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Obama's Proposed Space Weapon Ban
eldavojohn writes "Obama's proposed ban on space weapons is a complete 180 from George W. Bush's stance on them. Space.com looks at the two sides of the issue and quotes Michael Krepon explaining, 'The Bush administration rejected space diplomacy. We refused to negotiate on any subject that could limit US military options. We have a shift from an administration that was very dismissive of multilateral negotiations [as a whole], to an administration that is open to that possibility if it improves US national security.' You may recall discussing the necessity of space based weapons and Michael Krepon from 2005."
Obama: "Today I have signed an executive order banning all space weapons."
China: "Yay! We fully support this."
*China blows up all U.S. satellites*
3. Profit!
2. ???
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The mere owning of a weapon doesn't make you a bully. Therein lies the the flaw in your thinking and, possibly, Obama's.
That's a naive view. American invervention in many countries has understandably stirred up a lot of discontent, but the problem of Islamic aggression has much deeper roots than US misdeeds. I'm from Finland, an obscure Nordic country with little foreign policy to speak of, and even I get hate. I have traveled throughout Muslim countries, and while local people have been extremely generous and hospitable to me as an individual, I've constantly heard them complain that Europe has not embraced Islam, that Europe has a culture they find odious, and that the West must be attacked both with force and subterfuge until it is brought to its knees. Even if the US tried hard to atone for its past, it wouldn't change much when so many hate the West just because of its cultural values. Bush might have been a dumbass, but comments along the lines of "They hate us because we are free" speak much truth.
Actually, Obama is pursuing a very rational course here. In short, the US does not want to start an anti-satellite arms race, because we're already so far ahead in the satellite race - why reset the game board to zero? A couple of points to consider:
1)In current US military doctrine, superior satellite coverage is a key "force multiplier" by providing C4ISTAR advantages (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance). US military planners are particularly keen on these so-called "force multipliers" because they field a comparatively small force numerically.
2)The US has a huge interest in maintaining the status quo in space. The US has a strategic advantage in satellite coverage, and that advantage is currently very difficult to assault in a wartime, short-time-horizon scenario.
3)For the US, declaring "space" a "neutral zone" would basically mean that a whole bunch of military equipment that makes our soldiers fight better is legally considered off-limits
4)Compliance with a space weapons ban is comparatively easy to monitor, because deployment of anti-satellite technology requires testing.
So for the US, a space weapons ban is a no-brainer. The trick will be getting the Russians and the Chinese to sign on (at this point no one is suggesting a unilateral ban on space weapons and such a policy would obviously be inane from a national security standpoint.)
Because we all know that everyone else will uphold the same morals.
Sorry, but this is just political grandstanding for his base. If the does follow through he will simply gimp the US going forward
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I agree. I've been trying to figure out how to tell people that Obama is a man who happens to be black, and because of this hysteria, he has arguably been given far more trust than any president should be given.
There are plenty of arguments for why we should have space based weapons. If you read the right books, we need them to be prepared to repel alien visitations. Other opinions are equal to the notions of what would have happened if the US had decided that we don't need automatic weapons.
In the end, you will have them. The only question is how much damage are you willing to sustain before deciding to build them.
There is another angle. Space based weapons can be built using civilian space travel/exploration technology and the other way around. I don't think it's a case of having to pay twice as both programs can share development costs in various ways.
Obama has made several statements that lead many of us to believe that he's not quite sure WTF he's doing. Nobody is perfect, but this 180 degree shift doesn't make sense unless he is just pushing the program underground or plying for political favor somewhere. Neither of those options speak well of him, and neither explanation bodes well for the security and safety of the citizens of the USA.
Those who criticize him for it are quite right to do so, not to mention they are within their constitutional rights to do so. We need to think critically and criticize where it is appropriate. Letting the executive branch run around wildly is what happened over the last 8 years. Time for that to stop. If that means Obama has to explain himself in detail and quite often, so be it. We need transparency and wisdom in the Whitehouse.
Saying that any criticism of Obama is racism is exactly the kind of thinking that Bush used: Any criticism of the Executive branch is unamerican. This, my friends, is what fascism looks like.
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So the only way to be safe is to keep building bigger weapons? I don't suppose youve ever looked into the 50 year immediately following WWII? Whats that meme round here "those that don't understand the mistakes of history bound to repeat them".
Not only is heading towards a cold war situation generally a bad idea, but given the current economic situation America doesn't stand a chance. China has a manufacturing capability much greater than America and given how china virtually owns America, you cant even hit china with trade sanctions.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Obama has made several statements that lead many of us to believe that he's not quite sure WTF he's doing
Here's something that worries the hell out of me. Apparently we shouldn't be keeping our nuclear deterrent reliable and having any sort of assurance that the weapons actually work as designed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We have more weapons on land, air, sea, even underwater than anyone else
...and you're still terrified.
How is arming yourselves even more going to solve the problem?
You have three potential threats:
1. Russia/China/etc: Have no interest in attacking the US, they have their own problems, they don't need yours.
2. Terrorism: The only successful counter to terrorism has been to make the underlying causes irrelevant.
3. Internal: Good luck with that...
On top of which there is a fourth real threat coming directly from the economic system that is collapsing around your ears and which is most certainly not going to be solved through wasting money on fantasy projects, isolationism, or "reds under beds" paranoia.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Military "GNP" is akin to making lots of expensive goods and then putting them all on a bonfire.
Exactly. Orwell had a point about this in 1984. And since everybody in /. loves Orwell here it is:
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
Prophet or not, the man has/had a point there, although it's not directly applicable to modern societies of course.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
As I recall, the US economy got a boost from reduction in arms spending post-Communism, in the Clinton era. I remember discussions in the UK before that on how Japan benefited commercially from not having a significant military, meaning that not only did they not have to pay for it out of taxes, but engineers who might be making missiles could work on things like better cars.
There was the talk of the peace dividend we'd see after "winning" the Cold War but it never materialized. We're spending more now than ever on the military.
To generalise wildly, countries with large military R&D spending and manufacturing tend not to be good at consumer products. Military "GNP" is akin to making lots of expensive goods and then putting them all on a bonfire.
There was a good little book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (I think) and the author said there was a rule of thumb that could be seen through the nation-state era -- exceed a certain percentage of GDP spent on the military and see yourself become marginalized. Anyone who has played Civilization immediately grasps the principle here. Your have x resource units per turn. Your economy will grow at a rate of y and your military power at a rate of z. Too much money spent on the military, you end up not having an economy that can support it, not to mention you'll be driving around with obsolete weapons while your opponents have modern kit. Too little money spent on the military and your thriving cities will be snapped up by your militant neighbors. And it doesn't help that the bastard computer cheats.
The rule of thumb the author came up with was 5%. Keep it at or below that, your economy will keep up a reasonable rate of growth. Exceed that and you risk hollowing yourself out. He calculated that the Soviets were spending something like a third of their GDP on the military. The result is that they had a first world military by some standards but a third world economy that simply could not support it. An analogy would be the freakish weight-lifters who have so much muscle mass that their hearts are struggling just as bad as if the guy was a 500lb tub of lard.
The whole problem with the military-industrial complex is that there's too damn much money to be made in producing weapons. Get enough weapons lying around, people are inclined to use them.
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Um... You missed a news report - Iran launched a satellite of its own a few days ago.
Made possible by Russian technology. Read up on the history of Iranian satellite technology - they used Russian launch pads until last year.
Which actually brings up another good point - a nonproliferation agreement has the positive secondary effects of preventing technology transfer to potential rogue states. Again, nonproliferation only works to the extend that compliance is verifiable - which, with ASW, is possible at the testing phase. Note that the Iranians had to do dummy launches, which we detected, for a full year before getting a satellite into orbit. This wasn't some sudden bootstrap of Iranian technology that caught us flatfooted, though you wouldn't know it from reading the sensationalistic press reports.
How is proposing to abide by existing space treaties banning space based weapons "disarm the USA altogether". Obama isn't some hippy Dove. He wants to pull out of Iraq, and beef up the USA military presence in Afghanistan. Diplomancy isn't surrendering. Obama has made it clear that he will fight when it makes sense, but make diplomacy a higher priority.
Obama is pragmatic enough to change course if other nations activities in space were an actual threat.
Anarchists never rule
And look at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising... where barricaded Jews starting with a handful of rifles and pistols made asses of the Nazis for months.
You know, it never fails to amaze me how people can demand that "only the government should have guns".
First, there's plenty of evidence (see Nazi Germany) that governments often do very bad things to their populations, and that having no means to resist them just makes the government's job easier. You may still wind up dead resisting, but at least you will have died standing up for yourself instead of dying like cattle at the slaughter. Peaceful non-resistance against violence only works when those committting the violence have a conscience and a moral code against doing it. Otherwise, you just wind up dead like those cows.
Second, there's usually the implication that personal protection (particularly the use of force for it) is the government's responsibility. Legally speaking, the courts have consistently ruled otherwise--law enforcement has no obligation to protect individuals.
As a whole, I see this denial of responsibility, and the desire to foist it off on someone else, to be a form of cowardice. The same people who will deny any responsibility to protect themselves, or who refuse to do so with force because it's "bad" and they "don't want to hurt anyone" (or some other "moral" objection) seem to have no problem asking--nay, demanding--that somebody else, whom the demander has probably never met, risk his life and put his ass on the line to protect the demander's life and ass, using the same force that the demander refuses to use himself.
If you're going to be a damn pacifist, live what you preach. Don't use force to defend yourself. Back down any time someone confronts you and makes any kind of physical threat. And don't sit there demanding that someone else use force on your behalf and do things that you refuse to do for yourself.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I have traveled throughout Muslim countries, and while local people have been extremely generous and hospitable to me as an individual, I've constantly heard them complain that Europe has not embraced Islam, that Europe has a culture they find odious, and that the West must be attacked both with force and subterfuge until it is brought to its knees.
Do listen to what people in 'Europe and the West' say about Muslims and Islam? I constantly hear people say that their culture is backwards and ignorant, and that the only thing that will solve the problems in the middle east is for them to embrace Christiantity and our way of life... well... that or a 'nuke from orbit'.
How is that any different from what they say about us?
Or is the only difference that they have 'zealot terrorist organizations seeking to cause us harm'? I suppose that's a difference... we only have state sanctioned organizations seeking to alternately exploit them for resources and that only cause them harm if they don't fall in line.
Even if the US tried hard to atone for its past, it wouldn't change much when so many hate the West just because of its cultural values.
It would change everything.
Bush might have been a dumbass, but comments along the lines of "They hate us because we are free" speak much truth.
Bush might have been a dumbass, but comments along the lines of "They hate us because we are free" speak much truth.
That's just idiocy. They don't "hate us because we are free". They disagree with us on religious issues. They hate us because we exploit them and interfere with them, and they (perhaps rightly) see our relative wealth as a direct result of that exploitation and interference.
And extremists use the religious differences to fan that hatred into self-damaging levels of action.
But if we didn't interfere and exploit them, sure, the religious disagreement wouldn't go away, but it would settle down to the same level of agreeability that all relgious factions reach when you have mutual respect.
No they don't. They hate us because we are the haves and they are the have-nots. They hate us because we don't do anything to help them out. Their hatred has little to do with freedom and little to do with religion and everything to do with poverty.
If you keep a group of people in poverty, make it difficult for them to get an education, give them very little opportunity to pull themselves out, you make them ripe to be manipulated. Religion is a great manipulator. "God says the reason you can't feed your family is because the USA keeps screwing with us. Take them down and our lives will be better."
Give people an education, give them hope that they can make their lives better and the problem goes away. It's harder to get leverage on someone that has something to lose.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable