For source-material in this article, go to www.rferl.org and search by date in the archives section. Additionally, reference the February 2003 edition of The Economist.

According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, specifically articles printed on 9/13/02, 10/11/02, 10/18/02, 10/23/02, 12/13/02, and 2/14/03 in the Central Asian section, China and Central Asia are warming up to each other quite nicely.

The friendliness between Beijing, Almaty, Dushanbe, Bishkek, and Tashkent has been long lasting, but in the past two years, specific developments have made this relationship stonger.

Central Asia contains vast oil reserves that are only now being exploited to the benefit of Central Asian economies. China has proved very interested in the purchase of this oil. Indeed China has good reason to be so intrigued: Ford and other car manufacturers are setting up shop on the Chinese mainland. The economic integration of China and Central Asia (including the dispersal of a loan to Uzbekistan INTEREST FREE) is an extremely important development that deserves attention. In fact, it would not be suprising in the near future for an Eastern form of NAFTA to develop ratified by the big traders in the region. The Economist gives China a decade to unleash its mighty economy on the rest of the world, and Central Asia is likely to reap the benefits of this.

Military integration is another important feature of this Sino-Stan friendship. China has spent a goodly sum of manpower and money to help equipp, train, and generally tidy up the state of Central Asia's armed forces. This behavior is likely indicative of a regional hegemon.

For those of us in the West, we would be wise to turn our attention to the East. A new kid is on the "bloc," growing ever more ripe and willing to take on the role of Global Equalizer. The China-Central Asia alliance is about to emerge as America's sole economic competitor.......and they have oil--LOTS of it.

How will America react?

Greg Easterbrook, author of "The Here and Now" and editor of The New Republic, wrote a small article in the Sunday, February 16 edition of the New York Times entitled, "The Smart Way to be Scared."

The article deals with the improbabilities of certain terrorist attacks (i.e. chemical or biological attacks) and contrasting those odds with the probabilities of other terrorist attacks (nuclear detonation, dirty bomb, and conventional explosives). Then Easterbrook points out how little discussion has been given to the latter, more probable manifestations of terrorist attack, and how much--disproportionately so--discussion has been devoted to the far more unlikely manifestations of terror.

If the reader disagrees with Easterbrook, or is curious how he came to the conlusions that he did, post a comment and I will answer your questions based on the material within his article.

What I wish to discuss now, however, is the American policy of pre-emption. War with Iraq is officially a war to prevent terror attacks in the future. The Bush administration seeks to root out the threat before it rears its head as the reaper of more civilian lives.

Can the same be said for Homeland Security? I think not and Easterbrook shows us why. He is correct in saying there is far too much talk about a possible chemical attack. This amount of discussion is to be expected I suppose considering the US has already been victimized by a successful anthrax onslaught that killed an unastonishing toll of five. Easterbrook does not write, but I feel he would agree with me, that there has been far too much discussion regarding terrorists and aircraft. A few short months after 9-11 a teenage boy in Florida flew a small plane into a skyscraper for the sole purpose of taking his own life. However, the media still had to calm quickened hearts by assuring Americans the incident was NOT a terrorist attack. Around the same time a large passenger aircraft lost its tail piece and fell to the earth, killing everyone on board. Terrorists were the immediate suspects almost by default. However, this incident too turned out to be the result of a structural failure rather than disgruntled Arabs.

Now, over a year later, the plane talk continues as the warning level for the nation rises to Orange (whatever the hell that means, Im still not sure). The goverment tells us to live our lives as we always would, with the conspicuous exception of creating a bio-safe room in our homes with plastic sheeting and duct tape. Besides that one little thing, the terrorist havent managed to change the way Americans live (yeah right).

What is of note is the fact that such a bio-safe haven would be of use only in the event tha a chemical or biological agent was released from a low-flying plane. It seems to me everyone is still all caught up in this "terror from the skies" thing.

As I said before, this is not suprising. After all, we WERE attacked the first time with planes right?

Wrong. The first attack on US soil also took place at the WTC but failed to topple the towers. The terrorists in this case used conventional explosives--the sort of weapons by far and large preferred by terrorists all over the world by virtue of their cheap cost, easy mobility, and relative power.

Yet the government, as Easterbrook points out, doesnt discuss what to do in the event of a conventional explosion.

The most horrific option: Atomic attack or radiological "dirty bombs" has yet to be employed by any terrorist group. I have no doubt terror groups have access to all the fissile material they could ever want....hell, the Ukraine and Russia were both selling fissile material on the black market all throughout the nineties. Literally, these two countries were nuclear sieves. Complement this fact with the cost of fissile material: The amount required to produce a one-megaton explosion (one Hiroshima event) costs about the same on the black market as a laptop does at Best Buy.

Sure, border security at airports and various other entry points for the US is pretty tight......yet there are still plenty of places where a determined terrorist can slip into the country. Take the border of Texas and Mexico as an example. Then there is also the entire US-Canadian border. These two huge regions are largely unguarded.

Given the relative low cost of creating something like a dirty bomb, combined with the tremendous amount of unguarded space on US borders, a radiological attack seems far more likely to me than two or more planes being flown into buildings again.

So, where is the talk about that? Why doesnt the government stress this point at least as much as it stresses chemical or biological attacks?

None of this sounds like true pre-emption to me. All of it sounds like the same old game: "React, react, react, and--oh yes, forget anything that might have happened during the Clinton administration unless it can help us along in the effort to invade Iraq.

The quixotic artifice of the Bush administration is as rational as those Greenspan termed "exuberant" in the late nineties.

As I stated before in my last writing concerning the State of the Union address, the information (or lack thereof) contained within regarding Bush’s foreign policy—most specifically his strategy concerning Iraq—required some time for digestion and contemplation. After doing both in tandem with some research, I have formulated an opinion.

There is the mistaken assumption that the US is about to initiate an “oil war.” Of course, this conclusion is understandably drawn. The most obvious benefit the US would reap from an Iraqi regime change would be rock-bottom prices on oil. Indeed, Cheney and other members of the Bush cabinet would have and potentially still may gain great wealth from a regime change (Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, an industry that specializes in the manufacture of oil-extraction equipment). However, the situation is more complex than that. Iraq is a member of OPEC, and has several other international ties that deserve consideration. For one, France—a conspicuous recalcitrant amongst the “alliance”—relies heavily on Iraqi oil, being one of Iraq’s most important customers. Then there is Russia, a state still struggling with financial burdens, which depends on regular trade with Iraq in industrial goods. Iraq post-Saddam must guarantee these relationships still exist.

Therefore it is not a stretch of reason to see the importance of Iraq remaining in the OPEC organization in the event of a regime change. To do otherwise would not only jeopardize future alliances with powerful voices in the EU (France), but could seriously disrupt world-wide oil prices and set a precedent worrisome to Vladimir Putin; straining US-Russia relations. These are not strategically viable moves during a time whilst the US is still engaged in the “War on Terror.” International cooperation—not isolation, is in the interest of a nation suddenly made aware of its vulnerability to those who would like to see it crumble.

This indeed is not an oil war. This is a war anticipated and requested by the Project for a New American Century (www.pnac.org). Of which Donald Rumsfeld is a member. In 1998 PNAC wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton requesting he lay the political ground for a swift invasion of Iraq. This letter was signed by Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, Zalmay Khalilzad (envoy to Afganistan), and Paul Wolfowitz—all members of the current Executive Cabinet. Another member of the Cabinet, William Kristol, is the current chairman of PNAC.

At the time the letter hit Clinton’s desk, however, the political capital to instigate such an ambitious campaign was lacking; and Clinton knew this. Clinton also knew the reason behind the letter’s request, and it was not oil.

Instead the reason was Israel. If it were possible to dispense with an international player that no one in the world was especially fond of (Hussein), and in his place establish an American-friendly democratic regime, there existed the possibility that “democracy fever” would sweep the Middle East; the monarchy of Saudi Arabia and the repressive government of Iran would fall down to the ideals of democracy. Should these events come to pass, the Palestinians would become much more likely to accept future Israeli-favorable peace treaties.

Having said this much, a peculiar line from the State of the Union address now makes much more sense to me. President Bush, who has for the past two years all but turned his back entirely on the Palestinians, said he wanted to see, “A secure Israel and democratic Palestine.” This statement presumes two things: 1) A separate state named “Palestine” will exist. 2) A future Palestine will be democratic.

Is it possible Bush is seeking to do that thing which evaded Clinton at the end of his tenure as President? Can it be that Bush longs to bring an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in lieu of Camp David; but by the back door through an Iraqi regime change?

I certainly hope this is not the case. If Bush subscribes to the ideals of his PNAC fellows, then many assumptions about the culture of Islamic peoples and the capability of the United States to use its military might to export democracy have been made. Experience has taught me that when the chain of assumptions grows, the number of mistaken ones grows as well.