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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 - 12:59pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3364 of 3366)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The BBC broadcast was very interesting. Jack Spencer, of the Heritage Foundation, put out a spirited, and internally consistent, defense of the idea of missile defense.

I think that, if missile defense could work, and work on Spencer's terms, and with his assumptions, it would be beautiful.

But some key assumptions are wrong:

1) Any missile defense system so far proposed has a vanishingly small chance of working -- for reasons that have been discussed here --- reasons that could be more extensively checked. There are, of course, plenty of things that would be nice if they had a good chance, that aren't worth considering so long as they only have a neglibible chance of success.

There is another assumption, and it is crucial --

2. It is the assumption that the United States is not an agressive nation.

If everybody were agreed on that, the missile defense program would indeed seem benign. But everybody doesn't -- and the agressiveness of US forces, since WWII, and since 1991, has been very large --- that's a point of fact that needs to be understood, where most Americans believe just the opposite of the truth as it is seen by many, many reasonable people in other countries.

A position that is "beautiful" in terms of one set of assumptions can be very ugly indeed -- and deadly dangerous, in terms of other assumptions.

It matters what assumptions work when you check them.

rshowalter - 01:46pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3365 of 3366)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

3327: rshowalter 5/5/01 10:06am .. reads
http://scienceforpeace.sa.utoronto.ca/WorkingGroupsPage/NucWeaponsPage/Documents/ThreatsNucWea.html

THREATS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The Sixteen Known Nuclear Crises of the Cold War, 1946-1985 by David R. Morgan , National President , Veterans Against Nuclear Arms Vancouver, Canada March 6, 1996

( A detailed table of contents was posted in rshowalter 5/5/01 10:06am )

INTRODUCTION

"During the 39 years of the Cold War, the United States of America led the nuclear arms race, repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, and brought civilization to the brink of destruction on several occasions. This is an appalling record, but there is no reason to believe that any other great power having the same advantages as the U.S.A. would have acted any better. The human race is ill-equipped to deal with nuclear weapons.

"The Cold War and the Soviet nuclear threat to the U.S.A. was ended by Mikhail Gorbachev. It is now widely believed, however, that the U.S.A. "won the Cold War." The very dangerous crises of the Cold War, their threats distorted by propaganda at the time, are now almost totally forgotten. The role of the military establishment that led us into these crises remains unquestioned, its prestige untarnished. The public remains in ignorance.