Strategic Defense Initiative Summary

In 1982, the START negotiations between the United States, and the Soviet Union began to falter. President Ronald Reagan unveiled his vision for a Strategic Defense Initiative(SDI) that quickly became a popular topic worldwide. SDI was proposed by President Reagan on March 23rd, 1983, in a speech to the nation. He claimed that the government would begin to work towards a ballistic missile defense, to protect the country against Soviet attacks or otherwise.(Dewolf) This immediately polarized the American media, scientists and political analysts. Those who were scientists argued that SDI was not a feasible option, as technological capabilities were not up to speed with what Reagan had proposed. The political analysts took a different view however, …show more content…
(Pemberton 195) At the time, Reagan had fairly low approval ratings. During 1982, they had dropped to only 35% of the population. (Bunch) This spike towards lower approval ratings may have awakened the administration, and pushed them to announce SDI, to appeal to the public, as the announcement happened shortly after the approval ratings had fallen.
Influencing policy on the Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START) was Reagan 's best chance to make an impact in the history books, and change the public opinion in a positive direction. The START talks were from 1982 to 1991, between the Soviet Union and the United States, to try and defuse tensions between the countries, and take steps towards ending the Cold War. (Dewolf) In 1982 and 1983, the United States and Soviets had trouble agreeing on policy. So much so that the Soviet negotiators walked out of START When the talks began again in 1985, the U.S. attempted to make up for lost time that the Soviets had caused by refusing to …show more content…
Within the next year, in August, both parties would agree to total elimination of all nuclear weapons. Gorbachev publicly accepted the “zero option” but there were details that needed to be worked on in private, regarding West German Pershing missiles.(Rajcsanyi) The West German government was on board with scrapping the missiles, in favor of modernizing them. “This step removed the final significant obstacle in the (Intermediate range nuclear forces treaty)INF negotiations.” (Schumaker 57) The elimination of all European warheads after the acceptance of the zero option was ideal for the United States, because it destroyed Soviet missiles that were already in production, and deployed, while if necessary, the U.S. was still developing missiles that were unable to be destroyed as part of the agreement, since they were never deployed. (Ruekert 75) Although the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to this proposition, there would be many years before the warhead numbers were substantially