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 - 08:58pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9064 of 9068)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

BIG CHANGES: U.S. Force vs. Terrorists: From Reactive to Active by MICHAEL R. GORDON http://www.nytimes.com/20001/09/14/international/14STRA.html

" For the last decade, the use of American might has been shaped by several principles: emphasizing air power and long-range precision arms, avoiding ground combat whenever possible and using overwhelming ground forces when it is not.

" The use of American military force has also been reactive. Pre-emptive action was ruled out, partly because American law prohibits assassination as state policy. The United States waited to be hit before striking back, and American casualties were to be avoided at all costs.

" All of those principles were at work when the Clinton administration struck at Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 1998 bombing of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the suspected sponsor of the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

" The United States fired several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at his training camps in Afghanistan. There was no risk to American personnel; unfortunately for the Pentagon, there was little risk to the terrorist leadership either.

" That approach is now clearly in the process of being abandoned. The analogy between this week's terrorist attacks and Pearl Harbor is apt in one sense. The attacks have shaken the American public and the Pentagon leadership. Strategies and tactics that seemed unthinkable just weeks ago are thinkable now.

" Forget about the cruise missiles," said Francois Heisbourg, a French military expert and the incoming chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "The only thing that is worth thinking about now is how to dismantle and eradicate the organization that brought the terrorism about. You can use air power in support of joint military operations. But the coalition that takes on the terrorists has to actually send in people with guns and that means taking high risks."

. . . . .

" Such attacks could well mean casualties. "Forget about avoiding casualties," said John Keegan, the British military historian. "Air power can play its part, but this is not a conventional enemy."

" There has been a long-standing assumption at the Pentagon that the American public would not tolerate significant casualties. The Pentagon boasted that it did not lose a single soldier in combat during the Kosovo campaign as if that was as important as the mission of evicting Yugoslav troops from the province.

" The loss of just 18 United States soldiers during an ill-planned operation to capture clansmen in Somalia led the United States to abandon its mission in that East African nation. But the casualties seemed high because the mission seemed to be unclear and perhaps even unnecessary.

Comment: Thousand of Somalians were left to die.

" Now that terrorism has reached the American political and economic centers, inhabiting the minds of Americans in a way that is altogether new, the stakes have soared.

Comment: This is a return to military sanity, as the world has understood it for many generations, from a very strange stance. With sanity returning, there may be hope of eliminating horrors, incluiding terrorism in all its forms.

rshowalter - 08:59pm Sep 14, 2001 EST (#9065 of 9068)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The United States, which has so much good about it, has a resevoir of good will to work with, combined (and this is healthy) with disagreements and anger.

Outpouring of Grief and Sympathy for Americans in Europe and Elsewhere by WARREN HOGE http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/international/14EURO.html

LONDON, Sept. 13 — Dmitry Danilov, 44, a real estate broker, showed up outside the flower-strewn American Embassy in Moscow bearing a special Russian Orthodox icon for commemorating the departed.

" Maybe tragedy will unite us with Americans," he said. "We are very similar people."

In an extensive and spontaneous outpouring of grief across Europe and the rest of the world for the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, citizens, heads of government, royalty and critics unaccustomed to confiding sentiments of similarity with Americans are expressing sympathy for the United States and sending urgent messages of encouragement and solidarity.

" You are not alone, America," read a floral tribute from the 11th grade of the Kopernikus Gymnasium in suburban Blankenfelde that was placed outside the American Embassy in Berlin. "America, we will support you."

A card at the embassy here read, "In sorrow and sympathy with the U.S.A. You supported us in two world wars and more, and we stand with you now."

. . . .

" In Beijing, funeral wreaths pile up on the same pavement outside the American Embassy where two years ago protesters hurled rocks and stones after the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

" All that amounts to an extraordinary reversal. For some time, and especially since the Bush administration took office early this year, a current of growing hostility to the United States has been evident in many parts of the world.

" Resentments have focused on a wide range of issues, including American use of the death penalty, the politics of the environment, American plans for a missile defense shield, genetically modified food and the extent of American cultural and economic power.

"For now, such sentiments have been forgotten, it seems.

Comment: The reasons for sympathy have never been forgotten. The reasons for resentment won't be forgotten either. That's healthy.

(3 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense