Dangerous escalation

It may indeed be true that the actual announcement was not dictated by the current crisis in Georgia. However, it is a step too far to say that the issue has nothing to do with the dispute between Moscow and Washington over events in Georgia.

Both the siting of missiles in eastern Europe and the planned transformation of Georgia into a US protectorate, under the auspices of NATO, are closely linked.

They are linked by US determination to exercise full-spectrum military dominance to bolster its position as the sole global superpower at a time when its economic superiority is being progressively undermined, its currency sliding and its debt levels ruinous.

None of this is a secret. The current White House cabal and its advisers laid out their stall in their Project for a New American Century documents a decade ago.

US imperialism, which used to dominate the world on the basis of its economic superiority, is now reduced to recourse to war and threats of war.

Washington insists that its missile defence programme is directed against "rogue states" - code for Iran - rather than against Russia or China.

But, if that were the case, it would have accepted Moscow's offer to site its missiles in southern Russia. US refusal confirmed its real intention.

And its latest decision, on Thursday, to site Patriot missiles in Poland, upgrade Polish military capability and station US troops there needs no explanation.

It is now openly admitted by senior US representatives that oil lay at the heart of US motives for the illegal invasion of Iraq and US energy transnationals are already prepared to plunder the country's resources after signing strategic agreements with the pliable Kurdish regional government, undermining efforts by Baghdad to control its oil wealth.

Georgia is already a key player in Western attempts to secure Caspian Basin oil and gas, by virtue of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, bypassing both Russia and Iran.

The US and some European states have been gung-ho in their plans to welcome Tbilisi into NATO, even though it not only stretches north Atlantic to an unbelievable degree but proposes military alliance with a state that does not even share a border with any other member state.

The only reason for such a proposal is that Georgia would be used as a US forward base against Russia.

Had a missile defence shield already been in place, capable of neutralising Moscow's military response capability, what defence would South Ossetia have had against the blitzkrieg launched by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili?

The US is destabilising the situation, especially in Europe, through its escalation of military tension.

The likelihood is that Russia will programme its nuclear weapons against targets in western Europe once more, not least in Britain, where new Labour has put RAF Fylingdales and Menwith Hill at exclusive US disposal.

European states, which have more to lose than the US over a disruption of oil and gas supplies, must press Washington to end this dangerous adventurism.