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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Wordspayyy - 02:54pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10464 of 10657)

evenbetta - 02:18pm Jul 10, 2000 EST (#168 of 10463)

two notes:

first as I indicated and as the CIA indicates and as the rational actor models indicate

the use of 'rouge states' in underlying the need for NMD has not merit-all that matters is the rational actor model. Thus why the GOP and current administration dropped the model within the last two months.

second. Technology cannot be locked down. You cannot put nuclear weapons back in a bottle. I would rather live in an enviroment in which nuclear weapons did exist then pretend they do not. I advocate Kenneth Waltz on this one-neorealism-every position on that concept I believe thrust at your perspective. The critical difference between my realist approach on nuclear weapons is that nuclear weapons will exist until another weapon comes along that makes them absolete.Then people will want to run around trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons-just as they tried to rid the world of chemical weapons-----hasn't worked has it. Some would argue my position is contrary to my position on Nuclear Utilization Theory (NUTS-or the actual platform of NMD). It is not-my position is also realist in that sense as well. Being the largest holder of nuclear devices on this planet-I am aware that my decision to either employ or reject Nuclear Utilization Theory will rebound all over the world in how other nations consider a reaction. Nations despite what people on this board may think-are actually linked when in consideration of defense policy. All nations are in reaction to another. What you consider a offensive policy is actually a defensive position based on the perception of something else.One need only look at Americas current ambitions to see how its administration defines itself as 'defensive' and the world at large calls back 'offensive'. The system is offensive while being defensive-it is both. The United States being the largest nuclear power like it or not is the pinball that will bounce off every nations view of what it should do in regards to nuclear policy. If the British were the largest holder of nuclear power it fall to them-if India to them-if China to them if Pakistan to them If Russia to them. Russia has taken a position that places Nuclear Utilization onto the back burner-and makes the world not have to reroute its view of rational actions. Americas tends to make each slap of the offensive/defensive position

a constant Tilt.

Wordspayyy - 02:56pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10465 of 10657)

beckq - 11:09am Aug 10, 2000 EST (#210 of 10464)

Welp way I and others see it-America is attempting to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to sit around the world with all the nuclear weapons it can muster sitting in silos on planes and in ships, and the very thing that has prevented America and other nations from ever useing these overpriced male peckers is that if you use them-you without question WILL die. Think I'm wrong-consider why America signed that SALT I treaty and the protocols. It signed it to lower the chance that one side would attempt to consider ways to increase a survival rate. They knew-that if they did not maintain provisions that survival a 'no-no' then both would attempt to survive.

Wordspayyy - 02:59pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10466 of 10657)

beckq - 11:09am Aug 10, 2000 EST (#210 of 10464)

Your country will no longer exist the way you knew it prior. I heard another person call it national survival-the survival of your country is understood to be destroyed if you use nuclear weapons.

Now-America wants to take that very instrument-that assurance that America and the rest of the world has used to maintain that WMD are not used by other countrys-and it wants to-flush it down the craper. Why because everybody is worried about the crazy monsters they helped finance and build during the ideological pecker war with the Soviets. And now-now we can't have monsters anymore-and so we think we can just build a shield and they will stay out of the courtyard. Who says they have to fly into the courtyard to begin with? and kla-bloom-all your billions in money-money that can be utilized to provide better education-better healthcare-better quality of life is all wasted. And-you instituted an arms race with all the normal countrys you have been dealing with since day #1 because your 'defensive' shield-adds chance to a game that only worked when no chance existed Thats why nobody played.

Wordspayyy - 03:13pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10467 of 10657)

THE UNREALISTIC REALISM OF BUSH'S FOREIGN POLICY TUTORS. Team W. by Jacob Heilbrunn

Post date 09.09.99 | Issue date 09.27.99

Under Korbel's tutelage, Rice developed a passion for Russian studies and absorbed "realist" notions of international politics. She told me, "I read early on and was influenced by [Hans] Morgenthau," who wrote the realist bible Politics Among Nations. Morgenthau didn't believe that nations should go on ideological crusades or attempt to promote human rights in other countries. He saw the cold war not so much as a contest between communism and democracy but as something more antiseptic--a struggle between two rival continental nations who simply had clashing national interests.

Wordspayyy - 03:17pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10468 of 10657)

The New Republic THE UNREALISTIC REALISM OF BUSH'S FOREIGN POLICY TUTORS. Team W. by Jacob Heilbrunn

Post date 09.09.99 | Issue date 09.27.99

To the degree that Scowcroft and his acolytes help shape a George W. Bush foreign policy, then, it will be a neorealist policy.

myst_5.1 - 04:40pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10469 of 10657)

Do you work for a living or do you live off of the tax payers? You must not have a life at all considering you spend all of your time posting!

mayorrude - 06:29pm Dec 20, 2001 EST (#10470 of 10657)

All this worry about NMD is moot. Once the dems recapture the house and senate in 2002(and they will, they most certainly will!) NMD will die very quietly.

terry5c - 08:41am Dec 21, 2001 EST (#10471 of 10657)

mayorrude-I pray and hope you are correct. Merry Christmas.

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