15 - The causes of SDI

Summary

Herman Kahn established the Hoover Institute to ‘think the unthinkable’. SDI may seem more a case of explaining the inexplicable. By placing the search for explanation within the myriad theories about the dynamics of the arms race, we may have overlooked the most obvious of causes. Situated in a different context, such as the demise of the Soviet Union, SDI could be seen as quite simply a good idea, a coercive tool or bargaining chip which proved devastating – an idea propounded by Mrs Thatcher:

I firmly believe that it was the determination to embark upon the SDI program and to continue it that eventually convinced the Soviet Union that they could never, never, never achieve their aim by military might because they would never succeed.

This suggestion supplies a satisfyingly simple explanation for the swirling currents of Soviet policy; and suggests an equally simple explanation for SDI. It sails over any deeper consideration of the origins of ‘new thinking’ prior to 1983; the arms control record of Brezhnev in the 1970s; and the rise of liberal think tanks which promoted globalistika (global studies) and ‘mutualist’ approaches to the arms race, no longer seen as external imposition or symptom of class struggle, but as a ‘panhuman’ issue requiring interactive solutions.