Strategic Defense in the Nuclear Age is a concise, comprehensive, and up-to-date account of the effort to develop strategic defenses against nuclear attack, from the civil defense campaign following World War II through the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative-popularly known as Star Wars-to the current effort to develop defenses against a limited attack by rogue states.
Sanford Lakoff is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is co-author of A Shield in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative (1989) and has written or edited numerous other books and articles on the relationship between science and government and the history of political thought.
Lakoff presents a not particularly enthusiastic overview of US
programs and activities aimed at achieving active defense against
intercontinental ballistic missiles. After describing the previous
paradigm of mutual assured destruction, he reviews how Ronald
Reagan and subsequent presidents moves toward active defense
systems introduced problematic complications to arms control
negotiations and overall strategic considerations, describes the
Cold War politics of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and
examines the difficult technological obstacles to achieving a
workable system even assuming that the financial expense and
international political price would be worth paying.
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