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errantgeek -> RE: Ronald Reagan (7/6/2011 11:13:04 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arpig
Now look over my answers and think about them a while, then come back and answer this question: "What was the actual purpose of SDI/Star Wars?"
Yeah, what was the actual purpose of SDI?
I mean, it couldn't have been to tank the Soviet economy, that was already accomplished between mid- to late-70s economic stagnation coupled with the Soviet Union's gross over-expenditure in Afghanistan. It would have happened in the '70s were it not for the discovery of Siberian oil and natural gas, and the Trans-Siberian pipeline, that kept the Soviet economy (barely) afloat for approximately ten years. Moreover, once Khrushchev came to power and alienated Mao, the Soviets had to keep economic pace with both the U.S. and China, making their economic collapse which Kennan predicted in '47 beyond a foregone conclusion, especially after Sino-American relations were re-established with Nixon and Xiaopeng came to power and began to modernize the Chinese economy.
Outside that, it added nothing new to the economic game that Truman, Kennan, and later Eisenhower hadn't already figured out while Reagan was still making shitty B-movies. To wit, Eisenhower explicitly called out Kennan and revised the containment doctrine after Korea because to match the Soviet move-for-move conventionally would bankrupt us faster given the Soviet Union's massive lead on the conventional warfare front.
It wasn't a strategic power play, either. The U.S. already had sufficient second-strike capability to fully carry out the MAD doctrine -- which the U.S. had employed since its inception with McNamara after the glaring flaws of brinkmanship became evident following the Cuban Missile Crisis. Moreover, after the chilling in Sino-Russian relations, the strategic situation had strongly shifted against the Soviet Union given they had an enemy to their southeast and to their west (seriously, the USSR and PRC were at war with each other in '69, funded proxy wars against each other in Africa and the Middle East and damn near nuked each other more than once). Thirdly, the U.S. by the '70s had a solid conventional doctrine in stacking force multipliers through training, equipment and technology the USSR would have had an impractically-difficult time breaking with sheer numbers.
Really, had anyone but Gorbachev been in power during the '80s -- and probably even Gorbachev (the man wasn't stupid, just a skeptic) had SDI had a snowball's chance of success, the announcement of SDI could have fundamentally destabilized the balance of power by shifting the perception of American nuclear doctrine from mutually-assured destruction to first-strike. Add to this the fact the U.S. was already bound by the OST, NPT, ABMT, and PTBT with the INFT, CFET, and START I coming down the pike, and there was no reason -- strategic, economic, or otherwise -- to continue pursuing an orbital missile defense system, especially given its cost and low probability of success (to wit, SDI stalled nuclear non-proliferation talks for years and continues to be a thorn in the side of non-proliferation talks between the U.S. and the Russian Federation today). Plus, Soviet nuclear doctrine already was first strike, and given a situation in which this doctrine (along with second-strike) could soon prove to no longer be effective, along with a sudden shift in U.S. nuclear doctrine from MAD to first strike, is all but forcing the Soviets to strike before the opportunity is lost. Reagan's shift from MAD back to brinkmanship was already a dangerous-enough ploy at a period when economic and political instability within the USSR was at an all-time high well before SDI entered the scene.
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