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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?

mhunter20 - 12:40pm Feb 12, 2001 EST (#678 of 682)

m-of-u 2/12/01 11:17am

Good point. This could and should be verified....anytime and anywhere.

rshowalter - 12:58pm Feb 12, 2001 EST (#679 of 682)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Before the ugliness of nuclear terror can be well resolved, we'll have to come to terms with how afraid the Russians are of us, and how they are afraid, and also how afraid we are of the Russians, and how we are afraid of them. . No matter what anybody says, or how anybody poses (or what anybody says, however sincerely) both sides are fundamentally, deeply terrified of first strike tricks.

Military realities and human realities force this.

Within the political framework where the U.S. says, implicitly and explicitly, that it is all right to use nuclear weapons there is no solution here -- no political way for us to confiscate weapons of mass destruction from their holders. Nuclear weapons discussion from a feeling perspective

Some history, in a humane context, is useful here - Psychwarfare, Casablanca -- and terror .... Guardian Talk ... International

If we understood that fear of first strike tricks was inescapably central to our situation, then the mechanics of achieving nuclear peace would be essentially straightforward, though challenging.

Without our seeing this, the situation is essentially insoluble - all the beautiful solutions have been classified out of existence. Beautiful solutions, which this time are the only safe ones, need to be based on essentially accurate views of the situation being dealt with. Fear of first strikes, on both sides, is a central fact - now denied, that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with.