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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?

gisterme - 06:24pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3434 of 3480)

rshowalter wrote: "...I believe, now, that a good deal of it should be "common ground..."

I'll reply by reposting gisterme #3268...

""1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy."

Sounds like the NATO strategy for winning the cold war. Gee. I wonder if anybody there ever read this book?"

As for missteps, when you say "didn't turn off the nuclear threat" I presume you mean "nuclear threat" within the same context as is used in the rest of the post. The "Threats to use Nuclear Weapons" chronology you posted has no listing of any such threats by either side after the end of the cold war.

Strategic nuclear weapons remain "at the ready" on both sides. Is the US strategic deterrent the "threat" you mean the US should have turned off? Wouldn't getting rid of 4500 strategic warheads be a step in that direction? Isn't that what Bush says he wants to do? Where's the Beef?

If we need to build some defensive weapons of whatever type to keep the deterrence scale in balance while DESTROYING US ICBMs AND WARHEADS, so what? Who should be threatened by that?

rshowalter - 06:25pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3435 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If it is, peacemaking in the world may become more possible -- we need nation states finding common ground, in the cause of peace -- there's no particular reason for the US to lead -- it could very well follow.

rshowalter - 06:32pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3436 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

gisterme 5/7/01 6:24pm

We don't have much disagreement about what actually happened, it doesn't appear.

We may have entirely reasonable different views about the US - legal political context of what happened, and the world-political context of what happened with respect to reasonable US action for the future.

If the facts were widely understood -- that would be enough for me -- others could decide what to do with them.

But I think it is essential that they be understood.

My own view is that, if there was no financial misuse due to what most people would, I believe, agree was a conspiracy -- domestic political consequences might be considered minor.

If the right wing of the Republican party has been funded by skim from military budgets, and fortunes made, that's something else.

As far as foreign views -- given the facts -- the US has to take workable steps to become less threatening.

And a sweet smile from some politicians won't be good enough.

rshowalter - 06:40pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3437 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

If the facts were widely understood, I believe that the nation would be shocked, and the world would be shocked, and on both a national and an international basis, there would be an outcry.

And the analogies to the Germans in Casablanca that I suggested would be very widely agreed to.

rshowalter - 06:40pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3438 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I can testify that the story was once considered far-fetched by some New York Times folks.

possumdag - 06:41pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3439 of 3480)
Possumdag@excite.com

Don't you guys have commissions of inquiry that dig into dollar manure heaps with an audit mentality ?

On the little guy loosing his leg to NuclearWaste - water under the bridge - as they say:

I'd like to see the USA making an effort to pick up their litter in LAOS where families will have multiple prosthetic memberships.

Not having a leg (or two) for a child and into the rest of their life must create great hardship - especially in an underdeveloped country without pensions.

gisterme - 06:45pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3440 of 3480)

rshowalter wrote: "...even so, I stand by what I said" [about Maj. Strasser stereotype]..."

And I stand by what I said. If Americans go someplace and don't act like the Major, they won't be perceived as being like the major. Most Americans don't act like that when they're abroad because most are not at all like the major. People have eyes in their heads and are able to make judgements based on what they see. This is a case where a few rotten apples don't spoil the entire barrel.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that. It's just the practice of stereotyping by caracature that bothers me; I think it's bigoted behavior.

rshowalter - 06:47pm May 7, 2001 EST (#3441 of 3480)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There is a lot of "cleaning up their messes" that the US ought to do -- and its refusal to do so is widely noticed, and resented.

I wonder how many people in the world have the "all's fair in war" stance that gisterme seems to have. And especially in the Cold War case, where for more than a decade the Soviet Union was trying to find ways to coexist -- to make peace, and was denied any chance to do so on a basis that involved many public lies.

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