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."

Comments

Saves money, too

[Kupfernigk]

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.

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.

In the present case, Obama can achieve several things: reduce the cost of government, please the bluer segments of the US, and perhaps give Bill O'Reilly and co heart attacks. Potential triple win for the new Administration, and no-one gets hurt.

Re:Childish

[oodaloop]

but comments along the lines of "They hate us because we are free" speak much truth.

Bush gets so much criticism because of statements like this, but it is very true. They see our freedom as the antithesis to Sharia Law and responsible for our moral decay.

Examples

[Kupfernigk]

OK, then explain why it is that Samsung and Nokia are eating Motorola's lunch in mobile phones, VW, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and Honda seem able to make better designed and built cars than the US, US white goods are generally inferior to those from Bosch, Electrolux etc., most LCD monitors come from Korea, Taiwan or China, laptops get designed in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, the Long Island railway runs on imported French trains, most printers come from Japan, China or Korea, and how long is it since Kodak was last a major camera maker (though a lot of their Retina models were actually German.) As for the UK - well, we have massive military R&D per capita and our consumer products, such as they are, are obligingly made for us by foreign owned firms.

As for your knowledge of WW2 history - I'm sorry, it is utterly inadequate. Apart from the possibility that, had Britain defeated Hitler in the mid-30s the main language of Europe would be Russian, what makes you think the US, which was pretty pro-Hitler at the time, would have let us? Roosevelt had to overcome some pretty entrenched attitudes to give the UK the limited support that he did.

If you read the European history books, you will see that the 30s were pretty much a diplomatic failure. Had the West had the support instead of the fence-sitting attitude of the US, had Britain and France properly supported Austria, Poland and the Czechs, and had Weimar been supported instead of undermined, would Hitler have been allowed to form a Government? We will never know, but one thing is clear: despite its military buildup, Germany lost.