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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 - 08:34pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7258 of 7288)
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Bookclub:At times, Rice hints that she gets this. In her excellent chronicle of Bush's European diplomacy, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed
~ http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0674353242.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg (cowritten with Philip Zelikow), Rice takes the view that, when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, "Ronald Reagan's memorable words rang true. It was indeed a `sad experiment' practiced on a huge and helpless population." In a recent interview in National Review, Rice gave credit for the fall of communism to Reagan's unflinching language about its evils. Perhaps she and Wolfowitz could make common cause, at least on certain issues. ~ http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0870783920.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg In from the cold Editorial Reviews Book Description The Soviet Union's collapse eliminated the organizing principle of American foreign policy--and the focus of U.S. intelligence since World War II. In the wake of this sudden shift, a new host of priorities have been suggested for the intelligence community: terrorism, the proliferation of conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction, organized crime and drug trafficking, ethnic conflicts, and even global economic competition. Meanwhile, the coming of the information age and the opening of more and more societies have prompted arguments for changing the way intelligence is gathered.

In response to this debate, the Twentieth Century Fund assembled a task force drawn from the intelligence community, the military, government, and academia. In the course of its meetings, the task force identified four crucial areas for improvement: first, in an age when information is plentiful, the intelligence community's analytic capability must be reinvigorated; second, the increasing dominance of the military over intelligence operations is detrimental to the nation's political, economic, and social concerns--a greater balance must be sought; third, the clandestine service, often a source of publicized embarrassment for the CIA, must be streamlined; fourth, economic intelligence, which has failed more often than it has succeeded, needs to by upgraded and more sharply focused. (From the Publisher ) ~ http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0393975533.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

lunarchick - 08:34pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7259 of 7288)
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Essential Citizen-Led Reference on Intelligence Reform, April 8, 2000 Reviewer: Robert D. Steele from Fairfax, Virginia The Director of Central Intelligence now serving refuses to accept the word "reform" and persists in the traditionalist view that only incremental change is needed within the U.S. Intelligence Community. This book, by a very respected team of private sector authorities with experience in the business of intelligence opens by noting that "informed opinion overwhelmingly holds that many of the important questions about the intelligence agencies have yet to be addressed." Their book, and mine, and the books coming out this year by Greg Treverton, the team of Bruce Berkowitz and Allan Goodman, and a group of ten authors including Mel Goodman and Bob White, are part of the responsible effort from the private sector to get the incoming President and the incoming Congress to finally accept their own responsibility for engaging these issues and legislating reform that will never come from within the U.S. Intelligence Community if it is left to its own devices and inclinations.

lunarchick - 08:58pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7260 of 7288)
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Showalter you were talking Jewels (above) yet the Star of India here is only a text version. The real one is in the American Museum of Natural History looking? and here's a treat for Alex.

lunarchick - 09:17pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7261 of 7288)
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Book refs grew from descripto 7/19/01 3:00pm [Hans] Morgenthau

lunarchick - 10:12pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7262 of 7288)
lunarchick@www.com

Here there seemed to be a sense in descripo's post that those who weild international strategic power answer to only one constituency - themselves.
This arrogance is seen throughout the study of history, whereby those who held the reigns,
could concurr to be morally good - or -
produce inadequate responses in times of need,
leading to massive loss of life.

Political figure heads, in a modern democracy, are elected to office. Each genuine vote, be it a '1' or a 'X', represents the mark of a constituent.
The power of the figurehead is defacto power, handed to them, to be used wisely.

lunarchick - 10:30pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7263 of 7288)
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A case of 'if the shoe fits wear it!'

lunarchick - 10:56pm Jul 19, 2001 EST (#7264 of 7288)
lunarchick@www.com

Deja vu: (April 10–May 19, 1922), post-World War I meeting at Genoa.

Genoa 1834

G8 .. !

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