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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?

almarstel2001 - 03:48pm Mar 7, 2001 EST (#855 of 864)

Robert,

If, as you say, Americans feel vulnerable, can you imagine how the rest of the world must feel? And in great deal thanks to America!

While for the last century and at least forseable future there is no danger for a war on American soil. No american city was bombed or invaded. No foreign armies massed on borders.

At the same time, America invaded many countries, killed millions of people, commited horrendous crimes in Korea and Vietnam, diregards international and war crimes law at will in Iraq and Yugoslavia, supported terrorists and criminal mafia organizations in Afganistan and Kosovo. The list is just too long.

And, while most developed countries reduced their military expendetures after the Cold War, US keep them huge - more then 10 next greatest militaries combined.

I think you turned the whole story upside-down.

It is the rest of the world which fears America, not the other way around.

almarstel2001 - 03:59pm Mar 7, 2001 EST (#856 of 864)

As for "The New Mideast Paradigm" by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, I am sorry to inform you, it is just another peace of profaund garbage, as most of Mr. Friedman's works.

"Modernity" as understood in the West, brought so far the greatest disasters on the human civilization, including nazionalism, shawinism, colonialism and fascism. The "enlightened" West destroyed, killed and enslaved most of this planet. And intends to continue doing so. All in a name of a "progress".

Sorry, this is much deeper an issue to be discussed here. And surelly not on the basis of Mr. Friedman's absurdic and foolish simplifications.

almarstel2001 - 04:08pm Mar 7, 2001 EST (#857 of 864)

Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base - http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm

rshowalter - 04:20pm Mar 7, 2001 EST (#858 of 864)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

almarstel2001 3/7/01 3:48pm

makes a fundamental point, but then makes a key mistake, when he says:

" It is the rest of the world which fears America, not the other way around.

America fears the rest of the world (and with good reason.) The rest of the world fears America (also with good reason.)

It doesn't help to say "America is wrong to fear the rest of the world" because we DO have reason to fear the rest of the world. Terrorism is real. Nuclear weapons are real.

We need to find better balances than we have now. Now, it appears to me that the fundamental response of the United States, much too often, is to respond to threats by larger counter-threats - in a cycle that never seems to end, and a cycle that elicits defiance, and even real attack, with sad regularity.

I'm afraid that this happened today, in the meeting between our President Bush, and S.Korea's President Kim.

It doesn't help to deny that Americans are afraid of the rest of the world. Of course we are. And they're afraid of us. Cycles of escalating threat don't help here.

Nations threaten each other, in this sense. They stand ready, as part of their stance with respect to outsider nations, to impose penalties or costs if certain things are done, or not done. That will never change. The US surely treatens all other nations, friend and foe, to some degree.

But nations should threaten each other in ways that are credible, balanced, proportionate, and stable.

Nuclear weapons tend to make this much harder.

The problem is a serious one. It is surely an ugly situation, and disproportionate, when the U.S. has to be so afraid of a nation as small and weak as North Korea.

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