In 1997, President Clinton signed a Presidential Directive (PDD-60) that permits nuclear weapons to be used against anyone using or threatening to use chemical or biological weapons against the US. That same year, the US began looking at the development of tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons - in other words, making nuclear weapons usable.
It's not a stretch at all to believe that missile defence could, in fact, increase the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used.
Nuclear deterrence (the knowledge that if either side used their weapons they would face suicidal consequences as a result of the retaliation) has long been considered essential to ensuring that nuclear weapons would never be used.
This is why the US wanted the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed in 1972, to stop Russia from further developing its anti-ballistice missile defence system around Moscow.
If missile defence defies the critics and actually works, "mutual" deterrence will no longer exist.
We are on the brink of another nuclear and conventional arms race because the countries of the world know all of this, and they will be building up to defend themselves against the worst case scenario.
They have also seen the difference in the way the US handled Iraq (with no nuclear capability) and North Korea (with a nuclear capability). The message that the US is sending the world, whether they know it or not, is "you better get nuclear weapons and develop your capability before we come after you".
None of this makes the world - or us - or the Americans - safer. We need a whole different approach.
The greatest tragedy of all, is that 11 million children die unnecessarily, worldwide every year while vast sums are squandered on weapons systems. Just 8-10% of current global military expenditures (not factoring in the estimated $200 billion - $1 trillion that missile defence will cost) is all that is needed to provide the food, medicine, education and healthcare that would save and transform their lives.
Mr. Martin, I am certain that if you knew all of this, you would never consider signing us up for missile defence. It goes against everything that we as Canadians stand for. I implore you to listen to what the critics of missile defence are saying for the sake of Canada, and for your own sake.
Most Canadians are alarmed by the actions of the US under Bush. Most Canadians are opposed to missile defence. This alone should convince you that signing us up would be a disastrous political mistake.
Sincere regards,
Jillian Skeet
Vancouver
Stumble It!
Battlefield nuclear weapons have been around since the sixties, Canadian Artillery forces deployed them in Europe, the Honest John system.
'Mutual deterrence' only worked for a short period of time between the US & USSR, Jimmy Carter realized that it was no longer working and signed a Presidential order that changed the doctrine of nuclear war to being a 'winnable' proposition instead of the old doctrine of mutual annihilation.
The Soviets were building a missile defence system 30 years ago but today the 'experts' in the leftist crowd believe it's impossible to defend against them? The system hardware evaluates the missile's ideology before deciding wether or not to defend?
Think of the children. The brutality of a hard life under the despotic regimes of Iran, North Korea, Cuba and numerous African nations. Those poisonous societies should not be allowed to threaten North America and besides doing the right thing and defending ourselves, we should endeavour to help these people too - no free nation has suffered famine, only nations with despotic governments.
The Americans realized that a missile defense system could never work. However, they had already put some effort into investigating the idea, so they didn't want that effort to go to waste. So they came up with a brilliant idea. They produced fake reports that they were building a system that WOULD work. Then they leaked the secret reports to the Soviets, who then did what anyone in an arms race would do - tried to emulate the system. It cost them so much money, that it accelerated the collapse of their empire.
And now the US thinks it can produce these weapons successfully? The only thing that they have ever worked for was to bring the great empire that tried to build them before to its knees.
The reason missile defense can't work is simple:
It's like you're in a dark field. Someone on the other side of the field has night-vision goggles and shoots at you. You see the flash of the gun firing and try to shoot the bullet out of the air. IT WON'T WORK.
And if you want to make that analogy even more accurate, think of it like this. When the gun fires, 20 fire crackers go off. You have no way of knowing which flash is the right one. But you still plan on shooting the bullet out of the dark. Good luck.
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Kory Yamashita
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." - Oliver Wendell Holmes