Forty years ago, in the early spring of 1983, President Reagan surprised every American who watched his televised address from the Oval Office. HistoryAsItHappens podcast
, who began his career as an analyst inside the Reagan administration, discusses the legacy of SDI and the new nuclear arms race unfolding today.
“Reagan was sincere. He wanted to break the cycle of arms racing and to find a way to render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete… By his second term, he wanted to negotiate with [Mikhail] Gorbachev on a way to eliminate nuclear weapons, and he almost did it. As a result, we started on a path of tremendous reductions in nuclear weapons that continued up until about 10 years ago,” said Mr. Cirincione, the former director of nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
SDI was part of Reagan’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, but the idea became an obstacle in negotiations with the Soviets, the signing of the historic INF Treaty in 1987 notwithstanding. Moreover, the U.S. hason missile defense systems with almost nothing to show for it; SDI is still a Star Wars-like fantasy after all.
But the program reflected an abiding hatred of nuclear weapons on the part of Reagan – one shared by Gorbachev as the U.S. and USSR embarked on the “golden age” of arms treaties. Today, however, only one major treaty is left. New START will expire in 2026, but Russian President Vladimir Putin already has announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in it.
Listen to Mr. Cirincione discuss the modern nuclear arms race as well as Reagan’s vision for a world without nukes in this episode of
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