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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 - 07:35am Mar 11, 2001 EST (#918 of 920)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 3/10/01 10:37pm , I wish that I could say you were wrong.

The surreality of the sitution- the action, over long duration, of American officials, against reasonable United States interests, in combination with elaborate deceptions -- CAN be interpreted by vulnerable nations (including Russia and China) as U.S. preparation for wars of conquest. Russia and China have acted on that belief, against their interests and their own. The costs in human lives and opportunity has been especially great in Russia - the cost in opportunities in China is likely to be great - and the risks of destruction of the world, already great, increase from such escalatory responses.

A central problem, which CANNOT be wished away, is a systematic misunderstanding. Trust in military affairs is not to be expected. Deception and the witholding of information are ESSENTIAL to military function -- where, as a matter of primordial fact, the difference between a successful surprise attack, and walking into an ambush, can be a single mis-step - a single redeployment of forces. Military officers who cannot lie - to "enemies" to each other, and cannot lie on any channel that can convey information to "enemies" -- as communication in a free society can. That means that military officers, to do what, in military terms is their essential job, must be willing to lie to their own people. They must either withold information from, or actively misinform, journalists, politicians, and the citizens of the country they serve. And, again and again, they have done so. This must be expected, and it is a mistake, in America, that it is not expected. Misleading the public, in little and huge ways, whenever it serves military interests, is standard operating procedure in the US military, and for our military to do its job, this has to be expected.

rshowalter - 07:40am Mar 11, 2001 EST (#919 of 920)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It is dangerous, and very much against the public interest, that in the United States, after so much experience, including much involving the Vietnam War from beginning to end, this deception on the part of military officers, and their commanders, is not expected. The history of the actions of Henry Kissenger and his subordinates and co-workers offer example after example of such deception, leading up to the Vietnam War, during the Vietnam War, and continuing thereafter.

A very thorough study of this Vietnam case has direct application to circumstances today, and to the potential tragedies we face today.

(These potential tragedies include the likely destruction of the world, the reduction of the worlds human population to rotting unburied corpses )

Much information is now coming to light about the Nixon administration, and Henry Kissenger and his co-workers, that indicates that such problems, and serious consequences from them, did not end there, and continue to the present day. A revered Secretary of State is now being criticised, with much reason, as a war criminal. It may be that, in every case, Kissenger acted in what he believed was the intest of the United States. Nonetheless, his actions may have caused the unecessary deaths of 20,000 American soldiers, and deaths of thousands, or even millions of other people. And he, and the administrations he served, were immobilized, in the actions they too, by the deceptive actions they had taken in the past, and could not admit.

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