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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?

dirac_10 - 02:01pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4697 of 4701)

It's too late.

rshowalter - 03:55pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4698 of 4701)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD4532 rshowalter 6/6/01 1:48pm . . . MD4533 rshowalter 6/6/01 1:48pm

rshowalter - 03:56pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4699 of 4701)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD3929 rshowalter 5/15/01 6:32pm
Proposal for a "dry run" for moving toward nuclear disarmament and more stable military balances:

" Preparation of a "mock" "proposal for discussion and comment" for Russian, American, and other governments, with journalists from a number of organizations in several countries doing much or most of the staffing, with others involved insofar as possible. The proposed work would be a diplomatic "dry run" and a journalistic special project for publication.

Collaboration would be done, in large part, using the internet techniques used here and elsewhere --supplemented in any ways convenient.

MD3931 rshowalter 5/15/01 6:34pm

" There may be "many different points of view" but on key facts, there are many fewer when people are using their real names, the statements are public, and impartial people can be asked to judge facts that are in dispute. MD2009: rshowalter 4/5/01 2:17pm

md2917: rshowalter 5/1/01 6:05pm ... :

" At the level of diplomacy, where it is sometimes a matter of great moment when somebody gives somebody else a phone call, complex things may never close at all. There just isn't enough discussion and fact gathering for convergence.

" To get some of our military problems sorted out may take a great deal of talking.

" One intention of this thread has been to provide a model of what might be involved, that could be a point of departure. . . . What is being claimed is that the logic of the process, and the facts set out and focused, can be constructive.

rshowalter - 04:06pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4700 of 4701)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Bush Is Revising Energy Policy to Address Global Warming by JOSEPH KAHN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/politics/10ENER.html

Welcome flexibility, and a willingness to consider conservation, and the use of renewable energy sources, including wind or solar power.

If the Bush administration could fashion better policies, and execute them well, better solutions to global warming than Kyoto might be fashioned, to the credit of the Bush administration. Even so, signing Kyoto might still make sense.

Kyoto DOES offer a response to a major problem in need of a solution.

If global warming did have a better solution, a fully workable technical solution, moving forward, which restricted world industry less, the strictures of Kyoto could be relaxed with few dislocations.

rshowalter - 05:07pm Jun 10, 2001 EST (#4701 of 4701)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A very few groups control most of the news that makes it into the widely distributed press - and there is much self censorship. So uncomfortable ideas often do not propagate. Not all of them should, of course. But a central fact is that these uncomfortable ideas are not rejected because they are checked and found wanting -- checking, and attention, are denied.

It may perhaps be interesting that, on the internet, connections of the Bush family, and the Republican right wing, to Nazi groups are not hard to find, and the connection has been reinforced recently with the declassification of some CIA documents.

Author links Bush to Nazis a staff report of the Herald-Tribune Newscoast, is one such story, from an author who points out that the Bush family is not the only wealthy family that made money on "the wrong side of World War II." http://www.newscoast.com/headlinesstory2.cfm?ID=35115

Citizens for Legitimate Government: Family Ties - Family Values -- (many references) http://www.legitgov.org/linksPfamilyties.html

A search of Carla Binion provides many references, http://www.google.com/search?q=carla+binion&btnG=Google+Search

If one reads Mr. Putin, Meet Mr. Bush: Who Needs Treaties? by Thom Shanker http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/weekinreview/10SHAN.html ... Week In Review ...copied in MD4684-4686 rshowalter 6/10/01 11:49am ...with these references in mind, one may understand both the need for treaties, and the need for enforcement and checking in the treaties, from the point of view of the leaders of the Russians, the Chinese, or other nation states.

Unconditional trust is not to be expected between nation states, and the current US administration is not always saintly.
MD4675 rshowalter 6/9/01 8:16pm

Nor are the administrations of other nation states.

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