New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 08:52am Aug 26, 2001 EST (#8150 of 8157)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

People often talk about actions, implicitly, as investment decisions.

When opportunites seem like they might be high, but risks may be, too, and key issues are not known with confidence the BEST investment decision can be to get more information -- information that, when it counts, needs to be crosschecked in a number of ways. Often, when you look, there are many ways to check the probability (never the absolute certainty) of a piece of information.

For instance, this thread is extensive, and when the text is sampled, it reads as serious stuff. There is a subjective sense, on my part, that the thread has been of interest to leaders and staffs of nation states --- and useful to dialog among them.

I certainly could be wrong about that. And there may be reasons why people may want this channel "deniable."

Even so, there are ways to check that might reinforce (or destroy) my presumption.

It seems to me that it is becoming important to get that checking done.

Because, if I'm right, and people of good will and resources believed that - - we might be able to establish a number of FACTS about missile defense, and related issues, that it is important to check. Because right answers matter here, for the American national interest, and for the interest of all people in the world.

It would take some investment decisions to get this checking done at the level action would take -- and some people with different skills and backgrounds than my own -- whether or not the effort involved me.

A couple of hundred thousand bucks, spent by people capable of putting on good TV journalism, and some consulting engineers, might be able to head off a hundred billion dollars of direct waste on missile defense -- and VERY much larger costs and risks to the world as a whole.

Or put some doubts about missile defense to rest.

rshowalter - 08:53am Aug 26, 2001 EST (#8151 of 8157)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A few phone calls, on a few key questions -- made through "back channels" -- and never made public -- might make a big practical difference. There may be ways to get such things done.

lunarchick - 11:24am Aug 26, 2001 EST (#8152 of 8157)
lunarchick@www.com

Today a German container ship, the CMS Heidelberg Express, will tie up in Newark, New Jersey, after a seven-day voyage across the Atlantic. It is carrying three, 12-foot-high sections of the old Berlin Wall, to be erected as a symbol of freedom in the United Nations Garden in New York.

Yet, as the ideological division between communism and capitalism is being given museum status, another split, between two very different forms of capitalism, is taking shape. Once again, Germany is the main battleground.

On one side are the proponents of an Anglo-Saxon style, free-market, free-trade, neo-liberal capitalism; on the other, those who continue to support the continent's more corporatist version, which in Germany has reached its most developed form in the shape of so-called 'Rhineland' or 'social market' capitalism.

Scheide argues that this form of capitalism embodies a wide range of customs and practices Germany can no longer afford. http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,542609,00.html

lunarchick - 11:41am Aug 26, 2001 EST (#8153 of 8157)
lunarchick@www.com

German Economy: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=754097
USA economy: http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT33UOGASQC&live=true

rshowalter - 12:22pm Aug 26, 2001 EST (#8154 of 8157)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Not a good time to squander money on projects that don't work.

(3 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense