George F. Chapline
"STAR WARS":
AN INSIDER'S REPORT
An unsettling aspect of the last half of the twentieth cen–
tury is that the Western democracies face some ten thousand nuclear
warheads aimed in their direction, each of which would be capable
of destroying an entire city. Fortunately, a policy of nuclear deter–
rence has served the West well in discouraging the Soviet Union
from unleashing this arsenal. Increasingly, though, influential ele–
ments of Western society are unhappy with the fact that the Soviet
Union could decimate the Western democracies in a first strike at–
tack . This unhappiness has taken two forms: 1) the desire to lim.it or
reduce the number of nuclear warheads on each side - an approach
generally known as "arms control"; 2) proposals to build strategic
defensive systems - an approach brought to the fore by President
Reagan's famous speech of March 1983 . Although the advocates of
arms control don't seem to want to admit it, the net result of these
two approaches should in first approximation be the same - namely,
a reduction in the number of nuclear warheads reaching each side in
the event of war. Of course, the advocates of arms control would
argue that arms control is a more soothing approach in that it leads
to decreased tensions and a spirit of cooperation between the two
sides. Why then, would one be interested in the possibility of strate–
gic defenses?
One possible answer is that to significantly reduce the numbers
of offensive nuclear warheads without simultaneously working on
defensive systems would be suicidal. The point is that the leverage of
defensive systems increases dramatically as one reduces the number
of offensive nuclear warheads .
It
should be kept in mind in this con–
text that the Soviet Union already has a capable antiballistic missile.
We don't know the capability of the ancillary radars, but it is con–
ceivable that the Soviet Union could develop the capability of coun–
tering our submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the not too dis–
tant future . This would allow the Soviet Union to gain a first strike
advantage unless the West also deployed a defensive system. There–
fore it seems that arms control and strategic defense are inextricably
linked .
This still leaves the question of whether it is a good idea to turn
