# Missile defense-waste of money? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2001, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588 "2001-09-04T00:06:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2001, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/41 "2001-09-09T23:36:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Monster104 \* > Can you read? I haven’t resorted to anything. I’m AGAINST deploying any NMD program any time soon. Fair enough…I have to admit that when you jumped in to support Sam Stone’s point, I forgot that you had previously stated your opposition ot deployment. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t have the technology at all, but it does mean no one can use “the government has secrets” without some good correlating evidence that would suggest that the government actually DOES have the technology in secret and that there actually IS a reason to deploy it (God, I hope this makes sense). Fine…I guess I am willing to go with that logic, somewhat tortured as it is! 😉 I must admit that I don’t quite understand how this would work though…Do you imagine the government having one rather public program where the tests are announced and a lot of detail about them is known and then they have another very secret program off the books?!? I guess I would be skeptical of this scenario. I mean in the very basic research (more like “pipedream”) stage, I could imagine them having some stuff going on, but a parallel development program seems pretty damn unlikely to me! ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/42 "2001-09-10T00:12:36Z")
**Sam Stone** ’s suggestion that certain other countries may be more dangerous than even the GOP right asserts is simply disingenuous. To prop up the program politically, it would be more expedient to exaggerate the danger than minimize it. And isn’t that what’s happening? The same thing applies toward a suggestion that there’s some secret technology that will work better than what’s been so publicly demonstrated. It would be more expedient, in both the domestic and international political arenas, to simply show its effectiveness in tests and refuse to come forward with technical particulars. To claim otherwise is worse than fantasizing; it’s simple desperate hope. It has been asked several times why this thing persists. The answer seems to me to be in the religious devotion so many on the right have towards Reagan. The attitude is describable as “Saint Ronald had this vision, and he was divinely inspired in everything he said and did, so we must worship his legacy by carrying it out. Just as earlier generations built cathedrals to venerate their saints, so must we build the modern equivalent.” Reason and fact have nothing to do with it, so the religious devotees cannot be talked out of it. Now, isn’t it worth pondering who the “rogue nation” really is? ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Stewart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/43 "2001-09-10T01:04:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jshore \* > \*\* > > Dave, nice attempt to play devil’s advocate. But, you have only argued part of the case. Now you have to argue that it is safer to deploy a shield than to try to take measures to prevent proliferation (which are easier to do when you aren’t pissing off the Russians et al.) You also have to argue why it is important to start deploying something (and negating the ABM treaty) so fast when almost all serious scientists say it is way immature and indeed the system can’t even pass completely unrealistic and rigged tests half the time. > > Have fun! 😉 \*\* Too hard a task! Another thing - it is common knowledge what level of missile capability North Korea has - they shot a missile over Hokkaido, remember, and were about to shoot another one when they received the foreign aid that they wanted. It may be that the US government thinks that given another 10 years, North Korea will get to the point that it will be able to lob something at the west coast of the US, and so they’d better get started on the shield now. There is no guarantee after all that the two Koreas will eventually reunite. I haven’t read anything to support that line of thinking amongst US policy-makers though. I don’t really buy into the “we know something you don’t” argument, generally. **ElvisL1ves** comment: > [@](#): > > \*\* > The answer seems to me to be in the religious devotion so many on the right have towards Reagan. The attitude is describable as “Saint Ronald had this vision, and he was divinely inspired in everything he said and did, so we must worship his legacy by carrying it out. Just as earlier generations built cathedrals to venerate their saints, so must we build the modern equivalent.” Reason and fact have nothing to do with it, so the religious devotees cannot be talked out of it. > > Now, isn’t it worth pondering who the “rogue nation” really is? > \*\* The lack of credible policy behind the creation of the shield leds me to thing that there is some truth to this. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/44 "2001-09-10T01:09:27Z")
Oh, right, why Clinton signed off on it too: Simple political calculation by an expert on political calculations. As long as it looked like simply some technology development, no worse than most corporate welfare and better than some, and the bill stayed low, there was no real political price to pay for acquiescing. The decision did buy some silence from his hard-right opponents (who were not known at the time to be as implacably oppositionist as they later proved), and kept the Reagan cultists from having it as a rallying point. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/45 "2001-09-10T01:46:38Z")
While the “Reagan worship” hypothesis has a certain appeal, I think it more likely that the administration is attempting to exploit Russia’s current weakness to weasel out of a treaty that might make national defense more difficult 20 or 30 years down the road; when technology has advanced to the point that it becomes a simple matter for anyone to cobble together a respectable long range weapons delivery system. -pause for air- Despite all the protestations that the US and Russia are now “friends” Bush et.al. seem to have calculated that it’ll be easier to get out from under the treaty now rather than in twenty years when the Russians will likely be stronger. The possibility that we may not be so friendly with the Russians a couple decades from now, especially if we humiliate them by kicking them when they are down, seems to have gotten lost in the quest for immediate gratification. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Stewart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/46 "2001-09-10T03:58:27Z")
That does make some sense, except for the fact that most hypotheses on prevailing diplomatic trends suggest that Russia and the West are more likely to side together, partly because there isn’t too much difference between Orthodox values and Western/Christian values, but mostly because both civilisations have the common problems of Islam and China. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/47 "2001-09-10T09:18:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dave Stewart \* > \*\*That does make some sense, except for the fact that most hypotheses on prevailing diplomatic trends suggest that Russia and the West are more likely to side together, partly because there isn’t too much difference between Orthodox values and Western/Christian values, but mostly because both civilisations have the common problems of Islam and China. \*\* Do you have a cite as I’d like to read up on this theory. Putin was just here in Shanghai a few months ago. China, Russia and the Central Asia Republics are unifying against the spread of Afganistan style Islam. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Stewart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/48 "2001-09-10T12:40:18Z")
**China Guy** : I recommend Samuel P. Huntington’s _The Clash of Civilisations and the Re-making of the World Order_. [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) sell it. A total paradigm shift, which makes more and more sense as every year passes since it was written (1996). ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588/49 "2001-09-10T23:06:47Z")
Just wanted to point out that it seems another thread has been started on the same subject:[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=86268](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=86268) I particularly recommend everyone read **Tejota** ’s excellent post of 9-10-2001 5:46pm explaining the basic reason why NMD technology, aside from being too immature to justify deployment now, might never work in the sense of being able to do what we want it to in the face of countermeasures by the offense which will always tend to be much simpler than the job of defense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missile-defense-waste-of-money/79588.md?page=2)