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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 - 08:16pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5483 of 5506)

Some comments about htfiii (MD4525)

htfiii wrote: "...Eisenhower instituted a policy against the military use of space because he had seen the effects of militarization and way these matters swing out of all control under uncontrollable political circumstances and unleash destruction on a global scale. WWII for one example.

What Eisenhower saw was the USSR developing ICBMs that travel through space to hit their targets. The US was definately NOT the first to build ICBMs. I believe THAT was the militarization of space tha president Eisenhower was trying to head off.

If you check the facts I think you'd be able to make a pretty persuasive case that Soviet ICBM devlopment combined with their obsessive secrecy and exaggeration about their capabilities is what started the ICBM part of the strategic arms race. Then came Sputnik...

"If this policy of militarization of space is implemented, and make no mistake Rumsfeld is talking about missiles hanging over everyone's head,..."

That's BS. I can't say for sure that the proposed BMD archetecture doesn't include any space based missiles or projectiles; however, none but detractors have ever claimed or even hinted that any of them will include nuclear explosives. That's just not necessary. An object the size and mass of a lug nut can easily destroy ANY warhead in a multi-mach speed collision between the two. We have the technology to arrange collisions like that. That technology has been known since the original SDI days. Lug nuts from space don't frighten me too much. :-)

Speaking of SDI, the occasional whining I see here on this thread about "Oh no, not another SDI" (followed by a forehead slap, no doubt), as if the original SDI program was somehow unsuccessful, seems silly to me. That program achieved nothing less than the ending of the Cold War arms race, even though it was never deployed and only a tiny fraction of the proposed budget for it was ever spent. The original SDI program has to be the most successful program ever in terms of "bang for the buck" when it comes to Cold War efforts. Those "whiners" are the ones who've really failed to see the big picture.

SDI was not unique in its low-cost strategic effect. The B-70 Valkyrie was another "never-built" program that worked pretty well too, though the scale was much smaller. That succeded in getting the Soviets to spend huge treasure on MIG 25 Foxbat development...a strictly defensive aircraft that was quite amazing but totally useless against the non-existant threat it was designed and built to counter. The Soviets must not have been able to believe that the US could build two flying prototypes of an advanced high altitude supersonic bomber aircraft like the B-70 and then not go for production. The B-70 program was ended when one of the prototypes was destroyed along with a couple of pilots after an accidental collision with a chase plane.

gisterme - 08:57pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5484 of 5506)

rshowalter wrote: "...It seems to me that, in nuclear policy, the Vietnam War, and much else, the United States, behaving in "Kissingerian" fashion -- really was as ugly and blood-curdling as Friedman suggests..."

You seem to keep forgettng that that was in the middle of a couple of wars. The "Kissingerian" whine sounds a lot like what the "losers" on the receiving end of the policy must have felt.

Robert, I can't agree with you about Friedman's opinon of Henry Kissinger:

The utterly ruthless brand of by-the-numbers, detatched warfighting by the US started with Johnson/MacNamara NOT Mr. Kissinger and not meaning that tactics previous wars were any less ruthless. Can anybody name even ONE conflict started during Kissinger's era that was a "board-game" type war and that the US was involved in? How about ANY war started during the Kissinger era that the US was involved in? Not.

Significant US involvement in Viet Nam began during the Kennedy Camelot era and was the legacy of the Kennedy/Johnson administrations that was inhereted by Nixon/Kissinger. Those last just did what was necessary to get us out of there, ugly as it was.

What brought on all this whacky stuff about Kissinger? He was an amazing diplomat that made the best of a totally botched-up situation that he didn't cause. Robert, you must be taking dirac's advice about not letting little details like facts get in the way of your argument.

gisterme - 08:57pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5485 of 5506)

Out...

possumdag - 09:14pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5486 of 5506)
Possumdag@excite.com

South America:

Throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century the USA foreign policy with respect to South America was simply this ... ,br>support the right wing regime -
against the groundswell of citizenship wanting improved human rights along with improved economic growth.

There is additionally the common perspective that the C..I..A.. was somehow involved with the merchandising of drugs for profit.

possumdag - 09:21pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5487 of 5506)
Possumdag@excite.com

South America Map .. CentralAm ..Carribean

possumdag - 09:33pm Jun 19, 2001 EST (#5488 of 5506)
Possumdag@excite.com

Juxtaposing USA with the names of the countries in the, as C-Rice puts it, American Hemisphere .. the stories aren't pretty. In fact there have been UGLY happenings - lots of them, and the refugees who got out rather than 'be killed' .. don't like the way the USA has interacted with countries to it's south over the past years.

Knowing that much of Europe's plundered treasure from WWII will be with Nazi characters in SAm .. and seeing the Nazi links with the inner sanctums of American Foreign Policy 'making' - (do they actually make foreign policy or is it ad hoc spur of the moment strategy?) - makes one have to ask this question. If there were Nazi's running the Pentagon and C..IA .. how were their policies abusing the peoples of South America?

Florida's most loved man - Castro - would this fossil of a dictator still hold the reigns of power in Cuba had their been a RESPECTFUL relationship between itself and the USA.

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