Strategic Defense Initiative

Strategic Defense Initiative. On 23 March 1983, President Ronald Reagan called for a missile defense system that would make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” The president's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was fiercely attacked by those who believed it scientifically impossible, fiscally irresponsible, and strategically dangerous, since it threatened to upset the delicate balance of the nuclear age. It was supported by those who both believed in the limitless potential of American technology and had never accepted mutual nuclear‐age vulnerability as inescapable.

Interest in ballistic missile defense began shortly after the end of World War II, with controversies over the development and deployment of an antiballistic missile (ABM) system and continuing until the United States and the Soviet Union placed severe restrictions on such work in April 1972. Reagan revived interest in a high‐tech shield at the urging of defense enthusiasts such as Edward Teller; Gen. Daniel O. Graham (ret.), former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and founder of High Frontier, Inc., a missile defense advocacy group; members of the president's “kitchen cabinet”—brewer Joseph Coors, oilman William Wilson, and businessman Karl Bendetsen; and some members of Congress enthralled by Teller's vision of X‐ray laser weapons or chemical lasers. At least one member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pronounced missile defense morally superior to deterrence through mutual vulnerability to counterattack, arguing that it is better to save lives than avenge them.

Despite a lavish research budget, SDI—derided by its opponents as “Star Wars,” after the 1977 science‐fiction movie directed by George Lucas—did not come to fruition during the Reagan presidency. A drum fire of criticism continued, however, including warnings that such a system would violate the 1972 ABM Treaty. A more modest vision of missile defense endured, however, and in 1999, President Bill Clinton recommended further research into the possibility of defense against missiles from “rogue” nations, a recommendation that reawakened the controversy over the feasibility and strategic advisability of this approach. In September 2000, after several failed tests, Clinton announced that he would leave to his successor the decision on whether to proceed further with a strategic defense system.

President George W. Bush, citing the risks of attack from North Korea or other rogue states, gave high priority to the testing and deployment of an anti-missile system. Dismissing protests from Russia and China, the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty, developed launch sites at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and in California, and planned for the deployment of anti-ballistic missiles aboard Navy ships operating in Asian waters. The administration pushed forward despite repeated test failures (interspersed with occasional successes) that deepened doubts about whether the system would actually work in combat conditions. Though overshadowed by other concerns, the Strategic Defense Initiative remained as central to U.S. planning, and nearly as controversial, in 2003 as it had been when first proposed by President Reagan two decades earlier.
See also Cold War; Nuclear Arms Control Treaties; Space Program.

Bibliography

Weapons in Space, Daedalus 1 and 2 (Spring and Summer 1985).
Edward Tabor Linenthal , Symbolic Defense: The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1989.
William J. Broad , Teller's War: The Top‐Secret Story behind the Star Wars Deception, 1992.

Edward Linenthal

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Paul S. Boyer