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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 - 03:02am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8546 of 8556)
lunarchick@www.com

An interesting note re Cassablanca (1942) in our media supplement ... a contemporary person sent the script to various readers ... it was rejected .. only one recognised it for what it was. Shows that culturally the information people wish to imbibe must 'fit' their experience and environment. With ending the cold war - on this thread - people are still living in the past, and aren't yet reaching for the post-coldwar era. How does that need reach them. Here journalists have a role - to churn the popular grey matter - to help ease people out of the past, into the present then future.

rshowalter - 03:04am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8547 of 8556)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/6/01 2:56am .. if the Russians keep doing some of the things they're doing, making things more open, admitting mistakes, and fixing mistakes when found their returns will trend up.

While ours, because we've messed up so much, and make such bad decisions, are trending down.

We need to fix some problems, or we'll hit the same kind of "brick wall" that Japan has hit. Already, a lot of people are talking about that happening. Old patterns, that make us make bad decisions, and make us incapable of effective collaboration, need to change.

We need, much more often, to send in clear.

. . .

And other nations, for their own good, and ours, need to insist on checking us much more often, in many ways, both military and economic.

rshowalter - 03:08am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8548 of 8556)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I have a meeting in the morning where I have to look sharp. That means I have to get some sleep. Back in the morning.

gisterme , thanks for a comment that is very hopeful.

lunarchick - 03:12am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8549 of 8556)
lunarchick@www.com

wonder if 'loss of face' applies in the USA as it does in Japan - prone to nepotistic annalysis rather than reality

lunarchick - 03:19am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8550 of 8556)
lunarchick@www.com

Conflict? Truth/Business mix at the RM press

rshowalter - 05:01am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8551 of 8556)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

lunarchick 9/6/01 3:12am

Problems with "loss of face" apply to everybody who lives in a social group.

But some groups are more merciless than others to "outsiders" -- and the ones that are especially merciless, such as Japan, and in many circles, the United States, have to be especially concerned about "loss of face."

It can get in the way of right answers and be very expensive.

. . . .

Sometimes, for progress, "face" has to be lost -- and truths that are decisively important for good decisions have to be acknowledged.

Usually, it can be done in ways that are much less painful than the people concealing the information fear. But not always.

rshowalter - 06:24am Sep 6, 2001 EST (#8552 of 8556)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

I'm spending some time wondering what Ted Turner knew, and what he was told, when he entrusted $250 million dollars of his money, and his hopes for peace, to Sam Nunn, chairman of CSIS, which is, though admirable in many ways, an institution founded in the early 1960's, by the same people who made the Vietnam War happen as it did, for the specific purpose of finding intellectual justifications for the Cold War. Especially from a "strategic" (read nuclear) perspective.

It seems to me that "CSIS at a glance" and the staff of counselors bears reading by Russians, NATO nations besides the United States, and journalists who want to see how multiply connected, and how intricately defended, the "Cold War establishment" actually is. http://www.csis.org/about/index.htm

If one has reservations about Henry Kissinger, as the Russians do, one will have concerns about CSIS .

The information in a recent book,

No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam by Larry Berman Free Press, 2001 gives me pause, again, about the patterns so elaborately honored by CSIS .

When Turner gave his money, did he know how close Sam Nunn is to Kissinger and Wesley Clark and other people who do not communicate well with Russians, and who have an interest in glorifying, justifying, sanitizing, perpetuating, and profiting from the Cold War, and the arrangements built in America to fight the Cold War?

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