ABSTRACT
Strategic defense initiative (SDI), in theory, might resolve a mounting challenge to the strategic consensus of the 1960s and 1970s from the maximalists, at one end of the spectrum, and the abolitionists, at the other, by transcending both positions through a restructuring of deterrence on a nonnuclear basis. But regardless of the fate of SDI, the elements of a new debate on strategic defense were gathering in the deepening controversy between the opponents of Mutual assured destruction and the opponents of counterforce strategy, of which the incipient antiballistic missile debate of the late 1970s was only one manifestation. President Reagan's enunciation of SDI on March 23, 1983, was a response (whether calculated or not) to both the maximalists' and the abolitionists' criticism of the pragmatic strategic consensus—a consensus that had been weakened by the collapse of detente, the abortion of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and the resurgence of the peace movement.
