ABSTRACT
There are two reasons why ballistic missile defenses reemerged in the late 1970s to offer a limited defense option: technological progress and a reversal of political judgment. Combined, these two facts changed the attitudes that, in the 1960s, led to a rejection of BMD. Although BMD research was allowed to continue, the treaty killed development of the Safeguard ABM system and essentially buried any hopes of a US ballistic missile defense. With proper political presentation, strategic defenses might have been deployed as a means to reassert the credibility of US extended deterrence, without necessitating a return to multiple protective shelters for the silos of a new ICBM. As pragmatists agonized over possible destabilizing effects of BMD, the existing nuclear balance was itself threatening to become unstable. Without popular support for strategic modernization, without the means to halt Soviet nuclear expansion, BMD offers strategic refuge.
