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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 12:13pm Feb 21, 2001 EST (#728 of 732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If you're at all sensitive, and work at it, you can detect fear in people's faces during conversations. Discussions of matters nuclear reliably elicits fear responses that are pretty intense.

Want to slow down a conversation? Slip in something connected with nuclear war.

FEAR and UGLINESS are associated with, and stain, everything about nuclear weapons in most people's eyes.

Some very competent movie makers, notably those who do the "James Bond" series of films, know how well and easily this works. Nuclear weapons equal maximum terror, for almost everybody. Nuclear weapons are also so threatening that they can be used to comfortably justify all sorts of violent behavior, including killing for fun, and sex of a very exploitive kind.

Problem is, this aversion to all matters nuclear becomes an aversion to looking at problems. So that incredibly indefensible and reckless patterns of action, and sequences of escalation, happen again and again. And have for more than half a century.

rshowalter - 12:16pm Feb 21, 2001 EST (#729 of 732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Nuclear tactics, on both sides, rely on deception, and must. Bluff is essential - the only possible "win" is a totally devastating first strike that catches the victim unaware. The deceptions, that apply to almost everything involved, at the levels of strategy, tactics and technical capability, go unchallenged and undiscussed.

Here's a telling example. The US Military refuses to let any elected official except for the President so much as LOOK at its targeting maps of Russia (a point made in the documentary Rehearsing Armageddon ) - because "seeing is believing. " (The importance of actually seeing, in order to fully know was noted by a mortician on the op ed page yesterday: We Should Witness the Death of McVeigh ...R. Lynch. ) The military doesn't want the reality of our nuclear targeting to sink in. The elected officials are so cowed by fear of matters nuclear that the military gets away with this. When a few Senators or House members, in charge of reviewing policy, ask to see this very basic information, the military stonewalls, and gets away with it.

rshowalter - 12:18pm Feb 21, 2001 EST (#730 of 732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Our current nuclear situation is ugly , the situation is worse than it looks, the notion that the controls are well set up and able to meet the flexible challenges in the real world is false, and aversion to look at the reality makes documentaries such as CNNs .... REHEARSING ARMAGEDDON almost unwatchable for most people.

People who think about the unthinkable invoke rational man arguments repeatedly -- but the human responses almost all people show towards nuclear weapons are well beyond the rational.

Among defense scholars, there is not, even today, a consensus about how much of the Cold War was a mistake. Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War: Conflicting Realisms ...Revisionisms exist on BASICS

Fear of looking at nuclear matters frustrates debate - something that was illustrated vividly when a very distinguished group of people rshowalt 10/4/00 5:08am gathered, at the time of the presidential debate last October in Boston, and tried to raise the issue of nuclear peril. lunarchick 10/3/00 9:23pm They were dismissed, and it was done easily, because "no one wanted to hear" about the unpleasant subject of nuclear weapons. Many of these same people felt that, once Rehearsing Armageddon aired, there would be an outcry to reduce nuclear danger. There was no such outcry. People are paralyzed by fear, and as a result, good actions that would otherwise be possible can't occur. Breaking through this barrier is essential if we are to ask politicians to take beautiful, safe action on nuclear policy.

dirac_10 - 12:26pm Feb 21, 2001 EST (#731 of 732)

mhunter20 - 10:00am Feb 20, 2001 EST (#721 of 729)

You bring up an important point that is rarely mentioned anymore.

What if a Russian, or whatever, missle went off by accident? Or by some terrorist bribing some starving Russian?

Because we have both performed the miracle of not screwing up all these years, does not mean we won't in the future. No axiomatic system is complete. There's always a way to screw it up.

One thing's for sure, if a Russian missle goes beserk and heads for NY, no one will be talking about how the MD cost too much. Everyone will be wishing we had spent more.

The amount of money they are talking about spending is chickenfeed.

rshowalter - 12:46pm Feb 21, 2001 EST (#732 of 732)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If you want an objection to the IDEA of missile defense, you wont get it from me. I think it is a beautiful idea, that would be worth all the negotiating inconvenience it involved, if only it could be made to work.

My concerns are with getting the situation we have, with the capabilities we have, under safe control. And my opinions arent very different from those expressed by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

But there may be some other options - reframings can do a lot. For instance, Thomas Friedman's suggestion in his Op Ed column yesterday - if it could really be implemented, might RADIACALLY reduce danger, in an area of clear national concern, pretty gracefully.

That might work and be relatively inexpensive.

As opposed to "infinite cost" solutions, that combine very high pricetags with 0 functionality.

Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar's efforts on Russian nuclear safety may have saved all our lives, and Ted Turner's new foundation, working to increase nuclear safety, is very important.

Finding other ways to get control are very important. We should look actively for them. And I'm encouraged that people are doing it.

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