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I would point out that if the US is already spending more money on arms than the next several countries combined, I don't think this is the relevant issue. If a

I would point out that if the US is already spending more money on arms than the next several countries combined, I don't think this is the relevant issue. If another power was strong enough to threaten our defenses, that would be one thing but clearly there is something much bigger going on (I would say it is the US empire, at least according to a senior official in the Bush administration: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community). I hesitate to make this argument because I think they should be abolished, but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons? The only reason is to be able to control events in other parts of the world to the benefit of the people that start the wars. This perspective would imply that we should not be encouraging our citizens to devote their energies to devising ways to kill (i.e. form startups around "defense").

ethbro 8y ago
Because a world in which many parties have strategic nuclear defense AND sufficient non-nuclear forces is more stable and less conflict prone than a world in which major powers possess only nuclear weapons. Such was the worry about Cold War Germany: had Russia attacked with conventional forces, the US would have been all but required to escalate quickly to nuclear weapons. Similarly in Korea. If the Inchon landings hadn't been successful, it's a coin flip as to whether the US would have nuked North Korea, Russia, and/or China. Truman, LeMay, and MacArthur were all prepared to go to the mat for South Korea and Taiwan. https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war-almost-went-nuclear-180955324/ https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war...
dgudkov 8y ago
>but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons? Nukes are neither purely offensive nor defensive weapon (except low-scale tactical ones). They solve the task of strategic deterrence [1]. There are many other tasks that nukes can't and don't solve. It seems like your knowledge of the subject is somewhat shallow and hence the scorn. I highly recommend learning a bit more about defense -- its goals, problems, and ways to solve them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

ethbro 8y ago

Because a world in which many parties have strategic nuclear defense AND sufficient non-nuclear forces is more stable and less conflict prone than a world in which major powers possess only nuclear weapons. Such was the worry about Cold War Germany: had Russia attacked with conventional forces, the US would have been all but required to escalate quickly to nuclear weapons. Similarly in Korea. If the Inchon landings hadn't been successful, it's a coin flip as to whether the US would have nuked North Korea, Russia, and/or China. Truman, LeMay, and MacArthur were all prepared to go to the mat for South Korea and Taiwan. https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war-almost-went-nuclear-180955324/ https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war...

dgudkov 8y ago

>but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons? Nukes are neither purely offensive nor defensive weapon (except low-scale tactical ones). They solve the task of strategic deterrence [1]. There are many other tasks that nukes can't and don't solve. It seems like your knowledge of the subject is somewhat shallow and hence the scorn. I highly recommend learning a bit more about defense -- its goals, problems, and ways to solve them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction