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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 - 12:29pm Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5947 of 5954)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5296 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?7@184.ShaZab2wqbr^2289996@.f0ce57b/5658 . . . MD5297 rshowalter 6/16/01 8:43pm

On March 1, I did some posting in a Guardian poetry thread, and some of my argument, about key nuclear controls (which, one can see from Rehearsing Doomsday , are telephone controls) , is set out in #1281-1282 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1565

My sense of risks (about a 10% chance of the world blowing up per year, or 1.6 million "statistically expected deaths per day" is set out in #1279 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1563

#1273 http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee79f4e/1556 is an "expository poem that refers to something that happened to me in October of last year, where there are, I believe, journalistically solid records corraborating events. It starts

Before witnesses, not long ago
I blew through
Nuclear controls that apparently
hadn't been changed since the mid-60s'

I may have misused the word "nuclear controls" -- what happened is that my phones were cut off with "red alert" signals -- and I got through the isolation using patterns that were nuclear controls in the '60's and 70's , according to patterns I'd been taught then - and ran into operators, and procedures -- the same as I'd known then . . .

Back then, those patterns and sequences would have been useful for firing off missiles.

Given some responses, then and afterwards, I came to believe, though I cannot prove, that these same controls are still in use. . . . . and of course, that could be wrong.

What isn't wrong -- or can be easily be checked, is that the nuclear missile controls in the United States arsenal use telephone links that appear -- (again, I can only guess, but it is an informed guess) to be terribly vulnerable . . . so that a few people, or just a little psychopathology (grief, perhaps) could start firing missiles.

Something else isn't wrong --- and can be checked. Can partly be checked by looking at my experience. That is that the human aspects of our nuclear control system are terribly rigid, and resist most of the kinds of checking that people would expect them to have. . . .

Given that the issue here is a chance of the end of the world, why is this hard to get checked ?

The answer is that people are afraid, and the system is choked up by lies.

rshowalter - 12:30pm Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5948 of 5954)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD5299 rshowalter 6/16/01 9:41pm ... reads in part:

" I had stuff on Thomas Friedman's great book review of Kissenger's Does America Need a Foreign Policy http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kissinger-01policy.html

" How to Run the World in Seven Chapters http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/17/reviews/010617.17friedmt.html , which makes a wonderful analogy between Kissenger and Machiavelli (much to Machiavelli's advantage) but I'll wait on that, too.

lunarchick posted good links to "Machiavelli - that scheming little prince of darkness " http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/rosso.htm ~ http://nsa.nps.navy.mil/Syllabi/ns_4036.html

that emphasize something Friedman said -- that he had

" 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. "

MD5470 rshowalter 6/19/01 4:46pm ... MD5471 rshowalter 6/19/01 5:07pm
MD5472 rshowalter 6/19/01 5:08pm ... MD5473 rshowalter 6/19/01 5:12pm

Fix these big, passionately felt misunderstandings, and valid concerns, and cooperation in reducing nuclear threats from smaller nations and groups would be a foregone conclusion between Russia and the US, in my opinion.

rshowalter - 12:31pm Jun 24, 2001 EST (#5949 of 5954)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

gisterme disagreed, and the main extenuation was that Kissinger was acting in wars MD5484 gisterme 6/19/01 8:57pm

That extenuation can be judged against what one can legally do in wars -- and often, also, asking what was meant by "war."

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