Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative

The three-part series by staff reporter Robert Scheer on the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative (Sept. 22, 23, and 24) “Star Wars: a Program in Disarray,” was a masterpiece of disinformation. It asserted the familiar half-truths and tired old cliches of the anti-defense lobby, that SDI won’t work and is harmful to arms control.

In the flood of pre-summit disinformation on the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), certain charges have been made repeatedly. Each of these assertions is completely false. The charge that SDI is ill thought-out or some wild impulse is simply not borne out by any facts. The program is not in a “shambles” or in “disarray,” nor has it ever been.

Since its very inception SDI has proceeded carefully and deliberately. It was the product of two clear phenomena: the emergence of radical new scientific technologies, and the failure of the ABM and other arms agreements to moderate the Soviet offensive buildup.

President Reagan could not ignore the growing disequilibrium in the nuclear balance. On March 23, 1983, he delivered his now-famous speech proposing SDI. It called for a research study, not a crash program. One month later the President signed a national security directive establishing two study groups, one for policy, one for technology, to develop a plan of research. The research itself was not even to be implemented until fiscal year 1985.

The technology group, called the Defensive Technology Study Team (DTST), consisted of more than 50 distinguished scientists and experts under the chairmanship of former NASA administrator Dr. James Fletcher. Its members were drawn from a broad spectrum of disciplines in academia, industry, and government.

The study group assembled in Washington on June 2, 1983, and worked steadily for several months. In October the seven-volume Fletcher Report was submitted to the Department of Defense and through it to the President. After a further three months of executive review, the study was delivered to the Congress in January, 1984.

In April, 1984, the President appointed Air Force Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson to be SDI director on the recommendation of Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. In August, almost a year and a half after the President’s speech, Dr. Gerold Yonas was appointed chief scientist; he proceeded deliberately to assemble a staff of carefully chosen personnel.

This is not the record of a hastily thrown-together organization, or of a mission decided on “impulse.” Neither the need nor the effort came out of the blue. It is true, of course, that the President’s speech galvanized that effort. That is precisely what a President is supposed to do: provide leadership.

It is also a fabrication that there is a scientific consensus that SDI will not “work.” No one knows enough at this stage to make such a determination. For example, in its recently released study of SDI the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment concluded, “It is impossible to say at this time how effective an affordable (defense) system could be.”

The Fletcher study group was extremely thorough and broad-based. It concluded that these new defensive technologies were worth exploring. The research since then has in fact resulted in many scientific breakthroughs.

Certainly the Soviets think that these technologies are not totally hopeless. They are working assiduously in the same area. On Oct. 4 of this year the State Department and Defense Department jointly issued a report entitled “Soviet Strategic Defense Program.” It revealed that for the last 20 years “the Soviets have invested approximately as much money in strategic defense as they have in the massive and far better-known expansion and modernization of their offensive forces.” The Soviet laser weapons program alone has cost more than a billion dollars a year, and employs more than 10,000 scientists and engineers.

It is also a myth that SDI has to be perfect in order to “work.” No one has ever said such a system could or would be 100% effective. The Fletcher study never even considered the possibility of a leakproof defense, and said so in its report. Some protection, however, is certainly better than none; at present the nation is naked. Even a partial defensive system can be effective, so long as it results in the possible survival of enough retaliatory capacity to deter a first strike. We need create only a measure of uncertainty in the mind of a would-be attacker to help keep the peace.

If indeed it is so clear that SDI “won’t work,” why are the Soviets so concerned about it? The reason is that SDI threatens their massive offensive buildup, which up to now has been a good investment because it has not been met by an equivalent American response. Offense and aggression are not the American way. In SDI the President has found the necessary response, which is both moral and sensible. Defensive measures kill no one.

The most pernicious charge is that SDI is simply a covert tool being used by “hawks” to sabotage any arms control agreement at all. To the contrary, your readers should know that no one feels more strongly the need to lessen and ultimately remove the nuclear threat than those who work directly on trying to defend this nation, and who have direct knowledge of what faces us on the other side.

Far from being an attack on arms control, SDI is an attempt to reintroduce meaningful deterrence. Arms negotiations are based not on good will, but on mutual self-interest. And we are in danger of going to the table facing an opponent with a massive offensive capability and an accelerating defense effort, while we have neither. SDI is pro -arms control, because it offers both us and the Soviets the chance to transition to a defensive balance of power which threatens no one, and thus to a more stable and secure world. SDI is what has brought the Soviets back to the bargaining table, and what has moved them to show any flexibility at all in their proposals. Not because it is a “bargaining chip,” but because it changes the nuclear equation on both sides.

We are now on the threshold of a dream. SDI perhaps represents the last, best hope for mankind. Secretary Weinberger said it best in a speech before the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia Oct. 3: “The survival of civilization must be based on a firmer base than the prospect of mutual terror.” SDI offers us a way out. The issue is not the “militarization” of space. The issue is peace on Earth.

RICHARD SYBERT

Washington, D.C.

Sybert is a special assistant to the secretary of defense.