ABSTRACT
The Strategic Defense Initiative holds the potential to alter the US approach to strategic policy modestly, radically, or not at all. A radical departure from policy is likely to provide more fertile ground for ballistic missile defense (BMD) deployment than is modest change. The near-term deployment of limited ballistic missile defense could be compatible with continued reliance on the traditional approach to strategic deterrence based on the threat of nuclear retaliation. The chapter discusses the compatibility between near- and far-term defensive missions, presents a possible near-term defensive “architecture”, and examines how arms control and the deployment of BMD could be compatible in the realization of these defensive goals. The arms control regime that could provide such benefits would have to include both offensive and defense constraints, although these constraints would be quite different. Defense-reliant arms control, in effect, would force the Soviet Union to choose between a capability to ensure “dead Americans or live Russians.”
