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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 - 01:05pm Jan 21, 2003 EST (# 7879 of 7880)
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.

Things look touchy, but very hopeful to me. I'm having to be careful - and to tend to some other things. I've gained about 25 lbs of muscle in the last four weeks, am proud of myself, and am taking some time and effort to whip myself back into comfortable shape after I was beaten up badly in November 2001.

I've hoped, working with lunarchick , to explain some things about stable negotiated solutions that people need to know for safety and prosperity - and it seem to me that lunarchick and I are having some success - in part because some other people are being as graceful and careful as they are. I can't do everything I'd like - but it does look to me like a lot of things, including things in international relations, are getting organized so that every important requirement of the people involved, that they can explain in public, can be satisfied well - - so long as they really can decently explain their needs to themselves and their most immediate relations.

The notion of canonicity is important - and a notion that I'm trying to elaborate and focus. We need order, symmetry, harmony - in necessary conventional orders - and mixed up orders, and every which way - in ways that fit the real aesthetic needs of the decent people involved. Impossible? Certainly, in a sense. But we can do much better than we've done. The Golden Rule, Berle's Laws of Power, and Maslow's Heirarchy of needs are examples of canonical patterns in human relations that I believe need to be understood, and used for checking of solutions, more often than they have been. When stability is particularly difficult or important - these checks are particularly important.

Some of the toughtest problems in international relations involve the Saudis and the Palestinians - and some key needs of the Islamic cultures in coordination with the other cultures and nations of the world. I have been very encouraged by bin Laden's last writings - though we have very, very deep disagreements - putting the matter gently.

Iraqis have some very difficult problems unless the Saudis can make some clearer decisions than they seem to have made so far. Not necessarily either-or decisions - but clearer priorities and conventions than they've settled on.

I'd give the Iraqis high marks in a number of areas - and some F's in some other spots.

Total disasters and total triumphs can have a lot in common - I'm hoping others are careful, and I'm trying to be, too. The diplomats at the UN have a lot to think about and negotiate.

Pardon me for moving slowly.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense