Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: can.ai Subject: Re: Star Wars North Message-ID: <5390@utzoo.UUCP> Date: Mon, 1-Apr-85 13:05:35 EST Article-I.D.: utzoo.5390 Posted: Mon Apr 1 13:05:35 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Apr-85 13:05:35 EST References: <895@ubc-vision.CDN> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 170 A couple of issues of fact, first: > The Trident submarines are each > capable of annihilating most of the Soviet Union using the new > Trident II missiles with a flight time of only 10 minutes or so > (not enough time to respond) and are largely invulnerable...another > first-strike weapon? Trident II is barely under development; it will be years before it is operational. The current subs carry Trident I. > The cruise missiles are capable of evading > detection and penetrating through defenses...another first-strike > weapon? A first-strike weapon that takes hours to reach its target? Come off it. "Evading detection" does not mean that they are invisible, just that they are relatively hard to find and shoot down. It doesn't mean that there is any major difficulty in determining that you are under attack from them. (If for no other reason than that they won't all arrive at their targets simultaneously, and their low speed means that there will be a considerable spread of arrival times.) Any ICBMs that are left around by the time a cruise missile arrives, have been left around deliberately. These points are *not* quibbling; inflation of the threat is a classic tactic of propaganda. It is difficult to debate issues intelligently when you cannot agree on the basic facts first. > In the Strategic Computing Initiative, one of the projects > is to develop the capability to develop an "autonomous vehicle" > which are capable of "reconnaissance and attack missions". They > specify that some will work in high radiation environments. Virtually anything the US military buys these days is specified to work in a nuclear-war environment. There is nothing unusual in this being specified for a new device. > There > have been a multitude of reports of talk in the Pentagon of "fighting > and winning a protracted nuclear war". And such talk has been a standard feature of Soviet strategy for over thirty years. Not because they are evil, but because they view nuclear war differently. They are convinced that any major war *will* go nuclear, and that the *only* way to deter such a war is to convince the US that it cannot possibly win. This requires being prepared to fight such a war. Note that this is quite different from orthodox US policy, which is to deter a war by convincing the Soviets that it would be too horrible to contemplate. The difference in views, and the lack of recognition of the difference, are most worrisome. One might, with great hesitation, consider the recent shift in attitudes in the Pentagon a *favorable* sign -- at least the two sides are on the same wavelength. Maybe. > ... What if the defense was intended > to protect the U.S. from a weak retaliatory strike by the U.S.S.R. > after an American first strike?!! It would be much more effective > for that! This is a real and serious worry. > It would also be very effective to destroy Soviet > satellites (to blind them) just prior to an American first-strike. Not really. It would constitute giving advance warning of the attack. Why *else* would one blind Soviet satellites?? Such a move by the US is quite unlikely, simply because it *might* trigger an all-out attack. > You find it very hard to believe that the Americans would do > such a thing. Well I find it hard to believe that's Ronald Reagan's > real intention as well. The all important point, however, is that > the Russians may not find it so hard to believe...they are nervous! It is worth remembering that at one point, back in pre-missile days, there were some American generals who seriously believed that a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union was not only reasonable but the right thing to do. Fortunately, they were not in positions of influence. You can bet the Soviets remember them, though. > ... We must consider how > *they* will react to our moves and should tailor what we do to > encourage them to react in a manner which will enhance our *mutual* > security... Quite true. But see my note earlier, about the two sides not thinking the same way about quite fundamental issues. Many ill-informed people assume that the US view of deterrence is the only view; not so. If you want another example... Orthodox US policy (still deeply ingrained, despite recent noises) is to aim missiles at Soviet civilians, on the "deter war by making it too horrible" theory, otherwise known as "Mutual Assured Destruction". But the Soviets have never believed in MAD, and have always aimed their missiles at military targets, although the effect is much the same because many of these are in or near cities. If you are going to engage in the intricate dance of encouraging the Soviets to think (hence react) in specific ways, remember these differences! The if-we-do-this-then-they'll-think-this-and-do-this-so-we-should... reasoning, and the involved strategies that go with it, are not part of Soviet thought at all. They consider such elaborate chains of hypotheses ridiculous. Maybe they're right. > Surely, any stable peace must be built upon mutual trust. This is not entirely obvious. Switzerland has not had to fight a war in quite a long time, probably long enough for its peaceful relations to be considered "stable". (Longer than most peaces have lasted, in fact.) The Swiss did *not* get this way by mutual trust with their neighbors; they got this way by being (a) friendly and willing to trade, and (b) armed to the teeth in case somebody had different ideas. I am not saying that the Swiss model is necessarily right for the current context, just pointing out that the "peace comes only from trust" claim is verifiably false. > "Hans Bethe, in a lecture at Cal Tech last week, very conservatively > estimated the cost of deploying the space-based laser alone, even > after the outrageous assumption that they would operate at all, would > cost between 2 and 6 TRILLION dollars." Many people think this estimate is preposterous, hopelessly biased. If for no other reason, consider that most of this is launch costs, and a small fraction of that money, spent on better reusable launchers, would cut launch costs by an order of magnitude or more. > (1 trillion dollars looks like $1,000,000,000,000 when in numbers) > If you spent 1 MILLION dollars for EVERY DAY since the birth of > Christ, you would *still* not have 1 trillion dollars! Divided by the population of the Western world, it's about $2000 apiece. A lot, but not ridiculous. > Think of all > the other things in the world that money could be spent on. But it wouldn't get spent on them, would it? It would get spent on cars and cosmetics and tobacco. "Think of the other things we could do with that money" is a moving plea, but quite unrealistic. > To believe that there can be a "technological panacea" for our dilemma is a > *very* dangerous misconception. To believe that technology cannot solve the problem, or at least change it beyond all recognition, is an equally dangerous misconception. Ask the African tribes who attacked heavily-outnumbered British troops a century ago, confident that they would win... and found themselves facing machine guns. The technological gap between breech-loading rifles and machine guns is small, but the effect is huge. It is fashionable nowadays to proclaim that technology cannot solve anything, or change anything, in any important way. This too is verifiably false. It can, and does. The question of whether technology can solve this *particular* problem remains open. It is neither a sure thing nor a self-evident folly. > The fundamental problem is one of human > interrelations and greed (for money and power). But is there a fundamental solution? One that we can really achieve, not just one to dream about? History is not encouraging; the major cases of sustained peace that I am aware of started out as "peace through strength", not "peace through goodwill", although some of them eventually evolved into the latter. > Canadians should NOT > participate in SDI because it simply aggravates these underlying problems. But if we opt for an attack on these underlying problems, will we get anywhere? Greed is awfully fundamental. Maybe a (careful) treatment of the symptoms is the best we can hope for. Freeman Dyson, for one, has argued that antimissile defences are a part -- not the only part! -- of a viable treatment. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry