Physicist Robert Bacher Dies at 99!

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Jim Oberg wrote:

A lot of people, better informed (i.e., not hollywoodized), believe
that nukes prevented the BIG ONE with a paranoid Soviet Union.
They made war, big nation-to-nation war, literally unthinkable, and
scared world leaders into uneasy 'peace' for half a century.


Indeed, a period of over half a century with no war between the major
powers is historically *very* unusual.

In many major countries, two whole generations have grown up without being
marched off en masse to die. Many people are even starting to believe
that this state of affairs is normal and proper, which is a very hopeful
sign.


There used to be two great powers with Mutual Assured Destruction
holding each in check.

Now the U.S. is the single great military power. The gap between the
U.S. and the 2nd greatest power is large. And will grow much larger if
the Bush administration achieves the goals set forth in New American
Century's paper "Rebuilding America's Defenses".

If one of the goals “the ability to assure access to space, freedom of
operations within the space medium, and an ability to deny others
the use of space” is achieved, the U.S. will have supremacy.

What then would be the deterrence to prevent the U.S. from abusing its
power?


(This was arguably the single biggest factor in the fall of the Soviet
Union: it started to come apart because two generations had passed since
the last invasion, and so the Soviet people and leaders increasingly had
no memory of what it was like and no real conviction that the threat was
credible.)


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Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html