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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 - 10:47pm Aug 21, 2001 EST (#7982 of 7989)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Given the stakes, some key points are WORTH CHECKING. That checking should be morally forcing.

The administration is taking technical positions, many on this thread, that cannot stand the light of day.

rshowalter - 06:04am Aug 22, 2001 EST (#7983 of 7989)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

From MD7667 lunarchick 7/31/01 8:03pm

With respect to MD the questions include:

Does the technology work?

Are the people developing it aware of only the micro-aspect their team work on, rather than having a full concept of the system?

Could money be used to better effect?

Could engineers be employed in worthwhile ways?

A list of NEEDS for the world would relate first to basic survival, and then employment.

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The 'coldness' regarding the USA's policy of 'bombing from a distance' ... relies on the people of the world not seeing each other as brothers and sisters .. which they now do - thanks to improved communications and the efforts of writers and film makers.

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WRT the 'Shield' .. it seems that the main players can't understand it ... making the 'publics' of the world rightfully skeptical!

rshowalter - 06:06am Aug 22, 2001 EST (#7984 of 7989)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Rightfully skeptical" is putting it mildly.

MD7772 rshowalter 7/31/01 8:20pm

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. i 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.

rshowalter - 06:07am Aug 22, 2001 EST (#7985 of 7989)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Rip Van Rummy Awakes by MAUREEN DOWD http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/22/opinion/22DOWD.html .. is a distinguished piece, that ends with this line:

" How can the people who were supposed to know how the world works not know anything about how the world works?

We have to be careful that the world does work -- that things that need to be checked get checked, that things that need to be discussed get discussed. It is important, now, that the truth not be "somehow, too weak." The stakes are too high for that. Things that can be checked, on which consequential action depends, need to be.

Things are being polarized so that both opportunities and dangers are sharpening and strenthening. We could be involved with readjustments that make the horrors of the Cold War a thing of the past, and the world very much better. Or much worse.

bilbobaggins0 - 06:31am Aug 22, 2001 EST (#7986 of 7989)
Bush is NOT my president.

Has Bush started NERVE WARS?

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