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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 - 05:43pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3380 of 3385)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I might add that sometimes, the beautiful solution, in a real case, involves use of force.

I have no doubt that there are some times when you have to fight, and need to win.

There are good reasons for nation states to want military forces. Effective ones.

But violence is only the right solution when there really are not better alternatives.

And nuclear weapons are not a "good" answer to any question at all.

rshowalter - 06:05pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3381 of 3385)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm going to be at least another hour, but not more than two hours, responding.

gisterme - 07:18pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3382 of 3385)

Another thought about "first strike" policy. The reason that the US first conceived and built ballistic missile submarines was to ensure it would be able to respond to a Soviet first strike. By doing so the need to operate in that very dangerous "respond on alarm" mode was eliminated.

rshowalter - 08:36pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3383 of 3385)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

gisterme , I think we're getting close enough to agreement about facts, and also about definitions, that much progress can be made. Much progress has been made ! !

I spent some time thinking about analytical approaches that might make sense, but have decided to postpone them. I believe that the things that need to be considered can be pointed out - and maybe slept on, with respect to four movies. Movies are a very rich, complex, clear medium -- and I think that's useful here. I hope you know these movies, or know something about them. The movies I have in mind are West Side Story , which is a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet ; Dr. Strangelove ; Mary Poppins ; and, in my view perhaps the richest of all movies, Casablanca.

West Side Story is a primordial story of primative war between human animals, told with the superposition of a love story to give a sense of human consequences. It ends with a most unconvincing sermon over a fresh corpse, a sermon that is moving enough, at one level, but soon to be forgotten by the people involved. The limited good thing about the story is that weapons are limited, and though pain is real, and there is death, most people do survive, and go on.

rshowalter - 08:37pm May 6, 2001 EST (#3384 of 3385)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

What I said in 2887 rshowalter 5/1/01 12:31pm ...I'd like to repeat here:

I feel that we need to move away from Dr. Stragelove "solutions" -- and toward the kinds of focused, disciplined, graceful solutions that ordinary people so often craft in their own lives -- the sorts of solutions that make room for life -- the kinds that another very tough character, Mary Poppins , might approve of.

Something I've always liked about the movie Mary Poppins is that the heroine moves into a ugly mess. The ugliness is realistically portrayed. With some steadfastness, and some grace, she uses very specific knowledge of specific people and situations. There's the occasional coercive act or credible threat, but always she is proportionate, and graceful outcomes are arranged as well. b Things are worked out to a higher level of grace and practicality than existed in the household before, though nobody loses their basic weaknesses and flaws.

"We've had a lot of Dr. Strangelove in our international arrangements. Maybe we can't do away with all of it, though I think we can.

"But we could use some of the Mary Poppins virtues, too.

Mary Poppins is a more intellectually respectable figure than Dr Strangelove , and lives in a more complicated world, closer to our real one, where, with wit, there are more ways to avoid horrors and find graceful accomodations.

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