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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 09:07am Mar 22, 2003 EST (# 10310 of 10312)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

almarst2003 - 07:32am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10256

" The Treaty of Westphalia has failed"

Even if true, does it mean any small nation is now up for grabs by the mighty?

rshow55 - 07:44am Mar 20, 2003 EST (# 10257 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@28.BIeGalYc5az.750682@.f28e622/11803

It better not be as simple as that - and if Russia, China, and EU countries are at all careful - it won't be like that. But people - including leaders - and surely including Blair and Bush - have to be responsible for what they say and do - and there have to be some limits on the right to lie - that transcend borders.

Unless we can anchor discourse on some agreed upon facts - set out and reinforced according to the standards that work for human beings (that is, the standards actually needed in jury trials) there is no solution.

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We aren't dealing with the kindest and gentlest of circumstances:

Iraq's minister of information threatened today to treat American prisoners of war as "war criminals."

"I tell the American soldiers," said the minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf, "it is better for you to surrender. We will cut off all your heads." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/22/international/worldspecial/22MILI.html

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Richard Perle Friday March 21, 2003 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he will take the UN down with him. Well, not the whole UN. The "good works" part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat. What will die is the fantasy of the UN as the foundation of a new world order.

That "fanatasy" is a prototype that only partly works - we need an international law, with international institutions, that can work. That means that the "chattering on the Hudson" needs to become more coherent. Has the principle that force had to be a recourse actually been accepted - we wouldn't be having this war. I'm sorry that it wasn't accepted.

Perle's major objections to the UN were not nearly as telling to the original plan for the UN that was developed at the end of WWII - which involved a UN with actual physical force. Some good ideas from back then might need to be revisited.

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Putin: Iraq War Could Destabilize Region By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Russia.html

For stability - we have to have some common ground that is bedrock - a common frame of reference - some solid shared space. Getting facts straight is our only hope - and to do that, there has to be some change from the Treaty of Westphalia that give all parties (and their subordinate presses) an unlimited right to lie, and to evade.

I wish people knew more math - just enough more so that some very important principles about frames of reference could be used. You can't even think about stability, or right answers, unless some things are agreed on, and stable. We need to work toward that. These days, and for centuries past, it hasn't even been possible to check technical facts when somebody in power objects.

We have to do better than that.

We're in an intrisically chaotic, unstable, dangerous situation until we do.

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