🚀 go-pugleaf

A couple of issues of fact, first:

> The Trident submarines are each 
> capable of annihilating most of the Soviet Union using the new 
> Trident II missiles with a flight time of only 10 minutes or so 
> (not enough time to respond) and are largely invulnerable...another 
> first-strike weapon?

Trident II is barely under development; it will be years before it is
operational.  The current subs carry Trident I.

> The cruise missiles are capable of evading 
> detection and penetrating through defenses...another first-strike 
> weapon?

A first-strike weapon that takes hours to reach its target?  Come off it.
"Evading detection" does not mean that they are invisible, just that they
are relatively hard to find and shoot down.  It doesn't mean that there
is any major difficulty in determining that you are under attack from
them.  (If for no other reason than that they won't all arrive at their
targets simultaneously, and their low speed means that there will be a
considerable spread of arrival times.)  Any ICBMs that are left around by
the time a cruise missile arrives, have been left around deliberately.

These points are *not* quibbling; inflation of the threat is a classic
tactic of propaganda.  It is difficult to debate issues intelligently
when you cannot agree on the basic facts first.

> In the Strategic Computing Initiative, one of the projects 
> is to develop the capability to develop an "autonomous vehicle" 
> which are capable of "reconnaissance and attack missions".  They 
> specify that some will work in high radiation environments.

Virtually anything the US military buys these days is specified to work
in a nuclear-war environment.  There is nothing unusual in this being
specified for a new device.

> There
> have been a multitude of reports of talk in the Pentagon of "fighting
> and winning a protracted nuclear war".

And such talk has been a standard feature of Soviet strategy for over
thirty years.  Not because they are evil, but because they view nuclear
war differently.  They are convinced that any major war *will* go nuclear,
and that the *only* way to deter such a war is to convince the US that it
cannot possibly win.  This requires being prepared to fight such a war.
Note that this is quite different from orthodox US policy, which is to
deter a war by convincing the Soviets that it would be too horrible to
contemplate.  The difference in views, and the lack of recognition of
the difference, are most worrisome.  One might, with great hesitation,
consider the recent shift in attitudes in the Pentagon a *favorable*
sign -- at least the two sides are on the same wavelength.  Maybe.

> ...  What if the defense was intended 
> to protect the U.S. from a weak retaliatory strike by the U.S.S.R. 
> after an American first strike?!!  It would be much more effective 
> for that!

This is a real and serious worry.

> It would also be very effective to destroy Soviet 
> satellites (to blind them) just prior to an American first-strike.

Not really.  It would constitute giving advance warning of the attack.
Why *else* would one blind Soviet satellites??  Such a move by the US
is quite unlikely, simply because it *might* trigger an all-out attack.

> 	You find it very hard to believe that the Americans would do 
> such a thing.  Well I find it hard to believe that's Ronald Reagan's 
> real intention as well.  The all important point, however, is that 
> the Russians may not find it so hard to believe...they are nervous!

It is worth remembering that at one point, back in pre-missile days,
there were some American generals who seriously believed that a nuclear
first strike against the Soviet Union was not only reasonable but the
right thing to do.  Fortunately, they were not in positions of influence.
You can bet the Soviets remember them, though.

> ...  We must consider how 
> *they* will react to our moves and should tailor what we do to 
> encourage them to react in a manner which will enhance our *mutual* 
> security...

Quite true.  But see my note earlier, about the two sides not thinking
the same way about quite fundamental issues.  Many ill-informed people
assume that the US view of deterrence is the only view; not so.  If you
want another example...  Orthodox US policy (still deeply ingrained,
despite recent noises) is to aim missiles at Soviet civilians, on the
"deter war by making it too horrible" theory, otherwise known as "Mutual
Assured Destruction".  But the Soviets have never believed in MAD, and
have always aimed their missiles at military targets, although the effect
is much the same because many of these are in or near cities.  If you
are going to engage in the intricate dance of encouraging the Soviets
to think (hence react) in specific ways, remember these differences!

The if-we-do-this-then-they'll-think-this-and-do-this-so-we-should...
reasoning, and the involved strategies that go with it, are not part
of Soviet thought at all.  They consider such elaborate chains of
hypotheses ridiculous.  Maybe they're right.

>	Surely, any stable peace must be built upon mutual trust.

This is not entirely obvious.  Switzerland has not had to fight a war
in quite a long time, probably long enough for its peaceful relations
to be considered "stable".  (Longer than most peaces have lasted, in
fact.)  The Swiss did *not* get this way by mutual trust with their
neighbors; they got this way by being (a) friendly and willing to trade,
and (b) armed to the teeth in case somebody had different ideas.  I am
not saying that the Swiss model is necessarily right for the current
context, just pointing out that the "peace comes only from trust" claim
is verifiably false.

> "Hans Bethe, in a lecture at Cal Tech last week, very conservatively 
> estimated the cost of deploying the space-based laser alone, even 
> after the outrageous assumption that they would operate at all, would 
> cost between 2 and 6 TRILLION dollars."

Many people think this estimate is preposterous, hopelessly biased.
If for no other reason, consider that most of this is launch costs,
and a small fraction of that money, spent on better reusable launchers,
would cut launch costs by an order of magnitude or more.

> (1 trillion dollars looks like $1,000,000,000,000 when in numbers) 
> If you spent 1 MILLION dollars for EVERY DAY since the birth of 
> Christ, you would *still* not have 1 trillion dollars!

Divided by the population of the Western world, it's about $2000 apiece.
A lot, but not ridiculous.

> Think of all
> the other things in the world that money could be spent on.

But it wouldn't get spent on them, would it?  It would get spent on cars
and cosmetics and tobacco.  "Think of the other things we could do with
that money" is a moving plea, but quite unrealistic.

> To believe that there can be a "technological panacea" for our dilemma is a
> *very* dangerous misconception.

To believe that technology cannot solve the problem, or at least change it
beyond all recognition, is an equally dangerous misconception.  Ask the
African tribes who attacked heavily-outnumbered British troops a century
ago, confident that they would win... and found themselves facing machine
guns.  The technological gap between breech-loading rifles and machine
guns is small, but the effect is huge.  It is fashionable nowadays to
proclaim that technology cannot solve anything, or change anything, in
any important way.  This too is verifiably false.  It can, and does.
The question of whether technology can solve this *particular* problem
remains open.  It is neither a sure thing nor a self-evident folly.

> The fundamental problem is one of human
> interrelations and greed (for money and power).

But is there a fundamental solution?  One that we can really achieve,
not just one to dream about?  History is not encouraging; the major
cases of sustained peace that I am aware of started out as "peace through
strength", not "peace through goodwill", although some of them eventually
evolved into the latter.

> Canadians should NOT
> participate in SDI because it simply aggravates these underlying problems.

But if we opt for an attack on these underlying problems, will we get
anywhere?  Greed is awfully fundamental.  Maybe a (careful) treatment
of the symptoms is the best we can hope for.  Freeman Dyson, for one,
has argued that antimissile defences are a part -- not the only part! --
of a viable treatment.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry