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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?

lunarchick - 04:20pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6346 of 6351)
lunarchick@www.com

A good place to make contact is through education and training ... everything of which is basically unclassifed and readily available ... wonder if countries that need to implement this type of stuff have it to hand ... or do only the 'classified docs' transverse the Universe at speed :)

lunarchick - 04:58pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6347 of 6351)
lunarchick@www.com

http://www.odi.org.uk/briefing/2_98.html that “development is complex and the challenge faced by the governments of the world’s poorest countries is formidable”

~ http://www.asianexchange.org/News/96269169742464.php Globalisation & Development

rshowalter - 05:27pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6348 of 6351)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

GREAT REFERENCES !

The US "military industrial complex" could be fully and productively and profitably engaged, meeting those needs of world development, and dealing with the issues Gorbachev raised today.

rshowalter - 05:48pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6349 of 6351)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD2492 rshowalter 4/21/01 8:15pm ... " I think C.P. Snow's idea about getting rid of most world poverty, which didn't fly when he proposed it in THE TWO CULTURES and the Scientific Revolution might work now. The UK White Paper of International Development and Beyond http://www.odi.org.uk/briefing/2_98.html deals with that.

MD2493 rshowalter 4/21/01 8:20pm

"Snow's idea was that people who had advanced sociotechnical systems working could teach people who didn't (especially people culturally advanced in other ways) how to set up productive economic systems themselves.

It would be easier to do if people were more direct -- did more "in clear" -- lied less.

More fun, too.

MD4573 rshowalter 6/7/01 7:03pm

MD4143 rshowalter 5/22/01 8:33am ... MD4144 rshowalter 5/22/01 8:34am

From A Second Look Chaper 4 : Here is the hope I spoke of in MD4129 rshowalter 5/21/01 9:40pm , that made sense to Snow, that fizzled then, that might make sense now, and might actually work.

" .. it is accepted that, in all non-industrialized countries, people are not eating better than at the subsistence level. And they are working as people have always had to work, from Neolithic times until our own. Life for the overwhelming majority of mankind has always been nasty, brutish, and short. It is so in the poor countries still.

" This disparity between the rich and the poor has been noticed. It has been noticed, most acutely and not unnaturally, by the poor. Just because they have noticed it, it won't last for long. Whatever else in the world we know survives to the year 2000, that won't. Once the trick of getting rich is known, as it now is, the world can't survive half rich and half poor. It's just not on. "

How much worse we've done than C.P. Snow expected.

The Cold War has been a big part of the reason. More generally, failures of human beings to cooperate - which may perhaps be mostly technical failures, have kept the world poorer than seems sane, given technical possibilties that have long been in place.

MD4145 rshowalter 5/22/01 9:29am

rshowalter - 05:50pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6350 of 6351)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Snow wrote in 1959.

rshowalter - 06:10pm Jun 30, 2001 EST (#6351 of 6351)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I've got some catching up to do with comments by gisterme -- including some very gracious ones, and others I have concerns about with.

A big question for both of us is

"How do we move towards the future, and not get bogged down in the past, except in ways that are necessary so we can deal with the future?"

There are related questions - some also on Russian minds -- about

"virtual threats" ;

"virtual defenses" ;

the question of what one can check -- and can reasonably ask to check, in terms of the national and world interest involved ;

and the question of how one can set up a "negotiating game" or "structure" that is illuminating, fair and productive.

There are also issues of accounting, related to questions about the ways power in the "military industrial complex" can translate to corrupt economic and political power. That's an issue where the past must be considered if we are to have a better future.

At every stage, a point emphasized by gisterme seems central to priority setting.

" How do we move toward a better, fairer, safer future? "

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