Star Wars, Genius or Wasteful?
Introduction
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a military program conceived by Reagan to prevent nuclear missiles from landing on US soil in case of nuclear war. Opponents of the program domestically coined the term Star Wars to push the narrative that the project was overly expensive and too futuristic to be possible. The program never succeeded in being able to prevent nuclear missiles from landing on US soil and the initiative was scraped after the Soviet Union fell, a decade after it began in 1983.
Opponents of SDI after all was said and done claimed that the program had been an expensive money pit that had failed miserably, however, looking back we can see the profound effects that even the threat of Star Wars had on the Soviet Union and arms limitation talks. This paper will analyze the political climate that acted at a backdrop for the decisions made in the mid to late 80’s as well as discuss the consequences of attempting to create such an advanced weapons system. Finally, the paper will conclude with an analysis of whether I believe that the SDI program contributed to the end of the cold war, or simply was a threat that held back peace talks.
End of Détente
In the years leading up to Reagan’s decision to begin funding SDI, there had been breakdowns in the relations between the United States and USSR, largely because of the soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The SALT 2 talks break down and are never ratified, destroying the short-term possibility of ending the nuclear arms race. After a decade of diplomacy and arms limitation talks, the world had again become wonderfully simple to many in power. There were the good guys and bad guys, and the world became the battleground for the Cold War once again.
Following the invasion of Afghanistan, the US feared that a soviet puppet government in Kabul could destabilize the strategically important neighboring nations of Iran and Pakistan (Mullen et al., 2010). The Americans demand that the soviets withdraw their troops and are met with refusal. The response by the west includes halting the trade of grain and advanced technology to the Soviet Union as well as boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympic games. When Regan was sworn into office in January of 1981, the United States began sending billions of dollars in the form of cash as well as military equipment to train and arm the Mujahedeen, enemies of the Soviets.
The Arms Race
The end of Détente sparked what is now known as the “Reagan Doctrine”. This resulted in the United States undertaking the largest military buildup the world has seen since World War 2. Regan revived the B-1 Nuclear Bomber program that could deliver payload over long distances and increased production of the highly mobile MX missile system (Longley, 2020). The Reagan Doctrine was a reversal of the Carter Administrations more passive strategy of negotiations with the soviets and was instead created to eliminate communism instead of working with the communists for peace.
The Reagan Doctrine worked by combining classic atomic diplomacy, assuming that mutually assured destruction would prevent direct war with the Soviets, as well as providing both public and covert assistance to anti-communist guerrillas all over the world. Reagan supported and overthrew regimes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America all to push back the spread of communism and impose his idea of freedom, democracy, and capitalism.
The Soviet Union in the meantime began their own military modernization and buildup at this time. They dramatically increased military spending to the point where it harmed other aspects of their economy and began to cause civic unrest. Looking at military spending estimates (Figure 1) we see that the increase in military spending actually began in late 1975 rather than 1983 when SDI was first announced to the world. To me this indicates that, unlike what I was taught in high school, the threat of SDI was not the sole cause of the soviet military buildup. I would argue that soviet plans to invade Afghanistan caused the initial massive buildup, and then they simply did not decrease expenditure in the years that they were at war with the Mujahadeen.
Figure 1 (Ricon, 2016):
The soviets felt that they needed to win in Afghanistan as it was a nation of extreme strategic importance to the soviets. Its border with Russia acts as a protective buffer for the USSR in case of invasion and its geography makes it a gateway to Asia (McCann, 2021).
The decision to use US military and economic might to counter soviet expansion was made on January 17th, 1983, when the National Security Decision Directive 75 was approved by Reagan. The directive officially declared that it was the policy of the US to “contain and reverse Soviet expansionism” as well as to “effectively support those Third World States that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States”.
Reagan gave two very important speeches in the year of 1983. They were called the Evil Empire speech and the Star Wars Speech. In the former on March 8th, Reagan claimed that the USSR and its allies had become an “evil empire” and that they had started a dangerous struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. In this speech he encouraged his NATO allies to deploy nuclear weapons to western Europe in order to counter the placement of Soviet Nukes in Eastern Europe (Hoffman, 2022).
Two weeks later on March 23rd Reagan went on national TV and proposed a way to end the threat of the nuclear annihilation by creating the ultimate missile defense system. He called upon the scientists of the West to develop a highly advanced supercomputer that could use space-based lasers and subatomic particle guns, along with ground-based missiles to shoot down any incoming nuclear warheads. At the time he admitted that while not all of the necessary technology had been developed yet, he believed that SDI could make nuclear weapons obsolete.
Star Wars
As the arms race ramped up, both the US and USSR were increasing their military spending. It became quite clear that in economic terms, the United States had a distinct advantage in this regard. Throughout the majority of the cold war, the US had almost always been one step ahead of the Soviet Union technologically. After all, we developed the bomb first, then we developed multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV’s) technology, and then we managed to land on the moon before the soviets. These accomplishments may have led the Soviet Union to dramatically overestimate America’s ability to actually create SDI. While many within the United States decried the project impossible, the soviets for the most part fully believed that SDI was inevitably going to be developed by American scientists.
Its undeniable that in the years before Gorbachev, the Soviets overreacted to the actual threat that SDI posed (mostly because the threat was next to non-existent). Had SDI actually been possible as the soviets believed, this would have allowed the United States to launch nuclear strikes against their country free from repercussions, effectively ending the era of mutually assured destruction. Exact numbers on Soviet military spending were largely a mystery to the west and the subject of much debate. Sources range from saying that the USSR spent between 10-20% of its entire GNP on its military. Today we estimate that the number is around 17%, more than twice the percentage of GNP the USA was spending on its military (Ricon, 2020).
These number are vital to understand in the context of SDI. The Americans, even though they were directing a significantly smaller part of their economy toward developing SDI, still managed to pump tens of billion dollars into the effort (Geran, 1987), not to mention their entire military budget accounted for hundreds of billions of dollars. (See figure 1) Russia was spending a similar amount on their own military programs in order to keep up with the United States, but as we see the burden on their economy was much greater and contributed to shortages in all aspect of consumer life within the USSR.
The main difficulties that the United States faced technically when developing SDI were not the kill mechanisms that the media at the time focused on such as lasers, particle beams, and homing projectiles, but instead was the targeting mechanisms that allowed this kill mechanism to work. Sensors, computers, and highly advanced “electro-mechanical subsystems” (Hildebrant, 1988) were central to SDI’s success or failure. This is where the United States held a distinct advantage over the soviets. The Soviet Union had always been hesitant to develop computers because they thought, quite correctly, that it could lead to subversive thoughts and behaviors if their population was able to communicate with others outside the Soviet Union and see what life was like for them. Because of this the United States had substantially smaller microprocessors and better computing technology. It still wasn’t enough to actually create a working anti-missile system in space, but it certainly was enough to scare the soviets.
Soviet Response
There are two main narratives today when considering the effect that SDI had on ending the cold war. The traditional explanation is that Reagan’s plan to create SDI was a key factor in causing the Soviet Union to ramp up their military spending to the point that their economy collapsed. However, if we refer back to Figure 1, we see that the soviets actually started ramping up their military spending almost 7 years before SDI was even announced. To be fair though, the years between 1983 when the project began and 1985 when Gorbachev took power were the years in which the USSR dedicated the largest portion of its economy to military development since WWII. Based on all this information however, I tend to agree more with the second narrative in which the US played an important, yet small role towards ending the USSR. It is my belief that the SDI was a secondary factor and was not the real cause behind the fall of the Soviet Union. Decisions made by Brezhnev in the late 70’s started the Soviet Union down a path that it could not afford. The invasion of Afghanistan, Angola, and support of other proxy states put too large of a strain on the Soviet economy that was only further intimidated by American military technology. They chose not to put their hands up and focus on producing the necessary goods of life, and it cost them dearly. Put another way, Reagan did not destroy the Soviet Union, instead they committed economic suicide through the deterioration of their economic system. In fact, as I will discuss in the final section, Reagan’s unwillingness to give up his SDI program actually made Gorbachev walk away from a deal that would have limited each side to only 100 nuclear Warheads.
Gorbachev and Peace talks
When Mikael Gorbachev came to power in 1985 it was clear that he was a different kind of soviet leader, one that wanted to improve the material conditions for his population and was willing to negotiate with the west in order to accomplish this. A year after he came to power, he implemented the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, which opened the country up culturally as well as economically. His government even allowed Margaret Thatcher to be interviewed live on soviet television, a true first in the USSR’s history.
Shortly before rising to power, Gorbachev made a trip to London where he met with Thatcher who said afterword’s to Reagan and the rest of the world that “he is someone we can work with”. This initial go ahead from Thatcher gave Reagan the opportunity, politically, to meet with Gorbachev himself after his 1985 rise to power. During talks, both sides had a strong desire to agree to arms reduction treaties. Reagan wanted this because he hated the idea that all that stood between stability and nuclear war was the promise of total nuclear annihilation for both sides, and Gorbachev needed to find a way to drastically decrease his military spending in order to help his people.
In 1986 during the Reykjavik conference Reagan proposed a 50% decrease in nuclear weapons for both sides. Gorbachev at this point wanted to agree and act upon the treaty in order to lower his defense bill, however it was the American unwillingness to cease SDI that caused the soviets to walk away. In one conversation between the two leaders Reagan said that he would share SDI technology with the Soviet Union, however Gorbachev responded by asking how he could trust that when the US wouldn’t even share milking machine technology (Adelman et al., 2019). The two sides were never able to come to an agreement about arms reductions during Regan’s presidency, however if we look at the actually military spending year by year (figure 1), even though no agreement was reached, the Soviet Union nonetheless began drastically reducing their military spending in 1986. It wasn’t until START in 1991 that true arms reduction treaties were agreed to by both sides.
In conclusion, SDI was an unsuccessful dream that may have ended the threat of total nuclear annihilation had it been successful. The idea however that SDI was the driving factor behind the fall of the Soviet Union seems to be a western centric idea that ignores many of the internal problems and failures within Soviet decision making in the late 70’s and early 80’s. In fact, in many ways it acted as a deterrent to peace as it was a sticking point that prevented the two powers from being able to agree to nuclear reduction treaties that they both wanted. In my opinion the fall of the Soviet Union can be much more accurately attributed to long approaching political and economic domestic instability within the USSR as well as Gorbachev’s decision not to fight this movement by repressing his people. Instead, his attempts to open the USSR up to foreign ideas and markets allowed many more people to realize that life was in fact better on the other side of the ocean and caused many to call for the end of the Communist party.
Works Cited
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