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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?

rshowalter - 03:13pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9568 of 9578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

The issues that arise for Russia, treated in To Free the Way for the U.S., or Not? by MICHAEL WINES http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/international/europe/21RUSS.html ... involve high stakes , and complex decisions, and the need to negotiate a system of interrelations that have to work in the situation as it is.

One essential thing to see, I believe, is how complex the thought process behind the decision reasonably has to be, and how carefully both Russia and the United States ought to proceed, to have the decision work in the ways it is supposed to.

One thing seems clear to me. If the U.S. is saying " don't talk to us - - except for a few words . . just do as we say " then there is no decently reasonable or safe solution.

Similar problems have been occurring with respect to missile defense.

. . . .

It seems to me that problems of this kind need to be adressed by staffs, using techniques that can reasonably fit the information flows that need to occur.

I'm not sure that, in current interactions, the information exchanges of checkable information are even 10% of what they need to be.

rshowalter - 03:22pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9569 of 9578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Unless checking on key facts is morally forcing , and unless there are reasons to see that the checking is likely to get right objective answers, a lot of otherwise soluble situations are insoluble, treacherous muddles.

That's the situation today. For absolutely essential operational reasons, having to do with the logical structure of the world we have to live with, we need checking patterns that are much better than they are today. The key issue is a rule change. Checking, when stakes are high, needs to become morally forcing.

The dialog on this thread has almost all been touched by issues of distrust, and fear, that can only be adressed by more checking.

Almarst , with some reservations perhaps, is for this checking.

Gisterme , by and large, is against this checking.

It is a basic disagreement - - and many of the other disagreements would unravel, making room for new solutions, if this disagreement could be resolved.

As a matter of logic -- if there is to be much hope in the complicated circumstances where people get stumped, and angry enough to kill each other, we need more checking. There are too many ways to make mistakes, if we judge things on the basis of "facts" that aren't true.

rshowalter - 03:36pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9570 of 9578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Bush seeks support in the Gulf and Russia Terror in America: Coalition
by Rupert Cornwell in Washington 20 September 2001 http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=95043

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/russia/

rshowalter - 03:52pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9571 of 9578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

HOW TO SEARCH THE MISSILE DEFENSE FORUM .............

MD9057 rshowalter 9/14/01 2:26pm ... MD9440 rshowalter 9/19/01 8:07am

rshowalter - 04:29pm Sep 21, 2001 EST (#9572 of 9578)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Stocks Close Lower Once Again, Ending a Terrible Week for Markets by SHERRI DAY http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/business/21CND-STOX.html

For the week, the Dow fell 14.3 percent, a five-day loss unmatched since the week ended July 21, 1933, when it fell 15.5 percent, according to Gibbons Burke, the editor of markethistory.com, a market research firm.

For less than "a millisecond's worth" of this weeks losses the key problems that are getting the world so upset could be staffed, and cleaned up well enough so that they could be solved without much fuss.

(It would also take a willingness on the part of the Bush administration to get some things checked to closure, )

Taking down the terrorists doesn't look particularly difficult to me. Or nukes either.

That is, if people were willing to be honest, on a relatively short list of things.

Some key issues would have to be checked even if some people with power objected. Very bad taste, by current standards. But all the same, necessary, it seems to me.

There are some suggestions on this thread on what staff work would have to be involved. The suggestions I like best involve journalists, from several papers, working together, with the world able to watch.

But there are probably a million other workable ways to sort these things out. I shouldn't have to be involved.

But the questions raised on this thread that can be checked to closure should be.

That wouldn't be beyond the wit of man, given a little honesty.

It is ridiculous that the tragedy-crime of September 11 should have been permitted to happen.

It is ridiculous that people can't figure out ways to get nukes down, and to get the world above the Hobbesian state it is in now.

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