The Strategic Defense Initiative and the End of the Cold War: Reagan's Bluff Or a Genius Strategic Ploy?

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The Strategic Defense Initiative and the End of the Cold War: Reagan’s Bluff or a Genius Strategic Ploy?

Bachelor Thesis American Studies R.J. den Daas S4333446 – Radboud University Nijmegen Supervisor: Dr. P. van der Heiden Second reader: Dr. J. van den Berk 16-06-2019

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Teacher who will receive this document: Dr. P. van der Heiden Title of document: vanderHeiden_denDaas_BachelorThesis.docx Name of course: BA Werkstuk Amerikanistiek Date of submission: 16-06-2019

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Name of student: Robbie den Daas Student number: S4333446

3 /32 den Daas 4333446 Abstract

This thesis has set out to further investigate the role the Strategic Defense Initiative had in the ending of the Cold War. It has done so by investigating Reagan and his administration’s views on the USSR and the nuclear threat during his first term in office and by examining the rhetoric and foreign policies Reagan and his administration undertook in that first term. This was done to create a frame in which the thoughts behind the need for such a defense could become clear. Reagan changed his rhetoric from an aggressive and confrontational nature into a tone that was more open towards discussion between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thereby, showing that Reagan feared the possible consequences of a nuclear war and thought of the SDI as a way of making nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. This thesis also explained the details surrounding the initiative providing the history in research preceding its implementation, detailing the importance of the ABM treaty of 1972, the initial goal and intended research by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, a summary of important critiques and controversies surrounding the SDI and showing what has become of all the research. This was done to show that the idea of the SDI was not far-fetched. Furthermore, it discussed how the SDI was used, intentionally and unintentionally, as a political and diplomatic tool by detailing the most common held beliefs surrounding the ending of the Cold War. This thesis contends that it is highly probable that the thought of the United States gaining technological and military superiority via the SDI, thereby undermining the MAD principle, caused the new Soviet leadership to conclude that they would have to drastically reform their domestic and foreign policies. As their economy was failing and this renewed arms race would further destroy it. The unintentional role of the SDI was that of an important diplomatic tool.

Keywords

Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, Mikhail Gorbachev, USSR, Nuclear Arms Race, Military Buildup, MAD Principle, ABM Treaty, Cold War

4 /32 den Daas 4333446 Table of Contents

Abstract 3

Keywords 3

Introduction 5

Chapter 1: Reagan’s Views and Fears Concerning the USSR and the Nuclear Threat 8

Chapter 2: The SDI as a Defense Program 15

Chapter 3: The Role of the SDI During the End of the Cold War 21

Conclusion 27

Works Cited 31

5 /32 den Daas 4333446 Introduction

On March 23rd 1983, then President of the United States, Ronald Reagan publicly announced that the U.S. would start the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Reagan called upon scientists and engineers to create a rocket shield in space capable of stopping ballistic missiles when they left earth’s atmosphere. This would be done by a string of satellites in outer space. A year later the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was created as part of the Department of Defense so that they could oversee the project and allowing the SDIO to have access to more budget. Its main focus was research on a variety of scientific and engineering levels such as lasers, supercomputing and high-energy physics. The SDIO also worked closely together with universities and the industry. Since its announcement the SDI has been highly controversial and been dubbed by many of its critics as the “Star Wars Program”. There have been speculations that it was not only a military defense project but perhaps also used as a political tool concerned with ending the Cold War. For decades it has been highly debated and discussed among historians and academics who or what was responsible for the end of the Cold War and the eventual disbandment of the Soviet Union. Many historians claim it was Gorbachev and the new Soviet leadership that deserves more praise while Reagan also gathers his fair share of supporters. Also, the highly controversial SDI has been named as an important factor in the demise of the Soviet Union. This thesis would like to investigate the true motives behind this initiative and its relation toward the end of the Cold War. What was the role of the SDI in the ending of the Cold War? It is important to define what role means in this context. Role in this context not only means the feasibility of the creation of a rocket shield in space but also the likelihood that Reagan and his advisors knew that the Soviets could no longer finance their nuclear arms race. In other words, was it really meant for the military defense of the United States or was it a political tool? The first chapter will detail Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies towards the USSR and the Cold War as well as his views on how to affect the nuclear arms race due to the fact that these policies and views can give insights into how the SDI was thought of and to what end it could possibly be used. The second chapter will deal with the SDI from its conception to its end and will explain what made it controversial, how it evolved to a present day organization, what its goals were and are now and, if possible, summarize the total costs and effectiveness. In the third chapter a closer look will be taken into the role the SDI played in ending the Cold War. It will start with explaining the most common held beliefs among historians about who 6 /32 den Daas 4333446 or what played the most important role that caused the termination of the war. Then the intentional or unintentional effects the SDI, as a political and diplomatic tool, had on the USSR will be discussed. Thereby, trying to find out if it was effective or not. It is essential to begin with the moment the world, Americans and Soviets alike, heard of the SDI for the first time. On March 23rd 1983 Ronald Reagan made a historic television announcement that best described his and his administration’s view on the future of strategic nuclear war. An excerpt of his television speech taken from his biography Ronald Reagan: An American Life:

Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very strengths in technology that sawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies? I know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current technology has attained a level of sophistication where it’s reasonable for us to begin the effort. It will take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be successes and breakthroughs. And as we proceed, we must remain constant in preserving the nuclear deterrent and maintaining a solid capability for flexible response. But isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear? Tonight, consistent with our obligations under the ABM treaty and recognizing the need for closer consultation with our allies, I’m taking an important first step. I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only purpose – one all people share 0 is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war. (575)

7 /32 den Daas 4333446 There are many reasons why this is such an important and historic moment. Especially now in hindsight, scholars have been able to dissect certain parts and ascribe them to sincere personal beliefs of the president. It also shows what the long-term vision was and how Reagan and his administration were trying to change the future of the world. However, there are many parts that are still up for debate among which the claim that “we seek neither military superiority nor political advantage” (575). Even though this is a political speech made by one side in the Cold War, and must therefore be treated as such, it is an interesting starting point of what would later become the final years of the Cold War. Did Reagan really believe he could change a Mutually Assured Destruction era into a more benign one? Was it a bluff or genius strategic ploy? And more importantly, what were the Soviets thinking?

8 /32 den Daas 4333446 Chapter 1: Reagan’s Views and Fears Concerning the USSR and the Nuclear Threat

The time period in which the SDI was first suggested and then later implemented was the early eighties till the late eighties. The period in the early 80s has been dubbed as the ‘renewed Cold War’ for the reason that the two superpowers experienced a revived continuation of their arms build-up and because they were both trying to further influence third world countries by engaging in proxy wars or, as the Soviets were in Afghanistan, committing their own troops. Eventually the Soviet Union would fall, seemingly overnight, and an end had come to decades of high tension between two superpowers with two differing ideologies. This chapter will take a closer look into this intriguing period and try to create a frame in which the thoughts behind a need for such a defence program may become clear and could quite possibly illuminate processes that led to the fall of the USSR. This complicated turning point in the Cold War had two main players, Reagan on the one hand and Gorbachev on the other. The Cold War has always been a hotbed for debate among scholars and politicians. There have been on-going debates about its conception and now since its fall there have also been debates about the definitive reason as to how and why the Cold War ended. As Deudney and Ikenberry explain in their article, there was a feeling of a new wisdom emerging: “this new conventional wisdom, the "Reagan victory school," holds that President Ronald Reagan's military and ideological assertiveness during the 1980s played the lead role in the collapse of Soviet communism and the "taming" of its foreign policy” (124). However, since the fall of the Soviet Union many have come forward in proclaiming that they or their policy were eventually influential enough to become the leading factor in the Soviet’s demise. Jack F. Mitlock Jr. explains a number of differing views in his chapter Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War:

Perceptions of when the Cold War ended are equally divided: some picture it as ending with the collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Soviet Union itself; others believe it ended before Communist rule eroded in the USSR and that country fragmented into fifteen sovereign states. Nor is there consensus on how it ended: some—such as the Norwegian Parliament that awarded Mikhail Gorbachev the Nobel Peace Prize—give the Soviet leader the lion’s share of the credit. (57)

9 /32 den Daas 4333446 On the conservative right the almost mythical view is that “the Reagan administration's ideological counteroffensive and military buildup delivered the knock-out punch to a system that was internally bankrupt and on the ropes” (Deudney and Ikenberry 124). It is safe to say that there is still no leading consensus on who or what contributed to the fall of the USSR or even when it ended exactly. To find out which is more plausible a closer look must be taken into Reagan’s first term as President from 1981 to 1985. The beginning of the eighties saw the election of Ronald Reagan to become the fortieth President of the United States in 1980. To many it was clear that this election alone already foretold a shift in the U.S.’ politics in both domestic affairs and foreign affairs. The three failed presidencies before him had, depending on who was asked, left the United States in a weakened state. Even though this paper will not divulge too much on domestic affairs of the time in the U.S. there were many problems, some apparent and vigorous and some that had been simmering beneath the populace. According to Cheryl Hudson and Gareth Davies these were “the energy crisis […] rising crime rates, deindustrialization, anger at the courts, deteriorating educational standards, and galloping inflation and interest rates” (1). On the other hand, Ronald Reagan has been remembered more fondly for his foreign policies and his economics. These two fields have always been interlocked to a certain extent but during the Cold War both sides saw their budgets controlled by foreign policies. Important to note is that military defense, on both sides, were influenced heavily by this and both economies had to deal with massive defense budgets. Peter Beinart says that together it was 2.8 trillion dollars that Reagan spent on the military in his time as President (29). It is with this aspect that the SDI has been credited with ensuring both defense budgets would become massive. The announcement of the SDI of course ensured that the defense budget of both the U.S. as the USSR would rise even more and seemed perfectly in-line with Reagan’s hard anti-Soviet rhetoric. However, Beinart contends “that Reagan began abandoning his hardline anti-Soviet stance in late 1983, 18 months before Gorbachev took power” (30). This is an interesting fact to point out because it contradicts the belief that many have, that Gorbachev influenced Reagan into softening his tone. Many, such as Beinart, have attributed this change in rhetoric due to the fact that Reagan was influenced by movies about the impending nuclear apocalypse and together with the evaporating support for defense spending by the public, public outcry for détente and cabinet members asking Reagan to seek contact with the Soviets ensured this change of rhetoric (30). There is also evidence that Reagan personally experienced a certain level of fear and apprehension towards nuclear missiles. Political scientist Barbara Farnham in her journal article Reagan and the Gorbachev Revolution: Perceiving the End of Threat 10 /32 den Daas 4333446 claims that “Reagan had adopted these beliefs well before he became president [and] they accorded with his religious ideas […] and they were exacerbated by his realization in 1979 after a visit to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) that no defense against nuclear missiles existed” (230). Reagan personally concluded that the world had to get rid of all the nuclear weapons and a first step towards achieving that goal would be an assured defense against nuclear missiles. (Farnham 230). In Reagan’s eyes the SDI was the program that could fulfill this need or as Farnham states “This dream, of course, was transformed into the (in)famous […] (SDI), a policy to which Reagan clung tenaciously throughout his presidency” (230). However, from a Soviet standpoint the SDI as an anti-ballistic missile system would provide a way of undermining MAD and allow the U.S. to not only survive a possible nuclear war but also give them the advantage over the USSR. This change in rhetoric and the contradictory nature of the situation is interesting and important to further investigate. This will be done further on in the chapter. First a closer look will be taken into how the Reagan administration viewed the Soviet threat in the first two years of his presidential term (1981-1983). These few years saw an increase of great magnitude in defense spending and rhetoric that indicated that there would be no form of arms-control talks between the U.S. and USSR (Beinart 30). Between 1981 and 1983 the Reagan administration diagnosed two threats that the Soviets posed towards the U.S., namely, that Soviet expansionism and interventionism was threatening world peace and that Soviet military strength was threatening U.S. security (Fischer 479). The White House claimed that the latter had been a result from the fact that “the Soviets had been devoting an increasing percentage of their gross national product (GNP) to military expenditures, […] using these resources to both expand and modernize its arsenal” (Fischer 479). The Reagan administration thought that this buildup posed a threat because of the offensive intent that it posed and the sheer size of it meant that the U.S. military was inferior to that of the Soviets (Fischer 480). It seems as if Reagan and his administration were trying to make things look bleaker than they were to gain more public support so that they could increase funding to increase the number of nuclear warheads among other things. Their policy was set to achieve two goals, namely restraint and reciprocity. Restraint as in to end Soviet interventionism and reciprocity in two ways: to end the military buildup of arsenal and to ensure the Soviets were adhering to international agreements (Fischer 480). The three-pronged strategy that was used by the administration is linked to the following areas, low priority of arms control, the revitalization of U.S. military strength and linkage. The term linkage in this case had to do with the fact that “an improvement in superpowers relations was contingent upon a change in 11 /32 den Daas 4333446 Soviet behavior [:] if Moscow did not demonstrate restraint and reciprocity, Reagan officials asserted, the United States would insure that there would be no improvements in East-West relations” (481). This meant that the U.S. would only maintain a reactionary role and would not take the first steps to make things better. The factors involved in the linkage with Soviet behavior were East-West trade, summit meetings and arms control talks (481). The U.S. would only soften its approach towards the Soviets based on how said Soviets would change their international behavior. The revitalization of U.S. military strength seems straightforward but included some staggering numbers regarding to defense budgets as Fischer shows:

They initiated a military modernization program. In March 1981, the White House proposed the largest peacetime military budget in U.S. history. The Reagan administration advocated spending $222.8 billion on the American military in 1983, an increase of $33.8 billion. The president also proposed to increase defense spending by approximately 7 percent per year between 1981 and 1985, totaling over one trillion dollars. Defense expenditures would consume more than 30 percent of the federal budget over the next four years. The administration planned to use these resources to strengthen the American military posture in four primary areas: strategic forces, combat readiness, force mobility, and general-purpose forces. (483)

In March 1983 the administration initiated the SDI since they thoroughly believed that a defense system would mitigate Soviet military strength (Fischer 483). This increase in military buildup of course ensured that a high priority for arms control talks was pushed off the agenda. Reagan also proposed some diplomatic plans such as the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START), also dubbed the Eureka proposal, and the zero option plan. Both plans gave the impression that Reagan was trying to find common ground but were extremely one-sided, hence they were nowhere near acceptable from a Soviet standpoint. Fischer says, “This strongly suggested that the Reagan administration was not genuinely interested in arms control [and] as a result, rather than facilitating negotiations, these proposals stymied the arms control process” (485). It could be said that the U.S. was extremely aggressive in their stance towards the Soviets and demanded them to change their behavior whilst at the same time not bringing anything substantial to the table themselves. Their proposed military buildup and initiation of the SDI could have been seen as hostile from a Soviet point of view. On January 16th 1984 all this seemed to have changed when Ronald Reagan gave a declaration on live television that was broadcast around the world. This change of heart was 12 /32 den Daas 4333446 immediately felt in the U.S.-Soviet policy and would remain until the end of the Cold War. Reagan explained that the threat of nuclear annihilation was now one of the greatest threats towards the U.S., without mentioning Soviet military arsenal. He also argued that the U.S. should decrease their number of nuclear warheads and misunderstanding between the two superpowers (Fischer 487). Misunderstanding in the sense of better communications between them. The goal of U.S.-Soviet policy had thus been changed from restraint and reciprocity to rapprochement. This shift was not only significant but also symbolic in two ways. Significant because it showed that the U.S. would no longer have a confrontational attitude towards the Soviets and would no longer demand that they had to change, and symbolic because this thought showed that the U.S. now viewed the USSR as a superpower and an equal (Fischer 488). Reagan’s strategy to ensure a better relationship was based along the lines of two points: a greater emphasis on arms reduction and encouragement of more dialogue. At this point in time Reagan did not offer any new forms of arms control talks but did focus on the global reduction of nuclear arms. The encouragement on more dialogue would be done by institutionalizing superpower dialogue, which was in direct conflict with their position on summit meetings three years earlier (Fischer 488). There has been much debate on what caused this rigorous change in rhetoric from Reagan. Deudney and Ikenberry provide a plausible explanation: “there is abundant evidence that Reagan himself felt a deep antipathy for nuclear weapons and viewed their abolition to be a realistic and desirable goal” (126). They even mention that the SDI speech given in March was an example of this personal feeling from Reagan. In that speech Reagan called for “a program to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” (Deudner and Ikenberry 126). It is this anti-nuclearism that even influenced the Soviets under Gorbachev in a positive way towards the U.S. (126). Farnham debates what other factors could have been behind Reagan’s shift, including:

A series of events [that] [highlighted] the danger of nuclear weapons [such as] the Soviet downing […] of a Korean airliner that had strayed into Soviet airspace […] a television movie, "The Day After," which graphically depicted the effects of a nuclear war […] a briefing from the military on the SIOP (single integrated operational plan) for U.S. strategy to deal with a nuclear attack […] [and] the aftermath of the extensive military exercise carried out by American and NATO forces in November 1983 (Able Archer 83) to test procedures for using nuclear weapons in the event of war. Although the exercise was ultimately scaled down, it remained large enough to alarm the 13 /32 den Daas 4333446 Soviets, causing some to think that the United States was actually preparing a nuclear attack. First dismissed as "Soviet scare tactics," the intelligence reports eventually began to be taken seriously within the administration, especially by the president. For the first time Reagan realized to his great surprise that the Soviet Union might actually feel threatened by the United States. (232)

These events ensured that Reagan wanted to make nuclear weapons obsolete and that a change in rhetoric was needed to prevent a nuclear apocalypse that he dreaded so much. By 1985 the Reagan administration was seriously undertaking efforts to bring more viable arms control talks to the Soviets and this resulted in the Geneva Summit Meeting in November of that year and Fischer makes the point that “Although the Geneva summit meeting is often seen as the beginning of the end of the cold war, it was actually the culmination of the new policy that Reagan had introduced in early 1984” (494). This is a total different conclusion than what is commonly thought of to have been the reasons behind the end of the Cold War as these proposed elements by Fischer show. The claim now is that Reagan and his administration did not play an aggressive, reactionary role before Gorbachev came and changed Soviet policy but, that after an initial confrontational stance, Reagan set the stage for an improvement in relations. Or as Fischer says “Mikhail Gorbachev took the ball and ran with it, but it was Ronald Reagan who had put the ball in play” (496). Meanwhile, U.S. Congress had already started implementing higher military budgets and funding for the SDI had already begun under the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) which was a part of the Department of Defense (DOD). The SDI was implemented in a period of time when Reagan’s administration conducted a U.S.-Soviet foreign policy that was of an aggressive and confrontational nature. The U.S. did not seek out any form of diplomacy unless the Soviets conceded to change their behavior. What the U.S. proposed was unreasonable from a Soviet point of view and demonstrated the lack of wanting to create better relations. The SDI at a first glance seems to have been part of a renewed U.S. military buildup and would have been able to mitigate MAD and ensure that the U.S. could tip the balance in their favor. However, evidence seems to show that Ronald Reagan was against nuclear warfare and even seemed to be frightened by the chance of misunderstandings between the two superpowers to invoke a global destruction by nuclear missiles. Farnham shows that he sincerely saw the SDI as a means to make nuclear missiles impotent and obsolete. This opens the possibility that the development of this 14 /32 den Daas 4333446 defensive shield should not be seen as an offensive strategy. In the next chapter the SDI under SDIO will be examined.

15 /32 den Daas 4333446 Chapter 2: The SDI as a Defense Program

This chapter will focus on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). The main purpose of this chapter is to explain the details surrounding the SDI. It will do so by answering questions such as: what was the SDI? What was its goal? How did it evolve? What were the costs? What did critics think of the SDI? This chapter will explain and name certain technologies and missiles to explain the various anti- ballistic missiles and defense systems. It will however not go into detail about the scientific technicalities behind the proposed technologies, as they do not fit the scope of this thesis. At first it will begin with the history of research concerning ballistic missile defense (BMD) that led up to the moment in time that the SDI first came to being. This is to show that the SDI was not a far-fetched revelation by Reagan but a researched process which already had its beginning since the start of the Cold War. Then the SDI will be explained and it will finish with how the SDI transformed over time to what it is today. It is important to note that during the 1960s the realization that an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system could probably not protect the entire nation, as it was not feasible became the main thought among politicians on both sides of the Cold War (Flax 33). This ensured that MAD came into being, a strategic policy that was agreed upon by the Americans and Soviet, albeit between the lines, in the ABM treaty of 1972. Both sides disliked this new form of deterrent since it unequivocally meant that both sides faced destruction were a nuclear war to start if mankind were even to survive it. The ABM treaty of 1972 was an important moment in U.S. – Soviet relations as it was one of the few agreed upon political treaties and shaped both their policies for the upcoming decades. A closer look will now be taken into researches into BMDs prior to the ABM treaty. The first major program concerning a defensive method against missiles was Nike Zeus, which was first conducted in the late 1950s. Alexander Flax was the third director of the National Reconnaissance Office and in his article Ballistic Missile Defense: Concepts and History he explains that it was “a system of radars and interceptor missiles for high-altitude interception of incoming ballistic missiles” and that “by mid-1962, prototypes of the radars and missiles were ready for a test against a live missile, and in December 1962 the system successfully intercepted an Atlas D missile” (34). The Nike Zeus program eventually could not be implemented due to a multitude of factors. One of them being the research into ‘penetration aids’, “various types of countermeasures, including decoys (dummy war heads) […] both to see what the Soviet Union might be capable of doing to breach our defenses and 16 /32 den Daas 4333446 to ensure that U.S. ICBMs would be able to penetrate a possible Soviet ABM system” (Flax 35). Together with this research into penetration aids, the growing number of Soviet missiles and the further evolving technology into radars ensured that the Nike Zeus was discarded (Flax 35). The researches into countermeasures lead into even more research into countering these countermeasures. One of the newfound discoveries was that “decoys could best be dealt with by intercepting the actual warheads at low altitude, since the atmosphere acts as a filter, slowing down or burning up less massive bodies, making it much easier to distinguish between decoys and actual warheads” (Flax 35). This meant that a new BMD would have to have a low-altitude missile and this new missile was called Sprint. In 1963 a new Army BMD was created named Nike-X which not only had this low- altitude missile but also received better radars (Flax 35). Between 1963 and 1967 further research and work was done on the Nike-X system with the addition that preparations were being made to use this system to protect cities from a light attack (Flax 36). A new system “ which was called Sentinel, would incorporate an improved Nike Zeus missile, the Spartan, for high-altitude interception and the new Sprint missile for low-altitude interception [and] both missiles carried nuclear warheads” (Flax 36). The nation soon learned where these sites were to be located, near cities, and public outcry emerged eventually leading to a suspension of the construction of these sites (Flax 36). After Nixon had taken office in 1969 the Sentinel program underwent a change and became the Safeguard program. “The Safeguard system was comprised of the same missile and radar components as Sentinel, but was to be deployed in different numbers and locations” (Flax 35). It appears the change of name was meant to calm down political and public outcry but after the signing of the ABM treaty this no longer was of use. This is because “the treaty, together with a subsequent protocol, permitted a total of only one hundred interceptors in only one of two types of deployment, for defense of a strategic missile site or for defense of the national capital” (Flax 37). Therefore, civilian defense had been put out of the equation. After the ABM treaty, the U.S. still continued with R&D. In the 1970s research was mainly concerned within two areas (Flax 48). The first one received great interest from the Carter administration since they were looking at creating “a mobile basing system of multiple shelters for the MX missile” (Flax 49). The program in question was concerned with “the development of more effective and less costly technology for defending hardened sites, such as ICBM silos or command-and-control centers” (Flax 48). However, during the first term of Reagan it was decided, “to base the MX in existing Minuteman silos” (Flax 49) which caused 17 /32 den Daas 4333446 the loss of interest for “this type of mobile, hard-site defense” (Flax 49). The other area is explained by Flax who says:

The other area of R&D that has been pursued vigorously since 1972 is exemplified by the Homing Overlay Experiment. This was an effort to develop the technology for discriminating decoys at high altitudes using long-wave infrared sensors, either airborne or rocket launched, and for developing non-nuclear-kill interceptors using long-wave infrared seekers. The culmination of this effort was the successful interception and destruction of a Minuteman-launched missile by an interceptor missile on June 10, 1984. (49)

This quote shows the beginning of one of the technologies the SDI would further research. Therefore it shows that the SDI was not some far-fetched idea by Reagan, but was based on research done before he came into office. After the President’s announcement the Department of Defense (DoD) immediately “initiated two independent but related studies; one on technology and systems, under Dr. James Fletcher, and the other on policy, under Dr. Fred Hoffman (Flax 50). Both scientists came up with recommendations on how to begin with the SDI. Fletcher’s study primarily recommended “a long-term R&D program on ballistic missile defense, [of which] only the first five years were described in any detail” (Flax 50). Any other decisions that were to be made regarding R&D on system development would be considered after these five years (Flax 50). In his study “no specific BMD systems were selected for ultimate deployment, but promising new technologies and system components were identified” (Flax 50). Flax states that Flechter’s study’s tone was more optimistic in regard to technical success but could not ascertain when these successes would take place (50). Hoffman’s study was more about “the policy implications of a U.S. ABM deployment in such areas as the U.S.-USSR strategic balance, the stability of deterrence, initiatives and responses of the USSR, and effects on relations with allies” (Flax 51). In its conclusion the study showed that a deployment of BMD’s “would be favorable in most respects, or at least preferable to other alternatives” (Flax 51). The recommendations of the Hoffman study, in contrast to the Fletcher study, placed emphasis on the desirability of early deployment of BMD systems, even though their projected effectiveness would be considerably below that called for in the Fletcher study and implied in the president's speech. Eventually, when the DoD created the SDI, it chose Fletcher’s study “to carry out the expanded R&D program as recommended in his study, although initially at a somewhat 18 /32 den Daas 4333446 reduced level of funding” (Flax 51). The next paragraph will explain what the SDI became after this. The SDI was a proposed anti-ballistic defense system. Reagan and his administration called upon scientists and engineers to engage in research into a large variety of upcoming and technologies. According to Kevin C. Kennedy this research was “in the basic areas of directed-energy weapons such as lasers and particle beam weapons, and kinetic-energy weapons such as rail guns that can launch objects at enormous velocities” (856). The proposed defense systems could either be on the ground, in the air or in space and would target incoming hostile ballistic missiles. An interesting way of determining the flight of a ballistic missile is given by Colin Gray: ”a ballistic missile may be considered as having five flight regimes: boost phase, postboost, mid-course, early terminal, and late terminal (immediately prior to detonation)” (661). This shows that there are several phases in which the SDI could track and destroy foreign missiles which could give scientists some grip in their development of a system. However, Gray also shows that these many layers also provide the scientists behind SDI with a problem, namely, “The United States' SDI is exploring a wide, indeed a very wide, range of technologies that might be able to function in a layered fashion in each of the five flight regimes” (661). This shows that there were a number of areas in which to research a defense system that could destroy a missile along a 5-step flight path. Since its main idea was based on a space-based defense shield many critics nicknamed the initiative ‘Star Wars’ (Norton et al. 833). Kennedy states “the SDI program is planned to evolve through four progressively more sophisticated phases, the first of which is limited to research through the 1990s. Thereafter, the program will enter the development and deployment phases, depending on the progress of the research phase” (857). This shows that the intention of the Reagan administration was for the SDI to be a long-term research initiative. The primary goal was to research ways into making nuclear missiles obsolete by ensuring a defense that was hundred percent effective. Flax also adds “a national effort to move from a strategic deterrence policy based on offensive weapons alone to one more strongly based on defensive systems” (50). Reagan hoped that the creation of a full proof defense would lead to the realization that strategic nuclear missiles had become useless. It was also expressed that the U.S. would retain this knowledge from others but instead would share this instrument so that everyone nation in the world could defend themselves. This would further the point that the missiles had become obsolete. The following step would 19 /32 den Daas 4333446 ensure that every nuclear missile would be destroyed thereby ending any threat of a nuclear holocaust. According to Flax “The most compelling of the arguments against the president's proposal seemed to be over the question of whether such a system of the kind envisioned - even if it would "work" in a technical sense -could really be effective in enhancing national security, rather than simply causing a new and dangerous escalation of the strategic arms race” (Flax 50). Other critics were afraid that this program would destabilize the MAD principle and could cause major insecurities on the Soviet’s behalf. Norton explains that: “Critics warned that perfecting such a system was scientifically impossible and that the SDI would elevate the arms race to dangerous levels” (834). Also, many saw the SDI as a clear violation of the ABM treaty as the SDI could be seen as an ABM. Lastly, the costs seemed to be immense and many argued that these could be better spent on domestic issues. According to Norton et al. “the administration launched the largest peacetime arms buildup in American history [and] in 1985, the military budget hit 294.7 billion (a doubling since 1980) [of which] SDI research and development consumed tens of billions of dollars” (834). Near the end of the 1980s scientists had to conclude that the technology needed to orchestrate a space rocket shield was decades away of what was then possible and the initial idea was dropped. This meant that it could no longer give the U.S. a military advantage as the main goal had been debunked. The SDIO did continue with its research and created an anti- ballistic system but this one was ground-based. In 1993 it was officially stopped when Clinton took office. Studies and research did however continue under other names such as when the Clinton administration renamed it Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and diverted its main focus towards ballistic missiles with a lesser reach. Under George W. Bush’s administration the organization was renamed again as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). This agency is still conducting fundamental research on several engineering and scientific levels and has over 8,000 employees (Sessions 25). But what does the DoD and the U.S. tangibly have after decades of R&D on a national missile defense system? According to Jeff Sessions the U.S. had made some strides in their BMD development but were always “hamstrung by the restrictions of the ABM treaty” (25) until they stepped out of the treaty. George W. Bush did this in 2002 “after consultation with Russian president Putin and other foreign partners” (25). Sessions details the results garnered by the MDA and says that there are now “four tested and proven programs: Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), and the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system” (25). 20 /32 den Daas 4333446 In contrast to what scientists and engineers tried to achieve in Reagan’s time today’s missile defense systems are able “to operate on the principle of ‘hit-to-kill’ […] a monumental accomplishment that some have compared to that of landing a man on the moon” (25) AMDs such as Nike Zeus and Safeguard were not able to do this (25). Hit-to-kill in this regard literally means a missile intercepting a hostile missile thereby exterminating the latter missile. The U.S. still to this day do not possess a space-based shield against hostile missiles as their current defense system, the GMD system, is ground-based “consisting of 24 interceptors sitting in silos at Ft. Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg AFB, California” (26) It does however rely on radars based on land, sea, and space (26). The Aegis BMD currently consists of 17 warships that “are capable of long-range radar surveillance and tracking, of which 12 are also capable of missile intercepts [and] Aegis BMD warships fire the Standard Missile-3, which has achieved more successful intercepts than any other missile defense system in our inventory” (26). The final two proven and tested programs, PAC-3 and THAAD are theater defense systems. PAC-3 provides protection against short-range missiles that do not leave the earth’s atmosphere (26) while THAAD is able to also destroy medium-range missiles that are inside or outside our atmosphere (26).

21 /32 den Daas 4333446 Chapter 3: The Role of the SDI During the End of the Cold War

As identified in the previous chapter, the SDI’s progress and initial goal were not feasible during that time period therefore this thesis will continue looking at the SDI as a political and diplomatic tool. This chapter will investigate in what way the SDI program was used intentionally and unintentionally as a diplomatic tool. It will try to find out in what ways it was effective and in what ways it was not. This is in order due to the fact that it is still highly debated what role the SDI played during the final years of the Cold War. This chapter will also explain the most common held beliefs about the end of the Cold War. Was it Reagan or Gorbachev that played the most important role in ending the Cold War? Was the SDI meant to out bluff the Soviet Union into playing a financial and technological game they could never afford thereby destroying their economy and consequently destroying their entire Union? To start off, it is interesting to acknowledge what is commonly thought about the role SDI played in the political sphere between Reagan and Gorbachev during the late eighties. In A People & A Nation: A History of The United States by Norton et al., they state that “at a 1986 Reykjavik, Iceland, meeting they came close to a major reduction agreement [but] SDI stood in the way: Gorbachev insisted it be shelved; Reagan refused” (837). This book advocates “[that] the turnaround in Soviet-American relations stemmed more from changes abroad than from Reagan’s decisions” (837). Many reasons are given such as the fact that under Gorbachev a modernization of sorts began to happen in the Soviet Union. The two well-known programs that were implemented under Gorbachev are glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) (Norton et al. 837). Perestroika was a reform program intended to modernize “the highly bureaucratized, decaying economy” and glasnost was intended to “liberalize the authoritarian political system through openness” (Norton et al. 837). The finances needed to ensure that these programs could become successful would have to come from reducing the Soviet military expenditures and Gorbachev “also reduced his nation’s armed forces, helped settle regional conflicts, and began the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan” (837). All these changes lead to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987. The INF Treaty banned “all land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe” (Norton et al. 837) and has been viewed by historians as the moment the Cold War effectively ended. This thesis does not want to contend or undermine the efforts and contributions made by Gorbachev and his party members nor want to paint the picture that 22 /32 den Daas 4333446 Reagan deserves more praise. It does however want to take a closer look into how historians came to this widely held view. A good starting point to delve deeper into would be the Soviet military expenditures mentioned before. In other words, a closer look will be taken into what the status of the Soviet Union was during this time period, how they perceived the SDI and how they thought they had to respond to it. Norwegian historian and academic Geir Lundestad in his book The Rise & Decline of the American “Empire”: Power and its Limits in Comparative Perspective addresses the apparent sudden fall of the Soviet Union and he concludes that ‘imperial overstretch’ should be considered as one of the main reasons (132). Although he does caution that questions on how superpowers can seemingly fall overnight “cannot really be resolved, only illuminated” (132). There are many acknowledged reasons why the Soviet Union disappeared and these are: “the erosion of the center’s will to rule, the dissatisfaction of the nationalities in the Soviet Union, social problems, economic problems and political problems” (132). Lundestad borrows the term ‘imperial overstretch’ from another author called Paul Kennedy. In that book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, from 1987 ‘imperial overstretch’ is explained as the moment when a nation for a long period of time allocates more than ten per cent of its GNP to military expenditures, its growth will stop (133). However, at the time Kennedy used this term to express his beliefs that it would be the United States that would eventually fall due to the fact that it has (and still has) the highest military expenditures in the world. This again shows how unexpected the fall of the Soviet Union was at the time. Lundestad now borrows this term and uses it for the Soviet Union because it “fits [t]his theory almost perfectly [and] although many different factors account for the collapse of the Soviet Union, ‘imperial overstretch’ clearly represents one of the most powerful explanations for the fall of the Soviet Union” (134). The reason why it fits perfectly is because it acknowledges the theory others have already formulated, that the Soviet Union did not have the means financially to beat the U.S. Lundestad’s argument is formed by three parts:

imperial expenses in the Soviet Union were extremely high; the need to reduce them was a prime motivation behind Gorbachev’s increasingly drastic changes in Soviet domestic and foreign policy; these drastic changes were responsible, more than anything, for bringing first the Cold War, and then the Soviet Union, to an end. (134)

23 /32 den Daas 4333446 This is an interesting comment due to the fact that it shows that the expenses were indeed the reason for the eventual collapse but also interesting because he claims that it was Gorbachev’s decisions that were more responsible than the other factors. Thereby, showing that Gorbachev’s decisions were motivated by financial reasons. In the period after the Second World War it was the Soviet Union that was experiencing a rapid economic growth (135). This however changed during the 70s and the 80s and “when Gorbachev took over in 1985 there was little or no growth in the Soviet economy, military expenditures were high, and there was very little spillover from military to civilian technology” (135). These claims were published by other academics and seem to be more true than other figures. Lundestad explains this when he says “at present, there are no accurate figures [that] can be given for imperial expenses as a percentage of GNP” (135). The Soviet Union rarely published any figures of their own economy and when they did they were not particularly meaningful (135). As can be expected both sides would underestimate or overestimate one another’s economies. The U.S. was prone to overestimating the Soviets economy because this could be used as a fact to increase military spending. Lundestad says, “The CIA was long regarded as the leading authority on the size of the Soviet economy [and] estimated the Soviet economy at 57 percent of the U.S. economy in 1986 [and] 52 percent in 1990” (135). This is important because it shows that the CIA was underestimating the “burden of military expenditure on that economy and society” (136) which in turn showed that the U.S. were overestimating the Soviet Union’s power overall. They may have been equal in military terms but economically the Soviet Union was already showing signs of recession and malfunction. There has been extensive debate about the true numbers concerning the Soviet economy and how much of their GNP was spent on the military. Participants of this debate have come from old Soviet government officials, academics, the CIA and other government officials from both sides. The figures range from the military expenditure being 7-8 percent of the GNP to 23-30 percent of the GNP (137). It is therefore “probably impossible to establish the correct figure for Soviet imperial expenditures, as a percentage of Soviet GNP” (137). However, since it appears that most statistics appear to show that the expenditures as percentage of the GNP were high, it can be concluded that it was simply too high when Gorbachev came into power in the mid eighties. Interesting fact is that only a few people within the Soviet leadership knew the exact size of the defense budget (Lundestad 137). According to Lundestad “there already seems to have been, or at least there soon developed, a widespread feeling within the political and even the military leadership that the Soviet Union 24 /32 den Daas 4333446 was devoting too much money to defense spending (137). This feeling soon led the new leadership down a new path and ensured that Gorbachev was not left with any other option. Or as Lundestad summarizes:

The conclusion seemed obvious: the Soviet economy was in dire straits. The burden of military spending was, to a large extent, to blame. To reduce this burden arms control and disarmament had to be promoted. That in turn implied a basic change in Soviet foreign policy in general, particularly toward the West. (139)

This is the moment many historians and academic writers view as the moment that the Soviet leadership not only changed their views but would also start with instating life-changing reforms that would eventually lead into the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Union. This is also the moment that has been highly debated because there has always appeared to be a need to point one political figure or moment or program out as the one that changed everything. The most frequently formulated stance on which side, or which person, helped end the Cold War is explained by Lundestad when he says that “most historians and political scientists who have written about the end of the Cold War place primary emphasis on the contributions made by Gorbachev” (145). Lundestad counters this by saying that “in any bipolar relationship the attitudes of both sides count [and] in general terms the West certainly influenced Soviet actions by its political and economic success” (145). As elaborated before, the Soviet Union was in a crisis, “détente had robbed [them] of an enemy which had meant much for the cohesion of the Eastern bloc [and] the Helsinki Process set certain standards of human rights which had important long-term effects in the Soviet Union” (145). However, it was “the containment policy of the United States [that] also greatly increased the costs of Soviet foreign policy, given the Soviet desire to act as its military equal” (145). This is a crucial aspect of the entire Cold War since both parties did not want to be inferior to one another. Lundestad explains that this crucial aspect ensured, “the already expensive arms race threatened to become even more expensive with the SDI” (145). Dobrynin writes that the soviet leadership “was convinced that the great technical potential of the United States had scored again and treated Reagan’s statement as a real threat” (qtd. in Lundestad 145). History professor Walter A. McDougall of the University of Pennsylvania, in his book The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest, agrees with this as he says that “the Soviets were sufficiently cowed by American high-tech wizardry 25 /32 den Daas 4333446 that they worried, for a few years at least, that space-strike weapons might render nuclear weapons [out of date]” (334) but also adds that the SDI “was (except in Reagan’s mind) a colossal bluff” (334). This shows that the SDI was indeed a bluff that the Soviets fell for but Lundestad explains that “in the short term it probably also stimulated the further development of offensive weapons on the Soviet side” (145). In the end it was still Gorbachev that made the most concessions when he “gave up the linkage to SDI” in the INF treaty even though many Americans felt that Reagan had been making too many concessions before that treaty (146). In his journal article How Did the Cold War Die? : Principles for an Autopsy International Relations professor Charles W. Kegley Jr. comes with an interesting viewpoint.

Many influences on the Cold War's end were operative at once, and as these were themselves correlated, there is a great danger that we will mistake a spurious cause for a direct one. To avoid this, we must take into account the substantial literature that addresses the interactive impact of rivals' actions on subsequent behavior, and the degree to which reciprocated responses of both superpowers changed the quality of the Soviet-American relationship. (Kegley Jr. 29)

Kegley continues with “There is strong evidence that throughout the Cold War any substantial effort to reduce tensions initiated by either Washington or Moscow” (29) and that this “brought about a proportionate response in kind from the other” (qtd in Kegley Jr. 29). Lundestad also underscores this as he explains “when Gorbachev became willing to make dramatic concessions, he then met with a favorable response from the West, a response which, in turn, changed his appraisal of Reagan and other Western leaders, and contributed to further agreements and reforms” (144). Although it must be mentioned that Lundestad places the emphasis on Gorbachev being the first to be reach out. Kegley Jr. on the other hand also extends some merit toward Reagan by saying “U.S. moderation, not toughness, preceded and promoted a favorable climate in which the Soviet changes could develop [and] these actions by Reagan may have been the necessary antecedents to the Soviet leadership's turn to a new policy” (30). It is therefore that this paper will contend that, given the sources found and used, it appears that Gorbachev was indeed responsible for the most changes that led to the end of the Cold War but that one must not underestimate or undervalue the impact Reagan had on the U.S.-USSR relationship due to the fact that his change in tone allowed the Soviets to realize 26 /32 den Daas 4333446 that talks were possible. At first glance, the SDI appears to have had a counterproductive effect on Soviets on the short run as it may have led to an increase in arms production and in consideration of the armaments talks it ensured that no agreement could be found between Reagan and Gorbachev. However, given the information this thesis has gathered it should be mentioned that the former could have quite possibly been what the U.S. strategically wanted. Increasing Soviet military expenditures was what could destroy the Soviet economy. It is reasonable to suggest that Reagan was the only one that did not experience the idea of the SDI as a bluff and it was certainly believed by the Soviets in its first few years of conception. It cannot be stressed enough that the economic, social and political troubles of the Soviet Union were a major factor in all this. This paper therefore agrees with Kegley Jr.’s assessment that it could be dangerous to highlight one and only one cause for a direct one. This may not seem as a satisfactory conclusion but the events surrounding the end of the Cold War were so surprising and so multifaceted that it is academically the only just one. Even with that said though, and considering the multifaceted factors involved, the claim that the U.S. forced the Soviet Union economy over the edge by its proposed military buildup, among which the SDI program, is therefore highly probable. The Soviet economy was most likely already suffering from immense military expenditures and the new Soviet leadership had no other choice than to conclude that they would have to reform their Union with drastic measures including changing their domestic and foreign policies. This paper therefore proposes that the prospect of the U.S. gaining military and technological superiority via the SDI that could tip the balance of the MAD-principle caused the new Soviet leadership to arrive at the aforementioned conclusion.

27 /32 den Daas 4333446 Conclusion

This thesis has investigated the true motives behind the Strategic Defense Initiative and its relation toward the end of the Cold War. Thereby, trying to answer the question: What was the role of the SDI in the ending of the Cold War? In the first chapter a closer look was taken into the period of the Cold War when Reagan became president. This was done so that a frame could be made of the thoughts behind a need for a defense program such as the SDI. The chapter explains that the SDI was announced and implemented during a period of time when Reagan and his administration conducted a U.S.-Soviet foreign policy that was of an aggressive and confrontational nature. It would not seek out any form of diplomacy unless the Soviets conceded to change their behavior or would offer an olive branch first. Their policy was shaped around two goals, namely, restraint en reciprocity. They would reach these goals by a revitalization of U.S. military strength. It is in that sense that the SDI was seen as a major component of this renewed buildup. It is said that Reagan has spent 2.8 trillion dollars on the military in his time as president. This shows that the SDI in any event ensured that the U.S. military spending skyrocketed. The proposed diplomatic plans such as START gave the impression that Reagan was willing to find common ground but were extremely one-sided and unreasonable from a Soviet point of view and demonstrated the lack of wanting to create better relations. Eighteen months before Gorbachev became the new Soviet leader a change in rhetoric was noticeable in Reagan. On January 16th 1984 Reagan spoke of a nuclear annihilation as the greatest threat to the U.S. without mentioning the Soviets and their arsenal, argued for a reduced number of nuclear warheads and for better understanding worldwide. Although there is still no consensus among historians, a plausible explanation as to why this change in rhetoric happened is that Reagan himself thought nuclear weapons were despicable and believed that their abolition could be a realistic goal. The SDI would have been able to mitigate MAD and ensure that the U.S. could tip the balance in their favor. Which could be seen as a hostile move by the Soviets. However, evidence shows that Reagan sincerely saw the SDI as a means to make nuclear missiles impotent and obsolete and that the development of this defensive shield should not be seen as an offensive strategy. The second chapter set out to explain the details surrounding the SDI. First it explained the history of research concerning ballistic missile defense (BMD) that led up to the moment in time that the SDI was announced. An important point in time is the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972. Its importance lies in the very makeup of the treaty, namely, détente. 28 /32 den Daas 4333446 This shaped the Cold War till its dying moments and is the reason why many politicians and civilians alike, were afraid of breaking this treaty. Before this treaty, the U.S. was already tasking itself with creating a defensive method against missiles. In the 1950s the program Nike Zeus was first conducted. Even though first results seemed promising, the further evolving research on both sides and especially the research and development of countermeasures against defensive missiles ensured that the program was discarded. The U.S. continued testing and developing new missiles and missile defense systems until the ABM treaty. The ABM treaty also detailed a protocol that any nation was only allowed one hundred interceptors at any give time. Therefore, the scope of the research changed and the U.S. continued researching newer forms of missiles after the ABM treaty signing. The years of research that led up to the conception of the idea of the SDI show that it was not some far- fetched idea by Reagan, but that the SDI was based on tested missiles and missile defense programs. The SDI was intended to research a large variety of upcoming technologies and was intended to be a long-term research initiative. There were multiple proposed phases: a research phase that would continue throughout the 1990s and development and deployment phases. The primary goal was to research ways into making nuclear missiles obsolete by ensuring a defense that was hundred percent effective. At its core there would be a space- based defense shield but there were other defense systems that could either be on the ground or in the air. The idea was that an incoming hostile nuclear ballistic missile could be detected, targeted and destroyed. The technologies that were being researched ranged from LASER technology to particle beam weapons. This chapter also tried to summarize the reasons why the SDI was so controversial and highly criticized. The idea of a space-based shield that could laser down incoming ballistic missiles led critics to famously name the SDI as the ‘Star Wars Program’. Critics also feared that the SDI was in direct violation of the ABM since the program was an anti ballistic defense system at its core. Also, many already surmised that the costs for such a defense systems would be too high in a nation where finances could be used for the domestic sphere. This last point of critique seems to be justified as Reagan hit a military budget of 294.7 billion dollars in 1985 and it is estimated that the SDI cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars. Near the end of the 1980s the SDIO and its researchers had to conclude that the technology needed to construct a space based shield was decades away of what was then possible and the initial idea was dropped. The SDIO did continue with its research even continuing under President Clinton in 1993 but with another name, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) 29 /32 den Daas 4333446 and another research scope, namely, ballistic missile with a lesser reach. When George W. Bush became president he changed the organization again, now calling it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). This agency is still conducting research and according to Jeff Sessions there are now four fully tested and proven defense programs in the U.S., the GMD, ABMD, PAC-3 and THAAD defense systems. The third chapter discussed the SDI as a political and diplomatic tool. It investigated in what way the SDI was used intentionally and unintentionally in the diplomatic processes surrounding the end of the Cold War. It discussed the most common held beliefs surrounding this highly debated moment in time and tried to see if they held any merit. The two most used explanations of this period are that it was due to Gorbachev and his drastic changes in domestic and foreign policies that ended the Cold War. Others say that it was the way that Reagan ideologically and financially forced the Soviet economy to go bankrupt. Thereby, forcing them into ending the arms and thereby the Cold War. This thesis will contend that, given the sources found and used, it appears that Gorbachev was indeed responsible for the most changes that led to the end of the Cold War but that one must not underestimate or undervalue the impact Reagan had on the U.S.-Soviet relationship due to the fact that his change in tone allowed the Soviets to realize that talks were possible. So it was not Reagan’s bullying and aggressive tone that changed the Soviets but his change in tone in January 1984 that showed the Soviets that he was willing to talk. This paper agrees with Beth Fischer that it was indeed “Mikhail Gorbachev [that] took the ball and ran with it, but it was Ronald Reagan who had put the ball in play” (496). At first glance, the SDI appears to have had a counterproductive effect on Soviets on the short run as it may have led to an increase in arms production and in consideration of the armaments talks it ensured that no agreement could be found between Reagan and Gorbachev. However, given the information this thesis has gathered it should be mentioned that the former could have quite possibly been what the U.S. strategically wanted. Increasing Soviet military expenditures was what could destroy the Soviet economy. It is reasonable to think that Reagan did not perceive the SDI as a bluff and it was believed by the Soviets in the first few years. There were many factors involved in the ending of the Cold War and this paper acknowledges that it could prove dangerous to highlight only one cause for a direct one. Nonetheless, this thesis does contend that the claim that the U.S. forced the Soviet Union economy over the edge by its proposed military buildup, among which the SDI program, is therefore highly probable. This in turn led the Soviet leadership to 30 /32 den Daas 4333446 believe that they had no other choice than to conclude that they would have to reform their Union with drastic measures including changing their domestic and foreign policies. This paper therefore proposes that the prospect of the U.S. gaining military and technological superiority via the SDI, that could tip the balance of the MAD-principle, caused the new Soviet leadership to arrive at the aforementioned conclusion. It will never be known what the role of the SDI exactly was by Reagan: a bluff or as a genius strategic ploy, however, this thesis has shown that it is most likely so that Reagan sincerely believed in a world without nuclear weapons and that he thought the SDI could ensure this. This research has also shown that the unintentional role of the SDI was that of an important, yet costly, diplomatic tool. The role of the SDI in the end of the Cold War is therefore an important one as it ensured that the Soviets had to drastically change their stance on military buildup. It turned out to be an unintentional bluff that the Soviets bought hook, line and sinker.

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