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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 - 10:25am May 2, 2001 EST (#2974 of 2996)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Maybe peace is the future -- and we're in a transition for that future.

But speedbird's

"The future belongs to those who can envision it"

only makes sense if the future is envisioned correctly.

Plenty of times, people envision a future that turns out to be wrong, with expensive or lethal consequences that are independent of "good faith" in the sentimental sense.

When decisions matter, they matter, and we need to take care to be right.

mchan24 - 10:36am May 2, 2001 EST (#2975 of 2996)

Kind of worry if this new strategy lifts the ban of testing nuclear warheads in the ocean / space or underground. When countries test and explode nuclear warheads in the environment, bad moves !

cookiess0 - 10:42am May 2, 2001 EST (#2976 of 2996)

mchan24 - 10:36am May 2, 2001 EST (#2975 of 2975)

The issues are not related.

mchan24 - 10:46am May 2, 2001 EST (#2977 of 2996)

One more thing, the reduction from 7000 to 1500 means nothing when 1500 warheads can blow up the world, 7000 plus only means these weapons can blow up the world 4 times. The result is the same. Numbers in this scenario are just politic.

cookiess0 - 11:09am May 2, 2001 EST (#2978 of 2996)

mchan24 - 10:46am May 2, 2001 EST (#2977 of 2977)

START was something as was START II.

Why because it led to START II WHICH WILL LEAD TO START III.

Reduction is better then increase.

rshowalter - 11:19am May 2, 2001 EST (#2979 of 2996)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Indefensible missiles: Mr Bush is making a dangerous mistake

Special report: George Bush's America Leader Wednesday May 2, 2001 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,481620,00.html

"President George Bush's decision to develop highly versatile, "multilayered" space, land, air and sea missile defences is an historic mistake that will have dangerously negative repercussions worldwide. Going far beyond anything envisaged by his predecessors, this grandiose scheme will demolish the foundation of the strategic nuclear balance, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the Soviet Union. By banning defensive systems, the ABM accord effectively ensured that neither side could survive, let alone "win", a nuclear exchange. By deploying these new systems alongside its reduced but still superior offensive missile forces, the US will be well on the way to establishing a domineering, deeply threatening, global military posture. Perhaps Mr Bush, in his chauvinist ignorance, believes this is desirable. He is frighteningly wrong. Not only Russia but China and others such as India will feel obliged to respond in kind, in part by expanding their land-based nuclear arsenals to retain at least a vestige of offensive capability. Russia may in turn trash the medium-range INF treaty. "Rogue nations" such as Iran and North Korea, the fall guys which have provided a convenient, initial rationale for missile defence, can hardly be expected to scrap their weapons programmes. More likely, they will redouble their efforts, inferring the US has no use for dialogue and diplomacy. Regional frictions centring on US "clients" such as Israel and Taiwan, both promised a share of the theatre missile defence action, may be expected to intensify. Britain and America's other Nato allies will meanwhile face domestically divisive dilemmas about whether to support and buy into the new technology (which will not come free). With friends like the US, who needs rogue states?

"As disproportionate US military strength grows, as the imbalance of forces increases, as new arms races accelerate and as collective anti-proliferation efforts shred, international insecurity is likely to increase exponentially. Nor will the US itself escape this degradation, the very opposite of what it purportedly intends, even as a docile Congress pays through the nose for flash gear of unproven worth. The "hegemonistic" US will become, even more than now, the target of every ideological or religious fanatic and of every terrorist network from Afghanistan and beyond.

"Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld admitted recently that while "we are safer today from the threat of massive nuclear war than at any point since the dawn of the atomic age, we are more vulnerable now to the suitcase bomb and the cyber-terrorist". He is right. The state department agreed this week that while state-sponsored terrorism is declining, trans-national groups such as that led by Osama bin Laden are the big, growing threat. Random chemical and biological attacks are a more pressing danger than some dodgy rocket rusting in a silo on a Pyongyang pig farm or even Russia's ICBMs. Mr Rumsfeld's missiles, however smart, cannot stop an anthrax attack on the New York subway or the detonation in say, Austin, Texas, of a portable, low-yield "mini-nuke" of the kind favoured by US defence scientists and coveted by Iraq. So why do he and Dubya want them so? Perhaps it has something to do with manifest destiny and other bits of sentimental claptrap that rightwingers use to convince themselves the US has a god-given right to global supremacy.

"As we have remarked before, Mr Bush is becoming a menace. Tony Blair should stop being "sympathetic to his concerns" and tell him that Britain, at least, will have no truck with his madcap missiles.

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