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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 - 10:59am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5427 of 5461)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Putin is taking responsible positions, one after another, and arguing for the need for verifiable technical truth, open-ness, and reasonable conduct between nations. (He may be a bad fellow in many other ways, but this time, on this issue, he's taking reasonable positions.)

Putin's argued, for a long time, for deep cuts in nuclear weapons, and does still.

But military balances have to be maintained (and that means dialog with China, as gisterme also agrees) and the idea that Russia should trust the Bushes, as a family, of the United States, in the sense of "trust without checking" is simply not an idea that a responsible leader of a nation state can take.

bking55 - 11:12am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5428 of 5461)

Bush and Putin should work togeather to develop defense system so both countries can protect themselves from smaller more radical countries. We should be working togeather to do this. There is no need for the cold war to begin again.

cod37 - 11:12am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5429 of 5461)

Putin's statements were quite logical and it's clear he does not want to break the Russian budget on expensive military programs. It's our budget that will be broken on fairly useless items that do little to grow our economy.

One point on NMD: Unlike other methods of delivery, we will know exactly who launched a missile at us. Missile trajectories are very predictable and can be easily back-tracked to their point of origin. Anyone with any ideas about launching a missile at us knows that we will be able to retaliate will devastating results. In short, we have a formidable deterrent and don't need NMD.

rshowalter - 11:14am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5430 of 5461)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In MD5387 gisterme 6/18/01 4:37pm ... gisterme made a big issue of a statement of mine, about a picture -- when I said that Putin, as pictured, seemed to be showing discomfort and distaste. The picture connected to this article:

Bush Urges Putin to Approve Plans for Missile Shield by FRANK BRUNI http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/16/world/16CND-PREXY.html

After looking again at the article, I backed off on my interpretation. MD5389 rshowalter 6/18/01 6:27pm

All the same, some may want to compare the picture in Bruni's article above with the picture in today's

Putin Says Russia Would Counter U.S. Shield by PATRICK E. TYLER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/19/world/19RUSS.html?pagewanted=all

Vladimir Putin photographs well, and what I said wasn't unreasonable.

dirac_10 - 11:54am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5431 of 5461)

lunarchick - 05:51am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5410 of 5430)

Seems pretty disrespectful from where i sit.

You betcha.

Dirac if the forum isn't to your liking - don't stay.

I just skim over the inane rambling by certain parties. But it's a bother.

dirac_10 - 11:56am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5432 of 5461)

No one has ever given a physics reason that the NMD won't work.

It most certainly will.

And to claim that it won't work against N. Korea and will against Russia is absurd beyond imagination.

j.stromer-galle - 12:02pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5433 of 5461)

Putin's comments reinforce what I find so problematic about the Bush administration's plan to unilaterally build a missile defense system. Putin indicated that abandoning the 1972 ABM treaty and building a defense shield would force Russia to put multiple warheads on their nuclear missiles and lead to a new arms race as other countries try to build systems to beat the shield.

Is this really what we want? A new arms race? I certainly do not. And I am chagrined at the thought that world leaders for the past twenty years have worked so hard to stop an arms race, only to have one man, President Bush, throw it all to the wind.

dirac_10 - 12:03pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5434 of 5461)

pbrower2a - 10:47am Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5424 of 5432)

SDI again? A Maginot Line in space.

More like a multi layered defense than a line.

We Americans would have to expend great resources to build it,

Actually, a small part of the military budget.

and any clever enemy would find any weak spot possible. The successors of John Walker and Aldrich Ames will surely supply the devious enemy the needed information on weak links.

Ok, then we agree. There is no chance whatsoever that it will affect Russia. At least some progress... Now all that remains is to calculate whether stopping N. Korean launches is possible and worth a small fraction of the military budget.

SDI is not for counteracting a few stray missiles; it is for thwarting a mass attack.

Hardly. Pure fantasy. And what happened to Russia easily defeating it? Seems you flip back and forth, depending on whether it helps the particular point you are making at the moment. Can't have it both ways.

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