- FEBRUARY 10, 2010
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AFPAK
Why We Shouldn't Listen to Gen. McChrystal
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MEIN KAMPF
Discrediting Hitler's Tome
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IRAN
Regime Change Isn't Coming
Nibbled to death by ducks?
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Monday, July 27, 2009 - 5:53 PM
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Since Barack Obama became president back in January, his administration has launched a dizzying array of foreign policy initiatives. They've "pushed the reset button" with Russia, gotten serious about a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, and doubled down in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama has extended an open-hand to Iran, made a major speech to the Muslim world, pressed ahead on climate change, and talked about major reductions in nuclear arsenals. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden added a few more items to the agenda just last week, suggesting that the United States might extend a security umbrella in the Middle East should Iran develop nuclear weapons, reaffirming U.S. security commitments in South and South-east Asia, and cozying up (a bit gingerly) to controversial Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. And Clinton’s earlier speech to the Council on Foreign Relations made it clear that she thinks that nothing much is going to get done without active U.S. involvement (while noting that the United States couldn’t do it all alone).
On the one hand, these initiatives (and Obama's own charisma) have gone some distance toward repairing America's tarnished international image. A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a significant improvement in America's image around the world, and especially among U.S. allies in Europe. Chalk one up for a democratic system: holding regular elections does allow a country to get rid of incompetent leaders and hope for something better.
But the fact that more people around the world have a "favorable" impression of the United States does not mean that their governments are going to roll over and give Washington whatever it wants. Indeed, there are already signs that Obama’s ambitious agenda is facing significant resistance. India and China are not on board with Obama's proposals for a climate change agreement, which means that the entire project is in jeopardy. The Afghan and Pakistani governments are expressing reservations about U.S. strategy in Central Asia, and the past record suggests that neither government will play straight with Washington when dealing with the jihadi issue. North Korea remains defiant and Iran shows no sign of succumbing to Obama's charm offensive. Israel is digging in its heels on settlements and America's Arab friends are reluctant to begin normalizing relations with Israel in the absence of genuine (as opposed to rhetorical) progress towards a two-state solution. Even the Europeans stiffed the administration on its proposals for coordinating responses to the economic crisis, and key NATO allies are doing less in Afghanistan even as the United States does more. Trouble spots like Somalia or Sudan remain as intractable as ever, and I haven't even mentioned drug violence in Mexico or anti-Americanism in other parts of Latin America.
Moreover, trying to advance the ball on so many different fronts simultaneously carries its own risks. In particular, it provides governments that are opposed to some or all of Washington's agenda with an obvious way to respond: they can "just say no." In Taming American Power, I labeled this strategy "balking," (a term suggested to me by Seyom Brown) and I argued that it was a common way for weak states to prevent a dominant power from imposing its will. In a world where the United States remains significantly stronger than any other power, few states want to get into a direct test of strength with Washington. But American power is not so vast that it can simply snap its fingers and expect everyone to do its bidding.
Why? Because exercising leverage is itself costly, and the more you do in one area, the more latitude that opponents somewhere else are likely to have. There are still only 24 hours in a day, and the White House can't devote equal attention and political capital to every issue. So states that don’t want to do what Obama wants can delay, dither, obfuscate, drag their feet, or just say no, knowing that the United States doesn’t have the resources, attention span, staying power, or political will to force their compliance now or monitor it afterwards.
An even better tactic (perfected by a number of close U.S. allies) is to pretend to comply with American wishes while blithely going ahead with their own agendas. So NATO allies promise to increase their defense efforts but never manage to do much; Israel promises to stop building settlements but somehow the number of illegal settlers keeps growing, the Palestinians pledge to reform but make progress at a glacial pace, Pakistan suppresses jihadis with one hand and subsidizes them with the other, Iran agrees to negotiate but continues to enrich, China says it will crack down on copyright violations but the problem remains pervasive, and so on.
In On War, Carl von Clausewitz famously described what he termed the "friction" of warfare; the accumulated set of minor obstacles and accidents that made even the simplest of objectives difficult to achieve. The same problem can arise in foreign policy: even when everything is simple, "the simplest things are very difficult." States that oppose what the United States is trying to do have lots of ways of increasing that friction without triggering an actual crisis. In other words, Obama's foreign policy may fail not because he loses some dramatic confrontation, but simply because a whole array of weaker actors manage to grind him down. In this scenario he doesn't get vanquished, just "nibbled to death by ducks."
Obama took office with energy, a new vision, an experienced team, and lengthy "to-do" list. But one can already sense the forward motion slowing, which will encourage opponents to dig their heels in deeper and throw more obstacles in his path. If the administration keeps trying to do everything at once, there is a real danger that their actual foreign policy achievements will be quite modest. The sooner they decide which goals they think they can actually bring off, and focus their energies there, the more likely they are to succeed. And a few tangible successes now might actually make the other items on their agenda easier to accomplish later on.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
opponents are within USG -- a thousand cuts
At least a 100 cuts -- one for each senator.
e.g. After the F-22 victory for the Admin., the military-industrial-congressional complex wants to have its way with Missile defense and RRW -- even though these are technically stupid initiatives that only serve contractors and senate rep's bringing $ to states:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2009/07/27/senate_warns_against_concessions_on_nuclear_treaty/
Senate warns against concessions on nuclear treaty
By Jim Abrams, Associated Press Writer | July 27, 2009
WASHINGTON --The Senate is making it clear to the Obama administration that it will look askance at concessions, particularly on missile defense, that the United States might make to conclude a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
In several resolutions included in a defense budget bill passed late Thursday, the Senate went on record endorsing a missile defense system being considered for Eastern Europe that Russia detests, and warning against any arms treaty with Russia that puts limits on that system.
President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, meeting in Moscow earlier this month, set a goal of reducing strategic warheads by about a third, to a range of 1,500 to 1,675. The intent would be to come up with a nuclear arms reduction pact to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires Dec. 5.
But treaties must be ratified by 67 senators or two-thirds of those present, giving the Senate's 40 Republicans, with their traditional advocacy of a strong nuclear deterrent, rare leverage.
Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., won voice approval Thursday of a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that the START follow-on treaty not include limits on ballistic missile defense, space capabilities or advanced conventional weapons. It also called on the president to report on the administration's plans to enhance the safety, security and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons.
On another voice vote, the Senate endorsed a resolution by Sessions and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., expressing support for a ground-based midcourse missile defense (GMD) system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Alternative sites should be considered only if they are equally capable of protecting the United States and Europe from future long-range Iranian missiles, it said.
Lieberman said the resolutions "are our way of sending a message both to the administration and to the Russians." He said he is open to options other than Poland and the Czech Republic as sites for a missile defense system, including missile defense cooperation with Russia, but "not at the cost of in any way diminishing our security."
Obama has made no final decision on proceeding with the Poland-Czech plan, proposed during the George W. Bush administration. Russian leaders say deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe is a direct threat to their country. They suggested that progress on an arms agreement could hinge on the U.S. giving up its missile defense plan.
Sessions said he was concerned the administration was pursuing alternatives to the Poland-Czech proposal "as part of a grand strategy to reset relations with Russia and conclude a follow-on to the START nuclear reduction agreement."
He said he was baffled by Russian "bluster."
"Perhaps this is a way they think they can extract concessions from the United States as a bargaining chip," Sessions said.
Conservatives would not be overly concerned about the numbers in a new arms reduction treaty if the administration doesn't look like it is abandoning missile defense and other areas such as weapons development, said Stephen Flanagan, an international security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Another factor is that the urgency Cold War arms talks had no longer exists, said Gary Schmitt, director of advanced strategic studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
"The Obama administration can overestimate how much momentum there is for doing anything in this area," Schmitt said.
Schmitt said senators will question any treaty that comes to them before the Pentagon completes a congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review. That report on nuclear threats and deterrent capabilities is due by the end of 2010.
"There are chances of ratification," said Ariel Cohen, senior research fellow and Russia expert at the Heritage Foundation, "provided the administration does not capitulate" on the European defense system.
In 1999, during the Clinton administration, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty after its supporters couldn't muster even a simple majority.
Senators contended the treaty, which the United States informally abides by, lacked adequate means of verification. Obama has expressed interest in trying to get it ratified by the Senate.
On the one hand, these initiatives (and Obama's own charisma) have gone some distance toward repairing America's tarnished international image. A recent survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project showed a significant improvement in America's image around the world, and especially among U.S. allies in Europe. Chalk one up for a democratic system: holding regular elections does allow a country to get rid of incompetent leaders and hope for something better.
This is a tendentious statement and implies that U.S allies in Europe like us based on our leaders' competency. This is obviously not the case. The fact is, our leaders should be acting in our interests, which will sometimes cause the Europeans to not like us.
A realist should be analyzing the merits of specific policies, not making broad generalizations based on how the Europeans feel.
You mean, like cutting off all funding for Israel?
What has Israel done for me lately worth $5billion/year?
In other words, Obama badly needs at least one foreign policy success, because, despite a lot of hype, every one of his initiatives has so far been a failure, other than in getting Western Europeans to like us better, and therefore making it more pleasant for US liberals to go on their summer holidays.
These failures, combined with the millions of jobs lost under his administration so far, have pushed his approval ratings under 50% and will almost certainly combine to make him into a Carter clone unless things change drastically.
e.g. After the F-22 victory for the Admin., the military-industrial-congressional complex wants to have its way with Missile defense and RRW -- even though these are technically stupid initiatives that only serve contractors and senate rep's bringing $ to states:
A number of the Missile Defense technologies have actually done quite well in testing - the Aegis system, for example, has had a number of good hits.
As for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, something like it is an inevitability. Nuclear warheads don't last forever, and the current ones are at least 20 years old.
Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., won voice approval Thursday of a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that the START follow-on treaty not include limits on ballistic missile defense, space capabilities or advanced conventional weapons.
Good. I don't see why our technical capabilities for response should be inhibited just because the Russians made a poor choice in choosing to build the next generation of ICBMs rather than refurbishing their SSBN fleet or building a new fleet of strategic bombers.
They suggested that progress on an arms agreement could hinge on the U.S. giving up its missile defense plan.
That's what they're saying now. They keep fluctuating back and forth between that and a position where they say, "We're not going to trade for something for a nuclear drawdown".
Missile defense has not had one realistic test with countermeasures in a surprise setting.
It is not ready for primetime. Test it first. REALISTICALLY.
Here is what many Nobel Laureates have to say -- I'll go with them:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/scientists-letter-to-obama.pdf
Missile defense, like the F-22, will be hard to kill as it yields a lot of $$$$ for contractors and for the Pentagon. (Can you say “Raytheon”?) But it is an absolute technical and political boondoggle — make no mistake.
Aegis is OK technically -- but not against countermeasures.
Unfortunately, our pork-friendly senate will make sure taxpayer money keeps flowing to Raytheon and other contractors and military establishments in various other states.
Minimum wage earners are being taxed so that Raytheon fat-cats can sell us a system that does not work and has never been tested realistically — and even if it did it would do diddly-squat for a truck or boat nuke.
The real danger of missile defense is that our future political leaders may actually think it works and implement provocative policies which, even if they don’t invite a real test of the system, may result in some asymmetrical responses for which a missile defense is totally ineffective.
A leaky missile defense system — and all such defenses will be leaky at some level — would likely encourage Iran to build even more missiles and nukes (to be sure that some got through the ineffective “defense”) and to perfect other method of delivering the warhead (e.g. via boat, truck, from a ship via a SRBM, or via a cruise missile…etc…).
Missile defense is subject to the “Fallacy of the Last Move.”
Now, the untested RRW plan is plain stupid.
I do not buy the argument for making new (supposedly "more reliable") nuclear warheads - allegedly without ever testing them.
First off, there is nothing wrong with the current warheads. Hello? They are safe, secure, and reliable, and experts and relevant government agencies agree that their nuclear components will be just fine for the next roughly 70 years.
In fact, the preoccupation with reliability misses the point: The inherently psychological deterrent value of massively destructive nuclear weapons is not proportional to their reliability, which is about 98 percent for the current warheads. Since it's being advertised that the new warheads would be fielded without testing, how will we ever know their true reliability? In fact, for this reason, in the eyes of an adversary, untested new warheads may even hold marginally less deterrent value than the current tested ones.
Yet if the proposed new warheads have to be tested, they would break the worldwide moratorium on testing, making it more difficult to stop other nations from doing the same. As far as US security is concerned, the proposed program to develop new nuclear warheads is a lose-lose proposition.
Let's put it this way: Would you fly on an airliner that had never had a test flight, even though its aerodynamics may be well understood? So why would you -- or more importantly our enemies -- believe untested new weapons would work better than the tested ones we have?
On the other hand, if the proposed RRWs are eventually tested, it will be more difficult to stop other adversarial nations from doing the same. Either way, the RRW program is detrimental to U.S. security vis-à-vis proliferation and deterrence calculus.
Missile defense has not had one realistic test with countermeasures in a surprise setting.
Bullshit.
Here is what many Nobel Laureates have to say -- I'll go with them:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/scientists-letter-to-obama.pdf
Who cares what a bunch of nobel laureates say about the program? Were they involved?
Missile defense, like the F-22, will be hard to kill as it yields a lot of $$$$ for contractors and for the Pentagon. (Can you say “Raytheon”?) But it is an absolute technical and political boondoggle — make no mistake.
I'm not the one making the mistake. That would be you.
Aegis is OK technically -- but not against countermeasures.
Wrong. And I notice you've been rather evasive on what these "counter-measures" are.
The truth is that discrimination systems have been outpacing counter-measures for a while now. The modern SAMs, for example, aren't fooled by anything short of towed decoys these days, and that's changing.
A leaky missile defense system — and all such defenses will be leaky at some level — would likely encourage Iran to build even more missiles and nukes (to be sure that some got through the ineffective “defense”) and to perfect other method of delivering the warhead (e.g. via boat, truck, from a ship via a SRBM, or via a cruise missile…etc…).
Once you build the basic facilities, it is relatively easy to rapidly scale up the number of interceptors available for use. That's part of the reason why Obama's slash in funding for GBI was so idiotic - the facilities had already been largely built, but now they were going to sit empty.
Besides, ABM isn't just for stopping a full-spectrum attack; it's designed to prevent accidental attacks as well. Meaning that if, say, the Chinese or Russians were to accidently fire an ICBM at the US, the US could shoot it down and wait to see if they followed up, rather than simply responding to the destruction of a US city.
As for "other methods", that's the point - the destroy the viability of long-range missiles as a delivery mechanism for nuclear warheads. Missile technology has gotten far too cheap and widespread, and greatly weakening it with ABM pushes the ball back into the US's court (since we can afford to build fleets of bombers and SSBNs).
First off, there is nothing wrong with the current warheads. Hello? They are safe, secure, and reliable, and experts and relevant government agencies agree that their nuclear components will be just fine for the next roughly 70 years.
Name one who will say that the whole warhead is viable for 70 years (and I'm not talking about the nuclear material in the warhead - I'm talking about the warhead itself). If you quote the Center for Defense Information I'll laugh my ass off.
Since it's being advertised that the new warheads would be fielded without testing, how will we ever know their true reliability?
All the more reason for allowing under-ground nuclear testing (and preventing the ratification of that idiotic Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty).
who cares what a bunch of Nobel laureates say....
"who cares what a bunch of Nobel laureates say..."
Nice....hahahahaha!!
Well, I would imagine a lot more people
than care what you say.
THAT is for sure.
Don't know hat Countermeasures are? -- of course not, you must have drunk the missile defense kool-aid:
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/nmd.cfm
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/missile_defense/technical_issues/countermeasures-video-a.html
How about tumbling warheads and the stupid Euro "shield"?
http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064002009.pdf
"Name one who will say that the whole warhead is viable for 70 years..."
hmmmmmmm...let us see...how about the NNSA and the JASON group dumbass?
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf
Get a life man.
If you are ignorant of technical details, might I suggest you STFU?
It is fine to think technology can save you from everything -- especially if you are not a scientist or engineer, as some of us are.
"who cares what a bunch of Nobel laureates say..."
Nice....hahahahaha!!
Well, I would imagine a lot more people
than care what you say.
Hey dumbshit, if I quote a Nobel Prize winner in Economics on whether or not String Theory is accurate, wouldn't I be just as full of shit as you are now?
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/nmd.cfm
Do you even read your own links? That report said nothing about whether or not counter-measures were effective - it was all about how they wanted flexibility in examining the technical aspects of Nuclear Missile Defense, and that they wanted the reports on Boost-Intercept to be declassified.
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf
Hey fuckwit, did you actually read that report before citing it from god-know-where? It talks about the aging of the plutonium (which I'm not disputing), not about the aging and viability of the warheads. Try again.
Get a life man.
That's pretty rich coming from someone who always seems to have the time to bust out ten million posts (several of them cookie-cutter essays) whenever Walt brings up Israel.
Physicists are smarter than you
remember who got to the bottom of the challenger disaster? Richard Feynman -- a theoretical physicist.
Dumbass
remember who got to the bottom of the challenger disaster? Richard Feynman -- a theoretical physicist.
Dumbass
Did you forget the part about how Feynman was part of a commission that received a whole host of reports on the problem, including from the rocket people at Thiokol who came up with the engines? Do you have any proof, any at all, that these guys were involved in anything similar?
In fact, the preoccupation with reliability misses the point: The inherently psychological deterrent value of massively destructive nuclear weapons is not proportional to their reliability, which is about 98 percent for the current warheads.
Exactly. Our enemies don't know exactly how bad a US counterstrike would be, but they can expect it would very likely be very bad. They will not start a war if we give them any reasonable chance to sidestep.
That's about as much as we can hope for from our nuclear weapons. We try for more than that, we sometimes threaten to start a global war that will kill everybody, pretending we're insane so our saner bargaining opponents will concede stuff they wouldn't have otherwise. This is stupid on our part.
Since the actual details of the nuclear program do not actually matter as long as the result is horrendous, RRW is entirely irrelevant. (Unless of course we actually do get into the sort of nuclear war where we care about the technical details.)
Since it's being advertised that the new warheads would be fielded without testing, how will we ever know their true reliability? In fact, for this reason, in the eyes of an adversary, untested new warheads may even hold marginally less deterrent value than the current tested ones.
Entirely irrelevant.
Put it this way -- any foreign leader whose negotiating strategy takes into account the possibility that we will nuke him and that he will survive because our missiles and warheads are not reliable, is a desperate foreign leader. We can try not to drive foreign leaders to such desperation. And if they do get that desperate anyway, we can't much predict what they'll do and the technical details are not likely to influence them much.
RRW is entirely irrelevant except that it keeps some of our technical people busy on makework and they might come up with something useful while they're supposed to be working on RRW.
And of course there's the effect on the budget.
dont forget the cold civil war in america...
the govt isnt a monolith that's being nibbled at only by foreign ducks... maybe there are factions within the government itself that are working against each other.
that's where asimov and his theory of government by psychohistorians (the foundation books) fell down: asimov didnt take it far enough... (i admit i could never read asimov's books... that is, read them a dozen times apiece... i must have read some of his stuff, but it was such a chore that i didnt live inside the books for weeks at a time)
donald kingsbury wrote a peculiar book that took the idea of psychohistory farther, and the main point, that asimov apparently overlooked, is that factions will develop within the guild of psychohistorians, and these factions will begin counterpredicting each other and nullify each others' predictions and covert actions.
what develops is stagnation, gridlock, decay, "cold civil war" and eventually, overt rebellion.
Asimov's "Foundation" novels — the most famous science-fiction trilogy between "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" — described a new science of social behavior called psychohistory. Mixing psychology with math, psychohistory hijacked the methods of physics to precisely predict the future course of human events.
Today, Asimov's vision is no longer wholly fiction. His psychohistory exists in a loose confederation of research enterprises seeking equations that capture patterns in human behavior. These enterprises go by different names and treat different aspects of the issue. But they all share a goal of better understanding the present in order to foresee the future, and possibly help shape it.
Asimov's ‘Foundation’ theories on society move from fiction to academia Jewish World Review July 16, 2004
so aumann gets a nobel prize for his game theory (are aumann's crays behind the constant stream of lies that are supposedly intended to preserve israel by suckering america into fighting israel's wars?) three days after elbaradei gets the nobel peace prize for sticking to his guns despite the overwhelming volume of lies pumped out by the zionist media... lies that eventually got america into war with iraq.
anyhow, due to whatever factors, the israeli american AEI/PNAC psychohistorians' project is not turning out so pretty good... so the psychohistorians have to junk their computers and go back to the drawing board, and revert back to "might makes right"... which requires abandoning even the pretense of morals...
and here we are, bereft of "benevolent global hegemony"... which is probably, at the root, bill kristol's euphemism for the global guild of psychohistorians who, in the best of all possible neocon worlds, would be covertly running everything.
thank goodness these wars will enhance the fallback position: looting.
donald kingsbury wrote a peculiar book
Thank you! I want to read anything Kingsbury writes but I missed that one. Kingsbury! I'll read it this week.
I think Brett would surely like Kingsbury's The Moon Goddess and the Son which among other things considers details of a sophisticated missile defense system. A rich society that has space travel and lots of space-based solar power writes a blank check for missile defense and makes it work....
MAD, the moon goddess and missile defense...
"A rich society that has space travel and lots of space-based solar power writes a blank check for missile defense and makes it work..."
...except for other delivery systems, accidents and the random neocon who thinks missile defense will allow israeli america to do nuke first strikes on russia and china and get away with it...
havent read "moon goddess" for a year or so... time to read it again, i spose...
the thing that stuck with me, from that book, was the destructiveness and futility inherent in MAD... MAD is immoral, based on game theory, which supposedly proves that trusting people is fatal... but MAD is fatal, too, eventually, and meanwhile, you're wasting resources that should have been spent doing something useful.
MAD and game theory are destructive of trust, trust facilitates cooperation, and cooperation will become more and more necessary if we're gonna adjust to peak oil and global warming without killing billions of people outright.
too bad the game theorists have the upper hand right now... and this psychohistory business is the ultimate practice of game theory, game theory so powerful that people are manipulated into "proper" behavior without being aware that they're being manipulated.
when game theory is coupled to the neocons' renunciation of morals, and their belief in nuke first strikes, we're in a hell of a pickle.
.
one of the most intriguing things about "psychohistorical crisis" is the disappearance of the middle eastern religions, which happened so far back in history that there's no record of what happened to cause their disappearance, although there's no evidence of nuke war ever having occured other than hiroshima and nagasaki.
it could be that kingsbury thinks those religions are too childish to survive.
in "moon goddess", once kaissel had been...
...put through the russian wringer by limon barnes, kaissel came to the conclusion that the only hope for sanity lay in a real system of justice in the soviet union, implying that he believed morals and a concept of justice had survived in the russian people despite the brutality of the soviet system, and despite the centuries of brutality before the soviets.
now we americans find ourselves dominated by people whose only moral principle seems to be "might makes right", and these people are busily corrupting our own justice system... and this new neocon "justice" system seems to be headed straight towards something that will, in the end, be a duplicate of the old soviet union's police state.
the basic ideas of government by psychohistory...
1. you must have a reasonably truthful account of history... these accounts of history will be used to test and calibrate mathematical expressions that are developed to predict and manipulate human behavior... aka, "future history".
2. you need sophisticated mathematical descriptions of human behavior.
3. if your history is truthful and your math is sophisticated enough, you can predict trends in mass human behavior, although you will still be unable to predict behavior of individual humans.
4. you can spot unwanted trends in mass human behavior hundreds of years before they become problems, and head them off with a minimum and undetectable application of force.
5. your predictions and even the guild of psychohistorians itself must be kept secret, lest the resistance counterpredict and nullify your predictions.
6. the public will be fed lies tailored to produce the desired response.
.
so given the value of truthful accounts of history, it's probable that there are historians that know the whole story of, for instance, 9/11.
the chance of the truth being acknowledged by any of the responsible parties approaches zero.
anyhow, it seems likely that many of the ducks...
doing the nibbling are americans who despise the neocons and their works.
The following scientists and engineers say Missile defense is untested and unwise -- yet we are still considering it!:
see the full letter:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/scientists-letter-to-obama.pdf
John Ahearne #
Lecturer in Public Policy Studies, Duke University
Philip W. Anderson *
Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus, Princeton University
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Lewis M. Branscomb #
Aetna Professor in Public Policy and Corporate Management, Emeritus; Harvard University, John F.
Kennedy School of Government
Val L. Fitch * +
Professor of Physics, Princeton University
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Jerome I. Friedman * +
Institute Professor and Professor of Physics, MIT
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Richard L. Garwin * #
Adjunct Professor of Physics, Columbia University
National Medal of Science Laureate
Sheldon Lee Glashow *
Arthur G.B. Metcalf Professor of the Sciences, Boston University
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Kurt Gottfried
Professor of Physics Emeritus, Cornell University
David J. Gross * #
Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Nobel Laureate in Physics
David Hammer
J. Carlton Ward Professor of Nuclear Energy Engineering, Cornell University
Ernest Henley * +
Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of Washington
Daniel Kleppner + #
Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Leon Lederman *
Professor of Science, Illinois Institute of Technology
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Douglas D. Osheroff *
Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Stanford University
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Norman F. Ramsey * + #
Higgins Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Harvard University
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Myriam Sarachik * +
Distinguished Professor of Physics, City College of the City University of New York
Andrew M. Sessler * +
Director Emeritus, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
George Trilling * +
Senior Faculty Physicist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Steven Weinberg *
Jack S. Josey - Welch Foundation Chair in Science and Professor of Physics, University of Texas at
Austin
Nobel Laureate in Physics
Robert Wilson * #
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Nobel Laureate in Physics
_________
* Member, National Academy of Sciences
# Member, National Academy of Engineering
+ Past President, American Physical Society
I can point out several of those, particularly physicists, who haven't actually worked on Missile Defense. Can you name any of them who have?
Dumbass, read my response above...and get a technical education.
Clint, try to be polite.
There's an old saying that goes "You have a right to your own opinion but you don't have a right to your own reality.".
That saying is false.
Nowadays there are whole big groups of people who all believe stuff together, and they reinforce each other's beliefs, and they create a reality for themselves. There's no disputing such realities until some dramatic test happens.
If we actually build a missile defense and then somebody attacks and it succeeds or it fails, the hour after it succeeds or fails is a decision point, that says who was right. Until then it's belief.
We have various sorts of more-or-less-objective facts informing our beliefs. But those facts are in doubt. Remember too that there are secrets in the world. Imagine that somehow we did have a missile defense that worked. Our theorists might very well decide that if people believed in it, it would be destabilising. If people thought it worked then other nations would try to build them, and they'd have an incentive to do something about it before our derense was complete, etc. They might easily decide that it was necessary to present the appearance that it didn't work after all. And a failed test could actually be a successful test, if they aimed to miss by precisely so much in a particular direction and they did....
For all you know there might be a whole lot of physics that's classified, that civilians don't know about because somebody decided it was in the national interest that we all believe in incorrect physics. Maybe with the real physics we could have cheap energy and all sorts of wonderful things, but political theorists decided it would be too destabilising....
Well, that doesn't seem plausible to me. But I'm not in a position to know. There are secrets. A lot of people know stuff that they're forbidden to tell you. Maybe a whole lot of what they know is wrong, and maybe they don't get a lot of chances to test it. You don't even know what it is they think they know that you don't, it's a secret.
Brett has the right to his own reality. It doesn't make him a dumbass that given a whle smorgasbord of possible things to believe, many of them conflicting, he has chosen a different menu than you have.
Some of the existing data about current developments in missile defense is disinformation, lies put out to confuse people. Maybe it all is. Maybe the US government is trying to make people think it doesn't work -- independent of whatever the reality happens to be.
For myself, I don't want to find out whether we have a missile defense that works. I don't think it's worth the money. I live something like 15 miles from the Pentagon, though, and if DC gets nuked I'll probably have several seconds to think about what a fool I was to oppose it. My wife tells me we should move to canada and I'd do it if I could get a decent job there.
Why physicists' opinions matter
Fair enough -- but basic physics is not classified.
And countermeasures as mentioned above have never been tested against.
http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/nmd.cfm
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/missile_defense/technical_issues/countermeasures-video-a.html
http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064002009.pdf
Any nation that can make an ICBM can make countermeasures to fool MD.
Besides the technical aspect MD is wrong policy: it encourages our leaders to take bad risks thinking that it works. (Why even have it if you don't think it works?!)
A leaky missile defense system — and all such defenses will be leaky at some level — would likely encourage Iran to build even more missiles and nukes (to be sure that some got through the ineffective “defense”) and to perfect other method of delivering the warhead (e.g. via boat, truck, from a ship via a SRBM, or via a cruise missile…etc…).
Missile defense is subject to the “Fallacy of the Last Move.”
The "fallacy of the last move" is the idea that either side can do something, gain an advantage thereby, and the other side will somehow fail to respond, and let that advantage therefore be permanent. Iran is not a dumbass, unfortunately.
The most prominent example of the "fallacy of the last move" was when at the time the SALT I Treaty was being negotiated, the United States had to decide whether or not to include its new technology of multiple, independently targetable warheads on each missile, in the negotiation.
And Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon decided at that time that this was such a tremendous advantage in which we had a substantial lead over the Soviets; we had figured out how to put three or five or ten separately targetable warheads on each missile - the Soviets hadn't figured it out yet, and so we refused to negotiate about it. We wouldn't put that technology into the SALT I framework. And it was the "fallacy of the last move." We thought we have an advantage, why should we give it up. Of course, within five years, the Soviet Union had duplicated the same technology, and then they proceeded to deploy it in even larger quantities than we had deployed it, more missiles with many warheads on each one. And of course we started to wring our hands and say, "Horrors - what has happened here?"
Now we're terribly vulnerable because the Soviets have all these multiple warheads on their missiles. It was the "fallacy of the last move." Whatever made us think that we could do this and the Soviets would then allow us to have that as the last move rather than responding. The cruise missiles are a current example. The United States has a five-year lead on the Soviet Union in cruise missiles. We're deploying them initially by the hundreds; we aim to deploy them by the thousands. Our assumption is somehow the Soviets are going to let us get away with that as a last move. The Soviets of course will catch up. In five years they'll have as many cruise missiles as we do, and we'll be wringing our hands in agony at that time about, "How did we get into this predicament? What are we going to do now that the Soviet Union has 5000 sea-based cruise missiles off our coast capable of demolishing the United States?"
The same holds true of MD.
Once a beautiful MD w/ bells and whistles is made, Iran will send a boat or cruise missile over. Good luck MD.
I think a move to Canada is a smart idea.
Postol is full of shit. For one thing, warheads (particularly once they separate from the missile) move differently than balloons and/or chaff, and the interceptors can detect that and respond accordingly. That's why, as I mentioned, chaff doesn't work anymore for most SAMs - the interceptors can tell the difference.
That's typical for Postol, though - from what I've heard, he has a history of making false statements about Missile Defense, among other things, that can then only be completely disproven by revealing classified information.
The same holds true of MD.
Once a beautiful MD w/ bells and whistles is made, Iran will send a boat or cruise missile over. Good luck MD.
Better than missiles, which are harder to call back. As I pointed out, Missile Defense was never about making the US completely invulnerable to nuclear attacks - it was about making missile technology as a delivery mechanism for nuclear strikes ineffective.
Besides, cruise missiles don't have the range to hit the US, and boats can be detected.
"Postol is full of shit. For one thing, warheads (particularly once they separate from the missile) move differently than balloons and/or chaff, and the interceptors can detect that and respond accordingly."
Obviously you are an idiot.
In space balloons and warheads travel at the same speed and anti-simulation makes it impossible to tell the difference using radar.
see the video since you cannot understand words:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=realimpact/ucs/sdi_animation/ucs_mds.smi
Fair enough -- but basic physics is not classified.
Irrelevant.
And countermeasures as mentioned above have never been tested against.
Utterly irrelevant.
Nobody wants a nuclear war. Nobody will intentionally start a nuclear war unless they feel like all their alternatives are even worse.
The "fallacy of the last move" is the idea that either side can do something, gain an advantage thereby, and the other side will somehow fail to respond, and let that advantage therefore be permanent.
Here's the way I see it. There will eventually be a nuclear war for one stupid reason or another, even though it's in nobody's interest.
1. A nuclear power nukes a nonnuclear power. The world will be appalled.
2. Two nuclear powers fight, both lose. The world will be appalled.
3. Two nuclear powers fight, one does not lose, and that one is not the USA. The world will be appalled.
In each case, it appears that the loser cannot respond and the outcome, whatever it is, is permanent. But there's the rest of the world to consider. Faced with the reality of nuclear carnage, the rest of the world will not accept that there can be another nuclear war and will impose disarmament. Whatever advantage anybody might have thought they'd get from the war will be gone, leaving only losses.
4. The USA fights another nuclear power and does not lose. The world will be appalled.
But americans in this case may look at what happens to the other nation and what could have happened to them and decide that they cannot accept disarmament. So the USA becomes some sort of pariah state and other nations also do not disarm, fearing us. I can't predict that one so well.
I could be wrong. If I'm wrong and there is never a nuclear war, I won't live to find out my mistake.
Dumbass, read my response above...and get a technical education.
Presumably someone with a technical education would have enough literacy to read their own goddamn links.
I don't particularly give a shit about your appeal to authority. Why don't you show why I should give a shit about whether a bunch of Nobel Prize winners (including physicists) is relevant towards the viability of Missile Defense? Did they actually do a study on it, or did they just sign a petition that ended up being passed their way? Considering that it has a couple professors whose specialty is in "public policy" (whatever the fuck that means), I'm inclined to believe the latter.
I actually don't care whether you give a shit or not actually.
I just think your asinine posts are a useful foil for me to show my fellow citizens that any arguments for RRW and MDA are crap, and that they would reduce the security of the US.
Keep going buddy -- I mean dumbass -- you are doing really well in showing why RRW and MDA are stupid like their advocates.
I loved your quoting the test in which an interceptor was never even launched -- priceless. I could not have found that myself.
xoxoxoxox
I actually don't care whether you give a shit or not actually.
That's pretty fucking funny, considering that you bother to keep responding to my posts. And you tell me to get a life?
I loved your quoting the test in which an interceptor was never even launched -- priceless. I could not have found that myself.
Somehow, I'm not shocked that you missed the fucking point of the test - which showed that the detection system was being tested against counter-measures, and was able to discern against them.
Of course, why would I be shocked that a dumbass who confuses the life of the plutonium with that of the warhead would fail to understand such a simple point?
Keep it going. I find this quite amusing.
conflict of interest -- hello?
Yes, we should get people who are working on missile defense and getting paid $$$$$$$$$$ up the wazzoooo by US taxpayers to tell us if they think what they are doing is smart or whether they prefer virtuous and ethically-correct unemployment instead.
Another good idea, Dumbass.
I'm sure people who are working on missile defense are unbiased about how wonderful it is.
Read this from an expert:
http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064002009.pdf
I can point out several of those, particularly physicists, who haven't actually worked on Missile Defense. Can you name any of them who have?
Considerable selection bias there.
If you are the sort of person who's eligible for a Nobel Prize, and you think that missile defense will not work, you won't go to work on it. Putting your career into a dead-end project that will fail will not advance your career. Instead you will do something that's likely to succeed and help you get your Nobel.
On the other hand if you do bet your career on missile defense then you have a strong incentive to claim it will someday become feasible, and do whatever you can to make that come true.
There are very few physicists who claim that astrology doesn't work who have actually devoted much of their careers to trying to make astrology work....
If missile defense was cheap then I'd say let's just try it and see what happens. I'd be willing to put as much as $30 million a year into it. But it's far, far too expensive for what we hope to get from it even assuming we have no cost overruns and assuming it works.
Missile "Defense"[sic] is a hoax
Missile defense has not had one realistic test with countermeasures in a surprise setting.
Not one.
Never.
Anyone who disagrees please give me the name/date of the test.
Here's one example. Not that I expect that to satisfy you - you'll probably insist that it next show perfect interception rates as well as a "surprise setting" (whatever the fuck that means in terms of testing).
hahahahaha!
nice -- you made my point:
"No interceptor missile was fired in the test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Hawaii, which only involved the system's array of radar and optical sensors."
woohoo! some test!
go dumbass!
ice -- you made my point:
"No interceptor missile was fired in the test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Hawaii, which only involved the system's array of radar and optical sensors."
woohoo! some test!
Hey fuckwit, did you miss the part about the test being that of pitting their detection and discernment systems against counter-measures, and succeeding? You asked for a test against counter-measures, and I gave you one.
Of course, as I said, I don't expect you to simply concede the point, but it's good that you actually read the article to some degree. That puts my evaluation of your reading comprehension somewhere below that of a fifth grader, and above that of a recent illegal immigrant.
I'm sure Iran is quivering knowing that our MDA alleges that it can discern its own countermeasures without an actual test with an interceptor to test the real problem: the hand-off end-game discernment on the kill-vehicle.
This needs to be a red-team blue-team surprise test.
Let's see how that goes.
RRW is not needed -- current Pu pits have a lifetime >85 years:
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf
Hey asshole, that's talking about the plutonium in the warhead, not the lifetime of the warhead itself.
It is talking of the aging of Pu pit.
i.e. The physics-package of the warhead is fine for 1 century.
RRW would redesign the Physics package without ever testing it -- riiiiiight. A stupid idea which would REDUCE the credibility of our deterrent.
In case you are unaware (...it would clearly seem) we already have a warhead lifetime extension program (LEP) as well as a stockpile evaluation program (SEP) which has annually certified the warheads as being safe secure and reliable.
Use google before typing dumbass.
It is talking of the aging of Pu pit.
i.e. The physics-package of the warhead is fine for 1 century.
Go back and read your own goddamn report again - as I've mentioned, at least twice, it was talking about the aging of the plutonium. No mention on the aging of the components that make up the warhead.
Noted: you finally seem to listen in one of your later posts. Have a cookie.
Dumbass,
go to:
http://www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf
and at the bottom of the page it says "pit lifetimes do not at present determine warhead lifetimes."
OK?
No redesign of the physics-package is needed.
The Pu pit of the weapon is A-OK.
If you want to learn more about the terms used I suggest you look at this URL before typing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_package
We are already modifying other components of the warhead as needed at the NNSA. We do not need an RRW, that will be untested. It will HURT our deterrence.
Pu pits are fine -- no RRW needed
You obviously have no experience in nuclear engineering or physics.
We are already extending the life of the warheads -- the point is that Pu pits are fine so no new redesign of the physics-package is needed. At all.
We are already doing what you think we should be doing, dumbass.
By extending the “life,” or time that a weapon can safely and reliably remain in the stockpile without having to be replaced or removed, of a current weapon, NNSA is able to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without producing new weapons or conducting new underground nuclear tests.
Not all weapons and types are the same. NNSA must develop individual life extension programs, sometimes referred to as LEPs, for each weapon type and develop specific solutions to extend the lifetime of each particular warhead or bomb. This includes identifying and correcting potential technical issues with each weapon, and then refurbishing and replacing certain components as necessary. Life extension efforts are intended to extend the lifetime of a warhead or warhead component for an additional 20 to 30 years.
Each facility in NNSA’s nuclear weapons complex contributes to the life extension process. The majority of the physical work on the warhead and bombs is carried out at the Pantex Plant and Y-12 National Security Complex. The Pantex Plant does assembly and disassembly of the warheads and bombs while the Y-12 National Security Complex manufactures, assembles, and disassembles certain key components. The Kansas City Plant’s main mission is to manufacture and procure non-nuclear key components.
The design laboratories – Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories – assess the health of the current stockpile, design the components and systems for the life extension program warheads and bombs, and certify the life extended models when they enter the stockpile.
The Nevada Test Site provides facilities and expertise for experiments used to assess the health of the current stockpile systems and to evaluate proposed component designs for life extension programs.
The Savannah River Site provides tritium gas, an essential and limited life material used in modern warheads.
B61 Life Extension Program
The B61 life extension program extended the life of the B61 Mods 7 and 11 for an additional 20 years by refurbishing the canned subassembly and replacing the associated seals, foam supports, cables and connectors, washers, o-rings, and limited life components.
W76 Life Extension Program
The W76 life extension program will extend the life of the W76 warhead, used in the Navy’s Trident Strategic Weapons System, for an additional 30 years by refurbishing the nuclear explosive package, the arming, firing, and fusing system, the gas transfer system, and associated cables, elastomers, valves, pads, cushions, foam supports, telemetries, and other miscellaneous parts.
We are already extending the life of the warheads -- the point is that Pu pits are fine so no new redesign of the physics-package is needed. At all.
You both agree that the plutonium lasts a good long time without needing to be melted down and purified.
But that isn't the only thing in an explosive device that can go bad. The shaped charges eventually go bad too, don't they? And lubricants go bad, so that joints freeze and things that are supposed to slide don't slide etc.
So warheads need to be refurbished occasionally, and they are.
Isn't RRW about something else? About redesigning the warheads so they'll be different? And the stories about the old warheads aging is just an excuse to make new ones, the argument is that the old ones go bad so we have to get new ones anyway, so why not redesign them?
I haven't looked at the details because it looks to me like something that just doesn't matter. The old warheads are a fine deterrent. The new ones will be too. It's a lot of money for the same deterrent. but if they want to spend the money and they can get the funding, it's just one more slab of pork and not nearly the biggest.
Where RRW might matter is after the deterrent fails and we actually have a war, and it could make some difference in how efficiently we destroy our enemy and pollute the world with radioisotopes and stuff like that. It makes a difference in what happens after we have already lost. Nobody wins a nuclear war, everybody loses. I'm just not real interested in guessing which kind of nuke is better at blowing stuff up after we get into a nuclear war. Again, I live around 15 miles from the Pentagon and it's unlikely I'll be around to see how thoroughly we hit the enemy back.
We are already extending the life of the warheads -- the point is that Pu pits are fine so no new redesign of the physics-package is needed. At all.
It's good to know that you're finally getting to the fucking point, and realizing that I was talking about the warhead, not the plutonium.
By extending the “life,” or time that a weapon can safely and reliably remain in the stockpile without having to be replaced or removed, of a current weapon, NNSA is able to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent without producing new weapons or conducting new underground nuclear tests.
It's good to know that your google skills are intact.
B61 Life Extension Program
The B61 life extension program extended the life of the B61 Mods 7 and 11 for an additional 20 years by refurbishing the canned subassembly and replacing the associated seals, foam supports, cables and connectors, washers, o-rings, and limited life components.
Good. That said, there are other reasons for replacing the old warheads.
The point about testing is noted. I also think that deploying a new set of warheads without testing, and pretending that they've somehow got it down pat, is a joke - which is why I think the US should perform underground testing again.
W76 Life Extension Program
The W76 life extension program will extend the life of the W76 warhead, used in the Navy’s Trident Strategic Weapons System, for an additional 30 years by refurbishing the nuclear explosive package, the arming, firing, and fusing system, the gas transfer system, and associated cables, elastomers, valves, pads, cushions, foam supports, telemetries, and other miscellaneous parts.
Good. Now, if only you had actually pulled this out at the beginning, instead of dancing the fuck around claiming that the aging of the plutonium was the issue I was talking about rather than that of the warhead components themselves.
"...which is why I think the US should perform underground testing again."
great -- good luck with that. Perhaps it will happen in the United States of Brett.
J Thomas -- thank you.
You hit the nail on the head.
Sorry I don't tolerate fools like Brett as well as you do!
But I don't like my taxes being wasted, be it on Israel, RRW or NMD. These are huge wastes.
I'll go with the experts quoted below that RRW is not needed.
I think we can safely dismiss the views of anyone who dismisses the views of experts and noble laureates. And someone who is unversed in even basic nuclear physics to know the difference between Pu material and the actual pit assembly in the physics-package of the warhead.
Good day gentlemen!
Sorry I don't tolerate fools like Brett as well as you do!
I don't consider Brett a fool. He's very well read on a number of topics, and he reasons well from the data he believes in.
The trouble is only that he tends to believe official sources whether they're plausible or not, and he tends to suppose that traditional US thinking will still apply in the coming years.
He's in a whole lot of company on that.
See, US nuclear policy started with us having all the nukes and we argued about whether to nuke russia and couldn't bring ourselves do to it -- partly because we didn't have enough nukes then and we couldn't get enough nukes.
Then the russians had nukes too, and it was like gunfighters in the old wild west. Whoever shot first had the chance to kill the enemy completely before they could shoot back. That was a bad unstable game.
Ever since then, the general rule for that line of thought was that we had to use whatever technology was there. We don't get to choose what technology somebody else gets, and if they get something we can't counter they might nuke us and get away with it. So we have to develop everything first. Whether it's something we actually want or not. If it's a technology that trumps what we're already doing, and it's possible, then somebody will do it to us unless we get it first.
As long as we can't stop other nations from nuking us, the best we can do is to make sure we can nuke them back after they nuke us. That way we don't have to nuke them first.
But if we can stop them from nuking us and they can't stop us from nuking them, then we're in a great bargaining position if there's ever anything we want from them.
It's a technological mindset gone crazy. Game theory applied with inhuman rules. In reality, if you get into a nuclear war and you get nuked *even a little bit*, you lose. Never mind how much worse the other guy got it, if you lose even one city you didn't win.
We have spent many billions of dollars on the assumption that we will face an enemy who is utterly crazy but who will follow a particular set of inhuman logical rules. We have promised to follow those same rules to keep this hypothetical enemy from "winning" by those rules. And we try to be the first to develop new technology that would make the whole system fall apart -- because if we don't do it somebody else will.
I imagine a world where there are lots and lots of cheap breeder reactors, pumping out cheap energy and making plutonium. It doesn't make sense that the world will ignore the only cheap nuclear energy just because it makes nuclear weapons easy. Lots of breeder reactors, lots of nations that could make nukes easily if they wanted to. But they don't.
And if a couple of nations get into an argument where they might threaten each other with nukes, twenty or thirty other nations tell them to settle it without nukes. They don't want a nation that settled a dispute with nukes for a neighbor, and they will make sure that no nation which does that will "win" a war. So if you want to "win" a nuclear war you have to bomb whole lot of nations all at the same time and then you can live alone in the middle of a radioactive wasteland.
It doesn't take "missile defense", it doesn't take "second strike", it doesn't take a giant investment. All it takes is the international recognition that the best nuclear weapons get you is an expensive way to keep the other guy from winning, and that all the expense offers no way to win anything worth having, and that it isn't so very expensive to keep the other guy from winning.
Brett might feel like this is a stupid and irresponsible approach, that the only way to keep the other guy from winning is to keep on running in that technological squirrel-cage and forever spend the money to stay ahead of all competitors. A lot of americans think that. If the time comes that the big majority think my way, then we'll try it out and find out whether we get nuked. That's really the only way to test the idea.
Some theorists think that MAD stops working when you have too many participants. If we can't depend on a bunch of potential nuclear powers to police themselves, another possibility would be for us to get control of the whole world and inspect everywhere to make sure nobody's making nukes. We could try that and see if it works.
We can't try both at once. My approach has the advantage that it's cheap and easy, but it has the disadvantage that if it fails we don't get to try the other way. Getting control of the whole world has the disadvantage that it's very very expensive and tiresome and risky, but if it fails then the nations that survive us can still try my way.
MDA waste of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
see the video on how US government is wasting your $$$$$$$:
http://stream.realimpact.net/rihurl.ram?file=realimpact/ucs/sdi_animation/ucs_mds.smi
from:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/missile_defense/technical_issues/countermeasures-video-a.html
Gentlemen,
I am unfamiliar with the missile defense program (though honestly doubtful of its efficacy), I have, however, worked for >decade within our nuclear weapons complex. (No longer, however)
I generally agree with the view that there is nothing wrong with the current warheads and that the programs we have in place now are sufficient for their upkeep indefinitely. We _already_ do a lot of upkeep on our warheads. Further, the delivery vehicles are considerably more unreliable than the warheads we designed. So one must address the weakest link in the weapons _system_ : that weakest link is not, by far, the warheads.
Another colleague has weighed in already publicly so let me just quote him (Robert Peurifoy, the former vice president of technical support at Sandia National Laboratories):
"The present nuclear weapon stockpile contains eight or so nuclear weapon types. That population has enjoyed perhaps 100 successful yield tests. These weapons have benefited from a test base of perhaps 1,000 yield tests conducted during the 40 or so years when nuclear testing was allowed. Is DoD really willing to replace tested devices with untested devices?"
Quoted in "Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable Replacement
Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program" CRS report from 2007.
I agree with him. I hope this may be helpful to all in this discussion.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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