America's Star Wars Program

America's Star Wars Program
Author: Ann Byers
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2004-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781404202870

The Strategic Defense Initiative was a defense program supported by President Ronald Reagan that aimed to take the arms race to outer space. Though never carried out, and dubbed “Star Wars” by its critics, it was the nail in the coffin for the Cold War and therefore considered successful, at least in part. This thorough profile takes the reader behind the scenes and helps explain why this initiative still holds interest for leaders looking for new ways to defend the U.S.

Way Out There In the Blue

Way Out There In the Blue
Author: Frances FitzGerald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 588
Release: 2001-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0743203771

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.

The Phantom Defense

The Phantom Defense
Author: Craig Eisendrath
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2001-08-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0313016151

In the past four decades, the United States has spent $85 billion pursuing the fantasy of an effective missile defense system to shield our nation against the threat of a nuclear attack. Recent public tests, while less exotic than some of the original Star Wars proposals, were spectacular failures and call into question the whole program's rationale. Neither the land-based system proposed by the Clinton administration, nor the alternatives proposed by earlier administrations, would ever work--regardless of how much R&D money is channeled into the project. Rather than enhancing national security, these doomed efforts would provoke a new arms race and alienate key allies. The authors apply their extensive insiders' expertise to argue that thoughtful diplomacy is the only real answer to meet America's national security goals. Like President Reagan with his Star Wars program, President Bush has again made national missile defense (NMD) a national priority at a cost which may exceed $150 billion in the next ten years. Defense experts Eisendrath, Goodman, and Marsh contend that recent tests give little confidence that any of the systems under consideration--land-based, boost-phase, or laser-driven--have any chance of effective deployment within decades. The interests of the military-industrial complex and the unilateralist views of the Bush administration are driving NMD, not a desire to promote national security. Rather than increase U.S. security, the plans of the current administration, if implemented, will erode it. NMD will heighten the threat from China and Russia, alienate key allies, and provoke a new arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, all in response to a greatly exaggerated threat from so-called rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran. Thoughtful diplomacy, not a misguided foreign policy based on a hopeless dream of a Fortress America, is the real answer to meeting Americas security goals. Designed to stimulate interest and debate among the public and policy-makers, The Phantom Defense provides solid facts and combines scientific, geopolitical, historical, and strategic analysis to critique the delusion of national missile defense, while suggesting a more effective alternative.

Strategic Defense

Strategic Defense
Author: Keith B. Payne
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1986
Genre: Strategic Defense Initiative
ISBN:

Surveys current U.S. nuclear policy, and discusses the feasibility of the Star Wars program, arms control, U.S.-Soviet relations, and the morality of the Initiative.

The Strategic Defense Debate

The Strategic Defense Debate
Author: Craig Snyder
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2016-11-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1512807451

"The goal of our strategic defense research program, the vision and hope of the President, is to stop Soviet missiles before they could destroy any targets, be they in the United States or anywhere else. The goal is noble and straightforward: to destroy weapons that kill people. Thus, based on a realistic view of Soviet military planning, the transition to strategic defense would not be destabilizing. In fact, any initial defensive capabilities would offer many benefits. . . . This objective is far more idealistic, moral, and practical than the position taken by those who still embrace the mutual assured destruction (MAD) theory that defenses must be totally abandoned."—Caspar Weinberger "This is basically a research program and should remain so, at least for the foreseeable future. . . . In a world that relies on an exquisite strategic balance to forestall the holocaust, it would be the worst of blunders to jolt the tightrope when the safety net is tied at only one end."—James Schlesinger "Neither Star Wars I or Star Wars II, in whatever form one considers them, is an effective response to the public's intuitive awareness of the unacceptable risk posed by our present nuclear strategy."—Robert McNamara "The goal of our innovative science and technology program is to establish scientific feasibility and engineering validation of revolutionary concepts. concepts with potential for full SDI technological development. This forward-looking office has a broad research charter which focuses on advanced directed energy concepts such as gamma-ray lasers. on novel sensing and data preprocessing techniques, on advanced materials for space applications, on innovations in spacepower, and on emerging space­science applications and ultra-high-speed supercomputing. Interest in such exotic areas of science and technology clearly illustrates that SDI has greatly facilitated the mobilization of our nation's scientific community."—Lt . Gen. James Abrahamson Prominent world leaders and scientists came together in 1985 to discuss the technological feasibility and the political sensibility of "Star Wars." Their essays, presented in The Strategic Defense Debate, provide, for the first time a comprehensive look at this timely and controversial subject. Craig Snyder's introduction and headnotes to the collection highlight the critical points of each essay, as well as their conceptual significance to the overall topic. Contributors include: Caspar Weinberger, James Schlesinger, Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson. Robert S. McNamara, Andrew Cockburn, Richard Pipes. Stephen F. Cohen, Adam Garfinkle, Leon Wieseltier. Michael Vlahos, Franklin Long, Francis Pym, Major Simon P. Worden, Richard Garwin, Robert S. Cooper, Colin S. Gray, Robert Bowman, Alex Gliksman, and Warren Zimmerman. Excerpts from President Reagan's speech "Peace and National Security" and Ambassador Paul H. Nitze's speech "On the Road to a More Stable Peace" are also included. The essays were originally presented at a conference sponsored by The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in late 1985. The Strategic Defense Debate will be invaluable to students, scholars and lay persons interested in politics, history. military strategy and Soviet relations.

Seize the High Ground

Seize the High Ground
Author: James A. Walker
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN:

"[Seize the high ground is a] narrative history of the Army's aerospace experience from the 1950s to the present. The focus is on ballistic missile defense, from the early NIKE-HERCULES missile program through the SAFEGUARD acquisition site allowed by the 1972 ABM Treaty to the more advanced 'Star Wars' concepts studies toward the end of the century. [What is] covered is not only the technological response to the threat but the organizational and tactical development of the commands and units responsible for the defense mission"--CMH website.

Blowback

Blowback
Author: Christopher Simpson
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1497623065

A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.

The Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan
Author: Benn Steil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 621
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0198757913

Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War.