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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 04:34pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4764 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD3952: almarst-2001 5/15/01 8:36pm

"Is there a credible explanation to the US opposition to the International Court for War Crimes, supported, as far as i know, by most of the other nations?"

rshowalter - 04:35pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4765 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD3970 rshowalter 5/16/01 2:59pm

American callousness.

rshowalter - 04:38pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4766 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD3978 rshowalter 5/16/01 5:22pm ...

MD4043 rshowalter 5/17/01 12:57pm .. MD4044 rshowalter 5/17/01 12:57pm
MD4045 rshowalter 5/17/01 1:06pm ...

MD4046 rshowalter 5/17/01 1:19pm ... MD4047 rshowalter 5/17/01 1:21pm

Here is my summary of Hitler's ideals -- on the basis of which he acted and led a nation that backed him. (Those who backed him substituted "we" for "I" to a great extent.) :

" There is an "ideal Germany" to be advanced at all costs, I am the person to conceptualize it and impose it, and there will be NO value being placed on any nations, groups, or individuals who do not fit my elaborate, philosophically ornate, arbitrary conception."

Let me make two word substitutions:

" There is an "ideal America" to be advanced at all costs, we are the people to conceptualize it and impose it, and there will be NO value being placed on any nations, groups, or individuals who do not fit our elaborate, philosophically ornate, arbitrary conception."

Does that characterization remind you of some people?

Would it remind some other people of some people you know?

rshowalter - 04:39pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4767 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Many people outside the US see the US that way, and as the current administration, for all its fancy words (and the Nazis had plenty of fancy words, too) becomes more and more unilateralist, the resemblence occurs to more and more people.

At their worst, Americans sure look a lot like Nazis to me.

For examples, look at Refusing to Save Africans by BOB HERBERT http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/opinion/11HERB.html and also Dark Side of U.S. Quest for Security: Squalor on an Atoll by HOWARD W. FRENCH http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/world/11ISLA.html?0611inside

I prefer Americans at their best, where they have many traits the whole world admires, with good reason.

dirac_10 - 04:51pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4768 of 4771)

gisterme - 03:53pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4758 of 4767)

Yeah, our businessmen are why we have it good and Russia doesn't. Russia has everything else. Science, natural resources, climate, etc.

I think that was one of the big mistakes we made with Russia. We thought that by just releasing a supply and demand economy on them, the wonders of supply and demand would fix everything. But Russia didn't have the trained successful businessmen to impliment it. And the country was largely taken over by low level gangsters.

Something like 19 out of 20 people that start a business go belly up in the US. And we are used to it. I remember thinking at the time, how on earth it was supposed to work.

rshowalter - 05:59pm Jun 11, 2001 EST (#4769 of 4771)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Russia has to find ways to produce a sociotechnical system that works for them . . . (not for us) . . . and it seems to me that they're making progress, and asking the right questions.

I think one of the problems with the Cold War, in addition to horror and nastiness, is that, on both sides, we really didn't know enough about our own side, or the other side, to know how to make peace.

We have to learn how to do it. And Russia has to learn to be "a going concern" in the business sense.

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