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.
Author(s): Luc-André Brunet
Series: Cold War History
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 260
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: The Strategic Defence Initiative and the Atlantic Alliance in the 1980s
Part 1 SDI and the Superpowers
2 Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative
3 Soviet Response to the Strategic Defense Initiative
Part 2 Government Decision-Making Behind SDI Participation
4 Britain, SDI, and the United States, 1983–1986: A Guarded Relationship
5 Germany and SDI, 1983–1986: Anchoring US Extended Nuclear Deterrence and Westbindung for an Offense-Defense Future
6 Italy and the SDI Project: Envisioning a Technological Breakthrough for the Whole Alliance?
Part 3 NATO Governments’ Rejection of SDI
7 France’s Reaction Towards the Strategic Defence Initiative (1983–1986): Transforming a Strategic Threat Into a Technological Opportunity
8 Canada’s ‘Polite No’ to SDI: A Question of Sovereignty?
9 The Netherlands and SDI: We Have to Do the Research
10 Danish and Norwegian Responses to SDI: Between Low-Voiced Scepticism and Outspoken Opposition
Part 4 Civil Society and the Peace Movement
11 The SDI: A Further Challenge for the US Anti-Nuclear Movement?
12 SDI as a Contested Imaginary in British Culture and Society: ‘Winning in Space’
13 British and International Peace Campaigning Against the Strategic Defence Initiative
14 Star Wars: A View From the Commentariat
Index
