New York Times on the Web Forums Science

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 - 10:35am Jul 15, 2001 EST (#7046 of 7054)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

US missile defense efforts are happening in a context that we shouldn't forget -- because other nations, and people, can't be expected to.

MD3761 rshowalter 5/12/01 1:41pm ... MD3763 rshowalter 5/12/01 3:04pm

Since WWII - when mass bombing of civilians, first done without public understanding - became an "accepted" aspect of war - the US, more than any other country, has worked to legitimize mass death by bombing -- and then, legitimize the idea that nuclear weapons could be used in war.

Terrorists, all over the world, have been studying these AMERICAN arguments.

A great deal of propaganda effort, and psychological warfare, has made nucs "thinkable" in a terrible, abhorrent, and humanly impractical way. . . . . We need to delegitimize any use of nuclear weapons

Threats of NMD and space weaponization (neither technically viable options) may be useful -- if they motivate what really needs to be done. .... We need to find ways to reduce the odds of nuclear weapons killing and injuring people and the earth.

But to do this, we have to understand what the US has done --

THREATS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The Sixteen Known Nuclear Crises of the Cold War, 1946-1985 by David R. Morgan , National President, Veterans Against Nuclear Arms Vancouver, Canada March 6, 1996 http://scienceforpeace.sa.utoronto.ca/WorkingGroupsPage/NucWeaponsPage/Documents/ThreatsNucWea.html

On nuclear matters, much more often than not we have been the agressors - - and this continues --- and actively continues. There are things that need to be done to move the world in the direction of safetly.

rshowalter - 10:35am Jul 15, 2001 EST (#7047 of 7054)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

MD7007 rshowalter 7/13/01 1:03pm The administration's missile defense program, taken as a whole, could scarely be worse adapted to meet those needs. They are making plainly false assumptions, about the rest of the world, about the threats, about the technical possibilities -- again and again. The administration is pushing to "solve" threats that are not credible, with technology that cannot work, at the same time putting dangerous pressures on Russia, at a time when effectively ending the policies of the Cold War should be a major priority, and stresses in Russia are a threat to us.

- - Russia’s Nuclear and Missile Complex: The Human Factor in Proliferation Valentin Tikhonov, for the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace http://www.ceip.org/files/Publications/NPPDemoStudy.asp

And things of great value are being jettisoned. The administration is acting, on the basis of ideas most Americans do not share, to destroy the value of the word of the United States in international affairs.

Nuclear Testing and National Honor by RICHARD BUTLER http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/opinion/13BUTL.html

" The intention of the White House to kill the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, if fulfilled, would have serious consequences for nuclear arms control."

When the US says "trust us" -- and "defer to us" -- they have to look at it from the point of view of others -- consider, in detail, the fundamental, simple standards of the golden rule. Under like circumstances - how can people in other nations be reasonably expected to feel, and how can they be expected to react?

(7 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense