June 4, 2004 :: Washington Times :: News
Presidential candidate John Kerry has pledged that, if he were president, he would moderately increase the size of the armed forces, which would be paid for by cutting still further funds for missile defense. More attention should rather be given to prevent small, asymmetrical, attacks such as anthrax, “instead of over-relying on weapons and tactics to fight the battles of the past.”
But if concern with strategic vulnerability is a matter of “the past,” no one seems to have told the foreign leaders of the many rogue nations, or indeed that of China, who continue to put a high priority on the continued modernization and advancement of their ballistic missile arsenals.
Kerry’s comments parallel the response China gave this past week to the Defense Department’s annual report to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China. China accused the Pentagon of holding on to Cold War thinking, by emphasizing China’s own ambitions to deploying some 30 nuclear armed ICBMs capable of striking the United States by 2005—a number which is expected to rise to 60 by the end of the decade. (Article)
» June 1, 2004: China accuses US China report of “Cold War mentality”
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