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Missile Defense

Nazi engineer and Disney space advisor Wernher Von Braun helped give us rocket science. Today, the legacy of military aeronautics has many manifestations from SDI to advanced ballistic missiles. Now there is a controversial push for a new missile defense system. What will be the role of missile defense in the new geopolitical climate and in the new scientific era?

rshowalt - 12:12pm Sep 29, 2000 EDT (#342 of 396)

The November/December 1997 issue of the Nuclear Notebook

www.gn.apc.org/tp2000/handbook/part4.html

estimates the total number of warheads in the world (both active, reserve and non-deployed) as being 36,110 - the US having 12,000, Russia 23,000, UK 260, France 450 and China 400. But it does not mention Israel which is generally accepted to have up to 150 nuclear warheads, a mix of free-fall bombs, air-and ground-launched missiles.

So about 97% of the weapons, and the whole risk of destruction of the world at large, could be addressed by taking down the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Could the other nucs be taken down, as well? Including especially India and Pakistans?

If the following MORAL point, mostly resisted by the U.S., could be accepted, I think they could.

Here is Mohammed Bedjaoui, President of the World Court , para. 20 of the appended Declaration, 8th July 1996.

"Nuclear weapons, the ultimate evil, destabilise humanitarian law which is the law of the lesser evil. The existence of nuclear weapons is therefore a challenge to the very existence of humanitarian law, not to mention their long-term effects of damage to the human environment, in respect to which the right to life must be exercised.....Atomic warfare and humanitarian law therefore appear mutually exclusive, the existence of the one automatically implies the non-existence of the other" -

We ought to get ourselves out of the bind above, by getting rid of nuclear weapons. It is technically easy, it is militarily safe, it is prohibitively dangerous for us if we do not, but, alas, it is hard. The U.S. has to recognize some history, and have a change of heart.

rshowalt - 12:35pm Sep 29, 2000 EDT (#343 of 396)

lunarchick 9/29/00 11:31am

Lunarchick, in the negotiations I've seen, especially the multi-party ones, there's a lot of playing with hypotheticals, and yes, a lot of "consensual misdirection" getting things into focus.

A major point is that people have to be pretty smart, to negotiate such things effectively.

Another point is that moral bookeeping about end results has to be careful. A lot of deception in the middle of a negotiation can be essential to right answers at the end. Right answers at the end, however, matter.

Usually, I think, Clinton gets to these right answers.

But not always. I think he's had a problem anybody else in his place would have had, as well.

I submit that a complex society like ours that requires complex negotiation, with a good deal of intermediate jiving prior to equilibration, cannot afford the moral logic-degeneration that nuclear weapon doctrine builds into the system.

To negotiate well, our senses of right and wrong have to be intact. When we justify nuclear weapons, our senses of right and wrong break down.

Clintons instincts and skills are among the best in the world, but he's done a lot of thinking about "conditions where he can use" nuclear weapons. No president should be subjected to this logically devastating circumstance. Our nuclear weapons doctrine are morally corrosive - and that is a very good reason to get rid of weapons that it is never "all right to use."

I think Clinton made some mistakes that ANYBODY who thought hard about nuclear policy, American style, would be prone to make.

You want to mess up your mind? Convince yourself that "first strikes with nuclear weapons are all right under some circumstances", and then try to put together a consistent set of moral standards.

Here's a very good reason to get rid of these weapons. They hurt us, just by being there.

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