i'd just like to second this sentiment. nuke/missile technology = license for aggression and blackmail with impunity not having missile defence = america will have to cower in the face of nuclear rogue states, like n korea and china. if these nations were ruled by benevolent, peaceful democracies, i'd be cool about it. but they're ruled by jingoist dictatorships who are trying at every opportunity to enhance their ability to defeat us in war, who make continuous threats of violence/aggression against our allies and ourselves, and who would peddle WMD technologies to terrorists and other rogue nations alike for $3 and a 6-pack of beer. we cannot afford to just sit back and watch as our military presence in asia is overawed by govts like these. currently they possess viable WMD deterrents which we cannot defend against, we cannot just hope that they will go away. sitting back and letting them do as they wish is something which we must not do. yet it is precisely what we will have to do if we don't have a way to render ineffective their nuclear deterrents. chamberlain and daladier made this mistake. they watched and accommodated nazi germany's rearmament. they did little to maintain their nations' military superiority, in the false hope that letting Germany become the strongest military power in Europe will make the Nazis LESS bold and aggressive, LESS likely to attack its neighbors, LESS likely to challenge the UK and France. and the world paid the price. sixty years ago it was czeckoslovakia and poland. today, it's taiwan and south korea. funny how history has a way of repeating itself.
Why? We can still go after anyone any time it's necessary regardless of whether they are a nuclear power or not. We can hurt them financially, witholding resources, or militarily by blocades, no fly zones etc. or if needed direct action. Missle defense doesn't work, it doesn't work with what we have concerning conventional weapons presently, and it certainly doesn't work with what's proposed for star wars missle defense. N. Korea isn't very much of a direct threat to us. They are a threat to us by selling their techonology, which they have done frequently. We shoud be a threat to N. Korea, but that is a policy decision and not based on whether or not we have a flawed missle defense program.
Classic flawed liberal rebuttal. It doesn't work, you say. It'll never work, so why bother? I don't understand this mentality. Why not try to make it work? I'd much rather have an imperfect system than not having one at all. I'd rather not be held hostage by a bunch of kooks with nukes. MAD is a concept as dead as the passenger pigeon and the dodo. NK is not a direct threat? Are you high? They are presently developing missiles that can reach the West Coast and you say they are not a threat? What does it take to convince you people to get your heads out of your posteriors and allow us to defend our state rather than hobbling our defense with musty, out-of-date treaties and naive visions of a world utopia?
bama, don't many of your past posts describe missile defense as currently constiuted as a giant boondoggle and a waste of taxpayer money, while you instead preferred a space laser or a plane with a laser or something like that? I don't mine trying to make it work....let private industry take care of that and subsidize some of their research. But don't spend 10 BILLION on deploying a system that doesn't work when that money is desperately needed to improvve homeland security in the area of port security, disaster response, rebuilding afghanistan, etc etc etc, especially when the federal budget is a horror show.
I didn't say to never bother trying to develop a system of defense for our satellites. I said that it shouldn't be a priority at the moment. N. Korea could have 5 missles that would reach the west coast, and the chances would be slim that they would use them. The hysteria created during the cold war didn't help then and it won't help now. I was very plain and straightforward in regards to the threats that exist in regards to N. Korea. I'm aware of what N. Korea is developing at the moment. That should be handled through policy and placing enough focus and attention on that problem. It could be dealt with by appropriate policy as I mentiond earlier.
I think we should at least look into it. But we are already developing sea based and air-based systems that can handle the protection of our troops in the field. But can these defend CONUS? They would be hardpressed to do so. I have no problem with us spending some resources on the problem. I just think that we are placing a bit too much priority on it right now when other needs are a bit more important.
What were we arguing about? I think we are both saying the same thing. There are more pressing issues at hand, and that's where our focus and cash flow should be.
i'd like to draw all of you back to the original question at the start of this thread, and simply point out that: 1) the nations that represent a threat to our national security don't give a rat's ass about nonproliferation, multilateralism, or arms reduction. their entire military institutions are predicated on beating these very issues. 2) the less robust we make our defenses, the more boldly these nations will push their agendas of aggression and blackmail. i'm not here to argue with you guys the virtues of defence spending vs. other govt. spending, but rather that if we choose to spend on defence, then missile defense should be a high priority, compared to say homeland defence, which is a nebulous concept at best with no clear enemy or solutions in sight. terrorists have a million ways to hit america. anthrax in letters. strelas shooting down airliners. kidnap/murder our people abroad. bombs onboard buses/trains/planes. smallpox. dirty nukes. power lines/stations. cyber terrorism. snipers. plus a million other ways you and i haven't even begun to imagine. missiles on the other hand aren't nearly as complicated.
I think that's what I've been trying to debate with you about the whole time. Missle defense should be a low priority defense item while homeland security should be very high on the list. Yes terrorists have many ways to strike our country and the threat is nebulous. That is all the more reason to spend money on the problem. We need to pay informants, train intel agents, train surveilance personnell, come up with new surveilance tactics, structure more of our armed forces to be geared around combatting these kinds of threats.
bamma; Now you are starting to understand my point. As I said before I'm not philosophically opposed to space based weapons or ICBM defense except that we have finite resources and more pressing problems to spend our money on. Like keeping someone from smuggling a nuke into our country which IMO is much much more likely than the PRC or North Korea launching one on an ICBM at us. I would support a modest research program but as of now space weapons and ICBM defense is better suited for DARPA than in the field.
