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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 - 12:17pm Jun 22, 2001 EST (#5776 of 5777)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5470 rshowalter 6/19/01 4:46pm .... MD5471 rshowalter 6/19/01 5:07pm

Thomas L Friedman's review of Kissenger's Does America Need a Foreign Policy http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kissinger-01policy.html ...is titled suggesting an over-simplified, incomplete model - beautiful in some ways, ugly in other ways:

Friedman titles the review How to Run the World in Seven Chapters http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/17/reviews/010617.17friedmt.html

The piece includes this:

" What was said of ''The Prince,'' as Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. of Harvard University explains in his translation, will no doubt be said by critics of Kissinger. Mansfield wrote: ''Soon after being published in 1532,'' Machiavelli's book ''was denounced as a collection of sinister maxims and as a recommendation of tyranny, giving rise to the hateful term 'Machiavellian.' '' Kissinger's book is not a recommendation for tyranny in any way, but it is very ''Kissingerian'' -- focused more around power balances, stability and national interests than American values. I have no doubt that Kissinger is as cynical, mean and nasty a bureaucratic infighter and player of the game of nations as his most venomous critics have charged. At times, he can make Machiavelli sound like one of the Sisters of Mercy. But having said that, one can still value the clarity of his thinking, which is fully on display here.

One can value that clarity, from one perspective, and find it ugly indeed if you are almarst , of looking at things from the perspective of many other countries.

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.

We should stop behaving that way.

If we did, getting accomodations on missile defense would be a matter of course -- whatever those accomodations were. They'd happen by simple negotiation.

rshowalter - 12:17pm Jun 22, 2001 EST (#5777 of 5777)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5472 rshowalter 6/19/01 5:08pm .... MD5442 rshowalter 6/20/01 12:34pm
MD5565 rshowalter 6/20/01 6:13pm

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