Abstract
One of the curiosities of the Reagan Administration was that, in a very real personal sense, the President was repelled by the full implications of the policies his own Administration pursued and was keen to push policy in a quite different direction. He had developed a distaste for nuclear weapons early on in his career, and it had never left him. This was combined with a deep religious unease about the possibilities of Armageddon.
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Notes
- 1.
Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005).
- 2.
Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 550.
- 3.
For more information on the SIOP briefing Reagan received, see: William Burr (ed) ‘Reagan’s Nuclear War Briefing Declassified’, Briefing Book #575, National Security Archive, December 22, 2016. Available online at: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-22/reagans-nuclear-war-briefing-declassified. The practicalities of nuclear war are discussed in full in Ashton Carter et al. (eds.), Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1987).
- 4.
The issues are discussed in Franklin Long, Donald Hafner and Jeffrey Boutwell (eds.), Weapons in Space (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986) and William Durch (ed.), National Interests and the Military Uses of Space (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1984). Ashton Carter and David Schwartz (eds.), Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984). These also cover related issues of anti-satellite weapons. For a thorough assessment from a critical perspective see R.I.P. Bulkeley & Graham Spinardi, Space Weapons: Deterrence or Delusion (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986).
- 5.
For one example, related to the previous concern over the developing problems of ICBM vulnerability, see Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Jastrow and Max Kampelman, ‘Defense in space is not “Star Wars”’, New York Times Magazine (27 January 1985).
- 6.
Interviews with Albert Carnesale, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, 12/12/1987 and 11/03/1988; Simon Head, ‘Reagan, Nuclear Weapons and the End of the Cold War’, in Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies (eds.), Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 81–99; Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000); Donald R. Baucom, Origins of the Strategic Defense Initiative: Ballistic Missile Defense, 1944–1983, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, December 1989.
- 7.
On the politics of SDI see Gerald Steinberg, Lost in Space: The Domestic Politics of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1988).
- 8.
The first major critique was provided by the Union of Concerned Scientists, The Fallacy of Star Wars (New York: Vintage Books, 1983). For a rare scientific statement in favour of SDI see Robert Jastrow, How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985). For another early critique see Sidney Drell, Philip Farley and David Holloway, The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (A Special Report of the Center for International Security and Arms Control: Stanford University, July 1984).
- 9.
Ivo Daalder, The SDI Challenge to Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1987). See also chs. 9 and 10 of Lawrence Freedman, The Price of Peace.
- 10.
On which one of the most authoritative discussions is found in United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, OTA-ISC-254 (Washington, DC: USGPO, September 1985); Hans Bethe et al., ‘Space-based missile defense’, Scientific American (October 1984).
- 11.
Paul Nitze, Speech before the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, 20 February 1985.
- 12.
George Schneiter, ‘Implications of the strategic defense initiative for the ABM Treaty’, Survival (Fall 1984); William Durch, The Future of the ABM Treaty, Adelphi Paper 223 (Summer 1987).
- 13.
For a critical assessment of the new interpretation see Raymond Garthoff, Policy Versus The Law: The Reinterpretation of the ABM Treaty (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1987). The case in favour of the new interpretation is made by the State Department’s legal counsel, Judge Sofaer, with a critique by Abram and Antonia Chayes in Harvard Law Review (June 1986). See also Alan Sherr, ‘Sound legal reasoning or policy expedient: the new interpretation of the ABM Treaty’, International Security (Winter 1986/7).
- 14.
James Schear, ‘Arms control treaty compliance: buildup to a breakdown’, International Security (Fall 1985); Sanford Reback, ‘Responding to Soviet non-compliance’, Arms Control (December 1986); John Baker, ‘Improving prospects for compliance with arms-control treaties’, Survival (September/October 1987).
- 15.
The definitive account of the development of nuclear arms control policies in the first term of the Reagan Administration is found in Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984).
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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Strategic Defences. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_34
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