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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?

rshow55 - 07:25am Jan 11, 2002 EST (#10731 of 10736)

Russia Rejects U.S. Plan to Store Warheads by PATRICK E. TYLER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/international/europe/11RUSS.html

"MOSCOW, Jan. 10 — Russia today strongly criticized Bush administration plans to store rather than destroy decommissioned nuclear warheads, suggesting that such plans would undermine the credibility of any new arms control accord aimed at eliminating thousands of nuclear weapons.

"The spokesman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, Aleksandr Yakovenko, said in a short but pointed statement, "We hold that Russian- American agreements on further reductions of the nuclear arsenals must be, first, radical — down to 1,500-2,200 warheads; second, verifiable; and third, irreversible so that strategic defensive arms will be reduced not only `on paper.' "

" The Russian statement followed the results of a "nuclear posture review" by the Bush administration that provided the first details of how Mr. Bush plans to reduce the American nuclear arsenal over the next decade to 1,700 to 2,200 "operationally deployed" weapons.

"An assistant secretary of defense, J. D. Crouch, told a Pentagon briefing that the United States would hold in reserve a substantial number of warheads as a "responsive capability." "There have been no final decisions made at this point on what the size of our responsive capability would be," he said, "and also there have been no final decisions made on the overall size of the active stockpile and the inactive stockpile. Those things will shift over time."

"A number of arms control experts said the United States reserve of nuclear weapons currently numbers several thousand warheads beyond the 6,000 in active service. Russia maintains a much smaller reserve, officials here say. Moreover, that reserve is expected to shrink more rapidly as Moscow diverts more of its resources to upgrading its conventional military forces.

" The testiness of the tone of Russia's statement today indicated the depth of feeling here that Washington is seeking to orchestrate a long- term advantage in nuclear weaponry, especially after Mr. Bush's decision last month to withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. That was the first such decision in the history of nuclear arms control.

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rshow55 - 07:25am Jan 11, 2002 EST (#10732 of 10736)

" "What reduction can we talk about if the United States can go back to the Start I level in just a couple of hours?" asked Aleksei Pikayev, director of an arms control institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "It looks more like swindling," he added.

"Though Mr. Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin have set virtually identical goals for cutting the nuclear arsenals to around 2,000 warheads each, Russian officials have been openly advertising their concern over whether the United States is committed to enforcing those reductions by destroying nuclear weapons.

"Mr. Crouch was conspicuously vague on that point on Wednesday. "What we will end up with," he said, "is a situation where some weapons will move off and stay in the responsive capability of the United States, others will be earmarked for destruction and will be put in the queue for destruction, and others will remain in the inactive stockpile."

"United States and Russian negotiators are to meet next week in Washington for talks on an arms control accord that could be signed when President Bush visits Moscow next summer. Last month, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, said they had been instructed by both presidents to "codify" a significant reduction in offensive nuclear weapons in preparation for the Moscow summit talks. Secretary Powell said this could take the form of a treaty, but there appears to be substantial resistance within the administration to entering into such a treaty with Russia.

"In a visit to Finland last September, Mr. Putin said that though Russia had proposed that both sides reduce their arsenals to 1,500 warheads each, "this would only be possible when both sides take more action to promote trust. We are well aware that nuclear warheads can easily be removed from missiles and stored and then put back if necessary."

"For the last three decades, the focus of arms control negotiations has been to set the limits on "launchers" — missiles and bombers equipped with nuclear warheads — without trying to regulate the numbers of warheads.

"But the end of the cold war has made it possible to plan for the most dramatic reductions in nuclear weaponry ever, and, therefore, the status of each nuclear weapon looms larger in arms control accounting.

"Mr. Bush and his senior advisers have sought to capitalize on the historic importance of the president's decision to make the deepest reductions in the nuclear arsenal to date. But until the administration offers a more detailed explanation of how many nuclear warheads it intends to hold in reserve, several experts say, it is difficult to determine whether Mr. Bush is rearranging the status quo."

rshow55 - 07:51am Jan 11, 2002 EST (#10733 of 10736)

It makes no sense to squander US resources and prestige on systems that cannot possibly work. Or on diplomatic policies that do us discredit, to no reasonable purpose.

If the US is acting foolishly, it is safer, for the US and the whole world, to have that widely known. rshow55 1/9/02 5:57pm

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