ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the controversy that surrounds the president's $26 billion initiative; it evaluates the prospects for a successful ballistic missile defense (BMD) and the political and strategic implications of a national effort to secure one. The political and strategic dangers risked by the "Star Wars" initiative are at least as important as its technical flaws. The most obvious of the political and military hazards are immediate and predictable, in contrast to the putative benefits of BMD, which are distant and hypothetical. The dangers associated with BMD would not subside even if the superpowers succeeded in keeping the peace throughout the period in which they were striving to develop and deploy their respective antiballistic missile defenses. The ballistic missile defense envisaged by the Reagan administration poses a particularly grave threat to the future of arms control because it is plainly inconsistent with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
