More about missile defense
By Mikael on Tuesday 16 December 2008, 13:04 - Permalink
(From a letter to a German friend)
Some months ago, I engaged in a polemic with a historian and a nuclear weapons expert in Hufvudstadsbladet (daily newspaper in Swedish in Finland). I found that the expert shared my view that the existing missile defense of the West is worthless if it comes to intercepting Russian strategic nuclear missiles. However, the expert accepted the explanation given by the Americans for the planned radar and interceptor bases in Czhechoslovakia and Poland, namely, that these are built as a shield against Iranian attacks, because the Iranians are not expected to have, now or later, missile systems nearly as effective as the Russians.
My purpose in the aforementioned exchange of articles was to draw attention to the "economic" side of missile defense: that the main motive behind missile defence is indeed that it does not work, and that, for this very reason, missile defense is an unfailing goldmine for the military-industrial complex. Shortly after this polemic in the Finnish-Swedish newspaper took place (or at least later than I knew of it), George Monbiot published his excellent column on missile defense in The Guardian (London). Did you read that one? The title of Monbiot's column is The Magic Pudding (I have already quoted it earlier in this blog)
When considering the (relatively) autonomous development of the military industry, the German word Selbstgesetzlichkeit comes to my mind. Would you use that word in this context? Also, one comes to think of the term which was coined by E.P.Thompson in the European nuclear Disarmament Movement of the 1980s : Exterminism.
Some months ago, I engaged in a polemic with a historian and a nuclear weapons expert in Hufvudstadsbladet (daily newspaper in Swedish in Finland). I found that the expert shared my view that the existing missile defense of the West is worthless if it comes to intercepting Russian strategic nuclear missiles. However, the expert accepted the explanation given by the Americans for the planned radar and interceptor bases in Czhechoslovakia and Poland, namely, that these are built as a shield against Iranian attacks, because the Iranians are not expected to have, now or later, missile systems nearly as effective as the Russians.
My purpose in the aforementioned exchange of articles was to draw attention to the "economic" side of missile defense: that the main motive behind missile defence is indeed that it does not work, and that, for this very reason, missile defense is an unfailing goldmine for the military-industrial complex. Shortly after this polemic in the Finnish-Swedish newspaper took place (or at least later than I knew of it), George Monbiot published his excellent column on missile defense in The Guardian (London). Did you read that one? The title of Monbiot's column is The Magic Pudding (I have already quoted it earlier in this blog)
When considering the (relatively) autonomous development of the military industry, the German word Selbstgesetzlichkeit comes to my mind. Would you use that word in this context? Also, one comes to think of the term which was coined by E.P.Thompson in the European nuclear Disarmament Movement of the 1980s : Exterminism.