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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?

gisterme - 04:14pm May 11, 2001 EST (#3693 of 3698)

rshowalter wrote: "...No sensible nation can be asked to have deep or unconditional trust about nuclear weapons. There is too much to fear..."

True statement, Robert. Recall the saying, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" (-Wendell Phillips). I doubt that anyone would argue that there has been any lack of "vigilance" in the last half century. But trust is the thing that must be built over time. No matter how passionately and honestly-from-the-heart we present our points of view here, and even though by much conversation we become convinced of the sincere good-will of all, such conclusion is just the first (but very necessary) step toward sincere trust. As a concept there's little difference in the application of trust wheter between individuals or between nations.

From Mirriam Webster:

Trust: 1 a : assured reliance on some person or thing : a confident dependence on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something : BELIEF

Given that, we could adjudge "distrust" to be the natural path of least resistance in human relations, the natural gradent toward entropy. If the condition of genuine trust were likened to a mountain top, then distrust would be like the gravity that relentlessly negotiates with the mountain climber to return to the valley below. Due to human nature, some degree of distrust is as inescapeable as gravity; yet we all know that with sufficient perserverence that mountain climber can reach the summit. He does that by not giving in to gravity; kind of like the process of acheiving trust between individuals or nations. Trust is built by not giving in to distrust. The climber must REALLY want to reach to mountain top if he is to have any hope of getting there.

But what motivates one to climb a mountain for the first time? The fact that it's there? The desire to accomplish something not done before? Those are good reasons, but I think the real reason is that accomplishing something difficult by hard work and perserverence is rewarding to the soul (or psyche if you prefer). A serious climber will risk his life in pursuit of that seemingly intangible reward. He does it by striving toward the mountain top not by dwelling on recollections of the comfortable valley below.

Now the reason that I feel so strongly that the world is truly the threshold of a new age is this: There are no "new frontiers" left on earth. All the real estate is spoken for. There's no more room for expansion. There's no more debate about what may lie over the horizon. The world has transformed from "vast beyond imagining" to "uncomfortably small", not because of some physical anomaly but because of increased human knowledge. So "world size" with regards to human affairs is a function of knowledge. The "small world" is a perception built upon the applied cumulative knowledge of all generations of humans. The proof of the "small world" is that we individuals world-wide can communicate, almost in real-time, from nearly anyplace in the world, just as surely as if we were face to face.

In this new "small world" era we must learn to use the power of communication to preempt the power of demagoguary by the ready availability of truth. A child can fear the boogy-man when the lights are off because the child can't see under the bed or into the closet. But even a child has no fear in the light, because th

gisterme - 04:15pm May 11, 2001 EST (#3694 of 3698)

continuation (#3693):

In this new "small world" era we must learn to use the power of communication to preempt the power of demagoguary by the ready availability of truth. A child can fear the boogy-man when the lights are off because the child can't see under the bed or into the closet. But even a child has no fear in the light, because the boogy-man has no place to hide. In this new era, unlike in any other, we have a powerful light, right at our finger tips, able to illumiate the darkest corners. I can't help but think that trust should be much easier to build in the absence of the boogy-man.

Sorry for the ramble...just had to finish the thought

rshowalter - 04:49pm May 11, 2001 EST (#3695 of 3698)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In real human relations, even the best of them, there is always a balance between trust and mistrust --- and that isn't necessarily bad in any way. If a person wants to get right answers, he may ASK to be checked (which means, operationally, to have his work distrusted) so that mistakes can be avoided. Or she may accept checking as a matter of course, without any offense at all.

Trust and familiarity go together -- the more one knows of something, the more one is likely to accomodate to it in useful ways, and for rational reasons. The less fear is likely to be due to ignorance.

And the more likely that the fears that remain are rational fears, connected to clear knowledge of how to manage the things involved.

Professionals, knowing how things can go wrong, may show more concern about particular things than others do.

Nuclear weapons are designed to produce mass death and destruction. Fear of them is rational. The better one can imagine what these bombs do,the more fear one is likely to feel. And so long as that does not paralyze function and reason, that's all to the good.

Profession users of explosives are careful folk --because they KNOW what they are dealing with. Fear and nuclear weapons go together -- and no one in his or her sense can "like" them.

We need to get our military balances clearer, and better understood, and more clearly related to human realities. As we do that, we'll discover that we have no reason to hold on to nuclear weapons at all -- that we need to prohibit them effectively, on the basis of a well informed world consensus -- and that we can.

We're making progress toward getting that clarity, which will get things safer.

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