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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 - 12:58pm May 4, 2001 EST (#3221 of 3225)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A time for concern, hope, and negotiation:
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We don't have to be totally clean, and others don't have to be either, to clean up such a mess as this.

rshowalter - 12:59pm May 4, 2001 EST (#3222 of 3225)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Questionable circumstances in the US nuclear weapons control apparatus:
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Basic issues need to be checked .

applez0 - 01:05pm May 4, 2001 EST (#3223 of 3225)

Rshowalter - "It would be sad to have all the hopes of the world stupidly ended, with the history of higher life on earth ending with a mass of rotting unburied corpses."

That's all right, we'll all be so much ash and dust from the nuclear pyre sparked by the flash of Christian righteousness against those infidelitous Commies & Brown People! ;-)

(Yes folks, that's the tradition that has brought you nuclear weapons and now NMD...I don't know about you, but I think we can do better) :)

rshowalter - 01:24pm May 4, 2001 EST (#3224 of 3225)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I think we can do better.

And be a lot less afraid.

I don't think Americans even know how afraid they are -- how much tighter-than-they-have-to-be they are, how intimidated, and easy to bully they are, because of accumulated fear associated with nuclear weapons.

Or how messed up much of the rest of the world is, from the same cause.

It would be an enormous relief, for the whole world, to clean the situation up -- and technically easy to do.

If we faced up to a very few things, we'd all be much happier -- and the process itself, with only a few wrenches, would be a beautiful thing.

rshowalter - 01:31pm May 4, 2001 EST (#3225 of 3225)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I still don't see why the process I suggested on September 25th wouldn't be worth serious discussion among journalists and world leaders. Maybe it isn't workable, but it seems to me that it could lead to something that was workable.
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I tried to make a suggestion that made both practical and emotional sense.

Nuclear weapons are a deeply emotional issue, for all concerned, and one of the stupidest defenses people have is their inclination to deny the plain fact.

Whatever we do here has to feel right after we've been reasonably informed, and had time to think.

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