World domination via nuclear weapons.

President George W. Bush is the most dangerous U.S. president in history. This is no exaggeration, no unwarranted hyperbole. Bush is now embarking on a program, heretofore unthinkable, for the deliberate use of nuclear weapons. He not only withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June 2002 but, according to the May 21, 2003, New York Times, has recently asked Congress to lift the ten-year ban on research, development, and production of nuclear weapons of less than five kilotons. The Senate has already, by a vote of fifty-one to forty-three, agreed to this proposal.

Nuclear weapons, even if they are smaller than those of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, don't only kill on impact but also raise immense radioactive dust, resulting in slow, agonizing death from radiation.

Some assume that using smaller nuclear weapons can produce accurate precision bombing--such as was claimed in the bombing of Iraq. What wasn't reported by officials is that, although those bombs rarely missed a target by more than thirteen feet, when the bombs blew up they sent high-speed shrapnel flying as far as a mile, causing many civilian casualties. The additional power of a nuclear bomb, coupled with the dispersal of radioactivity, is sure to produce infinitely more harm.

In September 2002 Bush released a National Security Strategy paper that detailed a "strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction" in countries he deemed a threat to the United States. He declared that the United States "reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force, including through resort to all our options." This includes "both conventional and nuclear response" even, "in appropriate cases, through pre-emptive measures."

The small nuclear weapons proposed wouldn't be a substitute for any in the massive stockpile the United States now possesses. According to the "Nuclear Notebook" in the May-June 2003 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, five hundred nuclear missiles are currently deployed at three air force bases in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, all of which can be launched on short notice. As of mid2003, sixteen operational nuclear-powered ballistic submarines that carry 384 ballistic missiles with as many as 2,880 nuclear warheads were also readily available. Eight of these subs are in the Atlantic Ocean and four in the Pacific. Also, long-range bombers that carry earth-penetrating nuclear bombs are deployed in Missouri. These weapons are already developed; however, the navy is constantly updating its striking force. The Bulletin also reported that in October 2003 the navy will begin deployment of a new retargeting system for its offensive strike platform.

According to the Bulletin:

  The B-61 bomb is perhaps the most versatile
   and abundant nuclear weapon in the
   U.S. stockpile. Approximately 150 B-61's are
   deployed with the U.S. Air Force in Britain,
   Germany, and Turkey and held in U.S. custody
   for use by NATO allied air force wings
   and squadrons in Belgium, Germany, Italy,
   the Netherlands and Turkey ... the only
   remaining nuclear weapon deployed outside
   U.S. borders except for missile warheads
   on patrolling nuclear-powered
   ballistic-missile subs. [Yet] a serious flaw in
   the concept of nuclear earth-penetrating
   weapons, even those with relatively low
   yields, is that they cannot penetrate deeply
   enough to contain a nuclear explosion and
   its deadly radioactive fallout. If used in an
   urban environment, such a weapon would
   cause thousands of casualties.

According to Mother Jones analyst Bill Donahue, the United States is spending an estimated $5.8 billion on nuclear weapons this year and "in 2002 President Bush cued the Los Alamos Laboratories to begin developing 'Earth Penetrator' mini-nukes" even before seeking permission from Congress.

A classified Pentagon report, leaked to the Los Angeles Times on March 9, 2002, states, "The Bush Administration has directed the military to prepare plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries," including "China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Libya."

The first country targeted for action, however, was Iraq. The war was waged on the justification that the nation has nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. This has yet to be proved and it is now obvious that there were other hidden reasons.

Certain facts and assumptions flow from U.S. control there. One is that the United States will control the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to China, Korea, Japan, and most other countries. The second is that the Pentagon will maintain four long-term military bases in Iraq, as it has already announced. Third, the Bush administration won't foster genuine democracy in Iraq; it will only permit a regime under U.S. influence and control as it has in other nations--notably Afghanistan, Haiti, and South Korea. As an April 2003 New York Times report indicated, "The United States is planning a long term military relationship with the emerging government in Iraq.... [This relationship] will grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project the U.S. influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say."

In the Middle East the United States now has bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, along with the four established in Iraq.

Fifty-eight years after World War 11, the United States still maintains occupation forces in Germany, Japan, and other countries. With eight major U.S. bases still functioning, the occupation of Japan continues. On Japan's island of Okinawa, U.S. bases occupy 20 percent of the land. There are also bases in Guam and Taiwan. Australia is integrated into the U.S. military system with various stations from which U.S. submarines and vessels can control the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. In addition the United States has ten bases in seven European countries and sends military training missions to the armed forces of 110 countries.

Forty-one years after the Korean war, the United States has steadily maintained 37,000 combat troops at 96 bases occupying 65,500 acres in South Korea. The United States controls South Korea's armed force of 670,00(I troops, 460 combat aircraft, 44 destroyers and frigates, and four attack submarines, which regularly conduct maneuvers in the air space and coastal waters around North Korea.

Most U.S. citizens don't know the real results of the war against Afghanistan or that nation's inclusion in the American Empire. Besides military bases in Afghanistan there are bases in Uzbekistan and Pakistan. A U.S. air force base near Bishtek, the capital of neighboring Kyrgistan, will hold three thousand troops.

With the possible exception of the former British Empire, this pattern of overseas bases establishes the United States as the largest imperial power in history. It is an empire that U.S. taxpayers are forced to maintain, along with a federal debt of six trillion, three hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred million, seventy thousand dollars. (According to Kansas City Star's Jerry Heaster, it is actually higher than that, but the federal debt limit is $6.4 trillion.)

This empire has been building up for years while at the same time the U.S. military-industrial complex has profited from huge arms sales and the building of these bases. The collapse of the Soviet Union should have been a signal to disarm individual nations and strengthen the United Nations for a world of peace. Instead, we face a problem that Al Gore described as a new doctrine that destroys "the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, in favor of the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States."

John Swomley has a Ph.D. in political science and international relations from the University of Colorado and is professor emeritus of social ethics, St Paul's School of Theology, Kansas City, Missouri.