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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (9429)	6/1/1998 2:29:00 AM
From: Rajiv	Respond to of 18691

Lucent management and union has not agreed on the terms of a new contract. 44000 employees may go on a strike tomorrow. Regards. Rajiv

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (9429)	6/1/1998 2:31:00 AM
From: Mike M	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

<<does anyone think India may be tempted to a pre-emptive strike? And what would that do to global markets? >> I don't think anyone who has a reasonable understanding of the devastation of nuclear weapons would seriously unleash one next door unless they truly believed that their very survival depended on it. Hard to imagine India would really do that. Mike

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (9429)	6/1/1998 4:53:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 18691

If you accept the view that India went openly nuclear to get the same recognition from the West that China has, the last thing they ever want to do is use the nukes. That would make them even more of a pariah. As it is, I think India's move will totally backfire because they can forget about getting a permanent seat on the Security Council, business with the US will be hurt, China will move even closer to Pakistan.... They blew a lot of money and a lot of international political credit with this blunder, just so they could say "me, too" to the nuclear powers. Now we will see if they can feed their people with warheads.... PS If someone does push the button on either side, yes, it would tank the markets in a hurry. I expect that would happen after a series of accidents and miscommunications, much like the Cuban missile crisis created a 30 - 50% chance of nuclear war, according to Kennedy. Kashmir is an active conflict zone. Imagine if we had exchanged fire with Russian ships in the Bering Sea on a regular basis throughout the Cold War.

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (9429)	6/1/1998 6:05:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

From the Washington Post on the India - Pakistan nuclear "balance": Given their mutual suspicion and distrust, and the capability each nation has to build nuclear warheads and deliver them on planes and missiles, it may not matter what they claim, arms control experts said: The other side probably will assume the worst. Even if India says it has not deployed its weapons, Foreign Minister Khan said, "How long does it take to put a bullet into a gun?" Arms control experts said it is not that simple, that to be considered fully deployed, a country needs trained personnel manning completely assembled weapons full-time with the authority to launch them. That might leave room for some type of verifiable non-deployment treaty if India and Pakistan could develop greater trust, they said. If that proves impossible and the countries deploy, they will face numerous expensive decisions about how to ensure the safety of their arsenals, prevent unauthorized use of the weapons, guarantee their ability to survive a first strike and launch a counterattack -- which is critical to deterring a war in the first place -- and ensure that they have adequate and reliable systems to warn them of an attack and its source. Such warning systems can be as expensive as the missile systems themselves, experts said. Without such safeguards, "all it takes is one crazy lieutenant or air marshal in the chain of command for a calamity," said South Asian security expert Stephen P. Cohen, of the University of Illinois. "We had our own hawkish strategic command, but it was embedded in a command and control structure that was pretty rigid. And they screened people psychologically -- especially the Russians. But we don't know what type of systems India and Pakistan will come up with." Moreover, because of its smaller territory, smaller arsenal and shorter reaction time, "Pakistan could be confronted with 'use them or lose them,' because all of their missiles will be easily accessible to Indian aircraft or missiles. So they better make sure they have people who are reliable and under tight control from Islamabad," Cohen said. A U.S. congressional aide pointed out that once a country deploys nuclear weapons, "you have the risk of accidental war, miscalculation, hair-trigger wars -- it's only a matter of minutes in South Asia -- early warning, launch on warning, questions of doctrine, unauthorized use, terrorism and sabotage, bureaucratic problems, and issues of safety and security, and command and control." "It helps if you have a triad of mobile land, sea and air forces, but then you get sticker shock," he continued. "The tendency is to sacrifice safety, health and the environment and go with the hardware. The question is, will these countries go to the same expense as the United States and the Soviet Union?" "Part of the Cold War lesson is that it takes a lot of willpower for two adversaries to work together for arms control," said Stanford's Sagan. "It remains to be seen if India and Pakistan can do it."