1. "The requirements process should be broadened to include an analysis of the desirability of deployment which includes a consideration of a two-sided BMD deployment." Memorandum for the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition) from the Defense Science Board Task Force Subgroup Strategic Air Defense—Strategic Defense Milestone (SDM) Panel, published in Strategic Defense 2 (July 30, 1987): 1. [BACK]

2. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), p. 334. Quoted in Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's, 1981), p. xvii. [BACK]

3. Benjamin S. Lambeth, "Soviet Perspectives on SDI," in Strategic Defenses and Soviet-American Relations, ed. Samuel F. Wells, Jr., and Robert S. Litwak (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1987), p. 70. Emphasis in original. [BACK]

4. For Zbigniew Brzezinski's views on strategic defense, see his "Mutual Strategic Security and Strategic Defense," in Promise or Peril: The Strategic Defense Initiative, ed. Zbigniew Brzezinski (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1986), pp. 64-66, where he recommends a "limited strategic defense." Henry Kissinger, in "Reducing the Risk of War," Promise or Peril, p. 98, argues that "a foolproof defense of civil population ... is a mirage" but that the existence of some active defenses would strengthen deterrence by adding greatly to the uncertainty of a potential attacker's calculation. [BACK]

5. See Edward Teller, Better a Shield Than a Sword: Perspectives on Defense and Technology (New York: Free Press, 1987). [BACK]

6. See Alvin M. Weinberg and Jack N. Barkenbus, "Moving to Defenses Through the Defense-Protected Build-Down (DPB)," and Alvin M. Weinberg, "Speculations on a Defense-Dominated World," in Strategic Defenses and Arms Control, ed. Weinberg and Barkenbus (New York: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 23-65, 89-110. For a responsive commentary on their views, see Sanford Lakoff, "Toward a Broader Framework for U.S.-Soviet Agreement," in ibid., pp. 66-88. [BACK]

7. See Peter A. Clausen, "Limited Defense: The Unspoken Goal," in Empty Promises: The Growing Case Against Star Wars, ed. John Tirman, Union of Concerned Scientists (Boston: Beacon, 1986), esp. pp. 154-59. [BACK]

8. Richard Ned Lebow, "Is Crisis Management Always Possible?" Political Science Quarterly 102 (Summer 1987): 182. [BACK]

9. Fred C. Iklé, "Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century?" Foreign Affairs 51 (January 1973): 267-85, cited in Colin S. Gray, "The Missile Defense Debate in the Early 1970s," in Brzezinski, ed., Promise or Peril, p. 45. [BACK]

10. The President's Strategic Defense Initiative (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), p. 4. David S. Yost suggests that, for Soviet strategists, a combination of offensive and defensive superiority is advantageous because it offers a way to defeat NATO's flexible-response strategy. Such superiority could be used to "persuade NATO governments either not to initiate the use of nuclear weapons or not to engage in more extensive use in the event selective strikes failed to achieve their intended purpose." Alliance Strategy and Ballistic Missile Defense," in Strategic Defense and the Western Alliance, ed. Sanford Lakoff and Randy Willoughby (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987), p. 73. [BACK]

11. "I cannot envision any circumstance more threatening and dangerous to the free world than one in which our populations and military forces remain vulnerable to Soviet nuclear missiles while their population and military assets are immune to our retaliatory forces" (Address by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger before the National Space Foundation, Colorado Springs, Colorado, January 22, 1987), news release, Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs). [BACK]

12. Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), Report to Congress on the Strategic Defense Initiative (Washington, D.C.: SDIO, April 1987), p. II-11. [BACK]

13. Paul H. Nitze, "On the Road to a More Stable Peace" (Address to the Philadelphia World Affairs Council, February 20, 1985); published as Current Policy no. 657 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs), p. 3. [BACK]

14. Harold Brown, The Strategic Defense Initiative: Defense Systems and the Strategic Debate, Discussion Paper no. 104 (Santa Monica, Calif.: California Seminar on International Security and Foreign Policy, March 1985), pp. 3-4. [BACK]

15. Brent Scowcroft, Report of the President's Commission on Strategic Forces (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense, April 6, 1983), pp. 7-8, 17. [BACK]

16. Robert S. McNamara, Blundering Into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 92. [BACK]

17. Michael MccGwire, "Why the Soviets Are Serious About Arms Control," Brookings Review (Spring 1987): 11. For a different view, see Rebecca V. Strode, "Space-Based Lasers for Ballistic Missile Defense: Soviet Policy Options," in Laser Weapons in Space: Policy and Doctrine, ed. Keith B. Payne (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1983). She contends that the Soviet leadership has not accepted the notion that mutual vulnerability is desirable and that the Soviet military leadership "retains a keen interest in the potential military advantages of reduced homeland vulnerability" (pp. 134-35). Statements by Soviet leaders, beginning with Leonid Brezhnev (acknowledging that no country can win a nuclear war), differ from those appearing in the Soviet military press and reflect either a propaganda effort to allay Western alarm over the Soviet military buildup or the views of some in the leadership who have not yet been able to bring about "major alterations in Soviet operational strategy" (p. 138). [BACK]

18. For a good review of the various casualty estimates, see Paul P. Craig and John Jungerman, Nuclear Arms Race: Technology and Society (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), chap. 19, pp. 307-28. [BACK]

19. The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response: A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983), pp. 56-58. [BACK]

20. Iklé, "Nuclear Deterrence," p. 281. [BACK]

21. As Michael Walzer observes, in Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), "deterrence and mass murder are very far apart. We threaten evil in order not to do it. ... The threat seems in comparison to be morally defensible." Cited in Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Knopf, 1985), n. 11, chap. 21, p. 372. [BACK]

23. Cited in Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 15. [BACK]

24. Admiral Gayler's remarks on nuclear deterrence are quoted in McNamara, Blundering Into Disaster, p. 112. [BACK]

25. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986), p. 25. [BACK]

26. See Herbert F. York, Making Weapons, Talking Peace (New York: Basic Books, 1987), pp. 183-94, and 337, and Richard L. Garwin, "Launch Under Attack to Redress Minuteman Vulnerability?" International Security 4 (Winter 1979-80): 117-39. [BACK]

27. McNamara, Blundering Into Disaster, p. 49. [BACK]

28. See the discussion of low-endoatmospheric technologies in Gregory H. Canavan, "Defensive Technologies for Europe," in Strategic Defense, ed. Lakoff and Willoughby, pp. 44-45. [BACK]

29. McNamara, Blundering Into Disaster, p. 109. [BACK]

30. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies (Washington, D.C.: OTA, 1985), pp. 95-98. [BACK]

31. Ibid., p. 104. [BACK]

32. Ibid., p. 113. [BACK]

33. Ibid., p. 114. [BACK]

34. The Reagan administration's attitude toward arms control, at least during the first term, has been well described by Strobe Talbott: "Until the buildup in Western defenses was well under way, nuclear arms control would be a matter of keeping up appearances, of limiting damage, of buying time, and of laying the groundwork for agreement later," in Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms Control (New York: Knopf, 1984), p. 3. [BACK]

35. Paul H. Nitze, "The Impact of SDI on U.S.-Soviet Relations (Address to a seminar sponsored by American Enterprise Institute-National Defense University, April 29, 1986); published as Current Policy no. 830 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs), p. 3. [BACK]

36. Ibid. [BACK]

37. Ibid., p. 4. [BACK]

38. Weinberg and Barkenbus, eds., Strategic Defenses. [BACK]

39. The difficulties with the proposal for a defense-protected build-down are described in more detail in Sanford Lakoff, "A Framework for U.S.-Soviet Agreement," in ibid., pp. 67-69. [BACK]

40. OTA, BMD Technologies (Executive Summary), p. 13. [BACK]

41. Freeman Dyson, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 280-81. [BACK]

42. McNamara, Blundering Into Disaster, p. 108. [BACK]

43. James T. Bruce, Bruce W. MacDonald, and Ronald L. Tammen, "Star Wars at the Crossroads: The Strategic Defense Initiative After Five Years" (U.S. Congress, staff report to senators J. Bennett Johnston, Dale Bumpers, and William Proxmire, June 12, 1988, typescript), p. 92. [BACK]