Central to US foreign policy, the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) was launched by Ronald Reagan in 1983. While the Reagan administration failed to deploy the SDI system, it featured prominently in the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union. This insightful book examines SDI and the Reagan administration through an evaluation of the role of the SDI in the end of the Cold War. Presenting an extensive range of primary and secondary material together with interviews, the book will be welcomed by academics and upper level students interested in politics and history.
Way Out There in the Blue is a major work of history by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Fire in the Lake. Using the Star Wars missile defense program as a magnifying glass on his presidency, Frances FitzGerald gives us a wholly original portrait of Ronald Reagan, the most puzzling president of the last half of the twentieth century. Reagan's presidency and the man himself have always been difficult to fathom. His influence was enormous, and the few powerful ideas he espoused remain with us still -- yet he seemed nothing more than a charming, simple-minded, inattentive actor. FitzGerald shows us a Reagan far more complex than the man we thought we knew. A master of the American language and of self-presentation, the greatest storyteller ever to occupy the Oval Office, Reagan created a compelling public persona that bore little relationship to himself. The real Ronald Reagan -- the Reagan who emerges from FitzGerald's book -- was a gifted politician with a deep understanding of the American national psyche and at the same time an executive almost totally disengaged from the policies of his administration and from the people who surrounded him. The idea that America should have an impregnable shield against nuclear weapons was Reagan's invention. His famous Star Wars speech, in which he promised us such a shield and called upon scientists to produce it, gave rise to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan used his sure understanding of American mythology, history and politics to persuade the country that a perfect defense against Soviet nuclear weapons would be possible, even though the technology did not exist and was not remotely feasible. His idea turned into a multibillion-dollar research program. SDI played a central role in U.S.-Soviet relations at a crucial juncture in the Cold War, and in a different form it survives to this day. Drawing on prodigious research, including interviews with the participants, FitzGerald offers new insights into American foreign policy in the Reagan era. She gives us revealing portraits of major players in Reagan's administration, including George Shultz, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan and Paul Nitze, and she provides a radically new view of what happened at the Reagan-Gorbachev summits in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington and Moscow. FitzGerald describes the fierce battles among Reagan's advisers and the frightening increase of Cold War tensions during Reagan's first term. She shows how the president who presided over the greatest peacetime military buildup came to espouse the elimination of nuclear weapons, and how the man who insisted that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire" came to embrace the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and to proclaim an end to the Cold War long before most in Washington understood that it had ended. Way Out There in the Blue is a ground-breaking history of the American side of the end of the Cold War. Both appalling and funny, it is a black comedy in which Reagan, playing the role he wrote for himself, is the hero.
This history of the Strategic Defense Initiative ranges across politics, economics, strategic studies and international relations, and provides the latest research into the SDI interest groups, the distribution of contracts, and the politics of influence. It discusses the wider contexts of 'Star Wars', such as alliance management, marketing, and domestic politics, and its military spin-offs, especially for anti-satellite (ASAT) and 'space control' programmes. The author tests the theoretical literature on the dynamics of the arms race by using SDI as a case study, and draws evidence from sources such as congressional hearings, interviews, the trade press, restricted briefing papers, and documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act. The book follows the fortunes of strategic defence into the changed global conditions of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Gulf War, and President Bush's announcement of a refocused SDI, the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS).
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.
Since the public unveiling of SDI in 1983, discussion has focused on the technical and strategic aspects of the project. This book takes a new look, examining the cultural repercussions of SDI. Illustrated.
Bringing together proponents and opponents of the Strategic Defense Initiative, this book includes original essays by leading experts on every aspect of the issue. The collection provides a valuable introduction to the many complex questions involved in any serious consideration of the SDI. The contributors explore such issues as the strategic impl
Strategic Defense Initiative examines developments in the technologies currently being researched under SDI. The OTA does not repeat the work of its earlier reports but gives special attention to filling in gaps in those reports and to describing technical progress made in the intervening period. The report also presents information on the prospects for functional survival against preemptive attack of alternative ballistic missile defense system architectures now being considered under the SDI. Finally, it analyzes the feasibility of developing reliable software to perform the battle management tasks required by such system architectures.
Amerikansk populær fremstilling af USSRs planer og tiltag på det strategiske forsvars område, herunder udbygning af Anti Ballistisk Missil (ABM) systemet og Anti Satellit (ASAT) systemet. Modtaget fra USIS.
