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AMERICA'S PLANS FOR PROMPT GLOBAL STRIKE AMERICA'S PLANS FOR GLOBAL STRIKE PROMPT The USA's military dominance in conventional warfare systems means it no longer needs to use the nuclear strike option, but its plans for Prompt Global Strike capabilities including space-based weapons are already threatening enough. World Military Superiority without Nuclear Weapons here is only one country that has the military and scientific capacity to Tienes an instantaneous and undetectable, overwhelming and devastat- ing attack against a vulnerable adversary, and has openly proclaimed its intention to achieve that ability. That nation is what its current head of state defined last December as "the world's sole military superpower"'—one which aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full-spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space, to maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft- carrier battle groups and strategic bombers on and to almost every latitude and longitude, and to do so with a post-World War II record defence budget of USS708 billion for next year. Having gained that status in large part through being the first country to develop and use nuclear weapons, the United States of America is now in a position to strengthen its global supremacy by superseding the nuclear option. The United States led three major wars in less than four years against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq from 1999 to 2003, and in all three cases deployed from tens to hundreds of thousands of "boots on the ground" after air strikes and missile attacks. The Pentagon established military bases in all three war zones and, although depleted uranium contamination and cluster bombs are still spread across all three lands, American troops have not had to contend with an irradiated landscape. Launching a nuclear attack when a conventional one serves the same purpose would be superfluous and too costly in a variety of ways. On 8 April 2010, American and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) agreement in the Czech capital of Prague to reduce their respective nations’ nuclear arsenals and delivery systems (subject to ratification by the US Senate and the Russian Duma). Earlier in the same week, the US released its new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which for the first time appeared to abandon the first use of nuclear arms, The dark nuclear cloud that has hung over humanity's head for the past 65 years appears to be dissipating. However, the US retains 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 2,200 (by some counts, 3,500) more in storage and a triad of land, air and submarine delivery vehicles. More ominously, though, Washington is forging ahead with a replacemen for the nuclear sword and shield—for blackmail and for deterrence—with a non-nuclear model that could upset the previous "balance of terror" arrangement that has been a criminal nightmare for six decades, but for 60 years without a massive missile war. The new sword, or spear, entails plans for conventional first-strike weapon systems employing the same triad of land, air and sea components—with space added—and the shield is a worldwide network of interceptor missile by Rick Rozoff © Global Research, 11 April 2010 Centre for Research on Globalization Montreal, Canada Web page: http://tinyurl.com/2g82bds Centre for Research on Globalization Montreal, Canada Web page: http://tinyurl.com/2g82bds JUNE - JULY 2010 NEXUS ° II www.nexusmagazine.com