ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (10/14/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, October 14, 1986 12:13AM
Volume 7, Issue 32
Today's Topics:
Strategic Deception
administrivia
compromise of intelligence
Strategic Deception
Armageddon Complexes
Disclosure of info to electorate, or dictatorship?
"combat zone" meaningful in future war??
Stealth cruise missiles
"threatening" posture of US (formerly Re: Phil and SDI)
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Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1986 14:13 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Strategic Deception
From: Wayne McGuire <Wayne%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU>
One must begin to wonder whether getting on with this war has become
such an urgent concern for the neocons and their traditional
conservative allies that they are--as in the case of false reports
about Libyan "hit teams" in the U.S.--willing to use
disinformation--including the _manufacture_ of evidence--to push us
over the brink into a military confrontation which could rapidly
escalate into a world war.
I have asked this question before, but I'd like to pose it again.
Please supply a plausible scenario for how such a confrontation would
push us into world war with the Soviets, especailly given Soviet
behavior in the wake of the U.S. attacks on Libya.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1986 16:31 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: administrivia
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------------------------------
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 86 17:55:20 pdt
From: weemba@brahms.Berkeley.EDU (Matthew P Wiener)
Subject: compromise of intelligence
In response to Wayne McGuire <Wayne%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>:
> Are you asking for even further
> intelligence compromising? [me]
>[Wayne amplifies his Bamford summary, to the effect that the political
>[expediency of the Libyan intercept compromise was so damaging to intel-
>[ligence that a little bit more--the actual content--would not have been
>[that much more. In particular:]
> Armed with this knowledge,
>it was then a trivial matter for the Libyan government to tighten its security
>and upgrade its codes, and remove from our view a valuable window on their
>secret planning and activities.
This I know.
> Revealing the actual content of the
>intercepted communication would have added not at all to this initial damage,
Yes it could have. It could have alerted other countries to a particular
kind of weakness in *their* systems. It would also set a worse precedent.
Actually, while the NSA is certainly disgusted at seeing its efforts thrown
away, viewing it and countless other incidents as the abstract equivalent
of last year's ASATing of a working scientific research satellite, in the
end we must remember that the *reason* we have an intelligence community
is--so I hope--to decide when it is proper to take action, and not to feed
itself.
Whether this particular compromise was worth making is another question en-
tirely, even assuming the raid's "mission" was achieved. I can't even be-
gin to answer it.
> Could it be that the
>intercept is not the ironclad evidence the Administration claims it is, and
>was used as part of an on-going disinformation campaign that may have begun
>years ago?
Yes it could. It could also be that this is the one time the wolf crying was
for real.
Thus, I said:
> But the Libyan bombing raid is clearly distinct from the other
> three [examples]. First, our reaction was not limited to
> rhetoric and propaganda.
Consider Lebanon, where circa 250 soldiers were killed by terrorists. Our
reaction? "Shamefaced" withdrawal. (I use quotes since that seems to be
the level at which such actions are evaluated.) Surely if the reaction to
terrorism was to be based on forged evidence, then here was the opportunity.
> And more significantly, our
> intelligence was shared with our European allies, who agreed with
> our evaluation.... In this situation, I consider our allies'
> concurrence a sufficient substitute for "objective analysts".
>
>But according to accounts I read in a number of major newspapers, there was
>considerable dissension among European security specialists about the
>significance of this intercept. By no means was there unanimity about this
>evidence in European capitals.
This I haven't heard. In particular, I got the impression that the West
Germans were directly involved.
> ... what American citizens during the last decade have been
> the targets of terrorist attacks by the Libyan government or its
> surrogates? Names and particulars, please.
>
> The German discotheque!
>
>The proof that this is so appears to be rather flimsy, but you are missing the
>bigger picture. ...
Actually, I'm not. I'm only discussing the one incident. I am not informed
enough about other incidents or claims to begin to make comments/speculations.
Intelligence, by the way, is a very difficult field, with current interpre-
tations built up over the years like so many jigsaw puzzles. I can't even
begin to guess how many strands of information were put together to point
the finger at Khadafy. For example, Jack Anderson last spring had a column
about Libya trying to buy covertly plastic guns from an Austrian manufactur-
er. Where did this come from? Is it true? I have no idea.
I should point out that I think most of the administration's claims about
the Soviet Union and Nicaragua are sheer demagoguery. But Libya seems dif-
ferent.
>Something smells fishy in all this, [neoconservatives => war fever theory]
All too possible, unfortunately.
ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
------------------------------
Date: 13 Oct 1986 05:32 EDT (Mon)
From: Wayne McGuire <Wayne%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Strategic Deception
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 86 19:31:34 pdt
From: weemba@brahms.Berkeley.EDU (Matthew P Wiener)
... what American citizens during the last decade have been
the targets of terrorist attacks by the Libyan government or its
surrogates? Names and particulars, please.
The German discotheque!
I forgot to note that Mr. Wiener overlooks evidence undermining this
assertion that is even more damning than the failure of the Administration
to release the famous intercept. If you examine _The New York Times_ just
after the Tripoli bombing you will notice a number of articles reporting
that many security specialists--and especially the Israeli government,
which possesses probably the best database on Mideast terrorism in the
world--were, despite claims about the intercept, convinced that Syria and
not Libya masterminded the attack. How does one explain this?
Wayne McGuire
(wayne@oz.ai.mit.edu)
------------------------------
Date: 13 Oct 1986 05:43 EDT (Mon)
From: Wayne McGuire <Wayne%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Armageddon Complexes
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1986 14:13 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
I have asked this question before, but I'd like to pose it again.
Please supply a plausible scenario for how such a confrontation would
push us into world war with the Soviets, especailly given Soviet
behavior in the wake of the U.S. attacks on Libya.
It might be a mistake to assume that human societies, even in the latter
part of the twentieth century, are as rational as the average defense
intellectual. For the last few years, in fact, we have been witnessing in
important areas of the world a sustained attack on the Enlightenment and
modernism, and all the rational and tolerant values they represent.
A brief summary of a plausible scenario, which appears in greater length in
the archives somewhere, and which was not effectively refuted:
Current trends of radicalization and polarization continue in the world;
moderates in both the U.S. and USSR are pushed out of power by dogmatic
hardliners in both nations, who will be satisfied with nothing less than
crushing the communist or capitalist evil empires.
Religious extremism--Moslem, Christian, and Jewish--continues to gather
force in the Middle East and throughout the world. Peoples and nations
intoxicated on Allah, God, or Yahweh, contempuous of mere materiality and
pragmatic constraints, and more often than than not afflicted with an
Armageddon Complex, pursue their maximal esoteric goals at full tilt, in
complete disregard of the attendant dangers, and even in anticipation of an
Apocalypse. (For an excellent analysis of this trend in contemporary
Israel, see Aviezer Ravitzky's "Roots of Kahanism: Consciousness and
Political Reality" in the current issue (#39) of _The Jerusalem
Quarterly_.)
And so one of many scenarios in this hothouse environment might envision
Islamic extremists attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, Israel responding
with a full-scale nuclear assault on the Moslem nations and the Soviet
Union, and the Soviet Union reacting with a nuclear attack on Israel's
chief sponsor and protector (we provide 70% of her defense budget). This
sounds like a mad course of events, I know, but madness is often the Way of
the World, and this scenario is a fairly simple extrapolation, among
numerous plausible extrapolations, of current political and cultural
trends. Perhaps all these forces will peak and exhaust themselves before
they converge and climax in a world war, but then again perhaps they won't.
Wayne McGuire
(wayne@oz.ai.mit.edu)
------------------------------
Date: 1986 October 13 08:10:32 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject:Disclosure of info to electorate, or dictatorship?
LIN> Date: Thursday, 9 October 1986 17:41-EDT
LIN> From: LIN [sic, incorrect network address, no host given]
LIN> To: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at FORSYTHE.STANFORD.EDU>
LIN> Re: Trump cards vs. Broad brushes
LIN> From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
LIN> If this is so, why isn't the fact of predelegation conceded? Why
LIN> must we be left to *imagine* that predelegation exists?
LIN> The U.S. government will not necessarily acknowledge everything
LIN> explicitly, especially when it would create a storm of public
LIN> controversey.
Is this a democracy where our ELECTED representatives do OUR wishes,
tell US what the hell they are doing, and if we don't like what they
do we remove them from office at the next election?? Or is this a
dictatorship or monarchy where OUR opinion/wishes is of no concern,
where our ROYAL leaders simply do whatever they do with no regard for
our opinion/wishes, and try to hush anything that might cause a
rebellion? Or is this a fake democracy, a true dictatorship with some
facade of election to "justify" the dictatorship but really the
electorate is manipulated into total submission (like Nazi Germany,
Phillipines under Marcos, and present-day USSR in the opinion of many
Americans)? It sounds to me that LIN is arguing in favor of having
some kind of dictatorship here in the USA. I am adamently opposed to
dictatorship.
------------------------------
Date: 1986 October 13 08:07:01 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject:"combat zone" meaningful in future war??
I> Date: Thu, 9 Oct 86 11:08:49 PDT
I> From: ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
I> Subject: How dangerous are autonomous weapons?
I> Our list of autonomous weapons now includes mines and booby traps,
I> unexploded ordnance, and the new fire & forget missiles. Any of
I> these can indiscriminately kill civilians who enter the combat zone.
In WW2, the combat zone just about included all of Germany and nearby
nations. That is, while troops were stationned only in some areas,
bombs could land on just about any city. Some cities (Dresden for
example) were pretty much burned to the ground.
In WW3, the whole world will be a combat zone.
I don't think the restriction of mines and booby traps to combat zones
has much meaning any more. Probably some kind of booby traps will be
dropped on all major cities after the H-bombs have been dropped, to
kill off anyone trying to return to the cities to find food or shelter
among the burned-out stores. Instead of talking about "combat zone(s)"
let's stick to talking about the mode of attack, whether you have to
step on a mine or walk near it (you have to be on guard when
traveling, but not with sitting somewhere), or it will actually seek
out survivors and try to terminate them (you have no place to rest
anywhere on Earth).
(I'll admit some places might be more combat zones than others during
the initial stages of WW3 when troops are fighting a conventional war
plus some tactical nukes, but when the ICBMs et al start firing I
rather doubt there will be much distinction.)
I> So, do the new autonomous weapons increase the risk to the civilian in
I> or near the combat zone? Yes, I suppose the risk is slightly higher,
I> but insignificant compared to the risk of nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, if we can avoid crossing the nuclear threshold,
maybe there will be some distinction? I don't know. If the weapons can
be mass-produced like rifles, maybe a wave of them will cross the
frontier to invade the other country en masse, leaving no parcel of
land without one of them, killing anything that moves and doesn't have
a deactivator device. I think we have to be careful about what kind of
automated weapons we develop, produce and deploy.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 86 10:29:24 PDT
From: jlarson.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Stealth cruise missiles
Re: [Tracking cruise missiles] is probably not an insurmountable
technical problem
Does anyone know why stealth technology couldn't just as easily be
applied to cruise missiles as to bombers ?
John
------------------------------
Date: Mon 13 Oct 86 22:35:21-EDT
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: "threatening" posture of US (formerly Re: Phil and SDI)
; [cowan@xx] ... I was specifically referring to SDI, which has
; relatively little support (compared to other weapons systems) in the
; academic community except for those who have been "bought by the
; bucks."
;[lin@xx] On non-SDI systems, which do you believe has received significant
; academic support? This is an informational question, not a challenge.
I meant support as in an opinion poll (not active lobbying for SDI).
I would guess that there is general support for Midgetman, Stealth,
etc. (although support will probably decline as these weapons near
deployment and their cost is exposed and their effect on the strategic
balance is shown to fall short of initial, optimistic estimates.) I'd
bet there's also strong support for a nuclear freeze (an apparent
contradiction, but that's how someone like Ted Kennedy votes too).
On the rest of the DOD budget, I'd guess that the academic community
knows little, but they support a defense budget that's big enough to
fund seldom-debated developments such as JSTARS, NAVSTAR, GWEN, and
anti-submarine warfare (ASW).
; That is not so; I agree that there are situations for which
; the US military serves a legitimate defensive purpose.
; Good. What would you characterize as a legitimate defensive purpose?
Well, responding to a direct military threat to US territory, strictly
speaking. But before I get a flood of comments saying this is
unrealistic (given our global military "commitments" and US economic
interests abroad), I must say that if we adopted that definition for
"defense" all along, we would not have as many global military
commitments or economic interests abroad. Since we have not, the US
cannot abandon its empire abruptly, but it can relinquish control
gradually in places where we are not welcomed by the native
population.
; I should mention that it is not just the USE of military force that
; I was talking about, but also the THREAT of its use, which
; has bothered
; others by enabling the US to enter
; into agreements with those countries that are more favorable to us
; than would be the case without our military edge.
; Please describe a couple.
Well, again, if we hadn't had such a military edge in the first place,
the ground rules would be completely different and the reasons for the
agreements I was thinking of wouldn't exist anyway. Obviously,
agreements to locate US military bases all over the world wouldn't
exist unless we had a military edge over those countries. Now, you
may say bases are acquired by economic means (U.S. aid), but that is
closely tied to military means. Four others places to look:
1) How about the agreements of France, Japan, England, and West
Germany to participate in the SDI program (though this is not
"favorable to us" in my opinion, it is favorable to Reagan).
2) A recent series of Boston Globle articles on Micronesia (Kirbati,
Vanatu, and Kwajalein Atoll) says that the US has given little
compensation to the native population in exchange for US presence
there (e.g. we fail to honor 200-mile fishing rights on one island).
3) The threat of a US-backed coup certainly keeps Corazon Aquino
and Jose Napoleon Duarte from adopting the massive land reform
policies that Cerezo followed in Guatemala in 1954, arousing US ire.
4) I believe that the settlement of the war after Israel invaded
Lebanon to go after the PLO resulted in a government that was far more
"western-oriented" than would have been possible without the US
presence in the Middle East (and participation in the negotiations).
Note that the threats don't have to be stated explicity or publicly
(that's what diplomats are for), nor do they have to be executed
directly by US armed forces; the US can get foreign leaders to respond
without firing a shot. Once US power has been used, the assumption
that the US is a force to be reckoned with is built into all diplomacy
with the US, and no overt threat is necessary (it's similar for the
Soviet Union, too). Another example might be Sri Lanka; I heard that
the US is trying to establish a base at Trincomalee.
-rich
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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