I think Bruce_Daddy’s nuclear weapon analogy was right on point. If I might focus the analogy a bit to make it clearer: The U.S. has the means to interdict global air and sea transportation and commerce, including that of its allies, when it sees fit. These means are generally referred to as the Air Force and Navy.
The U.S. has blockaded nations on a number of occasions when it suited its purposes. The only difference I see with regard to space assets is that the U.S. could do it more cheaply, and with less risk to human life, than it could execute a blockade. At most, one might argue that this might lead the U.S. to take such action more casually than it would a blockade.
I think that even complete, simplistic self-interest would preclude such casual belligerency, but I recognize that there are those who view current policy as even more extreme than that. I suspect that those broader issues of Bush administraton foreign policy are being discussed far more exhaustively over in Great Debates, and in the Pit. I would simply say here that I have no less trust and regard for the wisdom and foresight of the U.S. government than I have for any other government.
Sweden, perhaps? Maybe Switzerland? They seem relatively inoffensive at this time. Or perhaps Canada. (I’m not limiting the choices to countries that would be actually capable of being superpowers, since “North Korea” was originally given as the “bad” counterexample)
The sorts of things I’m seeing coming out of Washington make me think the US is a really bad choice to be number 1.
Interdicting allies’ satellite launches is simply insane. Or perhaps all too sane: If even our allies can’t get satellite intelligence, we can tell them whatever we want. “We must attack [insert country here] as they’re building WMDs! You can’t prove otherwise, can you? Here’s a doctored photo from our satellite!”
Don’t worry; at the rate the Dubya Administration is fscking things up, we’ll have a new one soon. Only this time, it won’t be “The United States vs. The Soviet Union”, but “The United States vs. Everybody Else.” :eek:
Well put it this way - I liked living in the UK, where I spent a formative number of years. Bar a number of problems that the country has, I’d prefer living in the UK to living in the US, which has other problems (some of them bigger, IMO). But anyway, I’m comfortable with the problems of the UK - so if I were wishing a form of benign government on the rest of the world, I’d wish that of the UK. But I suspect a lot of non-UK people wouldn’t feel terribly comfortable with that. India, chunks of Africa, Israel/Palestine, etc. etc. The Americans certainly didn’t in 1776… despite the fact that we treated them charmingly. So now imagine that kind of resentment to something that feels itself to be benign (as British Imperialists largely did), and there you have another reason that people are worried about current US policy.
Can someone point to a reference about who owns space? About how it doesn’t seem feasable that our government should somehow be able to regulate what happens with other countries’ satellites? Seems like this issue should alone set the precident for other countries to start telling the Bush Administration to piss off and do it now.
It is precisely this sort of “elephant-in-the-hen-house” mentality that makes Shrub one of the greatest dangers to America in its entire history. I was saying this here before the election and I’ll say it here again. Shrub is a loon who is being puppeted by the moral majority and far right in ways that put all Americans in danger. Shrub must not be re-selected.
If things keep going as they are depicted in this thread, Russia and China are going to start looking like supporters of international freedom and democracy. And that’s just plain scary.
A person very close to me works as a project manager for a satellite company, and was at one point in the Air Force working on satellites. I forwarded the article to him, and he told me he couldn’t comment on it.
Apparently twenty minutes ago he was asked to renew his security clearance and start work on a project titled Space-Based Space Surveillance. You can Google it - there are several articles.
So now imagine that kind of resentment to something that feels itself to be benign (as British Imperialists largely did), and there you have another reason that people are worried about current US policy.