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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 - 12:54pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3794 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst-2001 5/13/01 11:41am Almarst, I think that "the need to wage an "ethical" warfare from the "high moral ground", is as old as human groups certainly as old as recorded history.

You are right, of course, that this "ethical" or "moral" justification denies benefits to the soldiers

Almarst says something profoundly right:

"To motivate the solgers in this condition, an ideological/religious/dehumanised/monstrous enemy and the culture of the glorification of the warier was needed and created.

Yes, needed and created -- but probably needed and created by hunting bands a million years ago. The arguments for "righteous war" come naturally to the species homo sapiens.

Almarst says something profound and hopeful when he says this:

However, unlike the fighting for the material benefits which has its clear and logical conclusion and the end as well as a clear sense of the cost-benefit in mind of every actual participant on the ground, the new "morality" has to portrate the "enemy" as an ethernal one, worth of and due to total extermination.

So it is important to make sure that war does not pay rationally. Under the conditions of advanced countries, that's getting easier and easier to do. And it is VITAL the we do the work to do this -- to make sure that war does not pay, insofar as we possibly can.

And it is also important to keep people from dehumanizing each other. People have to communicate well enough -- at enough levels, including emotional levels, that they deal with each other as human beings -- with a good deal of knowledge and capacity for cooperation. Unless and until this happens, everybody concerned has plenty of reasons to be afraid. Especially with nukes around. So communication is crucial. And resources of communication are getting better than before - something this thread is showing. Talk between old enemies matters a great deal -- even if it is not all pleasant -- so that people can get a sense of each other as HUMAN BEINGS.

rshowalter - 12:56pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3795 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

So to live in peace, nation states have to convince each other that they are really human and can really impose real, proportionate costs on each other.

So that both emotional and cold-rational reponses favor peace and cooperation, rather than predatory behavior, murder, and war.

rshowalter - 12:58pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3796 of 3800)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If things are arranged that way, nobody needs to trust anybody else to an unreasonable degree, nobody has to be very afraid, and nobody needs nukes.

Cooperation and comfortable relations can make sense and be stable then.

Without anybody having to become a saint.

almarst-2001 - 01:04pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3797 of 3800)

Robert,

I disagree with your assumptions for the following reasons:

- The "pre-civilized" people lived and continue to do so in some remote parts of the world quite peacefully and in a sense, a much more moral life. Please prove wrong on this. And the reason in my view is quite simple. The people being far from the most powerful animals, terribly need COOPERATION. And cooperation requires trust and assumption of a good will, unless and untill proven breached.

- Assuming the people so easily may come to hate and kill each other, why this process is not random. In order to create a mass-histeria and mass-directed coherent hatered, the sofisticated "identification and dehuminization of the enemy" is needed. The Cristian religion, in my view, was the first one to utilize this. And continued for many handreds of years.

- America, due to its unique state-religion and ethnical mix, presented a unique chalange to war propagandists. As was a case in USSR. and here the ideology conviniently came to place.

Unfortunatly for those who still want to send the death accross the world, the end of a Cold War spelled quite a disaster and an urgent need to invent a new motive. And here, or God, the new motive became nothing less then a "humanitarism" and the "defence of a human rights".

If the human beings and this Planet will survive such a twist, I would give a lot to know how this "interesting" period will be viewed a hundred years from now. And the reason is - this make the definition of an enemy so "wornedfully" flexible, one can create at any time with a little effort. As long as a consequences to aggressor will be minimal.

As i see it, this is a way the US policy and politics is moving.

If only I could be wrong.

almarst-2001 - 01:06pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3798 of 3800)

rshowalter 5/13/01 12:54pm

Disagree.

almarst-2001 - 01:09pm May 13, 2001 EST (#3799 of 3800)

rshowalter 5/13/01 12:54pm

When I said "actual participant", I meant those who fight, kill and die on the ground.

There are always some who hope to benefit from the war, sitting in a comfortable chears.

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