New York Times on the Web Forums Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators

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 - 01:51pm Oct 19, 2003 EST (# 15239 of 17697)
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.

At the same time, the need for better foresight and negotiating skills has gotten much greater - and I've believed that I've had a contribution to make in these areas. Nash did not solve key questions about getting stable - rather than unstable - limited cooperations between groups that had both competitive and cooperative interests - especially in the presence of strong emotions and fear.

I believe that I have. With a small staff behind me - that could be shown - or shown to be wrong.

This thread has been part of that work on negotiation problems.

It has been a complicated business in many ways - but I believe that the Missile Defense thread really has lived up to the objectives set out in the mission statements of http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.RErUbPHeYTe.1146264@.f28e622/16846 .

I also believe that James Reston would have thought my requests of the TIMES and its people reasonable, in view of everything. I think "the average reader of the New York Times" might do so even today.

The most stable, most just, most comfortable solutions are " win win" in the ways that matter most. That is why they are most stable, and most just. There are plenty of solutions like that in our sociotechnical systems - because people and groups have different interests and because the gains from cooperation are huge - and mankind's main hope - and because the losses from failed cooperation and destruction are so large. http://www.mrshowalter.net/Kline_ExtFactors.htm

To get such solutions they have to be defined ( and this often happens in steps, and with some tentativeness ) and actually negotiated step-by-step. . The actual negotiation requires sequences of steps, existing in a relationship that includes elements of both trust and distrust - where the actors look at consequences - and make some accomodations of each other.

Generally small, tentative steps - with effects that accumulate. This is always touchy, but there's no other way for it to happen. You can see it in bird courtship - or among competent negotiating lawyers.

rshow55 - 01:55pm Oct 19, 2003 EST (# 15240 of 17697)
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.

Negotiation skills need to be higher than they now are. The hopes expressed in

. Courageous Arab Thinkers By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/opinion/19FRIE.html

largely depend on better negotiation skills than people usually display.

The problems set out in

. Global Village Idiocy By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/12/opinion/12FRIE.html

, that have so frustrated the hopes in Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree need to be understood well enough so that they can be routinely and repeatedly solved.

I think that's possible - and that people involved on thread, including "powers that be" might gain status and money doing it.

We need to strengthen international law,

. From Bosnia to Berlin to The Hague, on a Road Toward a Continent's Future by ROGER COHEN http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/15/weekinreview/15WORD.html ends as follows:

without forgetting that Hobbesian realities that still exist. That looks possible to me. And necessary.

Unless we can do this, the hopes that motivate steps like Bush Says He's Open to Security Assurances for North Korea By REUTERS Published: October 19, 2003 Filed at 10:25 a.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-bush.html can't come to a stable, good fruition.

Short term solutions, applied again and again - without enough flexibility or foresight - have had ugly consequences in Korea for the half a century since

. TEXT OF THE KOREAN WAR ARMISTICE AGREEMENT http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/korea/kwarmagr072753.html

- notably over the last decade.

I've been giving a lot of advice about " win win" negotiations - and these last postings are intended to be part of a win-win negotiation.

At least an attempt at one that fits the criteria I've set out on this thread, and can be referred to as such.

The long and the short of it is - you need both long and short. The long and the short have to fit together. And the long and the short, together, must meet the tests that actually apply.

Recent postings will be an appendix, for reference, connected to a short proposal - one page in length at the "top dog's" level - intended to be "win-win". http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.RErUbPHeYTe.1146264@.f28e622/16937

Eisenhower might not think I've been so smart, but I think he'd approve of the effort, anyway. James Reston might, as well.

(2457 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Resource Area for Forum Hosts and Moderators Missile Defense