GW is making a big deal for missile defense, which is apparently needed to protect the country from ‘rogue’ nations which could shoot a nuke at us. What i don’t understand is, if say, Iran were to shoot a missile at us, well, not only would that be easily detectable and traceable, it would garauntee instant annihalation of the people who shot at us. On the other hand, if a bomb was smuggled in to the US and detonated on the ground, not only would it be untraceable, but it would do much more damage on the psychological front than a missile. So even if we don’t build a sheild, chances are they won’t shoot a missile at us, so what’s the point?
Why don’t you e-mail a moderator and ask him or her to move this thread to Great Debates. (I’m pretty sure there is a similar thread there, already, but it might be getting old, now.)
General Questions is the place to find factual answers and you have to realize that without an actual defense system in place that has or has not succeeded, any opinion regarding its effectiveness will very likely be challenged by someone with a different opinion.
Welcome to the SDMB, (but check the Forum headings).
Other than being used as a theater wide missile defense for troops in a combat zone (like the Patriot missle, but bigger) there probably is limited military value.
If it makes you feel better, military research often creates civilian offshoots. So even if a missile defense system is never used, some usefull developments will probably come out of the research.
I read a great piece in the NY Times opinion page on this subject and it convinced me that missile defense is not the way to go.
August 7, 2001, Tuesday
The Myth of a Perfect Defense
By Caleb Carr
Source: The New York Times
Section: Editorial Desk
Abstract:
Caleb Carr Op-Ed article says most important flaw in Bush administration plan for missile defense shield is strategic, not technological; says even if perfectly effective shield were built, enemies of United States would then focus on perfecting weapons that would make it irrelevent; says no nation has ever needed a weapon that did not terrify its enemies, and missile shield holds out false promise of security unless it also has offensive capacity.
This is better suited to Great Debates than General Questions, so I’ll move it.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot recently, on the premise that the shield is supposed to defend the US from “rogue states”.
The issue is that no “rogue states” currently have the ability to build a nuclear weapon, let alone a missile capable of hitting the US. North Korea was lucky to lob a missile over Hokkaido a few years back. Libya and other Middle Eastern states have the capacity to hit Israel, but little else.
The only nuclear armed countries with that ability are Russia and China. Russia is keen to downsize its arsenal, and the latest issue of the Economist suggests that it might do so unilaterally. China has some missiles capable of hitting the west coast.
So this shield is really aimed at stopping Chinese missiles.
China has said that this will prompt an arms race. The thinking is that missile shields cannot stop all missiles. The more missiles I can throw, the more will get through, and the greater the prospect of deterrence of the US.
Far more likely is the scenario of a bomb being smuggled into the US. If tonnes of drugs can be brought into the US, why not a nuke? The US should be focussing on improving its border surveillance, not messing around with hi-tech weapons which will cause an arms race.
Missile defense is not only a waste of money, it also makes our allies mad. Why why why??? <grits teeth in frustration>
I’d be more inclined to support Dubya’s missile defense toy if it could actually shoot down a target that didn’t have a locating transponder in its warhead – and even then, the prototype failed 3 out of 4 times!
I mean, call me crazy, but I really doubt any “rogue nations” that start lobbing missiles at us will be nice enough to put transponders in their warheads so we can shoot 'em down…
If your question is : why it makes our allies mad :
I can’t give a general answer, but I can give you an explanation in the french case :
-French nuclear policy wasn’t based on the MAD doctrina. It was based on the “weak to strong dissuassion” , roughly : “you have much more missiles, and more powerful armies, but if you become a vital threat (say, for instance your armored divisions enter too deeply in Germany) we’ll launch some dozens of missiles on your cities”.In other words : “you’ll lose way more than you can expect to gain by a military victory, it’s not worth it”
This can work only as long as the teritory of a potential ennemy isn’t protected by a missile defense (and the current treaty forbid it). If there is such a defense, most missiles will be intercepted, and the threat cease to exist. So, even if French territory is protected as well, its nuclear arsenal don’t offer any more a guarantee against a classical attack by a superior ennemy (and without a missile defense, France isn’t protected anymore against nuclear attacks, either, assuming the ennemy has one, since there’s no risk of retaliation)
And there are countries which at the same time could be a threat and could be able at the some point in the future to build an efficient missile defense, namely Russia and China, and possibly others in the long run.
So, if the treaty is broken, and missile defense systems begin to appear, France should :
1)Either renounce to insure its security with nuclear weapons(in other words, be without defense against say, Russia) or invest a huge quantity of money to strenghten its nuclear arsenal in quantity (assuming that some will pass past the defenses) or quality (able to “sneak” through the defenses), especially since France dismantled its land-based missiles after the fall of the Soviet Union.
2)build herself some missile defense system (probably tremendously costly), beg for some protection from the US system (without any guarantee that the US will actually activate it if needed) or try to be part in some equivalent european defense system (not the slightest chance that such a thing could appear in the near future)
Of course, if only the US created a missile defense system, it wouldn’t be a major issue, since I suppose french military don’t expect the US would attack France (though…they’re military…). But everybody is convinced that it would resume the arm race. Russia and China certainly won’t accept that the US could threaten them with nuclear weapons without being able to retaliate. And so france considers her security wouldn’t be insured anymore.
Of course, this issue only apply to nuclear powers. The others had already to live with this lack of nuclear detterent. But anyway, everybody is concerned by what is considered as the beginning of a new arm race.
By the way, concerning “rogue states”, though officially the french government ignore this concept, I read an abstract of the french military budgeting plan which could roughly be translated as “if these f****** countries use nuclear or biological weapons, we’ll transform their f****** territory in a nuclear waste”.
I actually don’t think that a missile defense system is of any use against the so-called “rogue state”. The reasons have already been given thousands of times (none is able to launch an intercontinental missile, it’s always possible to “sneak” a bomb, none of them would survive to an attack against a nuclear power so it would make no sense)
no, my question was, since its such a waste of money AND it makes our allies mad, why why why are we doing it??? Sorry, in my frustration I was ambiguous. Thanks for your fleshed out post, though.
That, I don’t know. It seems to me that it makes no sense to invest so much money against a so hypothetical threat (a “rogue state” which would at the same time able to build an ICBM and desperate enough to launch it on a super power).
My own assumption is that the missile defense system is actually intended to protect the US against an attack by a nuclear power (China or Russia), and give them a position of superiority if an international crisis occurs (I can anhilate you, and you can’t retaliate). But such an intent can’t be officially admitted, anyway.
(I’m not cynical enough to think it’s only a way to give a bunch of money to the military industry, though sometimes I wonder…)
And, of course, people are prepared to be pissed off if it works, too.
I tend to agree that this is one of the motivations (besides welfare for the aerospace defense industry). It seems like it is dubious how well this will even work though. I mean even, if by some wild stretch of luck, we are able to actually come up with something that is, say, 75% effective (fat chance!), can you imagine some President basing a decision on the fact that 3/4 of the missiles that get shot on us will be knocked down? [Or, if we are talking one or a few missiles, on the odds of knocking them down…but you get the idea.] Of course, the most likely scenario will be that we won’t even have a good estimate of how effective it is. The Patriots were apparently very effective in tests and almost 0% effective in action.
I think a related motivation is just the principle that seems to be eminating from Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., that the U.S. does not want to be pestered by treaties and such. The U.S. is top dog and we should be telling the rest of the world the way things are going to be. In this view, sticking to the ABM treaty is itself a sign of weakness and thus it is good to get out of it just for its own sake.
And, related to that, I doubt any of these guys are stupid enough to believe a near-term deployment will work but they may think that it can be made to work, say, 20 years down the road (a questionable belief…but at least not completely impossible). But I think they want to push deployment and breaking the ABM treaty just to get us irrevocably committed to that track while they’re in power. Sort of an idea of crossing a bridge and burning it behind you in order to make it more difficult for any successor administration to get back across the river.
Another thing to annoy US allies is that early warning systems in Australia, Scotland and Finland are essential for the shield to work. But do these countries get the “benefit” of the shield? 'Fraid not.
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The arguement has been made in this thread that the US fears a nuclear attack from China and Russia. Whats the rationale behind this? Whats the evidence for this? Its as if these countries have nothing better to do.
I think the whole missile defence deal is a self-perpetuating myth. The USSR is no more. So now the US has invented a new "monster" to tackle i.e China. North Korea is just starting on the re-conciliation road with South-Korea. And it probably is at its weakest now suffering years of famine.
Moreover, The United states interferes with the politics of other countries on the backing of its economic power. Whats if once it has this NMD it will start military interference with impunity?
And there is no accountability for the actions of the US since they’ve routinely refused to ratify international treaties that would encumber their military machine. Viz the War crimes courts, The CTBT, The small arms ban, The germ-warfare regulations.
Frankly, I am worried of the self-righteous , ‘We can do no wrong, So we are exempt from international treaties’, attitude coming out of Washington
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TruthFinder,
While I don’t disagree with much of what you say, I don’t agree that we have nothing to fear from Russian missiles. The danger of an accidental, mistaken, or unauthorized launch is still there. In fact, there was a time back in like 1995 or '97 (i.e., after the fall of the Soviet Union) in which the Soviets detected a scientific rocket launch as a possible nuclear missile launch from the U.S. It took them a while to determine it wasn’t a missile launch and in fact they apparently exceeded the time they allow themselves to decide if it is real and if they need to respond.
The problem, of course, is that NMD isn’t the solution to this. In fact, it is completely counterproductive. What we really should be doing is negotiating with the Russians to get all the nuclear missiles de-alerted and take other such steps.
Likewise, NMD is counterproductive with the Chinese (who, unlike these rogue states with theoretical capabilities in the future, can actually fire missiles at us today) since it is only going to encourage them to build more, to MIRV them, and take other countermeasures.
MDI GD
North Korea is often named as one of the “rogue states” from which Star Wars, oh sorry, “SDI,” will protect us. There’s an excellent article in the August 27, 2001 article of The American Prospect discussing how, were it not for the aggressive stance taken toward North Korea by the Bush II administration they wouldn’t be a “rogue state” much longer. I seem to remember reading in the paper a few days ago that Bush had told North Korea that the administration was backing off its opposition to North Korea’s mid- and long-range missile program. Of course the North Koreans have had about one and a half successful missile tests, but hey, if Bush can point to North Korea and say they’re developing missiles then he gets an excuse to push MDI, to defend against missiles which don’t yet exist but might someday because the US doesn’t oppose it. WTF?
“WTF?” indeed.
That’s amazing. Who is getting the money for this project anyway?
jshore,
Point taken. Russia’s inability to effectively maintain its weapons ( ~economic reasons) is a real threat. The US should be concerned about that. However, like u said, A negotiated resolution is more desirable than NMD. And given the economic mess in Russia, I’d say Russia will be more amenable to cutbacks to save on its military costs.
IMO, NMD can give rise to the opposite scenario, where Russia will find it difficult to justify military cutbacks in the face of a US NMD.
Good point, Dave. Did anyone outside Korea notice that there was an embarassing flip-flop of Colin Powell recently over thawing relations with N Korea.
Suppose I am an evil dictator with nuclear weapons, who hates the USA. Now suppose you are a young naked girl…NO, WAIT, wrong fantasy!
Suppose I wish to blow up the USA. It’s simpler in some ways to build a nuclear bomb than to build a successful intercontinental missile. Why not just use an old rusty ship and sail it into San Francisco harbor? Is the Coast Guard gonna stop it? Worst case, they try to board the vessel.
The missile defense won’t even work against missiles, at least not very well.
Seems to me we should inventory the real threats to our country and our world, and approach the list on a more rational basis.