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To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/27/2003 2:49:23 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 793681

One of the great delusions of modern times. The Soviet Union rotted out from the inside; Reagan happened to be sitting in the chair when the rot went terminal. It would have happened no matter who was there American policy could have been to go easy on the USSR, not pressure it, to prop it up in effect. Then it needn't have collapsed when it did, or how it did. It's very easy to look back on history as if it were predetermined. But usually wrong.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/27/2003 4:13:18 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

It would have happened no matter who was there Go talk to the people who in Eastern Europe who were involved during the 80's. They don't buy the Liberal approach you believe. They regard Reagan as a Godsend.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/27/2003 4:22:04 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

Interesting. The official Chinese Government position on the Christian basics is the same as our Churches on the Left here. the "Four Againsts": the Bible is not the revealed Word, Jesus was not born of a virgin, the resurrection is a myth, and there is no "second coming." Along with this view is a strong push among official Protestant church leaders to eradicate the concept of individual "salvation." In China, pews are packed Beijing is wary as Christianity counts up to 90 million adherents. By Robert Marquand \| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor XIAMEN, CHINA - China's first Protestant church is still located on a winding back alley of fish markets and fruit stalls in this old port city. A crest atop the brick colonial structure reads "1848." Yet the Xinjie Church here is hardly a museum piece. Every Sunday it literally overflows with more than 2,000 attendees during its two regular services, with more people coming during the Christmas season. This church - with an altar flanked by blinking conifers - and the four other government-sanctioned churches nearby, are home to rising numbers of worshipers. Christianity - in both the official and unofficial churches - is again gaining momentum in China, and is a source of some consternation for the party leadership. "Being Christian" is fashionable, with young people sporting crosses as a mild form of dissent, and others feeling the faith has a certain international cachet. But something more is at work. In many interviews, congregants say the deity they worship communicates, and has power in their lives, especially now when China is going through immense, jarring economic changes that upset older social contracts. "People in China have a spiritual hunger, very much so," says an official church pastor in Xiamen, "and there is a need for that to be filled. I think this is the main reason why we continue to have larger services." Congregations in China comprise all ages, with younger people popping up during the service to take cellphone calls outside - this being Asia. Last Sunday, several Xiamen churches held a Christmas party, notable because preaching took place. The gathering at an ocean-side exhibition center was so large that 300 people were turned away. In Quanzhou, north of Xiamen, church members tore down an 800-seat edifice, and have nearly finished a 2,500-seat $1.6 million new church which is 90 percentfinanced by the 3,000 congregants there. Along the easy-going southeast coast, Protestant worshipers pay little attention to China's Shanghai-based official church hierarchy. They hold Bible study groups, have choir rehearsals, and gather in volunteer groups. "We have to join the [official] church, but then we do and say what we want," says a local pastor. "We preach the living God." Still, what's happening around Xiamen is a far cry from the way Ji Lu worships in Beijing, the center of political power. Mr. Ji helps lead prayers in an unofficial church - where 20 people gather in a room so small that when they share tea and cakes afterward, all must stand. Ji is one of an estimated 30 to 60 million "unregistered" Christian believers. His sect is made up of nearly a hundred other small groups around Beijing - part of a range of illegal evangelical sects in China, some extremely devout, who say the church fills a "spiritual void" in their lives. The rising evangelical movement in China is creating a complex and dynamic set of tensions, as individual longings challenge a state operating for a half century on principles of collective social order. Not only are there renewed government efforts to curb Christian churches, policies to stop Sunday schools, restrictions on the movement of pastors from one city to another, attempts to dilute theological content, and efforts to stymie new church applications with red tape, but tensions and suspicions have also been growing between official and unofficial "home church" Christians as well. One expert says the home church-official church split is more serious in the long term than Beijing's scattered, stop-and-start efforts to rein in religion. "A lot of Chinese are becoming Christians," argues the US-trained theologian. "But the biggest problem is between unregistered and registered churches. There is a lot of antipathy between the two, a lot of water under the bridge." Christianity in China began to flourish after the Opium Wars, as European and American missionaries set out for the Orient. "In 1842, the Gospel of God was disseminated in Xiamen," according to the Xinjie Church council here. Xiamen is one of the original five treaty ports negotiated with China's imperial court. Churches grew rapidly throughout China, and have been regarded by officialdom and locals as a mixed blessing ever since. When the communists consolidated power in 1949 under Chairman Mao Zedong, religion was reorganized. Missionaries were largely driven out. Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, Protestants, and Taoists were brought under government control, and they remain the five officially sanctioned religions in China today. Protestants found themselves gathered under one roof called the "Three Self Patriotic Movement" - whose purpose was to bring the Gospels into the service of the state. According to the official Xinjie church records, "In 1966, owing to the Great Cultural Revolution, church services came to a halt. This situation lasted 13 years." Since the 1980s, as China liberalized, churches were again allowed to open. But a burst of religious expression brought a series of tighter controls whose actual enforcement has varies from province to province - with urban areas such as Beijing and Shanghai drawing more oversight and intervention than rural China and the south. Churches in the city of Wenzhou last year conducted a campaign of civil disobedience in response to official efforts to stop the teaching of Sunday School. Evangelicals in Henan Province have been targeted, as have home-church prayer leaders in Shanghai, who have been sent to labor camps in recent months. Church building is constricted. A government official in Fujian says one reason for so many home churches is that official services are overflowing. "It is very difficult to register any new churches right now," says the official. There has always been a policy not to allow more churches, but now it is being enforced. The government wants to stop the evangelical growth." Estimates of Chinese Christians vary widely. The official figure is 15-20 million unregistered, 1.8 million registered. Some Christians with access to unpublished figures in Beijing say the number is 85 million unregistered, 5 million registered. A recent graduate of Nanjing Theological Academy, considered the center of official Protestantism, gives a figure of 60 million. Jason Kindopp, a visiting scholar at George Washington University says the figure is "at least" 30 million, and possibly 60 million. In some ways, the efforts of the government in recent years has been to offer greater support to official churches - while making efforts to undermine the evangelical fervor found in home churches. For the majority of Christians in home churches, the basic question is how or whether to worship in an official church, which they see as woefully compromised by state rules. Ji, the home-church believer in Beijing, for example, jokes about one leading theological institute as a place where first-year students believe in God. By the second year, they are merely "good men." By the third year "you become a ghost who no longer believes in grace or being saved. But you are a ghost with a car, a salary, and a job." Typical of what Ji objects to is a 1998 policy (recently given new prominence) known as the "Theological Construction Campaign." It is promulgated in leading Chinese seminaries - and can be summed up by what are known as the "Four Againsts": the Bible is not the revealed Word, Jesus was not born of a virgin, the resurrection is a myth, and there is no "second coming." Along with this view is a strong push among official Protestant church leaders to eradicate the concept of individual "salvation." To the essentially conservative Chinese Protestant mind, such ideas are an effort to "de-Christianize Christianity," says one Guangdong pastor. Such liberal views do not yet predominate in official churches, especially in rural areas. But what separates Christians in China runs far deeper, and is reflected by fears on both sides. In numerous interviews, official church pastors said they couldn't currently engage home-church brothers and sisters (as they are known to each other) due to legal constraints. Official clergy say that home-church Christians simply cannot forget the Cultural Revolution period and its attendant horrors. Yet from the home-church view, to blame the Cultural Revolution for all problems, and to assume that all is forgiven, is too easy and too risky. In their memory, Protestants underwent more than a 10-year persecution - but they have been targeted since 1951. Land was taken, purges and "self-correction campaigns" were conducted, patriotic loyalty tests were prescribed, overseas support was cut, churches were closed, and pastors were demonized as imperialists or parasites. Moreover, they point out that evangelical Protestants are still arrested, and that campaigns (like the new liberal theology) are still powerful in official circles. A Chinese band brings glad tidings At Christmastime in the remote mountain valleys of Fujian, it is possible to pick up the live sounds of a brassy approximation of "Silent Night" or "Onward Christian Soldiers" or even "Jingle Bells." Each year at this time, the 15-member brass band of the Hutou Christian Church are on the march. Farmers, construction workers, and small business owners temporarily leave their jobs to assemble the only brass band, amateur or professional, anyone in this region has heard about. They even have a new CD. China is not known for participatory Christmas celebrations. But in these terraced Fujian mountain villages, where the lines between official and unofficial churches are blurred beyond recognition, well, Christians will be Christians when December rolls by. The Hutou church was officially founded in 1983, though it started with more than a thousand Chinese unofficial believers. As pastor Li Qing Ling tells it, the band is a gift. The church considered what it could give to their city of 100,000 and decided it should be "something different" that everyone would enjoy. "We decided to have a brass band because in the countryside, you need a sound that people can hear. This is a very open area," he says. Music plays a large role in Hutou services; members proudly point to a drum set and electronic keyboard in their 800-seat sanctuary. But to drum up, so to speak, a brass band - took nights of planning, months of fundraising, lining up the proper talent, and sewing uniforms. After three years of work, the church sent a delegation in 1996 to a music shop in Quanzhou, on the coast. They purchased 12 instruments. Each year for the next five years, they bought another. Progress was slow since band members first needed to learn how to play the instruments they signed up for. Yet now the Hutou Christian Church Brass Band "tours" with three trombones, two snare drums, a bass drum, two clarinets, three trumpets, a cymbal, and three alto horns. A saxophone was purchased this year, but you can't hear it yet. The sax player is still learning how to blow his jazzy riffs. www.csmonitor.com \| Copyright © 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email copyright@csps.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/27/2003 6:15:07 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

Mao's shadow on China at the 110 mark By Ross Terrill. Ross Terrill is the author of "The New Chinese Empire." A new edition of his book "Mao" was published this week in Chinese in Beijing Chicago Tribune Mao Tse-tung, alone among 20th Century dictators, enjoys a largely benign life-after-death. Taxi drivers in China hang a Mao photo on their steering wheels to ward off accidents. Department stores use a pink plastic model of Mao to display silk pajamas. Farmers clutch a Mao image as they fend off flood waters. Mao, born 110 years ago today, has transcended communism backward into Chinese history. He has escaped, so far, the harsher verdicts on Stalin and Hitler by entering Chinese folklore, becoming a version of the semi-mythical "Yellow Emperor" for an age of space capsules and the World Trade Organization. In addition, Beijing needs Mao, and here the picture grows darker. The Chinese Communist Party cannot dismiss Mao as a Stalin, because he was also the Lenin, as organizer, and the Marx, as philosopher, of the Chinese Revolution. Mao's 110th is being honored with exhibitions, speeches, galas, rap songs, pilgrimages to sacred spots, films and books, all devised by the party-state, most met with a yawn--occasionally a curse--from the Chinese people. In much of urban China, Mao has lost meaning, negative or positive. Youth can dine in a "Cultural Revolution-style" cafe off rough-hewn tables with Mao quotations on the wall as they chat about sex or the stock market. In rural China, Mao looms larger as a flawed emperor who yet remains a father figure. His home village has built 110 gold statues of Mao. One is being donated for erection in the Mao Mausoleum at Tiananmen Square. The other 109 are on sale at $25,000 each. After his death in 1976, silence about Mao was safest until the CCP sliced him up into good and bad, the knife angled now left and now right. Finally, in 1981, Beijing promulgated a Delphic balance sheet of his "great deeds" and "grave blunders." Deng Xiaoping, knocked down as a "capitalist roader" in Mao's Cultural Revolution, criticized his arbitrary predecessor in the 1980s to signal a fresh agenda of economic reform. After Deng's death in 1997, Jiang Zemin made a few pro-Mao gestures, differentiating himself from Deng, reminding Chinese people that Mao was 70 percent correct and only 30 percent wrong. The current leader, Hu Jintao, seeking to be less aloof and corrupt than Jiang, has waved a flag of homespun populism that invokes Mao in word but not in policy. Hu said Mao at 110 offers "precious spiritual wealth" to China. Internationally, Mao's brand of Third World revolution has collapsed like a cold souffle. Pockets of voluntaristic Maoism remain in the hills of Nepal and Peru, but post-Mao China itself has given up the export of communist ideas for the import of capitalist ideas. Re-evaluation of Mao goes on as fashions change. America's need for China as a counterweight to the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, for example, led many in the U.S. to focus on Mao's qualities and downplay his flaws. One need only consult Henry Kissinger's memoir, "The White House Years." Later, Mao's image lost this boost. He shrank from a near-Superman to just one dictator and nation-builder among others. Some say Deng reversed Mao's revolution, but it is an important distinction that Deng dismantled Mao's whimsical thought yet retained Mao's authoritarian state. Deng-ism (continued by Jiang and Hu) was a retreat from as much as possible of Maoism without endangering Leninist political power. We won't know what many Chinese people think of Mao until the monopoly of power by the CCP comes to an end. If it has not been possible to build a museum to the Cultural Revolution, as the writer Ba Jin suggested, or a monument to the victims of the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward, certainly it is not possible--with the CCP's image still at stake--to approach Mao without political blinkers. Under the surface, the collapse of the Soviet Union has probably begun a reassessment of Mao within China that will one day go far. A future Chinese leader may say the whole Marxist-Leninist phase of China's 20th Century history was an unnecessary detour from the self-strengthening approach to the challenge of the West in the 19th Century. And thus, for Mao, Marxism was actually a handicap to his great missions of farmer-rebellion and national unification. Last week, during a telecast interview from the Washington studios of the Voice of America, I was asked by a caller from Shandong Province if China would have been better off had Liu Shaoqi, Mao's methodical deputy, become top leader from 1949 onward. A tough question. Without Mao there would have been no utopian Great Leap Forward or fascist Cultural Revolution. But Liu's China, resembling the Soviet Union, would probably have experienced Brezhnev-like stagnation. Mao went off the rails so badly that Deng was handed a tremendous unspoken mandate to be pragmatic in pursuit of prosperity and stability. Time was lost, yes, I told the man on the phone from Shandong. But the deck was cleared for a fresh voyage. chicagotribune.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/28/2003 3:15:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793681

The rise of China will probably tie with our efforts to change Islam in the early history of the 21st Century. China's Stature Growing in Asia The nation's economic power is fueling trade, prosperity and a new sense of shared destiny. By Tyler Marshall Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 28, 2003 HONG KONG — When the president of the Asian Development Bank unveiled its economic forecast for the region this month, he cited a key reason for the rosy outlook: the rapidly increasing importance of the People's Republic of China. The assessment by Tadao Chino was one more piece of evidence pointing to the shift of geopolitical power underway in Asia. In the space of a few years, China has become an economic power and increasingly potent political force in a region where the United States once stood unchallenged — from New Delhi in the west, to Southeast Asia, to Tokyo and Seoul in the east. China's growth, coupled with its emerging role as a catalyst for economic integration in East Asia, has awakened a sense of shared destiny in a region where cooperation has traditionally been weak. In defiance of early predictions that China would crush its smaller neighbors as it became the world's preferred producer of cheap goods, Beijing's boom has — for now — become Asia's windfall too. What remains unclear is how long the region's smaller economies can maintain their surprising ability to keep trade ties with China a mutually beneficial, two-way exchange. Some analysts already see indications that, as China's production muscle continues to grow, weaker countries such as the Philippines are finding it harder to keep up. At this point, specialists believe, China's waxing influence carries no threat to the United States. As Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's recent visit to Washington underscored, the nations share increasingly similar interests: Both place a high priority on stability in the region and in countries that supply vital imports. And both see unfettered shipping as essential to maintaining the free flow of trade. And both view militant Islamists as a serious threat. China's deepening involvement in international affairs — including its entry into the World Trade Organization — binds the country more tightly to a global order still dominated by the United States, these experts say. "China has made gains, but not at the expense of U.S. interests," said Amitav Acharya, deputy director of the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game." Much of China's new status stems from its emergence as one of the world's major trading nations and, in the process, an important market for export-oriented neighbors. But there is a strong political dimension to this power as Beijing's new leaders show themselves prepared to set aside old disputes and engage, rather than bully, other nations. So stark is this change that many refer to China's new regional diplomacy as a charm offensive. The relaxed, affable demeanor Wen displayed in Washington is typical of Beijing's current posture in foreign affairs. "These leaders are changing how China deals with the region and the wider world," said Peter Jennings, director of programs at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. In sharp contrast to the United States' ballooning trade deficit with China, most Asian countries actually enjoy healthy surpluses with their fast-developing neighbor as Beijing buys raw materials, food and manufactured goods in increasingly large quantities to fuel its domestic growth. "Everyone said China would overwhelm the region, but it's not happening," said Jean- Pierre Verbiest, the Asian Development Bank's deputy chief economist. "Instead, it's had the opposite effect, and Asia is flourishing." Although China's transformation into a more open market economy has been underway for more than two decades, trade growth curves within Asia have tilted off the charts since Beijing's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization. Wen recently predicted that China's trade with members of the 10-nation Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations — ASEAN — would exceed $100 billion a year by 2005, a figure more than triple the volume of two years ago. Few believe that China can sustain its foreign trade growth. Some experts point to October figures, which showed reduced growth of foreign direct investment and lower domestic loan volume as early signs that the white-hot pace of economic growth — and trade volume — could soon start to slow. Still, China already has had a role in transforming how East Asia views itself. Thanks largely to China, trade within the region this year is expected to exceed that with countries outside the area for the first time — a reality that experts predict will foster a greater sense of community among the nations. "This isn't like Europe, where governments played the key role in creating a single market," Verbiest said. "This is business-driven. This is fairly unique in history." Some experts, however, worry that as China's economy continues to grow and gathers more technical expertise, smaller Asian nations could eventually lose the competitive advantage that now enables them to sell so successfully to the communist nation. "China will obviously climb up the technology ladder, and the question is whether these smaller economies can stay ahead or whether they get overtaken," said Yiping Huang, a Hong Kong-based Citigroup economist who specializes in China. This deepening regional interdependence has helped to drive a softening of China's relations with its neighbors. Rudolfo Biazon, a Philippine legislator and vice chairman of the Senate Committee on National Defense and Security, said Beijing had notably toned down its rhetoric in its long-simmering dispute with Manila over possession of the tiny Spratly Islands in the South China Sea west of the Philippines. "They are less aggressive, more cooperative, now," he said. The change is part of a larger pattern. Since October, China has: • Signed a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea with ASEAN that includes a pledge to resolve territorial disputes "by peaceful means, without resorting to the use of threat or force." The accord has eased tensions over two disputed island groups in the area — the oil-rich Spratlys, claimed in whole or in part by six countries, including China, and the Paracels, claimed by China and Vietnam. • Acceded to the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, which promotes closer economic cooperation, cultural exchanges and peaceful settlement of disputes. • Concluded an agreement on the creation of an ASEAN-China Free Trade Area. Tariffs on a wide range of mainly agricultural products will fall starting in January, with those on a variety of other goods scheduled to drop beginning in January 2005. • Overhauled its troubled relationship with India, conducting its first joint military exercises with the Indian navy. Beijing is said to be nudging its traditional ally Pakistan to resolve the prickly Kashmir dispute peacefully. In the first 10 months of this year, the still-modest level of trade between Asia's two giant economies jumped to $5.8 billion from $3.8 billion. • Decided to take a more active role and work more closely with Japan, South Korea and the United States to resolve the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. That China's rise has occurred at a time when the attention of the United States' most-senior policymakers largely has been focused elsewhere only adds to the sense of Beijing's growing influence. The Bush administration's self-declared war on terrorism and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq also have diminished America's standing in the East Asia region. In a speech this month, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda suggested that the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign, including the Iraq war, might have made the world less safe. A poll of international attitudes toward the United States published last summer by the nonpartisan Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 83% of Indonesians questioned had an unfavorable opinion of the U.S., up from 36% a year earlier. Just why Beijing has moved so intensively on the diplomatic front is a matter of debate among regional specialists. Some believe that China is buying time, to maintain regional stability as it builds up power for an eventual series of showdowns with smaller, weaker neighbors. Others, however, see China's policy of engagement as part a fundamental shift to bring its actions more in harmony with the interests of a large and powerful trading nation. "Cooperating with others is in China's long-term interests," Acharya said. But even he advises a degree of caution as China continues to gain influence. "It's not unhealthy to be wary" of China, he said. "We haven't seen major political change yet. What we've seen is a commitment to multilateralism, and that's it." latimes.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/30/2003 12:56:25 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793681

A Nuclear Headache: What if the Radicals Oust Musharraf? By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER - New York Times CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 29 — Two recent assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, have renewed concern in the Bush administration over both the stability of a critical ally and the security of its nuclear weapons if General Musharraf were killed or removed from office. Administration officials would not discuss their contingency plans for Pakistan, but several said the White House was revisiting an effort begun just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to help Pakistan improve the security of its nuclear arsenal and to prevent Al Qaeda or extremists within the Pakistani military or intelligence services from gaining access to the country's weapons and fissile material. "It's what we don't know that worries us," said a senior administration official, "including the critical question of how much fissile material Pakistan now holds — and where it holds it." Three years ago, American officials estimated that Pakistan had enough highly enriched uranium to manufacture 40 nuclear weapons, and it is assumed that the figure has grown. "It's one of the things that we're concerned about — nuclear materials or weapons-related information falling into the hands of terrorists or states who harbor them — irrespective of what country we're talking about," a State Department official said Monday. "We have discussed these concerns with Pakistan, and we continue to do so. Pakistan has taken those concerns very seriously." Under both President Clinton and President Bush, the Pentagon has analyzed whether American forces could seize or secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if it appeared likely to fall into the hands of terrorists or their sympathizers, part of a broad effort at planning for nuclear emergencies around the world. But a number of current and former administration officials said they had concluded that it was impossible to be certain where all of Pakistan's nuclear materials and weapons components were stored. One Pentagon official said any raid by the American military to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal during a period of chaos would be "an extremely difficult and highly risky venture." Other administration officials termed it simply impossible. Officials said they were relatively confident that even if General Musharraf lost power or was killed, Pakistan has established some fairly reliable nuclear safeguards. Nuclear warheads, triggering devices and the delivery systems for the weapons are all stored separately; thus, it would be difficult to steal a complete weapon, according to administration officials and academic analysts. The degree to which the United States may have aided in that process is a secret, in part because the Bush administration does not want to worsen anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. But there are other reasons, administration and Pentagon officials say. Pakistan has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and so the United States is prohibited from sharing certain technology. But two years ago a senior American official said the Bush administation would not let those rules be an impediment to improving the safety of the Pakistani arsenal. Still, the computerized, encoded nuclear safeguards are among the United States' most prized secrets, and military officials fear they could pass through Pakistan's hands to adversaries. Pakistan, too, might reject an offer of the safeguard technology because it would have to share its own nuclear design secrets with the United States to create a compatible system. Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, visited Pakistan and raised the delicate issue. On Monday, officials declined to describe the results of those discussions. But administration officials appear less concerned that General Musharraf would lose control over actual weapons than over highly enriched uranium. Terrorists in possession of bomb fuel, even without the triggering devices needed to produce a nuclear explosion, could build a "dirty bomb" that spews radioactive material, or could attempt to engineer a crude nuclear device. Documents seized after the invasion of Afghanistan suggested that while Al Qaeda sought to develop a nuclear weapon, it was not close to doing so. But Pakistan's scientific community has that ability, and much of the American concern centers on the issue of whether General Musharraf has the loyalty of his nuclear scientists. "When people talk about the safety and security of Pakistan's nuclear programs, they often focus on facilities and weapons and whether, if you have a coup or the death of Musharraf, these facilities come under some kind of hostile control," said Mahnaz Ispahani of the Council on Foreign Relations. "But an equal threat is the nature of these scientists, and what their connections are, and how well they are screened and monitored." George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is among those who argue that Pakistan's self-interest is reason for confidence in the security of its nuclear arsenal. "You have an organization that runs the country that would be quite obsessive about maintaining control over these weapons," he said. "They are the crown jewels, the ultimate deterrent and source of pride and prowess." That calculation changes, experts warn, should Pakistan, fearing war, assemble the weapons and transport them about the country for possible use. And the recent attacks raise a fresh set of concerns. "It's very unsettling what these assassination attempts imply, that the inner security circle for Musharraf has been breached," said Gaurav Kampani of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "If security for the president, for the head of the Pakistani Army, cannot be guaranteed, what guarantee is there that nuclear assets and missiles and so forth are safe?" David E. Sanger reported from Crawford, Tex., for this article, and Thom Shanker from Washington. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

To: Dayuhan who wrote (21735)	12/31/2003 6:56:02 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 793681

Or maybe not. One of the great delusions of modern times. ============================================================== Demanding Victory: Ronald Reagan versus Mikhail Gorbachev 1980-1988 To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. -- Sun Tzu Ronald Reagan inherited a terrible economy, a nation with no international respect, and a bold, expanding Soviet Union. He tossed away the old concept of military parity along with the Carter concept of capitulation and took it upon himself to defeat the Soviet Union. Reagan recognized that a socialist economy barely functions. By rebuilding American armed forces, Reagan challenged the Soviet Union to keep up. They obliged. Our military spending increased to 27% of our federal budget. But the Soviets needed 60% of their budget to keep up. That math didn't work well for the USSR. But then Soviets were willing to bleed their people dry. Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions. -- Sun Tzu Reagan had a stroke of brilliance. The Soviets relied upon hard currency to maintain their straining military budget. And there was only one source of Soviet hard currency; Oil. Reagan tripled the foreign aid to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to about 3 billion each, but under the following conditions: 1-They stop fighting. 2-They buy American military hardware. 3-Saudi Arabia increase oil production to meet American demand. The Saudis opened up the oil spigots. Overnight, the price of oil dropped below $20 per barrel. In one fell swoop, Reagan brought peace to the middle east, boosted the American economy with lower energy prices, and eliminated the only source of money to fund the Soviet army. It actually became more expensive for the Russians to pump oil than it was worth. The USSR was on its knees, ripe for defeat. Shortly after, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. The USSR tossed its hand. Within 24 months, the USSR was no longer in existence. Until Clinton, our economy benefited from lower oil prices and less military spending. All because Reagan won the Cold War. That victory wasn't the sum of efforts from previous presidents. Reagan alone won the Cold War. Without firing a shot. Few give him credit for his utter political brilliance. When Reagan left office, America held unprecedented prestige and strength. thevrwc.org Military expenditure 1982 Rank Nation %GNP ($millions) 10. USSR 10.9 170,000 28. US 6.4 196,390 newint.org MILITARY EXPENDITURES Year Current $ (billions) 1985 277.2 1986 287.6 1987 303.0 1988 319.0 1989 303.0 1990 292.0 1991 260.0 1992 159.2 1993 125.0 1994 93.0 1995 76.0 globalsecurity.org I see an 88% increase in Soviet military spending from 1982 to 1988.