The Pentagon's long-range thinker, Andrew Marshall, made a rare public appearance Thursday to discuss the future of warfare. Mr. Marshall, director of the nondescript but powerful Office of Net Assessment, said the nation's ability to project power over long distances will remain "the fundamental task." The drawback of America's long military reach is that it is driving more nations to seek nuclear weapons and long-range missiles capable of reaching U.S. soil. And Mr. Marshall believes they will succeed.

"The long-term trend is that nations are seeking new forms of strategic attack," Mr. Marshall told a small group of defense experts at the Brookings Institution. "More and more countries will have longer-range missiles that they can use to attack a capital or a society. We are going to live in a world where many more countries have the ability to attack from a distance." Information warfare - the capability of attacking computer networks from afar - will be part of it, he said. So will space warfare. Attacks against communications satellites and other space assets are "inevitable," Mr. Marshall said. 

Joseph de Courcy, editor of the well-respected journal Intelligence Digest reports this week: "While NATO congratulates itself on bombing the Serbs into submission, Israel's Mossad and other Middle Eastern intelligence sources have discovered that Kosovo was one humiliation too many for Russia. Now Moscow has agreed to back Saddam's secret plan of revenge. With this all-important Russian backing, Saddam is joining with hated Iran and Syria to launch one final war against Israel. Amazingly, Saddam will allow Iranian troops to cross Iraqi territory to join the attack on Israel. And to keep America from interfering, Moscow has given Osama bin Laden and other terrorists the means to attack American population centers with weapons of mass destruction. The threat is real ... and the implications terrifying. ..."

These are not the rantings of some self-proclaimed geo-strategic analyst. Joseph de Courcy is one of the most well-respected intelligence journalists in the world.

His report is nothing short of shocking. Yet it confirms and supports the research being done by WorldNetDaily's J.R. Nyquist, author of "Origins of the Fourth World War." I believe, based on trends obvious to anyone capable of picking up a daily newspaper today (online or off) that there is an excellent chance Russia and/or China may embark on a major military adventure before 2001.

Why? There is almost no chance America will be weaker militarily than it is right now during the remainder of the Clinton administration. We've hit rock bottom -- deliberately, because of the conscious policies of a president who is un-American to the core and who would sell out the memory of his own dead mother if he thought there were an opportunity for even momentary political gain.

Unless some equally unpatriotic, characterless leader hell-bent on national suicide is selected to be commander in chief, the military is bound to at least recover some ground lost during the last seven years.

Yeah, if there were ever an opportunity to surprise the U.S. when its defenses are down, this is it. Not since Pearl Harbor has America been less prepared for existing threats.

The Russians and the Chinese are not stupid. They can clearly see that they may never have a better chance than they have right now to strike a decisive blow to the United States -- a knockout punch from which we may never recover.

Any such designs would almost certainly include an adventure into the Middle East so that the oil fields could be secured, thus effectively shoring up sagging industrial economies for the long term and depriving what remains of the West from any hope of recovery.

BEIJING - China has successfully test-fired a ground-to-air anti-aircraft missile on a high plateau, the Liberation Army Daily reported Tuesday. It was the first time China had tested the mid-range missile on a plateau, the People's Liberation Army newspaper said without specifying where the test was conducted or identifying the missile.

The test was in line with the policy of the air force's Communist Party cell to "solidify combat readiness," the newspaper said in apparent reference to Taiwan. Beijing and Taipei have been locked in a war of words and military posturing following Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's declaration last month that ties should be on a "special state-to-state" basis.

China, which has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence, saw Lee's move as a lurch toward statehood. Beijing regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunified with the motherland. The newspaper said missiles downed several drone "enemy aircraft" from different angles and heights.

The anti-aircraft unit overcame transportation difficulties, bad weather and lack of oxygen, the newspaper said.

Not long ago the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist insurgency, launched a major offensive. They attacked 26 rural towns and attempted to stage a major assault on Bogota. But according to General Charles Wilhelm, commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, the Colombian government smashed the Communist offensive, inflicting "triple digit" losses.

A few days after the fighting died down the Colombian government said it desperately needed half a billion dollars in order to modernize its military. Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel and Egypt. But it's not enough. Given the difficulties of fighting a guerrilla war in a country of mountains and forests, and the fact that the guerrillas control nearly half the country, the situation is definitely not coming up roses.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are estimated to have 17,000 troops. And these are not the only Communist guerrillas in the country. There is another Communist insurgency as well, smaller in size--the ELN. These forces also have government troops pinned down across a wide area. The main problem for the government is how to protect the small towns and villages. The other problem is how to cut off the guerrillas' main sources of supply.

And what is that source of supply? Money from good old American drug users.

The two Communist guerrilla armies in Colombia--the FARC and ELN--control most of the coca growing areas in the country, and nearly all the new growth in coca cultivation. In fact, Colombia is the largest cocaine producer on planet earth, and half of the heroin picked up on U.S. streets is said to originate in Colombia.

I recently interviewed Prof. Joseph D. Douglass Jr., a defense researcher and author of Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America. He gave me an interesting statistic. He said that Russia and the nations of the former Communist bloc, including Red China, now control 80 percent of the international drug trade.

If true, that is a staggering revelation. Douglass further revealed that Communist bloc control of international narcotics trafficking is not something haphazard or accidental, but has been part of a long-term plan to penetrate and employ the world's organized crime networks for political subversion. In this matter the Russians (who Douglass says control about half the world's narcotics trafficking) and the Chinese (who control about one third), are not merely taking hold of a momentary opportunity to make money. This was a well thought out strategic decision made in the 1950s. In other words, it was a move in the Cold War chess game. And it appears from Douglass' comments that the Communists may have won a stunning victory against us through strategic dominance of the global underworld.

As Douglass points out in his book, the Soviets realized in the 1950s that dominance of organized crime would give them access to blackmail information on Western politicians and government officials. This would allow them to penetrate key institutions using organized crime syndicates as fronts.

From all appearances, said Douglass, Moscow and Beijing have succeeded in conquering the lion's share of the global underworld, and through this process it is possible that they enjoy a degree of penetration--even control--of American institutions that call into question the very integrity of the United States government.

On June 23, 1999, Oscar Arias, the former President of Costa Rica (who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize) published an article in the New York Times titled, "Stopping America's Most Lethal Export," stating,

"Americans have shown great concern about the reported loss of classified nuclear secrets to the Chinese. But they should be just as outraged that their country gives away many other military secrets voluntarily, in the form of high-tech arms exports. By selling advanced weaponry throughout the world, wealthy military contractors not only weaken national security and squeeze taxpayers at home but also strengthen dictators and worsen human misery abroad.

"After the cold war, arms manufacturers realized that their business would be threatened by falling demand. To protect their profits, they have lobbied to maintain high levels of spending in the United States while also promoting unprecedented levels of military exports.

"This two-pronged approach serves the manufacturers well: by shipping top-of-the-line arms overseas, they create greater dangers to surmount. They can then argue that continued American supremacy requires the development of even more sophisticated weapons systems--weapons that translate into lucrative defense contracts….

"While the arms industry profits, people throughout the world suffer. Overseas, American-made arms are often turned against civilians or used to strengthen dictators."

(Jerome Zeifman formerly served as chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.)

On April 24, five Kosovar brothers and two cousins ranging in age from 3 to 14 were playing in a field outside Doganovic, Kosovo. They found a small yellow canister the size of a soda can. As two of the cousins went to tell adults, one of the brothers began to pry open the canister.

The explosion killed all the brothers and severely injured their two cousins. That canister was a cluster bomb dropped by NATO forces. Much like land mines, unexploded cluster bombs pose enduring threats to innocent people.

The international treaty to ban the manufacture and use of land mines, signed by 135 countries and ratified by 81 of the signatories, became law March 1. The United States has refused to sign. Some people in the U.S. military oppose signing because the treaty's definition of land mines is broad enough to cover cluster bombs.

Cluster munitions are containers that break open in midair, scattering smaller bombs the size of soda cans or lawn darts. They may be dropped from aircraft or shot from rocket launchers and artillery projectiles. These systems often carry hundreds of the cluster munitions, saturating an area with flying shards of steel.

The smaller bombs are designed to explode near the time of impact. But not all of them do. Instead, unexploded bombs litter the target area, silent and nondescript, until picked up by a child or kicked by a passerby.

Cluster munitions may also hide themselves if they land in weeds, soft soil, sand, or water. Alternatively, those on top of the ground may become buried by vegetation or soil erosion. In this way they become hidden killers, blending into their surroundings like land mines.

In use for decades, cluster munitions are among the most indiscriminate weapons in military arsenals. These munitions not only cause physical suffering and loss, but also hinder agricultural and economic development of the land years into the future. Villagers understandably are reluctant to work land they know to be littered with unexploded bombs.

A senior NATO commander recognized in April that at least 5 percent (ranging up to 30 percent) of NATO's cluster bombs fail to explode upon impact. Commenting on Yugoslavia, he noted that "the place is littered with thousands of these things."

Bomb disposal experts in Laos, where millions of these munitions still lie unexploded from the Vietnam War, have said repeatedly that cluster munitions become less stable and therefore more dangerous with each passing year. Use of cluster bombs, then, is tantamount to the creation of uncharted mine fields.

Tragically, we can be almost certain that a deadly "toy" deposited by Serb or NATO forces today in Kosovo will lie in wait to kill the grandchildren of returned refugees many tomorrows into the future.