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short for President Reagan’s controversial Strategic Defense Initiative program, a proposed “missile shield” that threatened to further destabilize an already t

by causi 4y ago

short for President Reagan’s controversial Strategic Defense Initiative program, a proposed “missile shield” that threatened to further destabilize an already tenuous nuclear détente Not that SDI was going to work, but I will never understand this "we shouldn't build anti-nuke defenses because it might make the people pointing nukes at us angry" attitude.

sbarre 4y ago
Honest question: were you alive during the cold war days? It was different times, and the overwhelming desire to not escalate or provoke was very real, in a way that just doesn't exist anymore today.
thrwawat36 4y ago
I'm not a politician, but it could lead to an escalating arms race that is expensive and benefits nobody. If Reagan finished SDI, other nations like China/Russia could feel the need to develop a similar program. They would at a minimum start researching ways to work around the insanely expensive SDI program, which would cause it to be obsolete. The cycle continues and everyone loses money and resources that could be spent on other problems.
3pt14159 4y ago
If you would like to understand the arguments they're out there. Arms Control Wonk blog and podcast. My personal view is that we should build them to shield from states like the DPRK, but the contrasting view is that it destabilizes Mutually Assured Destruction. We don't know how many of their missiles we'll be able to intercept in the event of a mass strike, so it could make our leaders overly confident to take actions that would escalate. That's the critique, and I think it has some merit, but I also think that there are people that I admire, like Jeffery Lewis, that hold that view or something similar to it. For whatever it is worth, I've personally worked on arms control and in intelligence, so this opinion is not coming out of the blue.
sophacles 4y ago
A wierd consequence of mutually assured destruction is that you need your adversary to be roughly on par with you. If one side gains a major advantage they may decide to attack knowing that you'll have the worst of it. The weaker side may be more likely to use thier ultimate out of desperation and "nothing left to lose" type thinking. Further, the way to deal with anti-nuke defenses is to just send more nukes and/or lots of dummies too. Things like iron dome are 90% effective (reportedly, some think that number is too high and has a significant propaganda element)... You dont need a huge success rate for your nukes to be effective. Besides the consequences of a destroyed nuke are not great either, there's still a lot of uranium and plutonium getting dumped into the atmosphere. If your goal is to end nuclear proliferation, things that increase said proliferation are not ok.
- causi 4y ago
  If one side gains a major advantage they may decide to attack knowing that you'll have the worst of it. The weaker side may be more likely to use thier ultimate out of desperation and "nothing left to lose" type thinking. The US is already at a significant disadvantage. Russia's nuke-based nuclear interceptor missiles are an order of magnitude more effective than America's explosive and kinetic-based interceptors.

by causi 4y ago

sbarre 4y ago

Honest question: were you alive during the cold war days? It was different times, and the overwhelming desire to not escalate or provoke was very real, in a way that just doesn't exist anymore today.

thrwawat36 4y ago

I'm not a politician, but it could lead to an escalating arms race that is expensive and benefits nobody. If Reagan finished SDI, other nations like China/Russia could feel the need to develop a similar program. They would at a minimum start researching ways to work around the insanely expensive SDI program, which would cause it to be obsolete. The cycle continues and everyone loses money and resources that could be spent on other problems.

3pt14159 4y ago

If you would like to understand the arguments they're out there. Arms Control Wonk blog and podcast. My personal view is that we should build them to shield from states like the DPRK, but the contrasting view is that it destabilizes Mutually Assured Destruction. We don't know how many of their missiles we'll be able to intercept in the event of a mass strike, so it could make our leaders overly confident to take actions that would escalate. That's the critique, and I think it has some merit, but I also think that there are people that I admire, like Jeffery Lewis, that hold that view or something similar to it. For whatever it is worth, I've personally worked on arms control and in intelligence, so this opinion is not coming out of the blue.

sophacles 4y ago

A wierd consequence of mutually assured destruction is that you need your adversary to be roughly on par with you. If one side gains a major advantage they may decide to attack knowing that you'll have the worst of it. The weaker side may be more likely to use thier ultimate out of desperation and "nothing left to lose" type thinking. Further, the way to deal with anti-nuke defenses is to just send more nukes and/or lots of dummies too. Things like iron dome are 90% effective (reportedly, some think that number is too high and has a significant propaganda element)... You dont need a huge success rate for your nukes to be effective. Besides the consequences of a destroyed nuke are not great either, there's still a lot of uranium and plutonium getting dumped into the atmosphere. If your goal is to end nuclear proliferation, things that increase said proliferation are not ok.

causi 4y ago
If one side gains a major advantage they may decide to attack knowing that you'll have the worst of it. The weaker side may be more likely to use thier ultimate out of desperation and "nothing left to lose" type thinking. The US is already at a significant disadvantage. Russia's nuke-based nuclear interceptor missiles are an order of magnitude more effective than America's explosive and kinetic-based interceptors.