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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 - 04:36pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3173 of 3174)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

To get workable arrangements for a nuclear free world -- ones that people could trust - would, even under the best of conditions, take a lot of staffing.

Suggestion: Staffing a "dry run" -- capable of doing much more talkind and research than national leaders could do -- to get problems moved toward convergence.

( No one besides Dawn and I stand behind the idea -- but maybe it could lead to something. )

rshowalter 3/12/01 2:17pm
rshowalter 3/12/01 2:36pm
rshowalter 3/12/01 2:47pm
rshowalter 3/12/01 2:47pm
rshowalter 3/12/01 2:55pm

With the internet, and some organization, and some of the crossreferencing patterns on this thread, it might be possible to get answers talked through to something close to closure --- which takes a lot of time and backing-and forthing -- so that real world leaders, who would have been following the process if they wished, and guiding it if they wished, would have ideas more fully worked out than before to choose from.

That might give the leaders possible, rather than impossible, jobs to do.

Even leaders who "didn't like the press" might find it good to have some press folks "inside the tent, pissing out --- rather than outside it, pissing in." Especially with press from all the major nation states involved.

Leaders might also ask press folks, and other people wanting to offer free advice --

"have a better idea? How about if YOU are subject to crossexamination and have to work out the dirty details?"

To answer that would take hard work. The work might be worth it. It wouldn't take a big dent, for instance, out of the DOD budget to fund this, or something like it, or part of it.

wrcooper - 04:40pm May 3, 2001 EST (#3174 of 3174)
The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt [and] uncertainty...appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny....But such is the frailty of human reason. --David Hume

Here's the link to Wright's article at Slate. There are some links in the Slate text that weren't included with the text version I posted.

http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-05-02/Earthling.asp

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