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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?

almarst-2001 - 01:04pm Mar 19, 2001 EST (#1185 of 1188)

Russian Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the head of the Defense Ministry's international department, said he believed certain forces were interested in "a permanent state of crisis in Yugoslavia." - http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=169340

rshowalter - 01:37pm Mar 19, 2001 EST (#1186 of 1188)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Look, Ted Turner founded CNN, and he's an enormously powerful man. He's so concerned with nuclear disarmament that he just pledged 250 million dollars of his own money (and Turner CARES about his money) to promote disarmament. He didn't just order CNN to propagandize for peace.

He couldn't.

There are rules. You need to know them.

rshowalter - 01:43pm Mar 19, 2001 EST (#1187 of 1188)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If you think I'd have a reasonable chance of picking up the telephone, and getting to Ted Turner, you can think again about that, too. People have to vouch for other people. That's how it works.

Within the rules as they are, there's room for enormous progress, but there ARE conventions, and without some help, I'm in a box.

Here's a hint -- Steve Kline couldn't get his key paper in flow visualization so much as published (much less widely discussed) until some people with power (it happened to be the Air Force in this particular case) FORCED people to check core facts.

The impasse would have NEVER closed otherwise.

And Steve Kline and I working hard, haven't been able to get some core math checked YET . (For the last 6-8 weeks you might quibble with that - but it has been a fact, for a decade.) And under our systems rules, people in the New York Times, trying hard .... COULDN'T get the checking either.

If you understood why such impasses happen, you'd have a lot better chance figuring out how to get Russia, and the whole world, out of an insane nuclear and conventional military situation that needs to be confronted in ways that can work.

rshowalter - 01:45pm Mar 19, 2001 EST (#1188 of 1188)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Steve Kliine was boxed, on that flow visualization issue, for fourteen years.

Once a fight was set up -- it took weeks for the new paradigm to dominate the field.

You'd learn something, studying how that worked.

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