Method to their missiles: The ballistic missile defence system (BMD) that George Bush is bringing in his briefcase to discuss with Paul Martin strikes many Canadians as irrational or plain crazy. Most scientists say it won’t work. And if it did — who would they use it on? The bin Ladenites have no missiles. They are shopping for nuclear bombs, which they would smuggle into the U.S. and detonate there. Rogue states such as Iran or North Korea? Why would they launch a missile at the U.S.? Their countries would be obliterated.

It would precipitate a new arms race, as Jack Layton often says, and the “weaponization of space,” which Paul Martin claims to reject, though he remains open to signing on. (But Paul, BMD is the weaponization of space.)

So is it sheer idiocy and irrationality that drives the U.S.? I don’t think so.

BMD is a rational (from the standpoint of U.S. power) response to recent phenomenal advances by China and India. If you are a U.S. planner, where do you foresee coming challenges to your nation’s role as sole postwar superpower? As The Guardian reported, “China’s leaders aim to make China the 21st century’s superpower.”

India is on a comparable course. For the first time in the modern era, the population centres are set to become economic, military and political heavyweights. Culturally they are prepared. They have the sense of self to say: Why should an underpopulated latecomer, such as the U.S., so disproportionately control the planet’s resources and assets? Between them, China and India have 38 per cent of the world’s people. The U.S. has less than five per cent but consumes a fifth to a third of its resources. There will surely be conflict, if China and India are to continue expanding.

How can the U.S. assure superiority? Through a new generation of weaponry in space: BMD. Since its emergent rivals cannot let that happen, they will get into the game and voilà, a new arms race. This may suit the U.S. in the same way it suited the Americans to exhaust the Soviet Union economically through the last arms race. Where should Canada come down? Well, the world survived the weapons buildup during the Cold War by dumb luck, according to historical accounts. Does anyone truly want to chance another round?

Is this sheer speculation on my part? Sort of. But they never tell you their real reasons. In 1948, at the start of the Cold War, when the U.S.’s publicly declared aims were sheer altruistic spread of freedom and global prosperity, its chief foreign policy planner, George Kennan, secretly wrote, “We have about 50 per cent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population . . . we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task . . . is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to retain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security . . . we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts.”

Plus ça change, eh?

The Incredibles: I rushed out to see this film after Margaret Wente called it a “bracing” critique of our “anti-elitist culture that celebrates mediocrity” and an attack on “the suppression of individual talent by the masses.” It is indeed about a family of superheroes forced to become “ordinary” and conceal their unique powers. But isn’t that a theme in most U.S. mass culture, i.e., the heroic struggle by individuals who triumph against levelling social forces that try to destroy them? I mean, can you find a single example of a U.S. film, novel or song that glorifies mediocrity and demeans the rugged individual?

Far from an attack on U.S. culture, I’d call the film a reinforcement, even in its details: The superheroes are defrocked because of frivolous lawsuits — a key theme in the Bush-Cheney campaign; family values triumph when they join to defeat the villain.

Of course culture can conceal as well as reveal social reality. I, for instance, see the U.S. as a complex place with a healthy rhetorical disdain for mediocrity, but a willingness to wink and elevate it to prominence, when accompanied by wealth and privilege.

Welcome to Canada, Mr. President.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.