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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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 11:24am May 2, 2002 EST (#1956 of 1961)

Plenty of oversimplification, blindness to complexity, and tendency to arrogant judgementalism - - lots of places. But we're gaining the means to handle and explain complexity, and to show the consequences of oversimplification, about context and about consequences.

People like lchic are showing what can be done - and having effects.

Some days (maybe it is hormones, I'm not sure) - I wake up, look around, and smile. Are things hopeful? Is it possible that some things can get much better? Sometimes, ugliness, horror and all, it seems to me that there's a lot of reason for hope.

Nobody could hope to "solve all the worlds problems" -- but would it be practical to go a long way toward solving some of the biggest ones? I think maybe it is, and that some things on this thread are showing "prototypes" of how some things can be practically improved.

I'm pleased about some of the things that are happening, at the level of negotiation structure, in the middle east. By making conversation much less restrictive, and providing reasonable structure, including complexity when it needs to be there -- deals too complex to close before, even too complex to see clearly before, may be understood, to the level where people agree about facts, and what the possibilities and necessities of the situation are. And then resolved.

U.S. Contemplates Next Moves as Threat of New Violence Looms by Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 2, 2002; Page A http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18173-2002May1.html includes this:

"Since last week's Bush-Abdullah meeting, the Saudi and U.S. governments have been in near-constant contact with each other. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal, who has remained in Houston, speaks with Powell several times a day, officials said.

"White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush believed the Saudis were playing a "very constructive role" in the region. But he said that current Middle East diplomacy "involves multiple conversations on multiple levels" and that it was "oversimplistic" to say that the Saudis had taken on a special role.

I hope people remember that, when things are coming into convergence, there are prodigiously large word counts. Then there is a need to clarify, classify, organize, and condense - so that everyone who has to can understand the things (including the meanings, and multiple disagreements about words) on which effective agreements depend.

The internet can handle the high word counts - in places as public or restricted as they need to be.

With staffing, the internet provides new technical means that can also display the classifications, organizations, and clarifications that are worth setting out. By doing so, it can accomodate and make visable both where people agree, and where they do not.

I hope that when negotiators think they have "a meeting of the minds" they take the trouble to use internet resources to make clear what people intend - using words, pictures, graphs, numbers - multiple views -- whatever it takes. Costs of this work are real, but fairly moderate. When it matters enough for people to be clear about facts - they can be clear -- and can refer to common things.

MD1919 rshow55 5/1/02 10:51am ... MD1935 rshow55 5/1/02 3:41pm
MD1936 rshow55 5/1/02 3:51pm

Could we learn to make wars much less likely, and, when they do occur, much less costly?

It seems practical that we could, if we worked at it, and we could do it soon.

mazza9 - 01:10pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1957 of 1961)
Louis Mazza

Robert:

If you're suggesting that lchic's rude crude behavior is a contribution, well as the target of these puerile, (oops lchic that is Latin for CHILDISH!), proddings I can't agree.

lchic how was May Day for you? Burn any synagogues? March for LePen? Pick your nose?

LouMazza

rshow55 - 01:31pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1958 of 1961)

Mazza, not everybody is a perfect, as graceful, and as balanced as you are. Still, people make progress, and sometimes there's hope. Even for folks who haven't joined "toastmasters".

Advertorial: Hydrogen: promise and challenge http://www2.exxonmobil.com/files/corporate/020502.pdf

"Hydrogen vehicles may become an important part of our energy future if known problems can be overcome."

Large scale solar energy as an approach:

MD1128-133 rshow55 4/5/02 8:40pm ... MD1194 rshow55 4/8/02 10:03pm
MD1229 rshow55 4/10/02 9:59am ... MD1236 rshow55 4/10/02 2:38pm

rshow55 - 01:34pm May 2, 2002 EST (#1959 of 1961)

A Russian Role in NATO http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/02/opinion/_02THU2.html

"A productive partnership between Russia and NATO could powerfully reinforce President Vladimir Putin's efforts to reorient Russia's foreign policy toward the United States and Europe.

If the Russians and the other members of EU and NATO can use the communication, definition, focusing resources now possible -- a lot of good things could be worked out - and a lot of nonsense, injustice, and lying ruled out.

Including nonsense about "missile defense" -- and other boondoggles and excesses that the US, without aid of discussion from other powers, may not be able to sort out for itself.

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