There are over a billion Chinese and a billion Indians…
[The Chinese and the East Indian economies are growing at a rate several times that of the U.S. You do the math - at some time, during the next hundred years (probably within the next fifty, in fact), the U.S. is no longer going to be the world’s sole economic and military super-power - in fact, it is going to be substantially weaker and less powerful than these two countries (the Europeans are going to be in the same boat). Would it not behoove our leaders to act in such a way as to foster a world situation where those more powerful than us would feel constrained to behave by enforceable norms? Or do we want to wind up in the same situation the Soviet Union did - spending three times our relative GDP in a fruitless effort to keep up with a much larger and more economically powerful state for the purpose of national security? I’m certainly not interested in having my retirement go to fund such an effort, or having to work into my late eighties before I can retire… Bush’s “pre-emptive strike” doctrine and his legitimization of “first strike” with nuclear weapons and other WPD is incredibly dangerous to our long term national security, and to the personal security of every person in this country. Especially given the racist and xenophobic tendencies within Chinese and Indian politics. -Thomas]
China to put man in space this year
‘Peaceful development of the outer space’
Thursday, January 2, 2003 Posted: 7:06 AM EST (1206 GMT)
BEIJING, China — China plans to become the third nation to put people in space later this year, following the successful launch of an unmanned spacecraft earlier this week.
