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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 - 01:16pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6332 of 6337)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1401 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:56pm

Americans would rather work with a really unattractive sonofabitch, who could do his job, rather than a much more attractive human being, who couldn't.

You don't have to sacrifice your culture - many of us LIKE the idea of an authentically different Russia. But you have to , in an American phrase, "pull up your socks."

MD1402 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:58pm ... MD1403 rshowalter 3/23/01 6:22pm
MD1404 rshowalter 3/23/01 6:33pm
Every single negative thing that business people frequently repeat about "Russia being a bad place to do business" you need to study carefully, and FIX.

The issue is related to the problems of world peace.
MD1405 rshowalter 3/23/01 6:37pm

The United States hasn't known how to make peace with you, and settled on a policy of scaring you into collapse -- and it worked, and we weren't honest to our own people while it was going on -- and American initiative being what it is, a lot of stealing may have been going on, as well.

But once you collapsed, we still didn't know how to work with you (and maybe had forgotten how to talk to you, though we never knew how to do it well)-- and so things have stayed a mess.

The exercise of cleaning up the terribly dangerous vestiges of the Cold War might go a long way toward solving these problems.

(And the world may blow up if we don't do it.)

rshowalter - 01:25pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6333 of 6337)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There are basic things that Russia needs to do better, and understand better. And the amount of latent good will, toward Russia, in the US, may be much greater than you think.
MD1392 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:28pm

We'd like you to know this, in the ways that matter for action. You need interaction with Russia to be "a good investment." Reliability is crucial for this:

MD1393 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:29pm ... MD1394 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:30pm
MD1395 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:36pm ... MD1396 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:38pm
MD1397 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:41pm ... MD1398 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:43pm
MD1399 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:51pm ... MD1400 rshowalter 3/23/01 5:53pm

Again, MD1401rshowalter 3/23/01 5:56pm ... .

rshowalter - 01:28pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6334 of 6337)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD1409 rshowalter 3/23/01 7:10pm

Although it was a complicated circumstance in many ways, this is true:

our two countries have been at an impasse , and scaring each other to death (even when it was unintentional) for fifty years

and we've just been through a decade where

there's been no reason at all not to take the weapons down and we haven't been able to do it

and during this decade, for all the disasters on the Russian side, it is also true that, as a class,

the "capitalist exploiters" have lost money on Russia.

It has been a mess. It has to be sorted out.

(3 following messages)

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