New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

almarst-2001 - 12:00am May 22, 2001 EST (#4134 of 4138)

gisterme 5/21/01 1:49pm

"Conditions really are different."

They are. But not different enough for my expectations.

"nobody including the US has a clue about what to do now or quite how to act in this new environment."

Most likely so. But that not an impression you get if you listen to Ramsfeld or Wolfoviz or Bzezinsky.

"There are new challenges (or anceint ones revived) but few can be solved by force."

That was always true, wasn't it? But one would come to a opposite conclusion by studying the US military budget, operational doctrine and wearpons development programs.

"Fortunately, adaptation is one of the strong points of our species. :-) "

Some hope to "adapt" the others into submission while self adapting to the permanent "masters" and half-Gods. Nothing new here.

The major and rather fearsome change I see is an attitude of the public to the war and the ability to conduct a "safe" and remote "fotogenic" acts of crimes, aggression, destruction and cold-blooded mass-murder. So "beautefull" and even "funny" (remember the footage of bombing the Iraqi bridge blown by a laser-guided missiles fired from a stealth bomber, just in front of a poor motorists), the Pentagon is just proud to provide a footage to the evening news. No PG lable attached. Children could enjoy.

Once upon a time the war was a durty and dangerous endeavour. How many people could be killed by a single, even the fittest and most brutal Rome's Legioner in a buttle?

And now, the moderately fat undergraduate can destroy a city or nation between two cans of bear. And still have a time to watch the nightly Football game.

That what is really new.

rshowalter - 05:52am May 22, 2001 EST (#4135 of 4138)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarst , that's a superb post.

In a NYT WEEK IN REVIEW earlier this year, James Dao wrote a wonderful essay. It was titled.

" Please Do Not Disturb us with Bombs."

It set out the argument for missile defense very well in the terms in which people mostly argue for it -- and set that argument out just below a picture showing a gross servoinstability in a recent ABM test -- showing how far short our technology actually remains, compared to the promises offered by the advocates of Missile Defense.

The policy of the current administration, behind a pelthora of words, many of them evasive and off point, includes the notion set out in Dao's essay title, but says more. Basically, it says.

" Please do not disturb US with Bombs. But we can bomb YOU."

The US has to do better than that - or it degrades itself --- and the rest of the world has to expect better than that, for its own safety, and because it degrades itself otherwise.

rshowalter - 06:00am May 22, 2001 EST (#4136 of 4138)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Over the weekend, I was in Lafayette Indiana -- Sunday morning I woke up before dawn, and for about two hours from dawn I had the pleasure of walking around the Purdue University campus, and the surrounding cities of West and East Lafayette Indiana. There's a beautiful walking bridge across the Wabash river between West and East Lafayette. As I walked, I wished some Russian and Chinese officials might take a similar walk --just looking at the complex, orderly, constrained structure in which so much worthwhile American life goes on. Looking and thinking about how much accomodation might be possible, but also how complex, in unanticipatable ways, some of it might well have to be. I thought, as I often do, about nuclear weapons. when looking at this meticulously laid out, orderly, clean, hardworking place.

So much to admire here ! Such an interest in order here ! So much good here.

A terrible place for uncontrolled explosives intended to destroy. A terrible place for a suicide bomber. A terrible place to think of nuclear weapons.

The people in Lafayette Indiana are, by and large conservative, hardworking, and decent. By and large, as human animals, disciplined and accomplished. They care a great deal about neatness in the way they live their lives.

Somehow, like other Americans, they feel that they can, morally and operationally, project power on other people, and the possessions and cities of other people, by bombing -- by not very well aimied deliveries of explosives - from B-52's, and sometimes including nuclear weapons.

It is a stunning, wrenching blindness. It is, from my perspective, breatakingly ugly -- and devalues much about America.

I can't say that I know how Almarst and others feel about it -- but I think I can imagine some of it, and I sympathize.

Most Americans now don't have any idea how others feel about this. The point, somehow, has to be put across - before certain necessary accomodations, in the interest of everybody alive, are going to be possible.

And other nations dealing with the US have to take this blindness into account, in dealing with us. This blindness, and a great deal of dishonesty that defends it (for it is not quite blindness - it is far from innocent) stains the many good things about the United States, and denies, all over the world, chances for good that could otherwise occur.

rshowalter - 06:02am May 22, 2001 EST (#4137 of 4138)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If this blindness and ruthlessness was not a real concern, missile defense would be just another technical idea, to be considered in terms of ordinary risks and costs.

But because this American blindness and ruthlessness IS an issue, the whole world has to be concerned about what is being discussed -- especially because of the inconsistency and evasion of much of the discourse.

rshowalter - 06:06am May 22, 2001 EST (#4138 of 4138)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

It is a saving grace that America is now so very vulnerable. All concerned would be safer if this were more widely understood.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense