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 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
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On Sept. 11, a reader of mine sent me an e-mail, which begins: “Lev, I greatly enjoy your articles” and ends: “I guess you think of yourself as the modern Cato the Elder. Carthago delenda est.”
My reader’s e-mail is a half-a-page single-spaced paragraph, and I cannot quote it in its entirety. But I am grateful to him for his attachment: a 15-page article from U.S. “Air & Space Power Journal” that confirms that the U.S. Navy and U.S. air and space power are in their lethal sleep, together with the Pentagon as a whole. “Air & Space Power Journal” (Fall 2006) concludes as follows its summary of its article, entitled “Molecular Nanotechnology and National Security”:
Commander Vandermolen suggests that the United States take the lead in creating a strategy of international regulation.
Many children reading adult books know that a “strategy of international regulation” is being created since the mid-19th century, but Hitler (so wicked, mischievous, ill-bred!) violated it in 1939.
Commander Vandermolen (U.S. Navy) “suggests that the United States take the lead [in the fall of 2006!] in creating a strategy of international regulation.” Never, never, will the dictator of China violate it by attacking the United States (and the rest of the West) with molecular nanoweapons!
Vandermolen seems also to fail to understand that nanotechnology is a field of many fields, some of them civilian and thus commercial. Thus he says (p. 2) that the “US National Nanotechnology Initiative [NNI] expects to have a budget exceeding $1 billion in fiscal year 2006, a ninefold increase over its 1997 budget of $116 million.” Why? Because the U.S. NNI embraces commercial civilian fields, which Congress welcomes. On the other hand, the Foresight Institute of Eric Drexler, the founder of nanotechnology, has not received a cent from the Congress because Drexler expressed in his book way back in 1986 that molecular nano weapons are superweapons compared with which nuclear weapons are worthless as offensive weapons, since nuclear weapons cannot eliminate nuclear retaliation on the part of the country attacked.
Moreover, representatives of the NNI and civilian nanobusiness in general have been ridiculing in Congress Drexler’s theory of molecular nano weapons to prevent the allocation of the “nanotechnological money” to his Foresight Institute. In their chase of money, many Western businessmen do not wish to understand that by contributing to the suicide of the West they contribute to their own suicide as well.
Vandermolen devotes half a page (p. 5) to the installment of civilian nanotechnology “in areas with little or no access to regular sources of technology, such as rural India.” Is this the U.S. Navy, a navy supposed to defend the United States, or a charitable institution for economically underdeveloped areas?
As for China, one paragraph (p. 7) is devoted to it: the prediction that world nanotechnology will make useless China’s cheap labor and thus will destroy its economy. Poor China! Shall the U.S. armed forces help her as well?
The section before “Conclusion” is entitled “What Strategy Should the United States Pursue?” (p. 8).
The years 1939-1945 demonstrated that there is only one strategy of national survival in the age of superweapons: since Germany was developing nuclear weapons (which were the super weapons of the time) it was necessary to develop them ahead of Germany and use them as a deterrent—a superweapon of retaliation. Hitler should have known that if he used nuclear weapons, the vital part of Germany, including his bunkers, would be nuked. This strategy of retaliation came to be called Mutual Assured Destruction.
Commander Vandermolen (U.S. Navy) seems never to have heard of this phrase in use for three generations. Instead, this is his answer:
There are three basic strategy courses that the United States can pursue to deal with MNT [Molecular Nano Technology]:
These three “basic strategy courses” are too naive to be worth a single comment. As for “Conclusion,” it is sufficient to quote the first sentence of its two paragraphs (p. 11):
Based on the radically unprecedented direct and indirect threats to US national security posed by MNT [Molecular Nano Technology], the United States should adopt a cooperative strategy of international regulations to control and guide R&D [research and development].
Lest some readers in the West and in the strategic HQ of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army ask: “Who is this Vandermolen? A child of five who has learned some adult words?”, let me cite how “Air & Space Power Journal” introduces him:
LCDR [Lieutenant Commander] Thomas D. Vandermolen, USN (BS, Louisiana Tech University: MA, Naval Air College), is officer in charge, Maritime Science and Technology Center, Yokosuka, Japan. He was previously assigned as a student at the Naval War College, Newport Naval Station, Rhode Island. He has also served as intelligence officer for Carrier Wing Five, Naval Air Facility, Atsugi, Japan, and in similar assignments with US Special Operations Command, US Forces Korea, and Sea Control Squadron THIRTY-FIVE, Naval Air Station, North Island, California. His essay “A Smarter INTELINK” was awarded first prize in the Director of Naval Intelligence Essay Competition, while at the US Naval War College.
My aversion for the cruelty of dictatorship is especially acute since I had experienced it while living in Soviet Russia up to the age of forty. The United States, where I have been living ever since, is so much more humane, kind, lenient. But let us see the ruthless cruelty of dictatorship versus humaneness, kindness, leniency in the United States in terms of geostrategic survival.
In the dictatorship of China, officers or officials like Vandermolen would be first of all dragged out of their offices or studies and kicked out, together with those who gave them degrees, promoted them, decorated them, or published them in military journals. In the humane United States they prosper and shine until the United States or the West in general are annihilated by super weapons that China is developing in cooperation with Putin’s Russia—or forced to surrender unconditionally.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.
This is true. Except that Cato ended every speech of his with: “Carthage must be destroyed” (and it was destroyed in 146 B.C.), while I keep repeating: “The West will be destroyed (by superweapons developed in China in cooperation with Putin’s Russia) unless it wakes up from its lethal sleep.”