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From: piet@mcvax.UUCP (Piet Beertema)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.politics
Subject: Re: Star Wars Defense Plan
Message-ID: <5968@mcvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Sep-84 12:29:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcvax.5968
Posted: Mon Sep 10 12:29:13 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Sep-84 20:28:37 EDT
References: <570@erix.UUCP> <557@ttds.UUCP>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 45

<...>

	>The nuclear force is built up, not to be used aggresively...
Nuclear weapons ranging in the megatons simply aren't defensive.

	>The newspapers stated a few weeks ago that the Red Army would take
	>over ALL of Western Europe (including Holland)...
Oh come on, as long as they don't have VAXen, Holland is just too small
for their crude missile guidance systems to give them any chance to hit us...

	>The whole strategy upon which the defense of free Europe is based
	>assumes that USA would use their nuclear force, if necessary, to
	>prevent a Russian attack on Western Europe.
Of course the US would, blowing only Europe to pieces without risking too
much for themselves.

	>How much extra money are we ready to spend on conventional forces to
	>balance the Red Army forces ?
Balance? Outweigh you mean.

	>Is it at all possible to have a defense of the free world without
	>nuclear arms as long as the Soviets have a nuclear threat directed
	>against us ?
A nuclear threat directed by the SU against Europe is a threat against
themselves.

	>...following a civil aircraft full of tourists with its radar
	>locked for attack on the civil aircraft.....
How do you determine if a plane's radar is locked for *attack*???

	>When the Swedish fighters sent up to take care of the matter arrived
	>the Russian had gone back to its base in Estonia.
What would they have done if it had been a Russian civil aircraft "apparently
on spying mission" a la KAL007?

	>To me it is clear that any talk about disarmament is simply utopian
	>as long as the elderly boys brought up during WW2 are in control in
	>the kremlin....
...and even more: as long as elderly boys brought up in the movie scene
are in control of the white house, not only building up a huge nuclear
arsenal, but every now and then even thinking about and threatening to
use it.
-- 
	Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam
	...{decvax,philabs}!mcvax!piet