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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 08:18am Feb 24, 2001 EST (#772 of 775)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've spent a good deal of time on working out how to produce sets of strategies, each essentially impossible to defend against, for immobilizing, or firing, nuclear weapons systems, to demonstrate the terrifying instability of these systems. Enough instability to make first strikes distinctly thinkable, for both the Russians and ourselves.

Im hoping to phrase the patterns by which this may be done in ways that are not too scary to permit reasonable action., but in ways that are, nonetheless, clear.

Im having to think carefully about how to do that in a readable way, and apologize for the delay on that matter.

To repeat: Im working out how to produce sets of strategies, each essentially impossible to defend against, for immobilizing, or firing, nuclear weapons systems, to demonstrate the terrifying instability of these systems. Enough instability to make first strikes distinctly thinkable, for both the Russians and ourselves.

In my judgement, with a small team, any reasonably competent nation state could generate sets of such strategies, each with workably complete tactical instructions, at a rate of several a week, or with work, many a day. Most of these strategy-tactical packages, I believe, would be inexpensive, and most would be convincingly workable. That will be increasingly true as the electronic revolution proceeds.

Combinations of compatable strategy-tactical packages could be initiated simulateously, or in structured sequences.

The stability and assured destruction of our nuclear weapons postures is a sham - the basic pattern of MAD is beyond redemption, and missile defenses, even if they were developed now, would not save the situation.

The balance of nuclear terror is no longer balanced, and cannot be balanced. We should take the damn things down.

Im struggling for clear ways to say some simple things. Here is one simple thing, worth noting. One can see its reality, by looking at the documentary REHEARSING ARMAGEDDON . US command and control of nuclear weapons, at the highest levels, and most other levels, is a telephone based system - and one where individuals at low levels have much more discretion to fire missiles than anyone wants to admit.

Our telephone grid is too vast, and too complicated to be defensible. It is not necessarily vulnerable to internet attack alone - but, with a combination of internet attack, and competent action by a few equipped people working on the telephonic grid, it is vulnerable indeed.

Moreover, the geometry is indefensibly complicated, and getting more complicated rapidly. One of the reasons is the astonishing mobility that internet access now has.

On an issue of vulnerability: The Web, Without Wires, Wherever by GLENN FLEISHMAN , today.

rshowalter - 08:19am Feb 24, 2001 EST (#773 of 775)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The system is also built, at many stages, on trust of human beings who are trained to respond with great discipline, under great emotional stress, to inflexible circumstances.

Such people, bombarded by many unexpected challenges, may respond imperfectly.

rshowalter - 08:23am Feb 24, 2001 EST (#774 of 775)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

A lot of good people, from many nations, have been wearing their hearts out, trying to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, from the time of Hiroshima on. Here are some very good sources.

People know how precarious things are, and how large the risks are.

Religious people of all kinds, of all faiths, all over the world know that.

Secular people, all over the world, know that.

People have been trying to work on the basis of establishing trust and that's impossible.

We should work on the basis of an assumptions that are true -- we do NOT trust each other, we fear each other. The nuclear powers have been lying to each other, and threatening each other, for so long that it is hopeless to try to establish enough trust for nuclear disarmament, or even very deep reductions. Possibilities would be far more promising if we established facts and worked with the distrust and fear that actually exist rshowalt 9/25/00 7:32am

rshowalter - 08:29am Feb 24, 2001 EST (#775 of 775)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here are some excellent sources, eloquent, I believe, in their ugly combination of hard effort and frustration, testifying to how hard people have tried, and are trying, to get to nuclear disarmament on the basis of the false assumption that trust, on these matters, is really possible.

THE ACRONYM INSTITUTE

Disarmament Issues in the UK Parliament .... by Nicola Butler

Disarmament Diplomacy, published since January 1996, is the successor journal to Nuclear Proliferation News.

Editors Introduction...Disarmament Diplomacy -- Issue No 53

Breaking the CD Impasse: Statements by Vladimir Petrovsky And Rebecca Johnson ....Disarmament Diplomacy -- Issue No 53

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