Table Of ContentNATO and the Strategic Defence
Initiative
This book explores the largely neglected issue of responses to the US Strategic
Defence Initiative (SDI, or the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme) across
NATO.
The chapters here explore the reactions of different Western allies to the
announcement of the SDI in 1983 and especially the 1985 invitation to participate.
While existing studies have explored the origins of the American programme and
the role it may have played in ending the Cold War, this volume breaks new ground
by considering the impact of the SDI on transatlantic relations in the 1980s. Based
on newly available archival sources, this volume re-evaluates the responses of
eight NATO member-state governments, as well as the Soviet leadership, to the
SDI. In addition to looking at ‘top-down’ governmental reactions, the volume also
explores the ‘bottom-up’ response to the SDI of civil society and peace activists
on both sides of the Atlantic. The volume examines how the American initiative –
derisively named ‘Star Wars’ by its detractors – provoked a crisis in relations with
its allies during the final decade of the Cold War and how those tensions within
NATO were ultimately resolved.
This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War history, strategic
studies, foreign policy, and international history.
Luc-André Brunet is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History,
The Open University, and Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project at LSE
IDEAS, UK.
Cold War History
Series Editors: Michael Cox
London School of Economics & Political Science, UK
Odd Arne Westad
John F. Kennedy School of Government , USA
I n the new history of the Cold War that has been forming since 1989, many of
the established truths about the international conflict that shaped the latter half of
the twentieth century have come up for revision. The present series is an attempt
to make available interpretations and materials that will help further the develop-
ment of this new history, and it will concentrate in particular on publishing expo-
sitions of key historical issues and critical surveys of newly available sources.
America and Romania in the Cold War
A Differentiated Détente, 1969–80
Paschalis Pechlivanis
The Greek Junta and the International System
A Case Study of Southern European Dictatorships, 1967–74
E dited by Antonis Klapsis, Constantine Arvanitopoulos,
Evanthis Hatzivassiliou and Effie G. H. Pedaliu
S ecrecy, Public Relations and the British Nuclear Debate
H ow the UK Government Learned to Talk about the Bomb, 1970–83
Daniel Salisbury
U S Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War in Africa
A Bridge between Global Conflict and the New World Order, 1988–1994
Flavia Gasbarri
E uropean Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement with the West
N ational Strategies in the Long 1970s
E dited by Angela Romano and Federico Romero
N ATO and the Strategic Defence Initiative
A Transatlantic History of the Star Wars Programme
E dited by Luc-André Brunet
F or more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Cold-War-History/book-series/SE0220
NATO and the Strategic
Defence Initiative
A Transatlantic History of the Star Wars
Programme
Edited by Luc-André Brunet
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Luc- André Brunet; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Luc- André Brunet to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-61218-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-61750-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10467-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003104674
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction: The Strategic Defence Initiative and
the Atlantic Alliance in the 1980s 1
LUC-ANDRÉ BRUNET
PART 1
SDI and the Superpowers 13
2 Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative 15
JAMES GRAHAM WILSON
3 Soviet Response to the Strategic Defense Initiative 35
SVETLANA SAVRANSKAYA
PART 2
Government Decision-Making Behind SDI Participation 55
4 Britain, SDI, and the United States, 1983–1986: A Guarded
Relationship 57
EDOARDO ANDREONI
5 Germany and SDI, 1983–1986: Anchoring US Extended Nuclear
Deterrence and W estbindung for an Offense-Defense Future 73
ANDREAS LUTSCH
6 Italy and the SDI Project: Envisioning a Technological
Breakthrough for the Whole Alliance? 95
MARILENA GALA
vi Contents
PART 3
NATO Governments’ Rejection of SDI 111
7 France’s Reaction Towards the Strategic Defence Initiative
(1983–1986): Transforming a Strategic Threat Into a
Technological Opportunity 113
ILARIA PARISI
8 Canada’s ‘Polite No’ to SDI: A Question of Sovereignty? 129
LUC-ANDRÉ BRUNET
9 The Netherlands and SDI: We Have to Do the Research 146
RUUD VAN DIJK
10 Danish and Norwegian Responses to SDI: Between Low-Voiced
Scepticism and Outspoken Opposition 164
JAKOB LINNET SCHMIDT
PART 4
Civil Society and the Peace Movement 187
11 The SDI: A Further Challenge for the US
Anti-Nuclear Movement? 189
ANGELA SANTESE
12 SDI as a Contested Imaginary in British Culture and Society:
‘Winning in Space’ 204
JONATHAN HOGG
13 British and International Peace Campaigning Against the
Strategic Defence Initiative 221
PATRICK BURKE
14 Star Wars: A View From the Commentariat 238
LAWRENCE FREEDMAN
Index 245
Contributors
Edoardo Andreoni is Editor at Europa Editions, New York City, US, and earned
his PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK.
L uc-André Brunet is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History at
The Open University and Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project at LSE
IDEAS, UK.
Patrick Burke is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Westminster, UK.
Sir Lawrence Freedman is Professor Emeritus of War Studies, King’s College
London, UK.
M arilena Gala is Professor of the History of International Relations, Università
Roma Tre, Italy.
J onathan Hogg is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at the Univer-
sity of Liverpool, UK.
A ndreas Lutsch is Junior Professor of Intelligence Analysis at the Hochschule
des Bundes für öffentliche Verwaltung, Abteilung Bundesnachrichtendienst,
Berlin, Germany.
I laria Parisi is an independent researcher and an Associated Researcher at the
École normale supérieure in Paris, France.
A ngela Santese is Adjunct Professor of US Foreign Policy since 1945 at the Uni-
versity of Bologna, Italy.
S vetlana Savranskaya is Senior Analyst and Director of Russia programs at the
National Security Archive, George Washington University, US.
J akob Linnet Schmidt is PhD Fellow at the Danish Institute for International
Studies and the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
R uud van Dijk is Senior Lecturer in the History of International Relations, Uni-
versity of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
J ames Graham Wilson is Supervisory Historian, Global Issues and General
Division, Office of the Historian, US Department of State.
Acknowledgements
T his edited volume arose from an international conference held on 31 May and
1 June 2019 at the London School of Economics. It was co-organised by The
Open University’s Centre for War and Peace in the Twentieth Century and LSE
IDEAS, specifically the Peace and Security Project and the Cold War Studies
Project. Additional support was provided by the History Department at The Open
University. Sincere thanks go to Sue Cocklin at The Open University for her
invaluable logistical help in organising the conference.
W e are grateful to conference participants whose insights helped shape the
present volume. In addition to the authors represented in this volume, thanks
go to Mick Cox, Jonathan Hunt, Claudia Kemper, Piers Ludlow, Annika
Mombauer, Or Rabinowitz, Dafydd Townley, and Vladislav Zubok for their
constructive contributions during and after the conference. Special thanks go
to Matthew Jones for his assistance in organising the conference and for his
invaluable involvement.
S ir Lawrence Freedman graciously delivered the keynote at this conference,
and we are grateful to him for preparing his lecture for publication in this volume.
Thanks to all the contributors for their commitment to this publication despite the
significant challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
T hanks, too, go to Mick Cox and Arne Westad, editors of the C old War History
series, and to Andrew Humphrys and Devon Harvey at Routledge.
1 Introduction
The Strategic Defence Initiative and
the Atlantic Alliance in the 1980s
Luc-André Brunet
Shortly after leaving office, Ronald Reagan claimed that the Strategic Defence
Initiative (SDI), an anti-missile shield he first proposed in 1983 as a means of pro-
tecting the United States from nuclear attack, was ‘the single most important rea-
son, on the United States’ side, for the historical breakthroughs that were to occur
during the next five years in the quest for peace and a better relationship with the
Soviet Union’.1 This assessment was echoed by Margaret Thatcher after the col-
lapse of the USSR, as she asserted that ‘looking back, it is now clear to me that
Ronald Reagan’s original decision on SDI was the single most important of his
presidency’.2 Few would have made such claims when Reagan first adumbrated
the SDI in March 1983. Indeed, Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe,
publicly derided the initiative as ‘a new Maginot Line of the twenty-first cen-
tury’, and the term ‘Star Wars’ was used ubiquitously and unflatteringly to refer
to the seemingly fanciful plan.3 Such misgivings about the American project were
widely shared across NATO capitals in the 1980s, but to date these international
responses to the SDI have been relatively unexplored by historians. This volume
uses new archival sources and innovative methodological approaches to provide a
rigorous study of allied reactions to the Strategic Defence Initiative.
T here is a considerable literature on the SDI, with historiographical debates
tending to focus on how far the SDI contributed to the end of the Cold War.4 Some
historians have argued that the SDI constituted an insurmountable economic and
technological challenge to the Soviet Union: unable to produce an SDI of their
own yet equally unwilling to leave themselves undefended, the initiative forced
Gorbachev to the negotiating table. In this interpretation, the SDI was pivotal in
bringing about the INF Treaty of December 1987 and ultimately the end of the
Cold War itself.5 Others have advanced the more nuanced argument that while the
SDI had some influence on Soviet policies, it was clearly a secondary factor in
bringing about arms control breakthroughs and the end of the Cold War.6 Indeed,
the SDI proved to be an insuperable barrier that scuppered a possible arms con-
trol agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit.7
Meanwhile, one recent study of the SDI has advanced a reinterpretation of the end
of the Cold War by arguing that Reagan pursued an ultimately unsuccessful grand
strategy of ‘cocreating’ a new world order based on superpower cooperation and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003104674-1
