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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watcgl!jchapman
From: jchapman@watcgl.UUCP (john chapman)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Canadian participation in Star Wars.
Message-ID: <2057@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Jun-85 09:43:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.2057
Posted: Tue Jun 18 09:43:57 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 02:58:08 EDT
References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP> <970@mnetor.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 79

> >  1. the people in charge are old and personally I think this makes
> >     them a lot more likely to die.  ronnie reagan probably doesn't
> >      have nearly as much desire to keep living as I do; he's going
> >      to go soon anyhow.
> >  
> Actually, I think this psychological analysis is somewhat flawed.  My impression
> of people as they grow old is that in general they become more scared of dying
> rather than less.  Maybe because death seems more real, who knows....

 Well it's certainly simplistic and so flawed in the way all such analyses
 are I admit.  My point though is that someone like reagan has already
 lived the vast majority of his life, knows he will die "soon" anyhow,
 and may feel strongly enough about the "red menace"/"soviet monsters"
 (pick your favourite reagan description of the ussr) that trading a
 few last years in return for destroying/stopping them may not seem
 like such a horrible idea.

> 
> I do seriously wonder what we happen if "our side" was to unilateraly disarm.
> Would the "ennemy" really have all the resources needed to invade the rest of
> the world and maintain their power?  Given that they probably do not have
> enough resources to invade with conventional weapons, would nuked-out wastelands
> really be of any use to them?  Even if we assume that they managed to
> successfully invade the rest of the world with conventional means, would they
> ever be able to keep their power against an opposition of 4 (or is it 5 now)
> billion people?   This all seems pretty unlikely to me, and it often makes me
> believe that the "red menace" is a hoax.

 I think that is a very good question and I would like to add to your
 points.  Very little attention is spent (at least publicly) on the
 question of why they would want a war. I can immediately think of two
 reasons.
 
 1. real estate (raw materials, resources etc)
	
    As you say, nuked out wastelands are probably of not much use to
    either of them.  Sufficiently strong conventional forces should
    make it undesirable to attack with nonnuclear means as well 
    (although if the nuclear problem is ever solved I think we had
     better turn our attention to chemical/biological weapons pretty
     damn quickly before they proliferate in the same way).


 2. because they percieve a threat to their existence
    
    Stop threatening them.  We (our governments) do do this and
    I think it would be a good idea for the west to make some
    gesture aimed at saying we'll leave them alone if they leave
    us alone.  Our international relations have all the flavour of
    a schoolyard fight between two kids who are too overwrought to
    come to any accomodation so they just stand their calling each
    other names and claiming to each be the "right" one. 
    Unfortunately their doesn't seem to be any teachers around to
    calm the juvenile emotions in our case.
    

    How many nukes do we need?  If the nuclear winter
    people are right then we need no nukes at all; if they attacked
    they would doom themselves just as surely.  What if they were
    drop only a few to cripple the west (three would do canada quite
    effectively)?  Well perhaps we could keep a few; enough so they
    would be too worried about a tit for tat type of exchange to start
    and in addition reasonably strong conventional *defensive* forces.
    It would seem that a hundred or less nukes would be more than
    sufficient; again, even if they don't hit their targets the
    nuclear winter will solve the "problem" for all of us anyhow.

  Thousands of nuclear missiles?  How can anyone seriously believe
  we need so many nukes? Even if the soviets were the danger they
  are often painted to be, thousands of nukes? geez, give me a
  break.


> -- 
> Sophie Quigley
> {allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie

 John Chapman
...!watmath!watcgl!jchapman