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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 07:49am Sep 20, 2002 EST (# 4444 of 4448)

These rules set explicit caps on discretionary spending (the money that lawmakers appropriate every year) and demand that tax cuts or policy increases in mandatory spending, such as on Medicare, be paid for by cuts elsewhere. In Mr Greenspan's view, these rules helped push down discretionary spending from 10% of GDP in 1990 to 6.5% by 1998.

At least some of these budget rules may eventually be extended. But a return to the discipline of the 1990s looks unlikely. There is no strong consensus for deficit reduction now, as there was a decade ago. Despite some politicians' apocalyptic language, America's fiscal position for the next few years is relatively comfortable; indeed, it is still stronger than in many other industrial economies (see chart). With global growth weak and deflation a risk, an obsessive focus on deficit reduction in the short term would be misplaced.

The medium term is cloudier, but not disastrous. The official budget forecasts of a return to surpluses by 2006 look too rosy: they make unrealistic spending assumptions and ignore unavoidable tax changes, such as fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will affect a third of all taxpayers by 2010. Yet even with more realistic assumptions about spending and tax policy, a return to the huge deficits of the early 1990s (which peaked at 4.7% of GDP in 1992) seems unlikely.

Yet this relative fiscal health masks a long-term problem that begins to bite at the end of this decade: the ageing of the baby boomers. According to a recent study by the CBO, spending on entitlements—pensions and, particularly, health care—will soar from 7.6% of GDP in 2000 to 11.3% by 2020—and that is without any new expensive prescription-drug benefits. By contrast, discretionary spending is only 7.1% of GDP and is supposed to fall (admittedly according to those optimistic figures) to 5.7% by 2012.

This underlines an important point. America's long-term fiscal health depends less on controlling discretionary spending (the current focus of Mr Bush) than on controlling entitlements. As Bob Reischauer of the Urban Institute puts it, even the strictest controls on discretionary spending will be a “rounding error” in the overall budget problem of the future.

lchic - 08:02am Sep 20, 2002 EST (# 4445 of 4448)

The Uighurs, China's Muslim minority, look to the U.S. to provide moral support in their fight against oppression by Beijing. But Washington may have dealt their cause a blow in exchange for China's backing in the war against terror. On Sept. 11, the U.S. persuaded the United Nations to add to its list of international terrorist groups a little-known Uighur independence organization, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The U.S. State Department linked the group to more than 200 terrorist acts in China's predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang. But according to foreign diplomats in Beijing, ETIM is an Afghanistan-based group that is thought to be defunct and moreover never carried out operations on Chinese soil. Some of the terror strikes ascribed to ETIM were deadly bombings; others were protest riots or attacks on police stations that don't fit common definitions of terrorism. 'I think the U.S. made a diplomatic deal' so China won't use its U.N. Security Council veto to block an Iraq invasion, says Enver Can, director of the Munich-based East Turkestan National Congress, a Uighur exile group. China in return can crack down on Uighur dissidents as 'terrorists' with less risk of censure for human rights violations, Can claims. 'China has the green light to do whatever it wants.'
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020923-351276,00.html

lchic - 08:11am Sep 20, 2002 EST (# 4446 of 4448)

Minority cultures need a UN platform.

The above with China, the Chetneyan question, the Basks ... all relate to cultures that stretch way back in time.

The EU has a pro-active approach to recognising minority cultures.

Others ought to consider how peaceful co-existance can be made to happen.

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