Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

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Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative

Bryan Preston explains the Proliferation Security Initiative, which, he argues has great promise strategically and which proves that Bush is no unilaterist, that other countries are willing to band together with us against terrorists and weapons proliferation.

"Called the Proliferation Security Initiative, this results-oriented alliance is now just over a year old. The work of the much maligned Under Secretary of State for Arms Proliferation and International Security John Bolton, PSI is already a great success in bringing nations that disagreed bitterly over the Iraq war together under one flag to deal with larger weapons proliferation issues, especially those relating to the Korean Peninsula.

The PSI is a bit of a strange bird, neither pure military alliance nor economic consortium nor intelligence agency, though it bears some of the features of all three. There is no guarantee among PSI members to come to the defense of any other member attacked by another party, for instance, such as exists in the NATO charter. It has no operating budget or swank headquarters building, and no jet-setting General Secretary or Supreme Commander. But most of the world’s great navies -- America’s, the UK’s, Japan’s, Australia’s, and Russia’s all play key roles. Many of the world’s best intelligence assets, from spy satellites to human intelligence sources to financial investigators, are devoted to working with the PSI at some level."

There is more, The Caspian Guard is to Iran what the PSI is to North Korea: "The Caspian Guard is ostensibly a three-way alliance between the United States, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for the integration of several interlocking program elements, namely airspace and maritime surveillance and control systems, reaction and response forces, and border control." Take a look at some maps (there are five different ones) to see how this cage in the making works. Interesting.

Note that Iran’s nuclear work is going full throttle; even Germany is worried.

Discussions - 1 Comment

PSI reminds me of one of Alvin Toffler’s ideas of an "ad-hocracy". Determine what needs to be done, form a plan, and then dissolve the damn thing. For now we have the ineffective U.N. and then IAEA; and at home one could argue D.H.S. How many people would be forced to pay union dues and then retire from PSI?

N. Korea shouldn’t be terribly hard to stop if this organization is as effective as this article argues because they have serious problems at home. As for Iran, or as a friend of mine from Lorain OH calls it, Persia... I think they are on the way to imploding as well. He says they have their own Taliban-like religious police that reportedly have been told to F** off. Liberals are good in Iran.

This international intelligence (Special Forces?) group give me hope. I know it’s "pop" reading but former Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko gives a lot of insight into how politics influences military operations, and he puts quite a bit of history into perspective. If Aristotle’s writings are meat, then Marcinko’s are candy. Both are good as hell.

The former USSR has a lot of mob (Voryi) influence that scares the hell out of me. I could see the press now if one of our guys gets caught in smelly Azerbaijan... "another Bush dynasty plot to seize foreign oil".

I trust Dr. Schramm, but I have not yet investigated Bryan Preston, author of "Junkyard Blog". Sounds like a pro rasslin’ reference to me... Nevertheless if this PSI is true and gains momentum then this is a conservative’s dream come true, and it would also serve as a very good example of a way to illustrate that bureaucracies are crazy; especially if they are international in character because there will always be someone who will want to seize the role of leader, and then sit on their asss and lead from the rear like Wesley Clarke. If by some fluke Kerry is elected I could see him taking credit for this.

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