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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 - 07:37pm Apr 17, 2001 EST (#2327 of 2332)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Here is Tayler's next paragraph, that says hopeful things, worth remebering, about the "doomed" sociotechnical system that is Russia:

" Despite the grave images the media show us, the full extent of Russia's weakness is not apparent to most visitors at first. Trains run on time. Stores open on schedule. The obvious poverty of shantytowns ad slums is rare. Though rising sharply, street crime is still less common than in major cities of the West. At times gruff in public, Russians privately maintain a superb civility and dignity, and their oriental tradition of hospitality to strangers puts Westerners to shame. Customs now regarded as quaint (or sexist) in the West, such as a man's opening doors for a woman and paying for his date's meals - are the rule, and only the indigent dress shabbily. Standards of education, especially math and science, exceed those of all but a few Western countries; the average Russian high schooler may have a grasp of U.S. or European history that would humiliate an American college student. The remnants of the Soviet welfare state ensure that few starve; the apartments the Soviet government gave to its citizens make Russia a nation of homeowners to a great extent. . . . . . In sum, few visitors find cause for dispair, and Armageddon seems well at bay. Reform and prosperity, it would seem, are a hair's breadth away, and those hwo would deny this are shortsighted pessimists."

Talyer contrives, at length, to find cause for dispair however, in a very interesting piece. Russia is "destined" to fall apart by its "thousand year history."

I have no doubt that many if not most of the points the piece makes can find reflections in reality.

Even so, the piece shows dangerously oversimplified and hubritic thinking, and connects closely to the questions raised in almarst-2001 4/17/01 1:43pm and almarst-2001 4/17/01 2:09pm .

rshowalter - 07:43pm Apr 17, 2001 EST (#2328 of 2332)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

NOBODY is as smart as Tayler thinks he is, and as Tayler makes his readers think they are.

Much, much too often, we forget this about ourselves, and about others.

All others.

Sociotechnical systems are far more complex than anything we can fit into our heads -- and sweeping statements and judgements about them can be, at best, dangerously incomplete but tolerably useful.

Quite often, they are dangerously incomplete, credible to those who believe them, and disastrous.

Practically and morally, too.