Selling the missile defense fantasy: Who benefits?

[ExTank]

6. Perhaps the goal isn’t even to build a working NMD.

But rather to force China into an arena of [technological] competition for which they are singularly unsuited. By doing so, we define the strategic imperatives and areas of strategic nuclear competition for the next 20 some-odd years or so. Where is China going to get the high-tech science and gee-gaws necessary to build a counter to NMD?

And by knowing what China needs to know, we know where they are going to look for it, and have a very good idea how they are going to go about it. I’d say that this puts us at least a step ahead of them, intelligence/counter-intelligence wise (barring another Toshiba-Konigsberg, of course).

If an ICBM could be destroyed prior to warhead/bus separation, near the apex of its trajectory…

…or even after warhead separation, the warhead is a “dumb” package, and it’s extreme velocity during reentry would cause enough localized ionization that it can’t effectively “counter” any homing NMD missile.

Does anyone honestly think that, if we develop sufficiently reliable ABM technology (currently a big if, but not an insurmountable one; doesn’t anyone here remember us going to the moon a couple of times, some years back?), that we can’t build enough ABM missiles to counter China’s ICBMs?

If you do, ask yourself this: how many Tomahawks did we launch at Iraq in '91?

That NMD doesn’t address FedEx Nukes or viral agents delivered by rogue states is irrelevant; I doubt any technical means could be developed to counter these threats anyway. The best shield against those particular bugaboos is good old-fashioned HUMINT, gathered by CIA agents in faraway lands with funny names.

Funny thing about that; IIRC, “W” has recently allocated more funds to the various US Intelligence gathering agencies.

SO: with this premise, we can promise to “share” any nominal NMD system all week long, knowing full well that our goal isn’t to actually build one; just force others to try to build one or a counter to one.

And who has the higher GDP surplus to spare?

[rjung]

*Originally posted by ExTank *
6. Perhaps the goal isn’t even to build a working NMD.

But rather to force China into an arena of [technological] competition for which they are singularly unsuited. By doing so, we define the strategic imperatives and areas of strategic nuclear competition for the next 20 some-odd years or so. Where is China going to get the high-tech science and gee-gaws necessary to build a counter to NMD?

What happens if China doesn’t want to play the Arms Race II game, then? There’s nothing stopping them from using the “terrorist with a suitcase bomb” scenario either, is there?

[Triskadecamus]

Well, if you examine the history of defenses versus weapons over the last fifty thousand years, you might find that on the whole, shields don’t work. People get longer swords, or better bows, or guns, or whatever. Now the exact point of the seesaw you happen to be on at that moment in history changes, but the development of new weapons always decides the issue.

We are the only nation on the planet that can abandon nuclear weapons. We should. We don’t need them. We can do better, and if we are going to spend billions, we should spend them on better weapons, not shields. If the governments of rogue nations know we can target them personally, and hit them reliably, they will have less incentive to launch attacks against us. Sitting behind your shield is an invitation to attack. Kami Kazi tactics are always going to exist for extremists. Shields won’t stop that.

As for the reason to follow this idiotic plan, follow the money. A lot of people in a lot of offices get a lot of money if we build a missile shield, and if it fails, well, we will have to pay them more money to fix it. Those people have invested a lot of money purchasing Lobbyists, Congressmen, and Senators to assure that they will continue to have that income.

Tris

[Ukulele_Ike]

*Originally posted by Triskadecamus *
shields don’t work. People get longer swords, or better bows, or guns, or whatever

Jules Verne parodied this state of affairs in his space-travel novels, From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, one hundred and thirty-some years ago…he portrayed (and denigrated) the arms race as a personality clash between individuals.

Barbicane, president of the Baltimore Gun Club, had spent his professional career devising larger and more powerful artillery…his arch-rival, Nicholl, has devoted his life to creating stronger and stouter armor plating to counteract each advance of Barbicane’s.

[Tejota]

Well said Tris. Follow the money.

ExTank I think it’s a mistake to believe that China can’t compete as an equal technologically. They have as many bright people as we do, and there’s no way to prevent them from going to school HERE if their schools should not happen to measure up.

These people aren’t stupid, they are just playing catch-up and they are catching up a lot faster than we are innovating. Just look at the Japanese, they played catch-up for a decade or two, but now they lead in most areas of electronics. I predict that China will do the same.

I figure that they will hit knowledge parity right about the time Bush plans to deploy NMD, though it will take quite a bit longer for them to replace all of their weapons (if they even want to bother).

tj

[Gadarene]

jshore:

I’ll take Cal Meacham’s word for it that George Will used to write good, thoughtful columns. Must have been before my time! My dad likes to point out that Will is the one who wrote a column praising a Nixon (I think) speech without revealing the fact that he [Will] had actually written much of it!

Not quite. It was, I believe, Reagan’s first presidential debate against Carter in 1980. Will did a pundit post-mortem after the debate on television and went on about how well Reagan had done and how prepared he had been–failing to mention the niggling little fact, of course, that Will himself had been a major part of Reagan’s debate preparation team.

Maybe there’s a Nixon speech analogue out there as well–it wouldn’t surprise me.

[ExTank]

rjung: no, there isn’t. Which is why the good old-fashioned spy is still viable. A point I addressed later in that same post.

Tejota: So you’re saying that China will reach technological parity with the USA, within a decade or two?

The same way that the former Soviet Union was striving for technological parity? Or the way that they failed to translate their parity into an industrial reality because their economy couldn’t support it?

And there are certainly ways of preventing their kids from coming here for education, but not in any way that wouldn’t seriously damage our current relationship with China.

My option (hypothesis, SWAG; take your pick) produces several possible outcomes:

1. Nationalist hardliners bankrupt the Chinese economy trying to achieve parity and production of sophisticated weaponry.

2. Nationalist hardliners send their children to America for education, to compete with us technologically, and cultural osmosis softens the younger generation into a more amenable culture of leaders.

3. The Chinese try to shortcut the techno-gap by espionage. Knowing what they are looking for will help CI efforts, and a few embarassing incidents might topple the hardliners with moderates (preferably bloodlessly).

Alternately, policies of engagement might produce the same result(s), w/o [supposedly] needless spending on a system of dubious utility. I’m not so sure.

Triskadecamus: Of couse shields work, for a while at least. To my knowledge, no shield ever made was meant to be permanent or foolproof. That doesn’t mitigate its current utility. Just like I said in the Are Tanks Obsolete Weapons? thread from last November: as soon as a better shield defeater is developed, someone develops a better shield. Once someone develops a better shield, someone else begins developing a better shield defeater. Whether it’s body armor, tank armor, or laser satellites zapping ICBMs, it see-saws back-and-forth.

Just because we can’t deploy a better shield right now doesn’t mean we can’t try to develop and build one.

I think people are misinterpreting the term “shield”, or perhaps confusing it with “fortress”.

I think that MAD blows chunks; it’s the moral equivalent of two people holding guns to each other’s children’s heads. But it works, after a fashion, and in my field, we also have a saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” That hardly precludes building a better widget to replace a poorly conceived, inefficient one.

If we really want to “wild card” the nuclear scenario, my vote would be to eliminate land-based ICBMs and go with more fleet ballistic missile subs. You never know quite where they are…and there is no really effective counter to them.

[Ace_Face]

*Originally posted by ExTank *
Triskadecamus: Of couse shields work, for a while at least. To my knowledge, no shield ever made was meant to be permanent or foolproof. That doesn’t mitigate its current utility. Just like I said in the Are Tanks Obsolete Weapons? thread from last November: as soon as a better shield defeater is developed, someone develops a better shield. Once someone develops a better shield, someone else begins developing a better shield defeater. Whether it’s body armor, tank armor, or laser satellites zapping ICBMs, it see-saws back-and-forth.
**

These aren’t exactly kevlar vests we’re talking 'bout here. The failure of this new Star Wars means the annihilation of perhaps millions of people. Not exactly an “Oops! Back to the drawing board!” situation. Also, “shield” has such a passive, defensive connotation. But many nations understandably view the deployment of space-based laser/projectile systems as an aggressive action. I would if the Russians were doing this instead of us.

[ExTank]

Ace_Face: While “millions” is certainly bad, I’m sure that it beats “billions”. Again, I believe some are confusing “fortress”, as in impregnable, with “shield”, which has a broader, passive connotation. Are you, and others here, saying that if it can’t be made 100% missile proof that it isn’t viable? With logic like that, why build armored vehicles? Why mount anti-missile defenses on warships? Why give cops Lexan shields for riot control?

Expecting perfection in any given technological system is more unrealistic than the belief that any given technological system cannot be developed, given time and resources.

Who ever thought that we would go to the moon? Or seriously contemplate going to Mars? How many airplanes crashed; not only during development of the aircraft, but since then?

Now if you’re arguing that development and deployment would destabilize the current nuclear scenario, you might have an argument. But that’s supposing that any other nuclear power is going to fly off the handle in a panic and launch the moment we deploy. More likely, they’ll wait to see if their worst fears are justified (that we’ll immediately attack the moment we feel/have high order confidence of major immunity from counter-strike); when they see that it’s business as usual, they’ll probably relax.

If we reallly wanted to get on some people’s good side, we could announce that we’ll use our NMD system to protect any allied nation from nuclear attack, or any nation signing and verifiably abiding by a non-proliferation treaty.

While I’m loathe to have the USA play Globo-cop, in this instance I feel that it could be justified, inasmuch as no ground troops are at risk.

And if Russia were to build and implement a viable space-based laser/projectile missile defense system, I would be very happy, for several reasons:

1. It means that Russia has most probably developed a stable government, economy and society.

2. Stable governments, especially democracies, rarely (if ever) make war upon one another.

3. We can stop shelling out economic aid to them.

4. Since this ain’t happening tomorrow, I’d be willing to bet that we could do the same.