eugene@ames-lm.UUCP (Eugene Miya) (06/06/84)
To address a number of your points: The United States has also failed to live up to many treaties dating to the 1700s. So your point about the USSR is moot. I think this is just a property of large governments. About tactical weapons: nuclear land mines have existed. Before ICBMs, a big worry regarded pre located bombs in American cities. It is not clear to me that our defense planners still not worried about this. The problem of the High Frontier is two fold. First, and foremost, it is destablizing to the arms race. The Soviets will have to also build their own HF (a fence our ICBMs will have to cross). Take the Soviet position. You see Americans trying to put up another ABM system. What are you going to do? (As a Soviet, now!) If the Americans defend missile silos, and you want a counterforce strat., then you have to target more warheads against key silos (Overkill). This leads to further escalation. The second point reflects a bit on decisions made by our Government (my employer). When we had an ABM defense we chose to protect one Minuteman base, and the Soviets chose to protect Moscow. Now, our system collects dust. We know the USSR's system has a lot of holes and is very inaccurate and crude. I know there are arguments for this (leaders get away(?) via Looking Glass type aircraft, etc.), but I think this is moot in an age of minute-response. Perhaps, the "high frontier" will be more appealing if you offered it in conjunction with other concepts such as a significant Build Down. My opinion is not for immediate unilateral (total) disarmament [you would certainly say this is unrealistic, too]. Let's get out of the arm race rut by continually building more arms. And let's keep weapons out of space. --e. miya a member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility