Cold War II - Attack of the Clones

The general thought on the war being sold by the Administration and corporate media is that the result of the conflict is the limitation of the feared meme of the time, "Weapons of Mass Distruction" ("WMD"). However, as I sit here, it occurs to me that the only way that any a country or faction has a hope of counterbalancing US military technology rests in two methodologies; namely, asymmetrical warfare and WMD proliferation.

Since the topic of A. warfare is fairly well documented at this time, let's consider WMD. In fact, let's focus on Nuclear proliferation. Why? In considering chemical and biological agents, the area of effect is far less than a nuclear weapon, and they have far more success for the enemy to use some form of counteragent. Nukes are the prime deterrent - the Cold War taught us that.

However, in the Second Cold War, the potential adversaries are not a monolithic nation state like the Soviet Union, but a number of smaller states, hypothetically such as Iran if they get their reactor producing fissible material, definitely North Korea, and potentially any country that can manage to cut a deal at an opportune time for old Soviet materials, or even sales from N. Korea, if President Il considers it advantageous.

So, instead of a stabilization of the global milieu, the potential outcome is a sort of WMD Whack-A-Mole. Perhaps I'm being a bit paranoid, but as Uncle Bill Burroughs once said, "Being Paranoid only means having all the facts".

Actually, I hope I don't.

Patrick Lichty
Director of the Bureau for the Dissemination of Metastructures and Media Metaphors