The
In April, an opinion poll showed that two-thirds of Czechs were against the
Tamas and Bednar occupy a storefront operation in the center of
On May 21, the government approved the plans though the basic document has yet to be ratified by parliament and signed by President Vaclav Klaus; the Czech-U.S. treaties are to be signed by July. At this crucial junction, Tamas and Bednar hold out for democracy. They are not alone.
On May 5, an estimated gathering of 1,500 protesters assembled in
In April, Greenpeace protesters set up a tent city, referred to as “Spot Height 718,” at the exact location of the proposed radar site in the Brdy forest. They have erected an overhead banner with an image of a large target.
Tamas and his group, the No to Bases initiative, proceeds simplistically and with straight forward demands. Yet what this protest represents is very complex. It is a situation has been upon the human race since the the dropping of the first atomic bomb. We have returned to the scene in history in 1983 where President Ronald Reagan first uttered the words, “Star Wars,” in the world arena.
According to a recent report in Ethics & International Affairs written by Philip Coyle and Victoria Samson, there is one glaring problem, among many, with the proposed missile defense systems: “tests have failed roughly half the time.” 2
Coyle and Samson’s report, “Missile Defense Malfunction: Why the Proposed U.S. Missile Defenses in Europe Will Not Work,” is both a explanation of technical and diplomatic failures. One can extrapolate from its contents that the urgency on the part of the
In summary:
Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. Signed by Presidents Bush and Putin on May 2002. The present proposal is in direct violation of the treaty which calls for joint research and development between the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Conventional Armed Forces in
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
The tenuous relationship between the
If this plan is a U.S.-centric geopolitical strategy aimed at threatening
The foremost treaty among all, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is put in considerable risk by tensions between the
Tamas and Bednar are making simple requests that may seem unachievable but there is recent precedent. In 2004, the Canadian government declared it would not join the Pentagon’s missile defense program though it continues in its capacity as a partner in the the U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
According to Coyle and Samson: “Canada understood correctly that U.S. missile defenses represent the first wave in which the United States could introduce attack weapons into space—that is, weapons with strike capability. While the militarization of space is already a fact of life—the
While it would be irrational to think that the geopolitical strategizing of superpowers will diminish in favor of the greater good any time soon, citizens compelled to take nonviolent action wherever they may be and in whatever ways they can, offers hope on incalculable levels.
Notes:
1. No Star Wars online petition at www.nonviolence.cz
2. Philip Coyle and Victoria Samson, “Missile Defense Malfunction: Why the Proposed
2008, http://www.cceia.org/resources/journal/22_1/special_report/001.html
3. see international appeal to “Bring the CFE Treaty into Force,” under “Appeals on Preserving the CFE Treaty,” Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs,
4. “
2 August 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/aug/02/foreignpolicy.politicalcolumnists
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