ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) (08/14/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, August 13, 1986 5:20PM
Volume 7, Issue 2
Today's Topics:
KAL007 - conclusive evidence exists
treaty enforcement
The 20% Question or How Much Is It Worth?
Star Wars vote
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Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 10:00:06 PDT
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ@Forsythe.Stanford.Edu>
Subject: KAL007 - conclusive evidence exists
> less than conclusive evidence, even today [that] KAL007 was spying
It is incredible that "less than conclusive evidence exists even
today," because of the wealth of data witheld by the United States
et alia -- the fact that this tragedy uniquely has not been publicly
investigated in the United States tends to prove that completely
conclusive evidence is so abundant that an inquiry would reveal it.
The most "interesting" aspect of the tragedy is why the Soviets
*and* United States have collaborated in witholding the conclusive
information they both possess. This puzzle is the one good point
against the espionage hypothesis, but it would be easy to see why
the USSR wouldn't want published how their radar was confused
by the USA, and how it took them over two hours even to sight the
plane, and how tardy their warning was.
Note though that when the Japanese radar tapes were revealed, the
route proven was roughly the same as that claimed by Russia, and
significantly different from that claimed by the United States.
However, the Soviets did hand over hundreds of pieces of metal
debris from their naval search, whereas a flotilla of vastly
superior US ships insulted us all by declaring the only metal they
found was an old ship's cooking pot.
To: ARMS-D@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: 12 Aug 86 19:43:17 EDT
From: Hank.Walker@unh.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: treaty enforcement
I think all this talk about treaty enforcement is off the mark. There are
really two kinds of treaties: treaties between unequal parties, and
treaties between equal parties. In the former case, the stronger party
forces the weaker party to agree to something. These treaties are enforced
by the stronger party through force, threat of force, economic might, etc.
In the case of equal parties, the parties agree to something that is in
their mutual self-interest. Neither party can force the other to do
something against their will.
Treaties between the US-SU fall into the equal party category, and
consequently only remain in effect as long as both sides perceive the treaty
to be in their self-interest. Clauses such as six-month withdrawl periods
only exist to cause embarrassment or public ridicule if violated, and cannot
be enforced. If a party feels strongly enough, then this ridicule will be
ignored. If 90% of the US public wanted to get immediately get rid of the
ABM treaty, how long do you think it would be around?
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Date: Tuesday, 12 August 1986 16:39-EDT
From: Jim Kirby <decvax!wanginst!kirby at ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
To: arms-d@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Re: The 20% Question or How Much Is It Worth?
Posted-Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 16:39:25 edt
Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d
Organization: Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, Tyngsboro, Mass.
An important issue has gone unmentioned in the discussion of whether a
BMD that could stop only 20% of the warheads in a ballistic missile
attack would be worth having. That issue is the cost of the system.
(In this message I am ignoring the effects on US security of possible
Soviet responses to such a BMD (such as building twice as many missiles
or targeting US satellites).)
If building a 20% effective BMD were free, it would be worth having. It
might turn out to be useful in some situation. If not, then the US is
out nothing.
If building such a system were to cost, say, $10 trillion (replace by
any ridiculously large sum), then it would not be worth building. There
are numerous more effective ways to spend such a sum to increase US
security.
It is likely that a 20% effective BMD would cost somewhere between zero
and $10 trillion. When someone says that such a system is worth
building, the question that person must answer is "How much is it
worth?" I cannot believe that the answer is "Any amount that we have to
spend." Such an answer implies that it is worth letting our children go
hungry and uneducated, that it is worth diverting all of our resources
to build a system that will protect us from only 20% of the warheads in
a nuclear attack.
The same argument applies, of course, to a BMD that is 99% or even 100%
effective. The point is that ballistic missiles are not the only threat
we face in this world nor is defense the only thing on which we want to
spend money. Addressing the threat is worth some effort. The question
to be answered is "How much is it worth?"
--
Jim Kirby kirby@wanginst (Csnet)
Wang Institute of Graduate Studies decvax!wanginst!kirby (UUCP)
Tyng Road, Tyngsboro, MA 01879 (617) 649-9731
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Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1986 17:10 EDT
From: LIN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Star Wars vote
[This message orginally came from CHAPMAN@SU-RUSSELL]
The House voted for $3.1 billion in funding for the SDI yesterday, the
figure supported by the Federation of American Scientists, UCS, Common
Cause and other groups. The $3.1 billion figure was an amendment to
the defense authorization bill sponsored by Congressman Charles
Bennett, a Democrat from Florida. This amount would only cover the
inflation rate of the figure for FY 1986. The vote was 239 to 176.
President Reagan had asked for $5.4 billion. There was no amendment
on the Hofl House floor for the President's figure. The closest was
$5.1 billion, sponsored by arch conservative Robert Dornan of Los
Angeles. That was defeated 324 to 94, with even a majority of
Republicans voting against it.
The Senate has approved a figure of $3.9 billion, but it missed
cutting the SDI budget to the House figure by only one vote. The
defense bill now goes to a conference committee, where it is expected
the final figure will be $3.5 billlion.
It is clear from these votes that the SDI's support is wavering in
Congress. The imminence of the cuts prompted a series of alarms from
conservatives, in- cluding one yesterday from Jack Kemp and Malcolm
Wallop (Senator from Wyoming) in the New York Times. Kemp and Wallop
brought to the New York Times the panic that has been expressed in
more conservative journals for the last month or so-- that the SDI is
"being researched to death." A new phrase of contempt has appeared
among SDI supporters: "research forever, deploy never." M. Stanton
Evans, a right-wing columnist for Human Events, said that the Congress
and the Reagan State Department are turning the SDI into "a very
expensive science project." Robert Jastrow has been yelling his head
off that the Reagan State Department, in its affection for the arms
control process, is condemning the SDI to a state of permanent limbo.
Jastrow has been telling everyone who will listen that the recent
announcement of the new negotiating policy in which the US will adhere
to the ABM Treaty until 1993, in exchange for deep Soviet cuts in
offensive missiles, is the "death knell" for the SDI. Strangely
enough, Jastrow has been claiming that the Department of Defense is
prohibited by law from pursuing weapons programs which, when they come
to fruition, would violate an existing arms control treaty (this to me
sounds like hogwash anyway).
Even more strangely, the conservative supporters of the SDI have
started to ignore the strongest opponents of the program and have
started to direct their attention to an even bigger bogeyman, the
Reagan State Department. Kemp, Congressman Jim Courter of New Jersey
(now the leading House supporter of the SDI), Wallop (long the leading
Senate supporter) and Jastrow, among others, are claiming that the
biggest enemy of the SDI is George Shultz. The supporters contend
that the Reagan State Department is too attached to arms control, and
they have bullied the President into accepting the desirability of the
ABM Treaty, which prohibits most of the research required by the SDI.
These supporters also contend that there are "off the shelf"
technologies available to deploy parts of a strategic defense right
now, and that to wait until 1993 to deploy a system will give the
Soviets a seven-year head start. These SDI supporters want the US to
notify the Soviet Union that we will abandon the ABM Treaty in six
months, as the Treaty requires. President Reagan, after having
listened to Shultz and sent off a delegation to Moscow to negotiate on
strategic arms, is now being blindsided by Republicans to the right of
him.
The SDIO, for its part, has made a lot of groaning noises about the
proposed cuts in funding, but some insiders claim that they can do
everything they want with only $3.1 billion, and that they are so
awash with money from previous years that they are funding a lot of
highly questionable projects which can be easily abandoned. Not
surprisingly, however, with such sums at stake there are fights
developing about which technologies will be given priority. Edward
Teller is still fighting for the life of the x-ray laser, which is not
only threatened by budget cuts, but is now jeopardized by a recent
announcement that the US and the Soviet Union will finally be talking
about a comprehensive test ban (and both the Senate and the House
voted for non-binding resolutions calling for such talks). Jastrow,
Kemp, Courter, et.al., are pushing for near-term technologies for
point defense; the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to direct the
SDIO to put more effort into silo defenses and less into space-based
area defenses. The President still clings vaguely to population
defense, but even he seems to have lost interest in the debate over
the SDI. Supporters in Congress are somewhat peeved that the
President did not use the leverage on Congress for the SDI that he
used in the contra aid vote, for example.
The President's latest negotiating position, however, is clever enough
to actually *bind* the US to deploying a strategic defense after 1993,
as part of a treaty with the Soviets. It is unlikely that this will
come to pass, however. It is highly doubtful that the Soviets and the
United States will be able to work out their differences over
strategic defense and space-based weapons in the two years remaining
in the Reagan Administration, let alone have the Senate ratify an arms
control treaty, especially with the powerful forces in the right wing
of the Republican Party (and within the Administration) which are
opposed to *any* treaty with the Soviets.
So the SDI is likely to remain "an expensive science project" for the
years remaining of the Reagan Presidency. And it is almost impossible
to tell what the future of the program will be under a different
President. Democrats are increasingly attracted to silo defense--this
has become the position of Sam Nunn who is probably the most
influential Democrat on strategic weapons issues. Moderate
Republicans have been curiously silent on the SDI, while of course the
Presidential hopeful Jack Kemp would abandon the ABM Treaty and deploy
what he could as soon as possible. But any President will be subject
to the growing skepticism of Congress and the increasing pressures of
the Federal deficit and the expense of other military programs. It
could be that the SDI will indeed be "researched to death," soaking up
$ 3 billion plus increases for inflation year after year, until those
levels of funding become our institutionalized cost for ballistic
missile defense research, as the $1 billion level was before March,
1983. Then military officers will gradually realize that an
assignment to BMD work is the end of their career, and the press will
snore every time anyone brings up "Star Wars." The SDI ends not with
a bang, but a whimper. . .
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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