Is Ballistic Missile Defense a Good Idea?

A small mountain of studies focusing mostly on the technologies that might make up the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has emerged since the president’s major address of March 23, 1983. The President Jimmy Carter made front page news out of missile defense for the first time since the Antiballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1972. The president’s enthusiasm and progress in some aspects of the SDI have kept it at the top of the strategic agenda. Called the New Strategic Concept by chief arms control negotiator Paul H. Nitze, the plan calls for a phased movement away from nuclear offensive weapons dominance to a world dominated by nonnuclear defenses against ballistic missiles. The chapter discusses the impact of missile defenses on strategic uncertainty, a factor increasingly recognized as central to the dynamics of US-Soviet strategic interaction and then move on to the prospects of incorporating defenses with offensive force reductions through some form of arms control.