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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 - 04:26pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11855 of 11863)

Lost chances:

March 7, 2001 South Korean President and Bush at Odds on North Korea By DAVID E. SANGER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/07/world/07CND-KOREA.html

March 6, 2001 How Politics Sank Accord on Missiles With North Korea By MICHAEL R. GORDON http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/06/world/06MISS.html

"As the Clinton administration's senior policy coordinator on North Korea, Ms. Sherman was prepared to fly to Pyongyang on a moment's notice. Her task there would be to clear away the final barriers to an accord that would neutralize the North Korean missile threat, which has been a central justification for the hotly debated American national missile defense project.

In my view, the N. Korean threat has been very much exaggerated, to provide an excuse for a bloated, unworkable MD program.

manjumicha2001 - 04:42pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11856 of 11863)

I guess you are entitled to your opinion re: NK capabilities.

Hopefully we will never have to find out who is right.

Only other comment I would like to make in that department is that many western analysts (as well as arm-chair commentors) approach NK issues constrained by the the pre-suppositions that are taken as truths. I think the best example of that would be your and others' almost faith-like dogma that "untested missles are not capabilities."

Anyway, no point keep beating on the dead horse.

For your proposition that we got to negotiate with NK. Too bad Clinton didn't finish the job. I think the the hawks in charge of pentagon has vetoed that idea long time ago. Big mistake I think. Probably Rumsfeld and Wolforwitz got too focused on Israeli needs to do something about it?

rshow55 - 04:55pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11857 of 11863)

Facts matter. Discourse and decision depend on them.

Russia is being offered a place for "discourse" in some high status NATO meetings-- though without veto power. If it were morally forcing to get questions of consequential fact checked to closure -- that might be an important postion indeed.

NATO Offers Russia New Role, but Without Any Veto By STEVEN ERLANGER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/international/europe/26NATO.html

I feel that all the powers in NATO who care about stability and peace should care for the truth, and insist on it when it mattered for decision. A great deal could improve, in a natural, step by step way, if they did.

The case of missile defense -- as a technical matter, where key issues are clear, and involve very well known physics - is important here -- both because so much European diplomacy has hinged on it, and because it offers remarkably clear examples where "the inability to apologize" and "the inability to check" have produced dangerous and probably corrupt absurdities - - where truth would be both more comfortable, and much safer for all whose motives could stand the light of day.

Human interactions that are stable and livable have to fit rules that we all hold in common. To fit these rules, people have to be expected to mean what they say -- and since people are imperfect, and consequences matter - facts that are important have to be discussable, and checkable -- to closure.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by William G. Huitt
Image: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.gif
Essay: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regsys/maslow.html
also listed, with comments, in rshowalter 9/24/01 11:05am

Berle's Laws of Power from Power by Adolf A. Berle . . . 1969 ... Harcourt, Brace and World, N.Y. set out in
MD948 rshowalter 3/12/01 10:02am ... MD1066 rshowalter 3/16/01 5:36am

MD11394-11387 rshow55 2/9/02 9:33am

rshow55 - 05:03pm Feb 26, 2002 EST (#11858 of 11863)

manjumicha2001 2/26/02 4:42pm

"I guess you are entitled to your opinion re: NK capabilities.

"Hopefully we will never have to find out who is right."

Certainly people need to know the right answers -- and it is worth some work to find them.

With satellite cameras, we should be able to find out a LOT. Have to know a lot now.

I wonder how many technical people can be found who doubt the "dogma" that "untested missile capabilities are not capabilities."

And N. Korea is NOT a supersophisticated nation .. NORTH KOREA, TV NATION http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/26/opinion/26WORK.html

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