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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.

gisterme - 11:38am Jan 6, 2003 EST (# 7418 of 7420)

manjumicha 1/6/03 1:45am

"...Chinese and Russians have dealt with NKs for centuries and know how NKs have bled the empire of the days..."

Umm, NK has only existed as a separate politcal entity since a little after WWII. Centuries, manju? I think you'd better give some credit to the rest of the Koreans if you want to make that claim...and the rest of the Koreans don't seem to be interested in starvation. South Korea is a regional economic power. Seems to me like they've got thier act together a lot better than the NKs. Of course that's not because of the NK people. It's because of the NK government.

"...That is why they [Russia, China, Japan] are staying out of this fight..."

What fight??? Russia, China and Japan are definately not staying out of efforts to make Kim Jong Il come to his senses. I just hope he decides to join the world one of the days, for his own people's sake.

"...their strategic interests will be best served if NK and US keep duking it out..."

I hope Kim Jong Il doesn't think he's "duking it out" with anybody right now. He isn't doing anything but boxing with his own shadow. He should be figuring out a way to join the world instead. His people haven't done anything to deserve a war. What they deserve is some prosperity, like all the other nations around them have managed to achieve.

"...the end result will be much diminished US influence and power in NE Asia..."

Well, the way to get US troops out of South Korea has always been for North Korea to stop threatening it. The US will not abandon SK so long as the SKs are threatened by the north and want our help. After all, it costs US taxpayers about $3 billion per year to do our part in protecting SK from it's neighbor. A lot of that money diffuses into the SK economy. From a more selfish point of view, I'm sure that money would be far better spent if it were infused into our own economy.

One thing is for sure though. The Cold War is over. The Korean War was a Cold War battle. The Cold War was about containing communist imperialism not necessarily about destroying communism. In case you haven't noticed, relations between China, a communist nation, and the west have warmed tremendously and are continuing to improve since the end of the Cold War. That's because the Chinese are not acting like imperialists or threatening their non-communist neighbors. China has joined the world. It is experiencing very good economic growth in sectors of industry that are beneficial to it's poeple. I doubt that China will withdraw from that for the sake of Kim Jong Il. It is in China's best strategic interest to see a stable and prosperous NK...not one that wants to bring war to the region.

"...you are too dumb to see it, gisterme...."

It must be so if you say it, manju. ;-)

rshow55 - 12:00pm Jan 6, 2003 EST (# 7419 of 7420)
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.

gisterme 1/6/03 11:38am "...you are too dumb to see it, gisterme...."

"It must be so if you say it, manju. ;-)

Good response! I've sometimes suspected gisterme was perverse in spots, insensitive in spots, backwards maybe in a few spots - - but not stupid!

_ __ _ _

Just a nutsy-boltsy response - while I'm trying to get other things organized.

Nations have to filter out

violence from the outside;

influences that are mutagenic to them from the outside;

, and control commerce so it fits for them.

If a nation state can't explain what its essential national identity is, and what its functional needs are - clearly enough to explain them to a good patent lawyer, or taxonomist, or computer programmer - in a consistent way - no amount of negotiation can close stably and in a way that can actually work until this clarity is achieved.

The standards of the patent law are absolutely flexible - if a technically clear statement can't be put clearly into a patent format - it isn't a clear statement. Patent lawyers and examiners are also very good at negotiating technical issues, no matter how complicated, to technical clarity.

If people knew what they were doing - and could admit it - they'd have a better chance of doing what they need and want to do.

Also, if things were clearly stated a lot of impossile "compromises" might be easy to reject by inspection.

Example: When the North Koreans and the US can barely talk together about anything - the idea of building a nuclear power plant ought to be rejected out of hand. Both sides should have known better. Especially the United States. Did anybody think about how much information flow, negotiation and cooperation such a venture actually takes?

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