Revisiting the British reaction to Reagan’s Star Wars
US president Ronald Reagan meets with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher at Camp David in December 1984.
Reagan White House
On 23 March 1983, in a televised address that was a surprise to NATO members and the American people alike, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The program’s objective was to establish a layered missile defense system, with interceptors on land and in space, that would render nuclear weapons obsolete (see the article by Gerold Yonas, Physics Today, June 1985, page 24 ). Because of its emphasis on placing directed-energy weapons in orbit, SDI was quickly tagged with the derisive nickname Star Wars.
Not all allies were on board with Reagan’s plan. The French, for example, vociferously criticized the program because of concerns that it would lead to an arms race in space. Reagan believed that he needed British support to establish SDI’s international legitimacy—and in December 1984, he got it. In her first official comment on the program, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher stated that there were “no differences” between the US and the UK on SDI.
Recently declassified British government documents tell a different story, however. Senior members of the British national security establishment seriously doubted the technological and strategic feasibility of SDI. The documents highlight the different approaches that the US and the UK took to integrating science and technology into national security policymaking. Whereas Reagan uncritically trusted technology to achieve a nuclear-free world, Thatcher was more focused on the details of the science and felt that there would be major obstacles to implementation that only years of basic research could overcome.
Technological enthusiasm
Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has described Reagan as an ardent nuclear weapons abolitionist. Reagan’s support of SDI might seem to contradict that idea, but for Reagan, SDI was not just a weapons system. It represented the potential to fundamentally change the nature of the Cold War. By shifting toward defensive technologies, Reagan hoped to stop the arms race from spiraling out of control.
This unflown antiballistic missile test vehicle is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia. In June 1984, as part of the US Army’s Homing Overlay Experiment, a vehicle like this one intercepted an incoming dummy warhead.
To allay Soviet fears about SDI being used to bolster America’s offensive nuclear capability (see the article by Peter Westwick, Physics Today, June 2008, page 43 ), Reagan planned to share it with the USSR. The Soviets scoffed at that prospect, given the US’s extremely stringent technology transfer policies. But a declassified US national security document from 1986 stated that the technology could be shared without “compromising either side’s perceived technological advantages.” The CIA analysts who authored the document argued that sharing SDI would create a more interdependent world and that lowering the threat of nuclear war would reduce international tensions. They even proposed creating SDI command centers that would be jointly operated by NATO and Soviet personnel.
Reagan placed great hope and faith in the capabilities of American science and technology to solve challenging national security problems, but there was a disconnect between that philosophy and his execution of SDI. Reagan did not commission a panel to study the technical feasibility of a multilayered ballistic missile defense system until after his 23 March speech. He also did not consult his science adviser, George Keyworth. His technological enthusiasm seems to have led him to assume that SDI was realistic and possible (see the article by Wolfgang Panofsky, Physics Today, June 1985, page 34 ).
Scientific rationality
Thatcher shared many of Reagan’s political ideologies, but she was more concerned than he about grasping the scientific and technical details of SDI. Within 24 hours of Reagan’s speech, Thatcher, a former chemist, asked her science adviser, Robin Nicholson, and the Ministry of Defense to put together a report on SDI’s feasibility. The ministry reported back that the technology required to transform the concept of SDI into a reality was not attainable in the near term and that the Soviets could develop effective countermeasures against SDI with little difficulty.
Unlike Reagan, who viewed SDI as a deterrent that could permanently prevent nuclear war, Thatcher viewed SDI as a research program that needed to be better developed in a laboratory before NATO could determine if a change in strategy was required. She never deviated from her view that new defense technologies should only enhance nuclear deterrence, not replace geopolitical diplomacy. When Reagan made his speech, the UK had just completed negotiations with the US for an upgrade of its nuclear arsenal. The UK was frustrated and dismayed with the US tendency to make decisions that had significant implications for Britain and all of NATO without prior consultation.
The prime minister was also distressed by Reagan’s proposal to share SDI technology with the USSR. She believed that any technological gains from SDI research needed to be used to strengthen the Western alliance. The British national security establishment did not accept the premise that sharing SDI could overcome Soviet paranoia. And it seemed preposterous to Thatcher that a mechanism could be established for sharing sensitive missile defense technology with the USSR without compromising national security.
But the British reaction to SDI was not entirely negative. Nicholson argued that research into advanced computing and optical technologies that SDI would require could benefit the British scientific establishment . The prime minister was optimistic about the economic, scientific, and defense potential of SDI research, even if the entire system did not come to fruition. Thatcher was also enthusiastic about the negative Soviet reaction to SDI; she believed Soviet fear could be useful for getting the USSR back to the arms control negotiating table. In the end, despite Thatcher’s concerns about SDI’s feasibility, her government publicly supported Reagan’s plan.
In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote that “SDI was the single most important” decision of Reagan’s presidency. She never overcame her science-based skepticism of the plan, and she never concluded that SDI could have provided total protection from the outbreak of nuclear war. In the end, Thatcher and the British government got what they wanted out of Reagan’s controversial program. The British were able to leverage SDI into investigations of spin-off technologies as well as arms reduction agreements with Moscow—though those were motivated more by the deteriorating Soviet economy than by space lasers.
Aaron Bateman works on national security programs within the Department of Defense. He is pursuing a PhD in the history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the US government.
