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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 - 10:49am Feb 23, 2002 EST (#11778 of 11808)

Key points from Robertson's Review:

"Making the world a safer place

" Defence Diplomacy

" Declaring additional forces as potentially available to UN

" Further steps on international arms control

" Reducing our nuclear deterrent capability to the minimum necessary

" Increased openness about our nuclear holdings

Rational discussion of any of these points, and reasonable decisions about these points, seperately and together, must depend on reasonable answers based on facts.

Not fictions, due to elaborate patterns of "psychological warfare" in combination with bureaucratic self-serving, long run amok.

It is in the interest of Britian, all the rest of the world, and the United States to get facts straight, and principles understood at a level that can stand the light of day.

"Tactical surprise" is one thing. As the Europeans are discovering, we are in a mess that is quite something else.

rshow55 - 10:59am Feb 23, 2002 EST (#11779 of 11808)

almarst-2001 2/22/02 10:46pm objects to Friedman's passage about the "hidden fist." One has to consider issues of proportion. But force, and the threat of force, always matter in human affairs, including international affairs, and that's unchangable. There is no reason for indignation about that.

But issues of proportion, and sane decision making about lethal means -- matter a great deal.

Simple minded prohibitions on the use of force are counterproductive, because they can never be enforced. For some necessary kinds of stability - stable enough patterns of deterrnace are our only hope - and threats have to be real.

"Missile defense", and especially the technical issues on the Bush administration's "missile defense" are especially important for what they say about proportion, respect for fact, and even technical sanity -- important issues.

They remain important for people who agree that the United States needs strong military forces, and deterrents in place that are effective.

almarst-2001 - 11:56am Feb 23, 2002 EST (#11780 of 11808)

Friedman, in my oppinion, is either deeply immoral and corrupted person or extreamly shallow narcisist, or both.

rshow55 - 12:11pm Feb 23, 2002 EST (#11781 of 11808)

Friedman has his faults, and maybe, in some ways, faults involving various immoralities, corruptions, and narcissims -- not rare traits among the writers of any nation. He's also one of the most influential intellectuals in the United States. He's made judgements that I would NOT have made. Some which, for personal reasons, flabbergast me. But he's done a lot of good work -- and work widely respected -- he's won two Pulitzer Prizes -- which means that his defects are associated, in his case at least, with things widely respected.

If Friedman were running US foreign policy, it would be far different than it is -- and I suspect, more to your liking than US policy now.

It would surely be more to my liking.

Even if he were the devil himself -- and he isn't that distinguished, or consistent in quite that way - - the whole world could deal with him better than with the current holders of power in America in one important way.

Friedman, most times, can explain himself clearly - and respond to questions coherently. He respects facts.

A world where people respect facts, and take trouble to check them - would be a far safer world than the one we're in. People wouldn't have to like each other.

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