Opponents of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the program falsely labeled “Star Wars” by a media hostile to the concept of defending America, are stunned by the way public support for SDI has escalated since the Reykjavik mini-summit. Credit for this dramatic showing in public opinion polls must be given to Ronald Reagan.
The Great Communicator made the SDI issue come alive with homey analogies that everyone can understand. He called the SDI space shield an insurance policy in case the Soviets don’t keep their promises, and he compared our implacable demand for a defensive system to our retaining gas masks after nations promised not to use gas warfare.
This makes sense to the American people. Polls now show that 75 percent of Americans think that SDI is a good idea, while only 23 percent think it is a bad idea; and 68 percent agree that Reagan should not give up SDI even for big reductions in nuclear weapons, whereas only 20 percent disagree.
Despite overwhelming public support for SDI, its opponents have come up with a six-pack of arguments. They’re not persuasive, but they need to be answered.
1) “SDI won’t work.” That’s false. On June 10, 1984, our Defense Department sent a missile up into space at 10,000 miles an hour where it scored a bull’s-eye at a height of 100 miles against another missile traveling at 10,000 miles an hour. This proved that we can accomplish the intercept, the most difficult part, so the great “can-do” America can surely build the rest of the system.
2) “SDI won’t be perfect.” That’s true, but SDI certainly will be more perfect than any treaty. Even if SDI were only 90 percent perfect, that would provide real deterrence and therefore give us 100 percent protection. If the Soviets knew that 9 out of 10 of their missiles would be shot down, leaving our Minuteman missile force mostly undamaged and in control of the world, the Soviets wouldn’t shoot any of their missiles at us.
3) “SDI is too expensive.” That’s false. SDI will cost only about $30 billion over the next seven years. This figure compares favorably with the some $40 billion we are now spending to continue maintenance and modernization of the offensive nuclear missiles required by our current MAD Mutual Assured Destruction strategy.
4) “SDI would be useless because the Soviets would ‘overwhelm’ it with more offensive missiles.” In order for the Soviets to build enough additional missiles to get through our SDI space shield, they would have to beef up their missile arsenal to ten times its present size. They would have to build an additional 5,000 ICBMs at a cost of $5 trillion. This is unrealistic and terribly costly. Fortunately, we are in a time-frame when the cost factors favor the defense instead of the offense.
5) “SDI would violate the MAD ABM Treaty of 1972.” That’s not true. The 1972 ABM Treaty prohibits only anti-missile defenses that were “currently” in use at that time. The Soviets absolutely refused to limit future systems.
6) “SDI needs ten more years of research so it won’t hurt us to extend the MAD ABM Treaty during that time.” That’s false and is a deliberate delaying tactic by those who are curiously comfortable with the concept of keeping America completely undefended. Over the past several years, U.S. scientific ingenuity has designed, developed and tested systems that can defend large geographic areas with non-nuclear, “smart rock,” kinetic-energy devices. They can destroy attacking warheads by striking them at a very high velocity instead of with a nuclear explosion. U.S. technology is unfolding far more rapidly than anyone believed possible a few years ago. We’ve made major breakthroughs in infra-red sensors, optics, computers and miniaturization so that we can track, target and destroy incoming warheads. Even the 1972 MAD ABM Treaty allows us to deploy 100 interceptor missiles at Grand Forks, North Dakota. The Soviets already have their one anti-missile site deployed and maintained around Moscow, so there is no reason for us not to have ours. President John F. Kennedy announced in 1962 that we would send a man to the moon. At that time, we certainly did not possess all the necessary technology and hardware, but the commitment was made by our President to start marching toward a definite goal. That finish line was reached under President Richard Nixon in 1969 when Americans walked on the moon.
Likewise with SDI. Since President Reagan has made it clear that he will not abandon SDI at any price or for any concessions, the time is ripe for him to announce that we will start immediate deployment of SDI. Of course, technology will improve as the years go on, but that’s no excuse for not starting to defend America today.
