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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 - 06:26am Oct 21, 2003 EST (# 15314 of 15316)
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.

Trying Diplomacy on North Korea http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21TUE1.html

"President Bush is now taking a wiser and more sophisticated approach to the crisis caused by North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons. In a proposal whose details are still being refined, Washington and four other nations would guarantee not to attack the North in exchange for its commitment to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

"This proposal makes an eventual peaceful, diplomatic solution to this extremely dangerous problem somewhat more likely. Just how likely is impossible to tell because there is no assurance that North Korea's highly unpredictable leaders will agree to disarm. If the North does spurn this reasonable offer, Washington will find it easier to persuade Asian nations to support more coercive steps, like international economic sanctions.

"North Korea's nuclear programs are particularly alarming because the nation has a long history of selling advanced weapons to all who will pay for them, including other rogue states and perhaps terrorists. Yet in the past year, as the North has raced ahead with reprocessing plutonium into bomb fuel, Washington has handicapped its own efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution by refusing to specify what America would be willing to do if the North firmly committed to giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions in ways outsiders could reliably verify.

"The White House had insisted that specifying any such quid pro quo would be giving in to North Korean nuclear blackmail. Blackmail is a fair description of North Korea's behavior. But in a situation in which everyone agrees that military action against the North would have catastrophic consequences for hundreds of thousands of innocent South Koreans and Japanese, Washington's principled stand poorly served American interests.

"With this proposal, Mr. Bush is now making a serious effort to revive negotiations and is personally seeking the support of his fellow leaders at the Asia-Pacific summit meeting in Bangkok. All four of the nations that would join Washington in the proposed security guarantee — China, Japan, Russia and South Korea — are represented there. Washington's new approach deserves strong support from each of them.

"In offering security guarantees to the North, Mr. Bush wisely overruled hawkish administration officials who preferred moving directly toward coercive economic and military steps. This initiative comes less than a week after the administration's skilled diplomacy won unanimous backing for a United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq that broadly endorsed Washington's policies there. Diplomacy is an important tool for advancing America's national security. It is good to see it coming back into fashion in the Bush White House.

I think that http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21TUE1.html writes about a step in the right direction - and is itself a step in the right direction. I think many will agree that "it is good to see diplomacy coming back into fashion in the White House." - and it would be especially good if that diplomacy could work .

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/opinion/21TUE1.html includes this: Just how likely is impossible to tell because there is no assurance that North Korea's highly unpredictable leaders will agree to disarm.

There are patterns of word usage - and shunning - and "negotiation" that assure that he won't - and assure that no reasonable leader would disarm. If we want Kim Jong Il to disarm ( in the ways that are workable and stable for North Korea - not only for us) we ought to know enough to avoid those patterns.

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