The New Republic has an interesting article in favor of national missile defense by Lawrence F. Kaplan. He criticizes the preprogrammed Democratic and Republican positions on NMD and makes a pretty compelling argument in favor of a shipboard system designed to address states with few ballistic missiles. I think that his position is more strategically sound than most, but I don’t agree with his strategy on many points, and don’t share his optimism on the technical feasability of the system. For his strategy to be implemented optimally, not only must the system work very reliably, but all of the states with missile capability must be sure that it works very reliably.