China has launched a hypersonic missile: Could it spark a new arms race?
Some of you may remember Barry McGuires song: ‘Eve of Destruction’ (1965)
Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say?
Can’t you feel the fear that I’m feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no running away
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy
But you tell me over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction
New York Times (Oct 27, 2021) had this recent report – WASHINGTON — “China’s testing of a hypersonic missile designed to evade American nuclear defenses was “very close” to a “Sputnik moment” for the United States, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday in the first official confirmation of how Beijing’s demonstration of its weapon capabilities had taken American officials by surprise. The tests, which could revive fears of a Cold War-like arms race, come as Beijing is spending heavily to modernize its military and may be seeking to expand its nuclear arsenal.”
And these were the head lines on the BBC News website (October 25, 2021): “Is China’s present missile development program a contest of strength that will be used as a threat to extend their political and moral supremacy over the world?”
Here is an excerpt from that article: “Some advocates of rapid US nuclear modernization have seen the recent Chinese tests as “a Sputnik moment” as a reference copy to the surprise and alarm registered in the US at the Soviet Union’s first orbital satellite in the late 1950s.”
“However, but some experts would disagree and don’t believe this test by China creates a new threat. James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says the US has been vulnerable to nuclear attack by China since at least the 1980s.”
Are some of the powerful nations stealthily and silently back into the STAR WARS competitiveness scenarios of the “Cold War” and the Reagan era? Being a teenager in the 50s, I remember the shock of reading that front page headline in the Globe and Mail newspapers on that 1957 October 4th early morning when I picked up my paper-route newspaper bundles for delivery along King Street, King William, Rebecca, Wilson, Mary Streets and Ferguson Ave in the city of Hamilton. The Russians had won the “cold war space race” and we were all in big trouble. The alarm sirens that had been strategically located around the city in the previous years to warn of nuclear attack were now our only defenses to save our lives. ( I think Hamilton had 5 of those)
The USA (read the Western World) now had lost their prominent scientific advantage for space weapon superiority and we would soon be in a war we would never be able to win. The anxiety of that thought was never far from my mind. The nuclear Cold War had been lost.
Although this was an anxious time, the population of the day continued with their work, studies and chores as before. What could they have done otherwise? Nevertheless there hung a threatening (cloud) in the sky. What if somebody slipped up or an unforeseen mechanical accident occurred? Where would we be safe?…………… Being a Christian, I asked, with these all-powerful weapons how can God defend us now? In fact why did God allow the Russians to race ahead of the USA and us? My anxiety about this threat always hung in the back-ground of my thoughts and prayers through my teenage years.
These thoughts were in the minds of others also and were expressed in Folks Songs of that day like: ‘Were have all the flowers gone’ by Peter, Paul & Mary, the Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, Brothers Four and many, many other singers. (Especially during the Vietnam war days)
Perhaps Peter Seeger expresses it the best in this song with Judy Collins: Turn, turn, turn, there is a season…….(based on Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 8 and on) which has this fitting ending:
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late
I also recently ran across a poem by I.F. Stone, (1907 – 1989) an investigative journalist and author who wrote it to commemorate V-E Day in 1985.
Prayer To A Displaced Person
Our father,
Who art in Heaven
Where shall we find You
When contending armies
Build battle stations
In the skies, jostling
For high ground
In outer space?
Where then will we hear
The Herald Angels sing?
Will You become
A displaced person
Searching among the stars
For a place
To lay Your head?
Who needs God
When particle beams
Spray death across
Infinite spaces
And lasers overwhelm
Your trivial lightnings
And the aboriginal void
You found in the beginning
Yawns again
To swallow You
And Your Creation
Why did You plant that tree
And temp us with the fruit?
Now our rebellion
Is at Your gate.
Where are we going with this at a time when our Climate Change dilemma – Covid 19 pandemic and war and poverty with stark economic inequality is seen all around us? When will WE ever learn!
JS October 29, 2021
The first epistle of Peter chapter 5, verse 7 reminds us: ‘Cast all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully]. Translation: amplified Bible
And Gospel of Luke chapter 21, verses 25 – 28: There will be earth-shattering events—the heavens themselves will seem to be shaken with signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars. And across the earth the outsider nations will feel powerless and terrified in the face of a roaring flood of fear and foreboding, crashing like tidal waves upon them. 26 “What’s happening to the world?” people will wonder. The cosmic order will be destabilized. 27 And then, at that point, they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and blazing glory. 28 So when the troubles begin, don’t be afraid. Look up—raise your head high, because the truth is that your liberation is fast approaching. Translation: the Voice
NOTE on Website: Spacing.ca/TORONTO a Chris Bateman article dated November 12, 2015;
…… In 1967, a fault at a downtown telephone exchange triggered dozens of sirens across the city for about 10 minutes. The police were flooded with calls, though no-one was scared, according to reports.
“The only thing that panics people here is when the Leafs lose 10 straight,” a police official said.
As the threat of nuclear war diminished through the 70s and 80s, the Ontario siren system began to fall into disrepair. Lightning strikes and damage by vandals with rifles triggered periodical false alarms. In 1979, a badly timed activation of 50 sirens between Port Credit and Oshawa caused nervous moments for several local residents.
“Some called police and local media to ask whether the alarm was a warning that SkyLab was about to fall on Toronto, ” the Globe and Mail reported.
By 1980, there were 1,704 sirens dotted across the country, according to the Toronto Star. “Most of the sirens have gone the way of the wind, or torn down with utility poles when lines and poles were replaced.” The downtown siren at Yonge and Richmond was still standing at the time, though it now seems to be gone.
NOTE: November 16, 2021 – BBCNews – On Monday, Russia carried out the A-Sat (anti-satellite) test from Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800km north of Moscow. The missile destroyed an old Soviet spy satellite, called Kosmos 1408….causing 1,500 pieces of large orbiting objects…… and thousands of smaller fragments some 440km to 520km above the Earth, threatening the ISS, China’s Tiangong space station and other spacecraft. Many countries now have their own A-Sat systems; the US, Russia, China and others have been developing weapons of this kind since the 1950s……and have conducted similar tests since as early as 1985. The proliferation of small satellite technologies will likely see the annual launchings rise above 1,000 satellites a year, greatly increasing space junk garbage.
On the Road 