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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 - 02:47pm Oct 19, 2003 EST (# 15238 of 15240)
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.

We've made some gains since 1952, but we've lost some very substantial things as well: Eisenhower wanted to combine the high achievements in administration and technocratic management that the US had up and running - with democracy and American ideals - in the service of a common good the country agreed on. We've lost a lot that we had working well - in the areas where Eisenhower felt most confident. 12084 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.a6aGbSx3PN9.3524790@.f28e622/13715

Snow ended his Godkin lecture with this:

"It would be bitter if, when this storm of history is over, the best epitaph that anyone could write of us was only that: The wisest men who had not the gift of foresight."

Bitterer still if they justly things even less kind. In significant ways, we've lost maturity and foresight since 1960.

At that time, administrators were " masters of the short term solution" and now, too often, top administrators have become "masters of the sound bite solution."

Political and miliary "strategy" that used to be a string of short term "solutions" becomes, much too often a series of sound bite "solutions."

Which is far worse.

rshow55 - 02:51pm Oct 19, 2003 EST (# 15239 of 15240)
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.a6aGbSx3PN9.3524790@.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.

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