SDI: Fallacy of last move in arms race

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), sold to the American people by a persuasive president as the weapons system to end all weapons systems, turned out to be only another step in the continuing arms race, contends the author. It might already have been terminated if President Bush did not fear the conservatives who see SDI as the strategic centerpiece of the Reagan legacy. He says the project was ill-conceived from the start because it was grounded in the simple-minded faith that technology can provide the answer to the arms race. The reason it got as far as it did was because this simple-minded faith had an adherent in an exceptionally popular president who sensed correctly that the voters shared the same naive confidence. He lists several factors that contributed to the unraveling of SDI: technical opposition based upon growing evidence that the system would not work; loss of the 1986 congressional elections and a subsequent drop in appropriations; and the dramatic improvement of relations between the superpowers. He concludes that SDI is but the latest in a series of fundamentally misguided efforts by both superpowers to achieve advantage; if it proves to be the final instance of the fallacy of the last move in the annals of the Cold War, at least it will not have been altogether in vain