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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?

wrcooper - 02:52pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4200 of 4202)

rshowalter 5/25/01 2:23pm

Great.

If you don't have the contact information for your representatives, you can get it easily through Project Vote Smart.

Here is the text of the letter I'm sending:

Dear _____________,

I am writing to register my firm opposition to President Bush's proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) program. I urge you to vote against any bill that comes before you that supports the President's proposals for NMD.

The President's program is bad policy for several reasons.

• It will abrogate the long-standing ABM treaty that helped prevent a costly and risky arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, leading to possible instability in the balance of forces among nuclear powers.

• The technology of BMD is highly speculative. Many competent experts think that it is fundamentally unworkable. Test after test has failed to demonstrate that antimissile missiles can detect their targets and intercept them under warefare conditions. At a minimum, the program sets distant and uncertain goals.

• The President's BMD program poses a limited strike by a "rogue nation" as a realistic threat to the United States when any such nation could avail itself of much simpler and less costly alternatives, such as chemical weapons that could be smuggled into the country. Thus, the rationale for BMD is questionable, at best.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely yours,

gisterme - 03:06pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4201 of 4202)

rshowalter wrote: rshowalter 5/22/01 7:17am "...You can understand their position especially well if you study closely how ineffective international talk and cooperation has often been. If the effectiveness of talk and international cooperation in the future is no better than it is in the past -- then the world may be, speaking figuratively of course, headed straight to h*ll..."

Given that almost all "ineffective international talk and cooperation" took place in an unstable empire-building environment, is the outcome any big surprize? When the environment is one of war, why would one not expect that negotiations between the warring parties should be difficult to say the least?

Why do you keep referring to today's international negotiations as if they are being carried out in a '70s environment? No such environment exists today between the nuclear armed nations. That war is over. Negotiations may still be difficult because there are difficult problems to solve; but the un-negotiable problem of territorial occupaton has been removed. Doesn't that seem like a big difference to you, Robert?

gisterme - 03:51pm May 25, 2001 EST (#4202 of 4202)

almarst said something way back, haven't got time to search for it, but it was to this effect:

Yes, the cold war is over but it has no "victor" or "defeated" in the same sense as other wars in history.

almarst's point was that nobody really has a right to gloat about "victory" in the cold war. I agree with that completely. Let the age of empire rest in peace.

I must confess that I felt great delight when I saw images of the Berlin wall coming down...images of disbelieving folks from both sides of the wall just sort of milling around together, passing the bottle of celebration, almost not knowing how to act. Images of joyous disbelief, arising from a reality that had been unthinkable for decades. People freely doing today the very thing they would have been shot for doing yesterday. For me, those images, collectively, formed the image of a cardinal point in world history, the end of the age of empire...true cause for celebration.

That delight I felt (and still feel) is not because an enemy was vanquished but because the symbol of a long-standing barrier to human communication was at last being removed. The final active legacy of both Hitler and Stalin was going down once and for all.

almarst is absolutely right in his comment about "victors". The whole world is the victor. Russia and its leadership at the time played the central role in the accomplishment of that victory and, in my view, have as much right to claim it as anybody else. After all, the Russian victory over the "throne of Stalin" resulted in their own liberty along with same for all of occupied eastern Europe.

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