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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (129989)	12/20/2000 6:13:29 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1579792

We have no enemy that is comparable to us in firepower. How can a star wars defense system do anything but foster more fear. Its intent is to create enough fear in any potential enemy so they will not attack. You may see this as a good thing, I don't. Russia conventionally is not much of a threat any more but they still have lots of nukes. China has a growing nuclear capability and while they can't hit the East Coast (yet), they could his Alaska, Hawaii, and the Pacific Coast. Neither of them are strictly speaking enemies right now, but that could change faster then we could ramp up a missle defence system. You have to be prepared to deal with the capabilities of potential enemies, not just the likely attacks of current enemies. The fear involved is fear of our nuclear weapons. We will have those with or without a defense system. Having the ability to deter potential attack against yourself is a good thing, but its even better if you can stop attack rather then die and take your enemy with you. In fact I see it as a major loss of $$$. It will not be cheap but it will not break the bank either. A missle defence systems will take quite some time to develop and deploy and will have to be maintained so over the years the total figure will be high. However the % of GDP or the % of government spending during this period will not be high. Besides, there is no power in the world with the economic wherewithall to be able to match us in firepower. Wtih nuclear weapons matching us in firepower is not nessiary. One missle strike in a major US city is too devistateing. Not only to we have to be conserned about actual strikes, but we have to worry about the more likely situation of blackmailing the US to change its forign policy by subtly (or blatantly) threatening the US with devistation if it gets involved in certain situations. All ready a Chinese offical has been quoted as saying that the US would not give up Los Angeles for Tapei. Implying that China could try to bluff the US off of resisting an attack on Taiwain. If we get such a bluff would you want to call it if we have no defense? Sure an actualy attack is unlikely but would you want to take that risk? You could argue that we should not defend Taiwain, but even if you do the argument is not limited to one potential situation. This need to build more weapons and foster more fear is a throwback to a level of machismo and thinking that is no longer appropriate in a world where large distances can be covered very quickly and where the firepower is sufficient to easily destroy life as we know it. The devistateing capabilities of nuclear weapons is the reason behind wanting a defence against them., Not machismo. Your arguement would make a lot more sense if I was advocating buying hundreds or thousands of new ICBMs. Tim