Word: nuclear
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Brennan-Johnson position has two major arguments. The first is that an anti-ballistic missile system would considerably reduce U.S. Casualties in the event of nuclear war. Brennan believes that an ABM deployment costing between $10 and $20 billion could reduce casualties from 80 to 120 million to something like 20 to 40 million; a reduction from almost half the population to less than a fifth. He further contends, incontestably, given the urban concentration of American industry and assuming his previous statistics are accurate, that the nation's loss of productive capacity in a nuclear exchange would be reduced...
...make a major increase in their offensive forces in response to our improved defense." The ABM would be the most incredibly complex electronic-mechanical system ever built, with all the fallability such complexity implies. The ABM's reliability could never be tested under conditions approximating those of a nuclear attack, simply because there is no way of simulating all the conditions of a nuclear attack. For example, a radar system control the trajectories of the ABMs. We know that radar is affected in strange ways by nuclear explosions, but that is all we know. To accurately test the effectiveness...
...construct a similar defense. We seem to have learned quickly about the system the Soviets were deploying around MosCow. Assuming the CIA is equally efficient in discovering a nationwide deployment of an ABM system by the Soviets, we would not be subject, as General Johnson thinks, to "that Soviet nuclear blackmail we have avoided for the past twenty years." We would "lose" only several months. Given the much greater productive capacity of the U.S. economy, that is a risk we can easily afford to run; in fact, only the most picayune or the most hysterical alarmists would dignify...
...first has to do with the mentality of a military establishment. It is a truism that soldiers exist to fight--and win--wars. Major "conventional" conflicts are unlikely, if only because they would quickly become nuclear once any party thought it was losing, the U.S. is inept at combating guerrilla units, and major nuclear was is, at the moment, strategically unacceptable. There just don't seem to be any kinds of wars the U.S. can win anymore. The obvious question becomes: What do we need soldiers for? or, at least, what do we need so many soldiers and weapons...
...make a professional military man more than a bit nervous. And whether it knows it or not, the American military has been reacting to this question. The only way to get back to a place where its existence is justified is to somehow create a situation in which a nuclear...