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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?

(7669 previous messages)

rshowalter - 08:20pm Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7670 of 7772)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD6839 rshowalter 7/10/01 10:14am reads in part:

Bush Advisor stand-in, gisterme is represented by ----- 59 search pages

and goes on with language along these lines:

The involvement of gisterme represents an enormous work committment on gisterme's part. Many of gisterme's postings are, I think, very impressive. I believe that gisterme's work has assisted in the focusing of problems where neither the US nor the Russians were clear about before the give-and-take of this thread began.

So I appreciate gisterme's involvement.

gisterme and I also agree on a number of points about missile defense, and the related issues of military balances. And it is the combined effects of interdependent military issues, considered as a whole, that most concern our "Putin stand-in" almarst . We agree that the Cold War should be over in all significant ways -- and that Russia and America should come to relationships that are more cooperative, and less threatening. I think we'd say, with different emphasis on matters of detail "much less."

gisterme and I also both agree that the administration's missile defense initiative would be worthwhile, even if missile defense programs never deployed, or never even worked, if they decentered terrible nuclear standoffs frozen too long, and moved the world toward much lower levels of nuclear risk, and much higher levels of world order and peace, in the interests of all concerned.

The program may indeed be serving that purpose, and serving it more effectively than anybody involved could have reasonably anticipated.

But it is doing so by uniting the rest of the world in distrust for the United States, in fear of the United States, and is dissipating, to a degree that no one would have guessed a few months ago, the prestige of the US government, and the US military, world wide.

It seems a very high price to pay - - a near-total, unilateral surrender and disarmament of one of the strongest assets the United States has had in the world. I'm speaking of our credibility.

Because the missile defense program is militarily insane, for technical and diplomatic reasons that are easy to check.

Many on this thread.

. . .

Now, we have the spectacle of a "great power" begging its allies, and its adversaries, to be permitted to commit a massive, expensive technical folly, corrupting in very many ways so that it can keep on spending money, and keep on doing things that no longer make sense.

And when begging fails, bullying them.

gisterme - 08:34pm Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7671 of 7772)

rshowalter 7/31/01 7:31am

"...But that's wrong...."

Is not! That's a perfect example of what I've been saying about your apporach to logic, Robert. You just make statements with no back-up whatsoever. The babble about reflective coatings that followed is just that. It has nothing to do with your "that's wrong" statement. You're proving my point about my opinion of your "sweep it under the rug" approach to facing facts. Despite your claims of being a techno-whiz you never answer numbers with numbers...you answer them with emotional rhetoric.

rshowalter - 08:38pm Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7672 of 7772)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

gisterme , glad to see you on here. I'm finding myself tired, but you're "calling me" on a point on which I'm quite sure I'm right.

It there's a mistake, it is a mistake about antecedents. When I say " that is wrong -- the that I'm referring to is that intensity of stimulus can't over-ride the geometrical limitations of what can be hit with given controls.

It that the that you're referring to? If so, this is surely one matter (among a number) that can be checked.

rshowalter - 08:42pm Jul 31, 2001 EST (#7673 of 7772)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Indeed, everything you cited in MD7107 gisterme 7/16/01 9:24pm ... responding to my