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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?

lunarchick - 08:42am Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6916 of 6919)
lunarchick@www.com

Wednesday July 4, 2001

Pressure for a political solution to end the prolonged conflict in Chechnya is mounting, as commentators note increasing weariness with the two-year-old war both among the Russian population and its military elite. Over the past month, previously docile members of the 140,000-strong Chechen refugee community in neighbouring Ingushetia have begun loudly campaigning for an immediate halt to the war as their patience with the basic conditions in the camps wears thin.

More than 40 refugees - including children and the elderly - have launched a hunger strike calling on President Vladimir Putin to end the war; almost 250 signed a plea sent to the president demanding that negotiations be opened swiftly between Moscow and the rebel Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov.

There can be "no military settlement" in Chechnya, they stated. "For the sake of saving thousands of Russians and Chechens, take a courageous step and stop the war," they urged ......."An influential three-star general ... told me: 'We have lost this war and should get out.'

"There is apparently a growing anti-war movement within the Russian high-brass, a group of generals who believe that the Chechen war is totally immoral and impossible to win, and that it is destroying our armed forces both physically and morally for no good reason," he wrote .

lunarchick - 08:53am Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6917 of 6919)
lunarchick@www.com

War & Peace

~ http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/52/96/frameset.html Tolstov
~ http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?centasia_index.html
~ http://www.nyu.edu/cwpnm/
~ http://www.ipb.org/conflict/Chechnya99.html

almarst-2001 - 10:45am Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6918 of 6919)

On Chechnia.

The facts:

This is a very strategically and economically importand region.

This is gorilla war against mafia-like bands supported by criminal activities and foreign funds, arms and even personal. Mostly from Afganistan, Pakistan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

The goal of the bandits is to spread terror and their influence by inciting the religious and nacionalistic extremism far beiong the Chechnia proper, as was demonstrated during the years of independence after the first Chechen war.

If Russia will exit, it will become a repetition of Taliban-rulled Afganistan.

By the way, when the Australia is going to return the aborigent's lands or at least compensate them?

rshowalter - 10:51am Jul 11, 2001 EST (#6919 of 6919)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Plenty of ugliness, all around. No getting rid of all of it. But we can do better -- with fewer negatives, and more positives. To do it, again and again, we need more of a sense of proportion.

A sense of the quantitative -- a sense of the core mathematical question, which is "how much?"

Disproportion is ugly and there's plenty of it.

In MD6908 almarst-2001 7/10/01 10:34pm ... and MD609 almarst-2001 7/10/01 10:38pm .... almarst quotes a passage by Thomas Friedman , and asks:

" Any regrets at NYT ? "

That's a good question, and not because what Friendman said was entirely wrong. Military force, and other kinds of force are necessary from time to time in human affairs. But what Friedman said lacked proportion, or references to the need for proportion. That made it incomplete in ugly ways.

The United States needs a solid defense, and competent military forces, to produce sufficient threats, sufficiently backed up, to support its interests.

So do other nation states.

But key issues involve proportion and also the simple question "what works?"

... Any regrets, Russia? ....

I'd expect so. We all have plenty to clean up -- and perfection isn't even thinkable. But we can do better than we're doing.

To do so, we have to ask "how much" questions about injuries done, and threatened, and about good and bad.

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