The Strategic Defence Initiative

Central to US foreign policy, the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) was launched by Ronald Reagan in 1983. While the Reagan administration failed to deploy the SDI system, it featured prominently in the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union. This insightful book examines SDI and the Reagan administration through an evaluation of the role of the SDI in the end of the Cold War. Presenting an extensive range of primary and secondary material together with interviews, the book will be welcomed by academics and upper level students interested in politics and history.

This history of the Strategic Defense Initiative ranges across politics, economics, strategic studies and international relations, and provides the latest research into the SDI interest groups, the distribution of contracts, and the politics of influence. It discusses the wider contexts of 'Star Wars', such as alliance management, marketing, and domestic politics, and its military spin-offs, especially for anti-satellite (ASAT) and 'space control' programmes. The author tests the theoretical literature on the dynamics of the arms race by using SDI as a case study, and draws evidence from sources such as congressional hearings, interviews, the trade press, restricted briefing papers, and documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act. The book follows the fortunes of strategic defence into the changed global conditions of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Gulf War, and President Bush's announcement of a refocused SDI, the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS).

This book explores the largely neglected issue of responses to the US Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI, or the 'Star Wars' missile defence programme) across NATO. The chapters here explore the reactions of different Western allies to the announcement of the SDI in 1983 and especially the 1985 invitation to participate. While existing studies have explored the origins of the American programme and the role it may have played in ending the Cold War, this volume breaks new ground by considering the impact of the SDI on transatlantic relations in the 1980s. Based on newly available archival sources, this volume re-evaluates the responses of eight NATO member-state governments, as well as the Soviet leadership, to the SDI. In addition to looking at ‘top-down’ governmental reactions, the volume also explores the ‘bottom-up’ response to the SDI of civil society and peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic. The volume examines how the American initiative – derisively named ‘Star Wars’ by its detractors – provoked a crisis in relations with its allies during the final decade of the Cold War and how those tensions within NATO were ultimately resolved. This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War history, strategic studies, foreign policy and international history.

Bringing together proponents and opponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative, this book includes original essays by leading experts on every aspect of the issue. The collection provides a valuable introduction to the many complex questions involved in any serious consideration of the SDI. The contributors explore such issues as the strategic impl

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to develop a ballistic missile defense (BMD) system has both short-range and long-range risks as well as potential benefits. For the most part, however, strategic, technological, and political issues relevant to SDI have been analyzed in isolation from one another. This book provides a more inclusive framework for assessing the possible development and deployment of a BMD system by the United States or the Soviet Union. Contributors discuss the risks for arms race stability, probable reactions of the Soviet Union to any U.S. space-based defense system, and implications for the stability of extended deterrence commitments to NATO European allies. They also evaluate Soviet research and development programs in missile defense that must be considered in any extrapolation of the requirements for U.S. deterrence in the next several decades.