ABSTRACT
The terms in which President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in March 1983 and in which he continues to express support for it confirm that he is convinced that SDI is achievable and that it will radically transform the way war is prevented.1 The President wants, and believes it is possible, to alter the nature of deterrence from a situation based on ‘mutual assured destruction’ (the certainty of one nation’s destruction in retaliation for its attack on the other) to a situation based on what the Administration calls ‘mutual assured survival’ (the knowledge that an attack by one can be successfully defended against by the other).2 The utopian vision of the latter struck a responsive chord among many on both sides of the Atlantic who abhor U.S./NATO reliance on the threatened use of nuclear weapons for the preservation of peace. Now, however, few beyond the President and his Secretary of Defense believe that nuclear weapons could be made ‘impotent and obsolete’ following SDI deployment, and most of the debate has shifted from consideration of area defense of cities to more limited forms of defenses. Although little support now exists for those more extravagant claims, the actual implications of SDI have been difficult to assess because its goals have been confused and the outcome of its research remains uncertain.
