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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 - 10:30am Jun 20, 2001 EST (#5519 of 5537)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Since Missile Defense 4433 rshowalter 6/6/01 1:48pm there have been 983 postings.

The NYT forums have now reinstalled a search function, after a long time.

This NYT Missile Defense thread is being extensively used, and discussion and controversy are continuing. Main contributers are:

almarst_2001 , previously almarstel2001 who, since March 5 has acted as a "Putin stand-in" here. almarst shows extensive connections to literature, and to Russian government ways of thought.

gisterme , who since May 2nd has acted as a "Senior Bush administration advisor stand in" shows some plausible connections to the Bush administration.

beckq and cookies2 according to the dialog, are the same poster. I'd interpret as "stand-ins" for former President Clinton since August 2000, and for a long time I was under the impression that becq was Clinton.

Me, and Dawn Riley, who have been arguing for improved communication, and as much nuclear disarmament as possible within the imperatives of military balances, since September 25, 2000

Counting search pages, for characters, gives some sense of the participation. Here are the number of search pages for these posters:

"Putin stand-in" , almarst --- 55 search pages.

"Bush Advisor stand-in" , gisterme ----- 35 search pages

"Clinton stand-in" , beckq, or cookies2 ----- 7 search pages

Dawn Riley - - - - 85 search pages

Robert Showalter - - - - 166 search pages.

rshowalter - 10:32am Jun 20, 2001 EST (#5520 of 5537)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've contributed the most words to the MD thread, and Dawn the most citations and the most connection to the news.

But the involvement of the "stand-ins" has been very extensive, too, and represents an enormous work committment on their part. Their postings are, I think, very impressive. The involvement of these "stand-ins" continues. I believe that their work has assisted in the focusing of problems where neither the US nor the Russians were clear about how to make contact with each other before.

The thread is an ongoing attempt to show that internet usages can be a format for negotiation and communication, between staffed organizations, capable of handling more complexity, with more clarity and more complete memory, than could happen otherwise.

I believe that is something relatively new, in need of development, and clearly needed.

I feel that progress is being made, and that impasses that were intractable before may be more tractable now.

The format is imperfect, in large part because it is adapted to more staffing than it has. Nor does the format of the thread, as of now, include a moderator function, or an umpiring function capable of dealing with distracting arguments, intended to distract, or with questions of fact, at times of impasse, when resolving the facts takes umpiring.

But these drawbacks, due to thin staffing, could be dealt with, effectively, with moderate additional resources, and do not invalidate the format aspects of the forum, and the ability to set out detail, and accomodate complexity, that the format shows.

rshowalter - 10:39am Jun 20, 2001 EST (#5521 of 5537)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A major difficulty that the thread shows again and again, and that I try to deal with as best I can, involves complexity.

The same facts can have different interpretations, and different patterns of justification, depending both on point of view, and interest.

And the same people, and the same groups, can be "beautiful, and in the right" in some ways, and at the same time, concerning the same facts --- "ugly and in the wrong" in other ways. Both ways can be significant ways.

One can hope for accomodations that preserve the good, and reduce the bad. For that to be possible, multiple points of view have to be acknowledged.

In complex circumstances -- any such accomodation is overwhelmingly likely to depend on a true and balanced view of the relavent facts and relations. Most problems between people and groups that continue for long times are complex in this way, and seem to me to include patterns that resist the determination of true facts and relations -- and by that resistance, throw away the only hopes for solid accomodation that fit the circumstances.

rshowalter - 10:45am Jun 20, 2001 EST (#5522 of 5537)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

For example, at some very significant levels, Russia and the United States (and Russia, the United States, and the European and Asian countries in interaction together) seem reasonably close to fully satisfactory accomodations that involve much less nuclear risk than now exists.

At some other levels, also very significant, there are bitter, rigid, intractable impasses.

Those impasses, I believe, exist, and continue because, in core ways, the players cannot, or refuse to permit, a determination of core facts that would make it possible for the people involved, with different interests and feelings about those facts, to be "reading off the same page."

The costs of these impasses, I believe, are much higher than the cost in embarrassment and effort that would be involved in setting out the core facts.

This applies to problems with Japan, with China, with AIDS, with the nuclear terror and other issues involving the Cold War, which, still too much today, continues, and with other matters, too.

Illustrations of the cost of lying, with respect to Japan, China, and the case of AIDS, have been in the news recently.

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