Six years ago President Ronald Reagan launched the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, proclaiming his objective of a "peace shield" that would protect the people of the United States from attack and make nuclear weapons obsolete.
In Star Wars, Reagan promised freedom from fear and a way out of the nuclear trap to a public well-educated about the threat of nuclear weapons. Many of us remember the ads on television that featured a crayon-drawn image of this protective shield at work. A child's voice expressed her belief that the barrier would protect her -- and the rest of us -- from attack. Her simple faith in technology seemed to parallel Reagan's.
From the beginning, however, there were those who expressed doubts about the practicality of Reagan's dream. The nation's leading scientists seriously questioned whether anti-missile weapons could actually protect our population from a nuclear attack. Despite the growing misgivings, the Reagan administration never admitted that it was impossible to create an invulnerable system against missiles, and each year Congress was asked to spend billions of dollars toward its development.
But now, only a few short months since Reagan left office, there has been a quiet but significant shift in the way Star Wars is being talked about. Case in point: President Bush's secretary of defense-designate, John Tower, testified in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Bush administration did not consider it possible to "devise an umbrella that can protect the entire American population from nuclear incineration. I think that's unrealistic."
Bush administration officials have said that they are looking instead at a system of ground-based interceptors to protect American bombers, missiles, and command centers. The New York Times described the Bush view of Star Wars as "more modest" than that of the Reagan-Bush administration. The shift from Reagan's version to Bush's, however, is more momentous than a mere reduction in scale. The avowed purpose of Star Wars under Reagan was to make nuclear weapons obsolete. Now, under his chosen heir, the purpose has become not to eliminate, but to protect, our nuclear arsenal.
Protection of U.S. nuclear forces from retaliation is a key element of a first-strike capability, and thus the "more modest" anti-missile system proposed by Bush is every bit as threatening as Reagan's plan. In addition, it is a clear violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements.
Tower's testimony downgrading the goal of Star Wars to missile defense was buried in media coverage of the assorted allegations regarding his personal life and his acceptance in the last two years of more than $1 million from defense contractors. The alleged transgressions of personal morality and conflict of interest are not the only scandals here. The scandal no one talks about is the fraud of Star Wars. What is scandalous is the bald duplicity unearthed by Tower's testimony, and the fact that the press virtually ignored the implications of these revelations.
FOR SIX YEARS, the government has sold the American public a false bill of goods -- and at a price tag of billions of dollars in a time when programs for the survival of the poor have been slashed. It is now becoming clear that many political and military leaders were aware from the beginning that the original concept of protecting the entire nation was unattainable, but it was kept alive for the purpose of selling the snake oil of missile defense to a skeptical public.
The key to the campaign was Ronald Reagan himself. Exit the great prevaricator, and the magic shield began to lose its magic. The realization quickly set in that to gain continued funding for the program, its most outlandish claims of total protection would have to be moderated. Tower's testimony was, in effect, a trial balloon; in the absence of outcry, it will become policy. Without an outraged public and a vigilant press, there is little to stop the slippery slope toward what is in effect a new arms race focused on high-tech and so-called defensive weaponry.
This late-in-the-game revision of the declared purpose of Star Wars is reprehensible especially because of what it says about the last six years: It shines a glaring light on Reagan's power of illusion, a compliant press and Congress, and the duplicity of those who have deliberately hood-winked the American public in a multibillion-dollar hoax.
In this Gorbachevian era of congenial superpower relations, the Soviet threat no longer provides the convenient justification for massive military expenditures and carte blanche for the Pentagon wish-listers. But the Cold War is far from over for the lifetime Cold Warriors, many of whom have a decided economic and political interest in making sure the military-industrial complex continues in good health.
The Bush administration has spoken of Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms as a "challenge" for the United States. Rather, the changes within the Soviet Union and in Soviet foreign policy should be seen as an important opportunity -- possibly limited in duration -- to break finally the spiral of military competition that has held the world in a deadly choke-hold for a half century. The continued dumping of billions of dollars down the sinkhole of Star Wars promises only that the reality of the Cold War endures even as its rhetoric has softened.
If ever humanity is to change its ages-old addiction to weaponry, we must begin to shatter the assumptions that propel us inevitably toward the latest technological developments, and instead begin to take steps toward the abolition of the weapons themselves. Until we do so, we will continue to be trapped in the ironic and futile posture of seeking after security in the very devices that make us insecure.
Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.
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