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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 - 06:19pm Feb 28, 2002 EST (#11926 of 11928)

Linked assumptions, fit to "objectives" that aren't fit into a context, but are treated as isolated "givens."

manjumicha2001 2/28/02 5:46pm But what if the US security needs are determined (through the US internal politics) to include total removal of NK's ICBM and WM capacities (which NK will, due to its own historical experience with US and its internal politics, never accept).

If that's the way the US does business - and thinks - - how can the rest of the world reasonably deal with us? Don't people need more coherence than that, and clearer reasons?

When I wrote the "long sentence" in 11923, I was asking for something basic, and difficult:

"If the United States could, and would, explain its national interest -- distinct from the interests of its military-industrial complex, and explain how its interests fit in the interconnected world we live in -- and do it honestly, and in ways that other nations could check, it could satisfy every reasonable security need it has, without unreasonable or unacceptably unpopular uses of force."

Let's break that down:

1. It would take a lot of WORK, and some discussion, and some checking against facts before "the United States could ... explain its national interest -- distinct from the interests of its military-industrial complex, and explain how its interests fit in the interconnected world we live in --" . . a lot of work, because, as of now the United States doesn't know its own interest, in a way it can explain to either itself or to others. It doesn't know it as a nation. Its leaders don't know the national interest, and aren't even clearly asking the question of what it might be, and how the national interest, and the interest of the military-industrial complex, might differ.

I said that "if the United States could do this, and do it honestly, and in ways that other nations could check, it could satisfy every reasonable security need it has, without unreasonable or unacceptably unpopular uses of force."

I think that's true.

But without getting its interest clear, and coherent enough that it can be explained (and can stand the light of day) the United States is in a false position, and deserves a great deal of the criticism it is getting -- and a great deal of the ill will that it is earning.

There needs to be political leadership - - not necessarily to "reduce" US goals - - as to set them out in a way that the world has a reasonable chance of reacting to.

Set them out in ways that can stand the light of day.

The world has a right to much more coherence from the United States than it is getting. On missile defense, and other things, we often come off as crazy and fraudulent as the North Koreans.

Questions like "What right does the United States have to dictate policy to N. Korea, or other countries? To what extent can it do so?" need answers.

If the answers make us look like Nazis, we need better answers.

rshow55 - 06:24pm Feb 28, 2002 EST (#11927 of 11928)

Other nations have a right, even a duty, to insist that the US NOT lie to them and get away with it. Other nations have a duty to check the word of the United States, a word that has, so often, been false or distorted by very many standards.

Almarst asked, a while ago, how other countries could get such things settled. If the leaders wanted to get some key facts clarified, they would be. The United States, for all its military force, could not resist this very effectively. On missile defense, where an enormous amount of diplomatic effort has been expended for a mistake-fraud, it would be very useful to get facts clarified beyond question.

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