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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 - 05:14pm Sep 21, 2002 EST (# 4470 of 4474)
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.

The situation might fit in with real, permanent improvements in the human condition - - or disaster, for people all over the world, and in the United States itself.

If people had their "guts" at all well connected to the reality of what nukes do - and how useless they are for any reasonable military purpose -- we'd find ways to get rid of them. To keep them out of the hands of rogues and outlaw groups makes sense - but who else but a rogue or monstrous outlaw would want them, or use them?

Is nuclear prohibition impossible? So flawed that it isn't worth doing? It isn't that easy to make a nuke - a good many controls are now in place, and working -- though we can do better.

Nuclear Nightmares by BILL KELLER http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/magazine/26NUKES.html

Lies are dangerous. There are many dangerous fictions in the world -- not all in Islamic nations. We need to be honest, and checkable, ourselves. We have reason to want to check about the rationality of our military arrangements, and the consistency of those arrangements with the ideals professed so eloquently in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html contains these passages.

Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty. By making the world safer, we allow the people of the world to make their own lives better. We will defend this just peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. We will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.

" Today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war.

If those ideals were and made operational, big steps toward stability, the outlawing of weapons of mass destruction and peace would be underway.

rshow55 - 05:15pm Sep 21, 2002 EST (# 4471 of 4474)
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.

But just for now, the U.S. is dangerously close to ripping out the current foundations of international law, with nothing but "right makes right" and "trust us" to put in its place.

The United States is not strong and independent enough to get away from that on any kind of stable, lasting basis - and surely cannot do so according to the ideals set out with such admirable clarity in "The National Security Strategy of the United States," http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html

In 4451 I said that "The National Security Strategy of the United States," http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html was very well written and, so far as the words themselves go, consistent with some key stability conditions.

. Berle's Laws of Power

. Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs

. The Golden Rule

4251 rshow55 9/10/02 7:16am

But the words in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html only work if they fit the understanding of the people who it actually refers to, and actually involves, in the situation as it actually is. To fit - they have to be true - - and consistent with a great deal not in http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html itself.

4403 rshow55 9/19/02 9:33am

A lot has to be readjusted - not quite all at once - but in a coordinated fashion. People ought to be scared. If enough of the execution, on the part of key players, is first rate - - as the words of http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/20/politics/20STEXT_FULL.html are first rate as words - - then the world could be much better off.

But under easily imaginable circumstances - much too probable circumstances - we could be getting into a mess that could make the ugliness and death of the Vietnam War look small - for the whole world, and for the United States.

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