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Good thing, then, that the Patriot system isnt involved here.
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Then what is it? Poland is asking for patriots, but it appears they want them as part of their air defense, not as ABM systems. The journalism sucks on the technical details on the articles I found. As far as I could find, the only other ABM systems the U.S. have are a Navy based system and this
Terminal High Altitude Area Defense - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. However, the THAD system isn't supposed to deployed till 2009, and is optimized for Scuds, not longer ranged missiles.
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One always tries to stay ahead of the threat, rather than having to react to it. If one is smart, anyway...
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Except, when you create a much more immediate threat in the process. Iran might possibly be a threat to Europe in the future, requiring both technology advances and major geo-political changes. Russian can blow the world up today, and they have a record of getting twitchy about stuff near their borders.
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In 1911, what reason did Japan have to attack the US?
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Thats relevant how?
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Yes. The NMD has no effect on the Russian nuclear deterrent.
Thus, the Russian complaints and threats to that effect have no actual basis.
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Regardless of the lack of logic in Russia's complaints, they are powerful enough to be taken seriously. Russia is wrong to consider this a threat, but thats not important. What is important that we don't allow a dangerous situation to develop. Nuclear weapons kill equally well when used for good or bad reasons.
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Hardly. A Russian NMD-style defense in Cuba woudl have no effect whatsoever on our nuclear deterrence.
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I agree it would have no effect, but you overestimate the logically capability of humans. People get panicky and nervous, and make a lot of stupid choices. A perceived threat can cause the same reaction as