US President Donald Trump, with US Defense Secretary Mark Esper (L), Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett (R) and US Space Force Senior Enlisted Advisor CMSgt Roger Towberman, attend presentation of the US Space Force Flag and the signing of Armed Forces Day Proclamation on May 15, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)
US President Donald Trumps fallacious thinking has ignited a dangerous new Cold War not simply with Russia, but also with other powers like China and Iran, a former US Senate candidate says.
Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster and pastor in San Antonio, Texas, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday after Trump said the United States will beat out military rivals including Russia and China with "super duper missile."
"We have no choice, we have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super duper missile and I heard the other night [its] 17 times faster than what they have right now," Trump said on Friday while unveiling the flag for his new Space Force in the Oval Office in the White House.
"Thats right," said Trumps defense secretary, Mark Esper, standing to his right.
"You take the fastest missile we have right now," Trump said. "You heard Russia has five times and Chinas working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and its just got the go-ahead."
The US Defense Department said in March it had successfully tested an unarmed hypersonic missile, a weapon that could potentially overwhelm other missile defense systems.
According to the Pentagon, the test was conducted successfully in the US state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean.
The test missile flew along the upper atmosphere to a designated impact point at hypersonic speeds, which is over five times the speed of sound, the Pentagon said.
Trump, whose public rhetoric and withdrawal from key arms control treaties have fuelled fears of a new nuclear arms race, seemed to allude to new technology.
Following is the text of Dankofs interview with Press TV:
I dont think theres any question about it. You have a situation here. First of all the Pentagon is absolutely amazed, apparently from reading the British Guardian and the British Independent on this morning as well as your Press TV reporting. Theyre amazed that the President of the United States was talking about this openly. This is something that caught the Pentagon by surprise.
Its very easy to discern what has happened here. And what has happened over time with the United States in the so-called post-Cold War period of time, which has now emerging as a new Cold War.
It is as follows. The first thing you do is you withdraw from existing agreements with other countries. The United States has done this with Russia principally, Iran secondarily, so thats the first thing you do is you withdraw.
The second thing that you do is escalate in terms of rhetoric. And Mr. Trump has managed to do this obviously in his escalation of rhetoric against both the Russians and the Iranians and now the Chinese.
The third thing you do, if you are the opposition is you develop and deploy, when youre being threatened you have to develop some means of defending yourself.
And so in this particular case where the Russians are concerned, they have developed hypersonic missiles that can apparently travel at 15 to 20 times the speed of sound, which has basically rendered the American naval aircraft carrier forward task force strategy that has been employed since the Second World War, completely obsolete.
In that regard, then what happens is that the development of these kinds of weapons for defensive purposes, by the side that is being escalated against, as it were, results in the aggressor developing more for his side.
In this particular case the United States, unsurprisingly, has now gone full-scale research and development and deploy apparently in regard to these hypersonic weapons. Now theres one key thing that is missing from all of this, other than the obvious which is that when you destroy existing agreements and treaties, when you escalate rhetorically against the other side, when you begin deploying against the other side it not only forces them to develop and deploy then you subsequently develop and deploy.
But theres one element to that is not in any of these stories, because it hasnt been mentioned as near as I could tell, either by the Pentagon, or the president. And that is how much is this going into costs over time.
We of course understand the political cost, and the development of absolute distrust among the various sides to this situation that is a result of these kinds of policies, and that distrust breeds more distrust breeds more military spending.
But ultimately just on the American side alone I have not seen in terms of this single new missile that Mr. Trump claims that the United States has or will have very shortly, how much is this going to cost in an era of trillion-dollar defense budgets.
A deficit simply just this year alone because of COVID-19 is going to be at record set, a deficit of $3.7 trillion for a single fiscal year. What is all of this going to do back in the economy and to American priorities in spending? What is this going to do to our overall relationship with other countries? What is all of this going to be ultimately for the United States in terms of spending?
Total spending, deficit spending, national debt, and in this plus misplaced set of priorities that not only worsen our relationships with people abroad but also, diverges governmental monies in the United States for more pressing domestic concerns.
I think these answers are all obvious. None of this is very good. Mr. Trump has brought into all of this fallacious thinking that resulted in the first Cold War. We now are in the middle of seeing the development of a new and more dangerous Cold War not simply with the Russians, but with all of the aggressive rhetoric and the deployment directed at Iran after the United States broke its word in the P5+1 treaty.
And now, of course, the American rhetoric against China which the neocons are escalating in the wake of COVID-19, and these American military deployments in the South China Sea and escalating rhetoric over the Paracel Islands, it all leads only in one direction, that is a more unstable world a more dangerous world.
In a situation ultimately with this kind of weaponry doubt being procured where the potential for an accident or for a catastrophic war to be triggered by a mistake, should be all too apparent to everyone, but I would simply ask Mr. Trump, a fiscal question and economic question. How much is this single missile going to cost? How many of these are going to be deployed? How much more deficit spending and how much more creation of national debt alone is going to occur as a result of all of this?
The end game is this: It is more dangerous world as this trend continues to develop and where the United States is concerned ultimately, it makes us not stronger but weaker to be breaking these agreements with the escalate in rhetoric, to be deploying, to be forcing the other side to deploy and spend, which results in more spending and more deployment, on our part.
Its a never-ending cycle. It is madness. And its a situation with a very big opportunity to end much of this of when the Berlin Wall came down has now evaporated. We are in an even more dangerous period of time now, and the whole thing frankly is simply sickening.
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/17657
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