‘Star Wars’: Origins and Overview

Abstract

On 23 March 1983 President Ronald Reagan made a speech that was almost as unexpected as it was portentous. In it he called on American science to create a total defence against ballistic missiles that would have characteristics and qualities such that it could support a radical change in US nuclear strategy. This change would be from a nuclear strategy based on offence to one based on defence, from one based on assured destruction to one based on assured survival, or, as some have put it, from one based on death to one based on life. The official name for the overall effort the President called for is ‘The Strategic Defense Initiative’ (SDI), but because the technical ideas underlying it involve intercepting missile warheads while they are in outer space travelling along the long ballistic trajectories that connect their launchers with their targets, both the speech and the programme are referred to as ‘Star Wars’, even by most of those who welcome it. This new initiative conformed very neatly to two other major elements of strategic policy in which the Reagan administration had from its beginning differed importantly from all its postwar predecessors. One of these is its apparent preference for technical and military solutions as opposed to political and diplomatic ones. The other is an apparent preference for unilateral measures, especially those that make it possible to avoid dealing bilaterally with ‘the source of all evil’.