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The Missile Defense Controversy: Technology in Search of a Mission

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Ballistic missile defense is a strategic idea that simply will not die. Having been put to rest (or so we thought) by the 1972 ABM Treaty between the US and USSR, it continues to be disinterred every couple administrations. Ironically, the pattern that remains constant is that the US and the (now former) Soviet Union are never in synch on the merits of the deployment of such a system. Whenever top American administrator favor it, Soviet leaders oppose it--and vice versa. Only former Secretary of Defense McNamara's coercive campaign to convince the Soviet Union that the US would keep multiplying it strategic offensive force in the face of possible ABM deployment finally bullied the Soviets into accepting a treaty. My book catalogues the early chapters of this seemingly unending saga from the origins of ABM systems to the ABM accord. It highlights the early fascination of the Soviets of a system that they saw as merely protecting people countered by the American fear that such a system would threaten or erode our offensive deterrent capability. The tale continues through the Reagan and Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations, as a system that apparently cannot measure up to awesome technological demands looks for a rationale politically convincing enough to persuade enough Congressional legislators and American citizens to underwrite such a questionable (and potentially destabilizing) strategic program. In the end, the American pursuit of a defensive shield can perhaps best be explained as a neurotic quest for absolute security saved from oblivion by the emergent Age of Terror.