Reagan’s vision

(Washington, D.C.): Twenty years ago this Sunday, President Ronald Reagan made a nationally televised address, most of whose contents have long been forgotten. In a few short paragraphs, tacked onto the tail end of an appeal for popular support for the modernization of America’s nuclear forces, however, Mr. Reagan launched what came to be known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) — and forever changed the debate about how to provide for this nation’s security.

On March 23, 1983, the President declared:

“Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embrace a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive….What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy ballistic missiles before they reached our soil or that of our allies?

“I know this is a formidable task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it is reasonable for us to begin this effort….Isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war?

“…My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There are risks, and results will take time. But I believe we can do it.”

With these words, Mr. Reagan challenged the Faustian deal struck eleven years earlier by Richard Nixon with his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed with great fanfare by the two leaders in Moscow prohibited the deployment by either nation of territorial defenses against ballistic missile attack.

This arrangement amounted to an early experiment in superpower arms control. It was intended to make possible deep cuts in offensive arms that might otherwise have been needed to overcome missile defenses. In fact, the U.S. government explicitly declared in 1972 that, if an agreement codifying such cuts were not achieved within five years, the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

A ‘Cornerstone of Strategic Stability’?

During the years that followed several curious things happened: First, the American foreign policy elite embraced the ABM Treaty, transforming it over time into what President Clinton repeatedly called “the cornerstone of strategic stability.” Members of this exclusive fraternity wanted no part of reconsidering the underlying logic of deliberately leaving the public vulnerable to attack — even after it became apparent that giving up U.S. missile defenses did not reduce the Soviet appetite for ever greater and more menacing offensive nuclear forces.

Second, unlike the foreign policy establishment, the American people never embraced the theory that their security required them to be absolutely vulnerable to attack. When asked by pollsters and focus groups, large majorities routinely expressed the view that the United States had a missile defense and expressed incredulity and often outrage when told it was not so.

Third, as the late, brilliant Defense Intelligence Agency analyst William Lee documented, the Soviet Union never lived up to its obligations to forego nationwide ballistic missile defenses. Instead, it deployed dual-purpose air and missile defense interceptors and radars around the territory of the USSR, together with a dedicated anti-ballistic missile system at Moscow to give itself defensive capabilities neither country was supposed to have. Most of this system is in place in Russia today and continues to be modernized as part of unwavering Kremlin commitment to protecting itself and other key assets from nuclear attack.

The Bottom Line

It took nearly two decades — and the leadership of another President with a vision and leadership qualities comparable to Mr. Reagan’s — to take the steps necessary to rectify the absurd, and increasingly dangerous situation fostered by the ill-advised and Soviet/Russian- violated ABM Treaty. Thanks to President George W. Bush, the United States last year formally withdrew from the Treaty and began in earnest the process of completing development and beginning deployment of effective anti-missile systems.

Today, as U.S. military forces shoot down ballistic missiles in the Persian Gulf and confront the real danger of similar short-range missiles being launched from ships off our coasts and/or longer-range missiles being fired at the United States from North Korea, the wisdom of Ronald Reagan’s vision of a defended America is clear for all to see. Thank God we have in his worthy successor, George W. Bush, a man who is determined to translate that vision into reality. We must pray that his efforts will translate into the missile defense deployments we clearly need now — at sea, on the ground, in the air and ultimately in space — before we need them, not after.