A small Reuters dispatch in The Washington Post on August 23 gives a clue to the true intentions of the Clinton Administration's Star Wars plans. Here's what it said:

"Washington's top arms control expert met officials from Denmark and Greenland today as part of U.S. efforts to secure support for a controversial national missile defense system being considered by President Clinton. John D. Holum, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, discussed proposals to upgrade an existing U.S. radar station" at the Thule air base in northwest Greenland.

Why Greenland?

The Administration has gone out of its way to say that the nuclear missile defense is not designed to foil the Russians or the Chinese, but this underreported meeting suggests otherwise.

"The Russians and the Chinese . . . understand that the Administration's 'limited' defense is, in fact, a system that is indistinguishable from one aimed at them," wrote Theodore A. Postol in an article entitled "The Target Is Russia," which ran in the March/April issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "They correctly understand the full technical implications of the Administration's proposed battle-management upgrades of early warning radars."

One of those radars Postol mentioned in his article was the very one in Thule, Greenland, that the Administration was discussing with the Danes, who govern the territory.

This upgrade, if the Danes allow it, would give the United States added capacity to detect Russian ballistic missiles. That is why Postol wrote: "It is also clear, both to Washington and Moscow, that the basic infrastructure of the proposed limited national missile defense system could be rapidly scaled up to become an overtly anti-Russian system."

This is how arms races begin.

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