The Geopolitics of Strategic Defence

Abstract

Arms control is enveloped in geopolitics, and geopolitics is not superseded or abrogated by the terrors, or the contradictions, of nuclear weapons. The prospective achievement, or even the putative achievement, of strategic defence by one or both of the superpowers has large implications for the shape of the international system. Certainly the consequences for China would not be constructive. A working strategic defence, primarily by the Soviet Union, would degrade China’s emerging nuclear deterrent; and, secondarily by the United States, would tend to abstract the United States from a role in East Asia that would otherwise be, on balance, helpful to China. (We must also remember, however, that the first American effort at strategic defence, in 1967, was a ‘thin’ antiballistic missile programme dubbed as an ‘anti-Chinese’ device.)