Urban Adventures & More

In the sixties and seventies, the US and Russia developed missle systems…then anti-missile systems…then anti-anti-missile systems. I kid you not. Then Russia went broke and disbanded because it couldn’t keep up with the arms race.
So now the US is still developing anti-missile systems, even though it has no one to use them against. Maybe you should administer the scrambled-word test in Washington, since the politicians apparently suffer from a lack of human intelligence.

You talk about that like it was the only arms race. First they invented the machine gun, then the tank, then the anti-tank bullet… or first they invented aircraft, then they invented anti-aircraft arms, then faster and higher-flying planes, then anti-aircraft missiles, then even higher flying planes and stealth…

True, it wasn’t by any means the only arms race. But it was the first in which one side went down in defeat without having fired a shot. This is significant only because the Republicans have allocated all of the credit for this to Ronald Reagan, who probably had no clue of what was going on.

Wait a minute. I thought there was an Anti Ballistic Missle Treaty that was authored before this whole period that prohibited anti-missle systems. Or was that only land-based systems, thereby allowing for pie-in-the-sky (or in this case, laser-in-the-sky) systems?
My guess is that Russia suffered from a weak infrastructure long before Reagan got to them, and he just happened to threaten to hit them where it hurt. Frankly, the whole Cold War sounds pretty stupid; I mean, was anybody actually being threatened, or just worrying that the other side could threaten them?

I think there was probably an existential US threat on some level: if some nut ever decided to launch Soviet nuclear weapons, for instance, as I understand almost happened at some point. But at least the leadership was sane enough and the stakes were high enough that we didn’t go to war over the threat of a threat. Unlike, say, Iraq or (potentially) Iran, where we’re worried that they might get weapons which they might, if they’re totally, completely suicidal, use to threaten us.

Before the arms race, there was no real threat except what some neurotics and warmongers perceived. Once both sides developed the ability to commit total annihilation, obviously there was a threat of some kind.
Is the situation of a modern country developing nuclear weapons to cause mass destruction any worse than the historic arms race? Is the end of the world caused by a nuclear war between the US and Russia a greater threat than massive deaths caused by an Iranian and American nuclear exchange? Obviously, in one scenario, everyone diea, and in the other only one side is annihilated (my assumption anyway). But I don’t think mass killing is acceptable on any level on either side, so, to finally come to my point, Iran does pose a threat of the same type as Russia did.

I agree, the two situations are analogous. To borrow the format of our emails, here’s how I’ll clarify my point:
1) One major difference between US-Iran vs. US-USSR is that the Soviet Union at some point dreamed of being able to do a massive, crippling first strike that mostly knocked out our nuclear capabilities. You’d have to be crazy to inflict that kind of mass destruction and take that risk, but you wouldn’t necessarily have to be suicidal. Obviously that wasn’t the case by the end of the Cold War, and it’s certainly not the case with Iran. Iran would have to be completely suicidal to use a nuclear weapon, because it would ensure a massive US nuclear response.
2) As the Cold War shows, and as you alluded to in your last post, it’s possible for two nuclear powers to coexist without launching their weapons at each other. India and Pakistan, which have a hugely acrimonious relationship and fight wars occasionally, still don’t use their large stockpile of nukes (even though the ruler of Pakistan is a military despot to boot). This was my initial point. Obviously it would be preferable if no one had nukes, but the fact that someone acquires them by no means guarantees conflict, or that, if conflict occurs, nuclear weapons will be used. In fact, I think it makes conflict a lot less likely.
3) The only caveat to this argument is that, as pro-war parties argued before the war in Iraq and argue again now, certain rulers (Saddam Hussein and Ahmedinejad) might be so wacky and unpredictable they might be willing to guarantee the annihilation of their country to get off one strike at the US. I think this is a) intentional hyperbole intended to drum up support for war and b) lacking any serious supporting evidence. If you think there is evidence of this, show it to me – the New Republic ran a story about how Ahmedinejad is a member of some strange apocalyptic muslim group, but I think this is a far cry from evidence that he’s dangerously unhinged (American evangelicals, after all, aren’t so much different in their beliefs about the impending apocalypse). If these leaders have any shred of pragmatism in them, as I believe they probably must in order to attain and hold on to power, they wouldn’t do something so obviously self-destructive.
4)I think the real fear in both the Iraq and Iran cases has been that a nuclear Iraq/Iran would be able to bully around the rest of the region, and possibly spur other countries to develop nuclear weapons as well. Maybe, maybe not – but I think it’s worth asking whether this kind of far-removed US interest without any obvious humanitarian benefit is worth going to war for. Since we ignored Rwanda and currently ignore Darfur, it’s pretty ridiculous to try to get our feet wet in another mostly altruistic crusade in the Middle East.
5) Oh, also, there’s the fear that Iran could give it’s nuclear weapons to terrorists, but of course given modern technology and intelligence, this goes back to point (1): we’d find out the bomb was Iranian and annihilate Iran. I’m sure Iran recognizes this as a credible threat and wouldn’t bring that upon itself.

Well-reasoned arguments that elaborate on my reasoning with the addition of #4.
Wouldn’t you just love to have a blog for that kind of diatribe? LOVE. You know what would be cool? A group blog. Then you can have duelling entries “The previous author is an idiot”. Movable type lets you do that really easily, so we could either have an integrated blog, or have separate ones that cross-post (your entries can sometimes appear on my site, for example). I think that sounds neat.
Like a true nerd, I find the technology, then make a need for it to fill. Maybe that’s just being male.

it is the essence of being male – sounds very neat. Plus we could get a whole bunch of people involved, all the entries duelling on some related subjects. If you create it people will post.

Is that really a blog, or just another form of the old-fashioned bulletin board with fancier capabilities (like calling someone an idiot in realer-time?).