New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 08:40pm Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6915 of 6916)
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.

I wonder how our "missile defenses" will do against missiles from unknown sources? If we're dealing with stealth delivery - why use a missile at all?

(If we're dealing with missiles adapted with competent countermeasures nothing in the MD record indicates that we can stop them anyway.)

Still, I don't feel like fighting right now.

I thought lunarchick 12/21/02 4:34pm and lunarchick 12/21/02 4:43pm raised great points, and the question

"What are the conditions for successful social change, and improved deal, a fairer sharing of a national pie!?"

is a great question. I'd add this question:

"What does it take to get a larger national pie, from output independent of oil production? Output that is sustainable?

After all, the whole Islamic world, these days, even including oil, has a GDP not much larger than that of Spain. Subtract the oil, and you have only enough to support squalor. And the oil money comes to a few individuals or governments - leaving most of the population as supplicants.

rshow55 - 08:41pm Dec 21, 2002 EST (# 6916 of 6916)
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.

There might be more high-flown things to say - but if I were Bush, and wanted to find the right message for Arabic youth, a key thing I'd do is ask Condoleezza Rice to get briefed by Nate Rosenberg, or one or his distinguished students, or somebody else well connected with his argument and scholarship. Rosenberg and Birdzell wrote HOW THE WEST GREW RICH: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World

Here is the first sentence of the Conclusion section from that book's Introduction:

"Our general conclusion is that the underlying source of the West's ability . . ( to advance ) . . were the wide diffusion of authority and the resources necessary to experiment; an absence of more than rudimentary political and religious restrictions on experiment; and inctives that combined ample rewards for success, defined as the widespread economic use of the results of experiment, with a risk of severe penalties for failing to experiment."

The Arab world faces different circumstances, and in some ways things should be easier - because economically useful knowledge and the means to communicate knowledge are so far advanced. There may be some new opportunities, and other approaches. Big ones. Even so, the political and religious restrictions on experiment and diversity in the Arab world are extreme - performance so far, outside of oil, has been dismal - and if Western experience is any guide, the political and religious restrictions in place essentially rule out the main sources of Western economic growth.

That message needs to be communicated in a way that works - as a fact - as a piece of checkable information.

One need not ask the Arab world to turn away from its faith.

But one can ask how they are going to adjust themselves so that their faith and their political insititutions permit them to function competitively in the modern world.

What a wonderful thing it must be to have Bush's power ! If he had a magic message that really would make things much better if it was heard - he could make it heard, if it was at all palatable. This message will be hard to put across - but it is an essential one.

Lchick , I'll be back to your question. I'm spending time on gisterme's points, too - but don't expect to post any more tonight.

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense