🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3rahj1$p6k@news.cais.com>, birdhaex@cais3.cais.com says...
>
>Andrew Cott (cott@ll.mit.edu) wrote:
>
>[substantial editing to improve readability; I've cut to what I think are 
>the salient points]
>
>
>: We're obviously talking about two different things, here.  I'm not 
>: suggesting we wouldn't or shouldn't respond.  I'm saying all Saddam (or 
>: anyone else) has to do is demonstrate his capability of dropping a >: 
warhead on the US and the game changes to our detriment.  
>
>I would not argue that we would be happy about Saddam having nukes.  What 
>I am arguing is that the utility of those nukes for Saddam vis-a-vis the 
>U.S. is _extremely_ small.  

Not true, in my opinion.  Look at the respect Nort Korea is suddenly 
getting.  All they have is the potential for nuclear warheads on existing 
short range missiles that threaten South Korea and Japan.  

And, should Tokyo and Pyongyang get into a diplomatic scuffle, shouldn't 
Japan be worried about those missiles and, say, Sarin gas warheads?  If they 
had TMD, negotiating power doesn't shift away from them so suddenly.  And, 
now that I think of it, that is a situation where if Japan *had* a nuclear 
arsenal as a deterrence, they wouldn't use them because the Korean peninsula 
is just too close.  Of course, in my opinion, every spot on the planet is 
too close when you consider the potency of our current inventory. 

>Actually, if there were a Ronnie (and I'm 
>not implyiong I agreed with his policies) in the White House, I would argue 
>that Saddam having nukes would be substantially to his detriment, not 
>ours.  I doubt that we'd have "nuked" him, but I do think we would have 
>done something akin to the sanction situation in place now even had 
>Saddam not attacked Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein was persuing a nuclear capability around the time of the Gulf 
War *and after*.  What do you suppose he was thinking?  (What do we suppose 
he is thinking now?)

[snip]

>Well, gee, what an opportunity.  If Saddam nuked us _anywhere_, I would
>most likely drop one on Bagdad (or wherever Saddam was).  If my intell 
>was good enough, I'd also go after any facilities used to make them with 
>conventional weapons.

Once you are forced into brinksmanship, you've already lost your advantage. 
Why should we just allow our strength to degrade to the point where we must 
start a *new* cold war with another nation?  

Also, I must restate that Hussein needn't have a nuclear warhead on an ICBM 
to gain significant leverage over the United States and the rest of the 
world.  If a working TMD system is created, we could field one in Kuwait 
that would protect the entire world from Iraqi rockets (either real or on 
the drawing board).  

>: I'd certainly retaliate, but that's after the damage has been done.  I'm 
>: looking to deal with the *threat* of a rocket delivery system.  
>
>And one deals with that, again, by making sure Saddam knows that if you 
>use it, YOU lose everything.  BMD is not necessary to communicate that 
>thought.

No, no, no!  Will you threaten to bomb him for merely *having* a rocket?  
Will you undertake a military action on Iraqi home soil in order to maintain 
your diplomatic superiority?  Do you know where all the rockets are?  Is 
there a rocket that you can't find, or is he just making it up?  Is it even 
*in* Iraq?  When do you mobilize our rocket forces?  How often do you end up 
going through this?  Is that Presidential pension really worth the 
headaches?


>: >But my point is having a TMD is unnecessary if your adversary 
>: >understands that launching will be counterproductive to his interests.
>
>: Nah, he does not *have* to launch to influence our decisions.
>
>I need some further clarification on what you mean here.

Yeah, this is the major point I'm trying to make.  Maybe I should sum up my 
position here, in hopes of clarifying it simultaneously (well, it's worth a 
shot ;-):

The days of the simple nose-to-nose brinksmanship of the US-USSR Cold War 
are over.  In retrospect, when considering the manageability of world 
affairs, policy considerations were remarkably bounded.  We, the two 
then-existing superpowers, had the luxury of Mutually Assured Destruction 
and we spent many years, essentially, leaning on one another whilst fearing 
the unthinkable.  

We are no longer in that open field, blue-uniformed ranks with muskets 
trained on red-uniformed ranks in similar pose.  We no longer plan to start 
firing when they do with everything we've got.  Proper and expected 
warfighting behavior is, as it traditionally has been, the almost laughable 
methodology of the last generation.  

With the end of the Cold War has come a new brashness amongst the world's 
more "restless" nations and organizations.  It's as if Mom and Dad got 
divorced and the kids are starting to get involved with the law.  That 
oppressive, awesome dark cloud of pending nuclear annihilation appears to be 
gone.  

The proliferation of weapons of increasing lethality is certainly a concern 
of all with an interest in world events.  As these restless groups increase 
in violent potential, as they surely will, the ability for those nations 
that may be the target of such violence to operate internationally by way of 
travel, trade, and policy--including conflict resolution--will be 
progressively hindered.  The threat these nations and organizations will 
pose are not ones of widespread annihilation, but of limited attacks on 
innocent populations.  

In order to gain stature in that jungle we usually call World Affairs, a 
nation can grow as an economic power and gain control over it's destiny 
amongst the other countries in a similar race or, increasingly, it can grow 
militarily, bridging the gap between itself and major world powers with 
potent militaries.  In this way the other nations of the world are forced to 
consider the whims as well as the actions of a country or organization whose 
aims do not allign with those of essentially peaceful people.  

The methods of gaining stature militarily we have seen in the past have been 
evolving: 

First, claim you have a potent military.  This worked for the USSR for many 
years until, as we all know, our recon. capabilities improved to the point 
where we could verify the hunches some had in the west all along.  

Next, actually spend the money and the energy and actually grow your 
military might.  Saddam Hussein is perhaps the most vivid example of this in 
recent time.  We demonstrated to him that the gap between Iraq and the West, 
in military terms, is larger than he might have thought.

So, then, screw it.  Don't bother spending the time building an army and an 
air force that superior powers not in agreement with your goals will attack 
effectively whenever adventurism strikes.  Because, in fact, it has been 
proven that killing a few innocents where they live is capable of paralizing 
a country more effectively that hitting one of their destroyers with an 
Exocet.  This is much better than taking out a full page ad in the New York 
Times "United States Must Stop Interfering With Irqi Actions of 
Self-Determination in the Muslim World."  The beauty of television brings 
the ad home like nothing Ogilvy and Mather could ever touch.  

There is a problem with the third stage of this evolution, though.  If you 
are an organized state (e.g. Iraq, N. Korea), you can expect reprisal for 
the deed. All you want is some respect and you find that you get more than 
that.  But you really hate the nations of the West that stand between you 
and what you want.  You want them to listen.  You want them to stay out of 
the way when you go off into the borderlands of your neighbors.  How to do 
it?  

You contact any of a number of nations on the fringe of visibility who have 
either the hardware or the technology to deliver a warhead from your own 
country.  As long as you can convince the world you have that capability, 
the world is very aware of it--witness N. Korea and their nuke program.  If 
you want to pick up some extra land, countries without a real interest in 
the loss will think twice whether intervention is worth the potential cost 
to innocent families at home.  For citizens who are not familiar with life 
in a war zone, the potential of involving them directly, with their lives, 
is a much higher cost than that of intervention once was.  It's not just 
"should we make the commitment and call up the reserves and risk votes in 
the next election?"  Now it's "will I be sacraficing the lives of innocent 
civilian men, women, and children at home?"  No, our hands are not 
thoroughly tied, but the strength and quickness in the arms is diminished.  

I suggest that this is a very real scenario that will be played out in the 
not-too-distant future.  I expect it because it is a desireable state of 
affairs for many countries and organizations in the world today.  As I've 
said before, I fully expect to live to see this in my lifetime (the safety 
of local highways notwithstanding).  This is not a scenario that lends 
itself to the traditional inflated nuclear breast of the past forty years. 
This is a scenario where the threat of posession is powerful, and the ease 
of acquisition is tempting and workable.  

As is the case with the arguments surrounding development of a Reuseable 
Launch Vehicle, if missile defense *proves* to be unattainable in the 
foreseeable future, that has to be accepted.  But to stop promising 
experimental development of such a capability that could diffuse the 
proliferation of rocket delivery systems that can be used to quietly 
threaten other countries is shortsighted.

Well, that's my closing argument as I have a very busy week staring me in 
the face.  I hope I've made my points clearly as I've had to rush this post. 
In any event, we'll be having this discussion off and on for some time to 
come, I'm sure (or until we have a working TMD system ;-).

-- 
Andrew Cott              MIT Lincoln Laboratory              cott@ll.mit.edu