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Why SDI?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Sanford Lakoff  and
Herbert F. York
Sanford Lakoff
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Herbert F. York
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Extract

Since the onset of the Cold War, and particularly after both superpowers began to amass large arsenals of nuclear weapons, military planners in the East and West have encouraged efforts to develop defenses against nuclear attacks. Both sides have made effective use of “passive” defenses, such as the hardening and dispersal of weapons systems likely to be the prime targets of a preemptive strike and the provision of shelters for command authorities and vital communications centers. Both sides have also tried, but with far less success, to develop “active” defenses, but against the varied and daunting challenge of modern strategic systems, all such efforts so far have been largely in vain, even though they have been undertaken at considerable expense and with great technical sophistication. The main reason is that every advance in active defense has been offset by compensatory improvements in offensive forces.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 44 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1989

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References

Notes

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4. Studies of defense policy-making provide support for each of these factors. The role of “bureaucratic politics,” i.e., the interplay of departments and agencies in the executive, acting out of organizational interest and perspective, is often stressed. Thus, in The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Cambridge, MA, 1972)Google Scholar, Harvey Sapolsky notes that the success of the Polaris project was a result of the skill of its proponents in bureaucratic politics: “Competitors had to be eliminated; reviewing agencies had to be outmaneuvered; congressmen, admirals, newspapermen, and academicians had to be co-opted” (244). In examining the controversy between the Army and Air Force over which service should get responsibility for intermediate-range ballistic missiles, Michael H. Armacost also notes the importance of lobbying by the services and the applicability of the pressure-group model of analysis. He points out, however, that the services found it necessary to build consensus among journalists, congressmen, analysts, in quasi-autonomous “think tanks” and “an extensive network of scientific and technical advisory committees located with the Executive branch” (256), and that this “very pluralism assured the government of a broad base of scientific and technical advice, and, superimposed upon service rivalries, this provided additional insurance that criticism of weapons programs was persistent and far from perfunctory” (256). The Politics of Weapons Innovation: the Thor-Jupiter Controversy (New York, 1969).Google Scholar Ted Greenwood, in a study of the decision to adopt the MIRV principle for warheads, urgues persuasively against adoption of any single-factor analysis, noting that the decision to adopt MIRV resulted from “the complex interplay of technological opportunity, bureaucratic politics, strategic and policy preferences of senior decisionmakers, and great uncertainty about Soviet activities.” Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making (Cambridge, MA, 1975)Google Scholar, xv. Other studies, such as Adams, Gordon, The Politics of Defense Contracting (New Brunswick, NJ, 1982)Google Scholar, emphasize the role of the “iron triangle” (the federal bureaucracy, the key committees and members of Congress, and the defense contractors) in promoting military expenditures. Melman, Seymour, in Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York, 1970), 70Google Scholar, contends that the managers of DOD “sell weapons-improvement programs to Congress and the public.” None of these factors played a significant role in the decision to begin SDI, though they may well become important when and if the research phase is succeeded by a commitment to develop and deploy an SDI system, when the stakes will be much higher.

5. McNamara, 236. Allison, Graham T. has suggested, however, that “U.S. research and development has been as much self-generated as Soviet-generated.” “Questions About the Arms Race: Who's Racing Whom? A Bureaucratic Perspective,” in Pfaltzgraff, Robert L., Jr., ed., Contrasting Approaches to Strategic Arms Control (Lexington, MA, 1974), 42.Google Scholar

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16. Greve.

17. The plan was publicized in July 1983 by Aviation Week & Space Technology. Stares, 219.

18. Greve.

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22. Ibid., 9, 20.

23. Testimony of Robert Cooper, 4635.

24. “DOD's Space-Based Laser Program—Potential, Progress, and Problems,” Report by the Comptroller General of the United States (Washington, D.C., 26 February 1982), iii–iv.

25. In 1982 DOD established a Space Laser Program as recommended by DARPA, in cooperation with the Air Force and the Army. The plan called for the expenditure of $800 million over the period from FY 1982 through FY 1988, under the supervision of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Directed Energy Weapons.

26. Gregg Herken, Cardinal Choices: The President's Science Advisers from Roosevelt to Reagan, draft of chap. 6, p. 21. A substantial part of this chapter has been published as “The Earthly Origins of ‘Star Wars,’” in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (October 1987), 20–28.

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30. Broad, 122. “In all,” according to Broad, “Teller met with the President four times over the course of little more than a year.” Teller, in a letter to the authors (21 September 1987) claims to have had little direct influence on the president's decision: “Before the President's announcement of SDI, I had two very brief meetings with the President. I expressed no more than my general support and good hopes.” In the September meeting, he recalls, “defense was mentioned but no subject like the X-ray laser was explicitly discussed.” With respect to the X-ray laser, Teller's recollection does not jibe with Keyworth's. See Herken, 23.

31. Quoted by Greve.

32. Quoted by Broad, 73.

33. Teller, Edward with Brown, Allen, The Legacy of Hiroshima (Garden City, NY, 1962), 128–29.Google Scholar

34. In an address to the Faculty Seminar on International Security, UCSD, 12 December 1983.

35. Greve.

36. Statement by the Assistant for Directed Energy Weapons to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering before the Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, 98th Congress, First Session, 23 March 1983.

37. Arms Control Reporter, 10 November 1983.

38. Interview in Government Executive (July–August 1983), quoted in Star Wars Quotes, 34.

39. Greve.

40. Ibid.

41. Herken, chap. 6, pp. 46–47.

42. Bardeen, John, letter in Arms Control Today (July-August 1986), 2.Google Scholar

43. Greve. Shultz is reported to have berated Keyworth for encouraging the president to believe in his vision of a perfect defense: “You're a lunatic,” he is said to have told Keyworth. Smith, Hendrick, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York, 1988), 612–14.Google Scholar

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Testimony of Robert McFarlane, Defense Policy Subcommittee, U.S. Congress House Armed Services Committee, 17 May 1988, typescript, 167–68.

47. Greve.

48. Interview, US News and World Report, 18 November 1985, 30.

49. Text in the New York Times, 24 March 1983.

50. The CIA view was presented in the testimony by Robert M. Gates and Lawrence K. Gershwin before a joint session of the Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, 26 June 1985. The Joint Chiefs’ view is reported in Talbott, Strobe, Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (New York, 1984), 224.Google Scholar

51. Helmut Sonnenfeldt, address at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 29 November 1986.

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53. See Michael Novak, “Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age,” National Review, 1 April 1983, 354–62, and “The Bishops Speak Out,” National Review, 10 June 1983, 674–81.

54. New York Times, 24 March 1983.

55. Herken, chap. 6, p. 49.

56. New York Times, 24 March.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Excerpt from an interview with Andropov in Pravda, 27 March 1983, quoted in Drell, Sidney D., Farley, Philip J., and Holloway, David, The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political, and Arms Control Assessment (Stanford, 1984), Appendix B, 105.Google Scholar

60. Bundy, McGeorge, Kennan, George F., McNamara, Robert S., and Smith, Gerard, “The President's Choice: Star Wars or Arms Control,” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1984–85), 63.2, 270–72.Google Scholar

61. Interview with six journalists, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (Washington, D.C., 4 April 1983), 19.13, 471.Google Scholar

62. A 1985 Sindlinger Poll found that 85 percent of the U.S. public favored development of a missile defense “even if it can't protect everyone.” Jeffrey Hart, “A Surprising Poll on Star Wars,” Washington Times, 9 August 1985. A Gallup Poll in November 1985 found 61 percent in favor of the U.S. proceeding with SDI. Christian Science Monitor, 21 November 1985.

63. Soviet Strategic Defense Program (Washington, D.C., October 1985).Google Scholar

64. On 7 December 1983, Secretary Weinberger was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying: “I can't imagine a more destabilizing factor for the world than if the Soviets should acquire a thoroughly reliable defense against these missiles before we did.” Cited in Star Wars Quotes, 52.

65. See William D. Hartung, Robert W. DeGrasse, Jr., Rosy Nimroody, and Stephen Dagget, with Brugman, Jeb, The Strategic Defense Initiative: Costs, Contractors, and Consequences (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Holdren, John P. and Green, F. Bailey, “Military Spending, the SDI, the Government Support of Research and Development: Effects on the Economy and the Health of American Science,” F.A.S. Public Interest Report, 39.7 (Washington, D.C., September 1986)Google Scholar; and Greenberg, Daniel S., “Civilian Research Spinoffs from SDI Are a Delusion,” Los Angeles Times, 9 September 1986.Google Scholar

66. The potential economic benefits were stressed in Graham, High Frontier, 89–98, and have been outlined recently in Report to Congress on the Strategic Defense Initiative (Washington, D.C, April 1987), viii, 2–5.

67. “You know, we only have a military-industrial complex until a time of danger, and then it becomes the arsenal of democracy. Spending for defense is investing in things that are priceless—peace and freedom.” President Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, 6 February 1985, Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, (Washington, D.C, 11 February 1985), 21.6, 143.

68. For one presentation of this view, see Podhoretz, Norman, The Present Danger (New York, 1980), 56–57.Google Scholar

69. Ibid.

70. For an exposition of the “Reagan Doctrine,” see Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., “The Reagan Doctrine and U.S. Foreign Policy” (Washington, D.C., 1983)Google Scholar, and “Implementing the Reagan Doctrine,” National Security Record No. 82 (Washington, D.C, August 1985). The doctrine is examined critically in Rosenfeld, Stephen S., “The Guns of July,” Foreign Affairs 64.4 (Spring 1986), 698–714.Google Scholar

71. Wills, Garry, Reagan's America: Innocents At Home (Garden City, NY, 1987), 360.Google Scholar The broad appeal of SDI is noted by Kevin Philips, “Defense Beyond Thin Air: Space Holds the Audience,” Los Angeles Times, 10 March 1985.

72. Thus, Sidney S. Drell has called for “a prudent, deliberate and high quality research program … within ABM Treaty limits” at a level of roughly $2 billion per year. “Prudence and the ‘Star Wars’ Effort: Research Within the Bounds of ABM Treaty Can Aid Safer World,” Los Angeles Times, 10 March 1985.

73. See especially Velikhov, Yevgeni, Sagdeyev, Roald, and Kokoshin, Andrei, eds., Weaponry in Space: The Dilemma of Security (Moscow, 1986), chap. 4, pp. 69–77Google Scholar, and chap. 7, pp. 106–27.

74. “The Department of Defense Directed Energy Program and Its Relevance to Strategic Defense,” Statement by the Assistant for Directed Energy Weapons to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering before the Subcommittee on Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 98th Congress, First Session (23 March 1983), 3.