Strategy as Politics, Politics as Strategy; Domestic Debates, Statecraft, and Star Wars

This chapter emphasizes that the debate over Star Wars is a political one. To understand and explain the Reagan administration’s advocacy of the Strategic Defense Initiative requires an understanding of the relationship between politics and strategy and, most specifically, of the political problems confronting the Reagan administration during its first two years in office. The president attempted to solve the political problem by trying to duplicate his successful strategy for dealing with the Social Security crisis; he named a bipartisan Commission on Strategic Forces in January 1983. In the ensuing months, the president discovered that he needed to demonstrate some political flexibility to ensure congressional approval for deployment of the MX.