ABSTRACT
A substantial amount of support for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has developed within the community of military technologists and strategists. The effect of the SDI program, and similar Soviet efforts, will be to undermine US Soviet arms-control negotiations, as neither side will be willing to make deep cuts in its offensive forces if work on strategic defenses is intensified. In non-nuclear combat, the survival of some percentage of the loser's military forces has rarely been militarily or politically important. But with defense against nuclear weapons there is a world of difference between 100 and even 99 percent effectiveness. The Strategic Defense Initiative stands out as the most bizarre episode in the sad history of the nuclear arms race. It is extraordinary that a US president should include this theoretically laudable, but technically baseless, goal of negating nuclear weapons in his address to the nation.
