Americans] propose to deploy to Poland and the Czech Republic". Browne
must be aware that this is a United States missile defence programme.
It incorporates no plans for defending other nations. The British
government has handed over its facilities, truncated parliamentary
democracy and put its people at risk solely for the benefit of a
foreign power.

The diplomatic cost of this idiocy is incalculable. It has already
required the abandonment by the US of the anti-ballistic missile
treaty, which is the bilateral agreement struck between the United
States and the Soviet Union in 1972. The treaty survived both the
vicissitudes of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but
not George Bush. Any hope that it might be revived has now been buried
by the facts on the ground in Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK.

Two weeks ago Vladimir Putin suspended another long-standing agreement:
the conventional armed forces in Europe treaty, which limited the
troops and military hardware that Russia could assemble on its borders.
In response to the US missile defence programme, Russia has also been
testing a new version of its short-range Iskander nuclear missile, and
it has been developing a new intercontinental missile with multiple
warheads, called the RS-24. Their purpose, according to Sergei Ivanov,
Russia's deputy prime minister, is to "overcome any existing or future
missile defence systems". The Iskander missiles will be deployed on the
European border and aimed at Poland and the Czech Republic.
Intermediate-range missiles will be pointed at Menwith Hill.

Bush's missile defence programme almost certainly means the end of the
intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty as well, and the cancellation
of any successor to the strategic offensive reductions treaty (which
expires in 2012).

Asked whether this might be the beginning of a new cold war, Putin
replied: "Of course we are returning to those times. It is clear that
if a part of the US nuclear capability turns up in Europe, and, in the
opinion of our military specialists, will threaten us, then we are
forced to take corresponding steps in response ... We are not the ones
who are initiating the arms race in Europe."

Like the war with Iraq, the US missile defence programme exacerbates the
threats it claims to confront.

All this, as you would hope, is of some interest to our members of
parliament, who have long been demanding a debate. In February, Tony
Blair agreed that they would have one. "I am sure that we will have the
discussion in the house and, indeed, outside the house ... When we have
a proposition to put, we will come back and put it."

In April, Des Browne told MPs that "the UK has received no request from
the US to use RAF Menwith Hill for missile-defence-related activities".
That, until last week, was all that parliament knew. Now we discover
that the proposition had been made and accepted before MPs had a chance
to discuss it. Browne was in the house on Wednesday, when he made some
announcements about aircraft carriers and the military budget. These -
because they were delivered in person - could be discussed, though
(shamefully) neither of them provoked any opposition. But knowing that
the Menwith Hill decision would be furiously opposed, Browne released
it in the form of a written statement, which cannot be debated.

Like everyone on the left in Britain, I wanted to believe that Gordon
Brown's politics would be more progressive than Tony Blair's. But as he
grovels before the seat of empire, I realise that those of us who demand
even a vaguely sane foreign policy will find ourselves in permanent
opposition. With his appointment of Digby Jones as trade minister and
his plans for deregulation, Brown demonstrated that the government is
still mesmerised by big business. By proposing that suspects be held
for up to 56 days without charge, he appears to share Tony Blair's
distrust of liberty. Now, in one furtive decision, he reveals both his
contempt for parliament and his enthusiasm for the neocon project.
What, I wonder, is there left to hope for?