The Strategic Defense Initiative

Ronald Reagan, NATO Europe, and the Nuclear and Space Talks, 1981–1988

Ralph L. Dietl

The Nuclear and Space Talks revolutionized arms control. The Cold War endgame commenced with the umbrella negotiations’ that linked START and INF negotiations to a regulation on the weaponization of space. This volume reveals a US grand strategy to replace deterrence with a collective security order. An entente of the superpowers was needed to transform bipolarity. The US planned the replacement of mutually assured destruction by mutually assured security. A global astrodome was to protect a nuclear disarmed world. The Franco-German special relationship in European affairs had to be amended by a US-SU special relationship to replace classic bloc politics. The Reagan Administration planned a global zero agenda, a joint development of a global protective system and a creation of a Common House of Europe. In brief, the superpowers prepared ‘the velvet revolution’ that eliminated the Cold War structures. Neither containment nor convergence offers a valid explanation of the Cold War endgame. Co-creation is the key to decipher the end of the Cold War. NATO Europe challenged the transformation of bipolarity. The European NWS resisted to a multilateralization of strategic arms control. In Europe the classic Cold War thinking survived the fall of the Iron Curtain. European conservatism contributed to the geopolitical catastrophe of the first order: the downfall of the Soviet Union.

The Reagan Administration developed a Grand Strategy to end the Cold War. The US-SU co-creation of an astrodome was meant to ease a global zero agenda. A global collective security structure under the United Nations was to replace deterrence. The superpower project collapsed due to the penetration of US decision-making by NATO Allies. The European NWS totally objected to a multilateralization of strategic arms control to preserve their relative position in the international system.

Lexington Books

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-6565-3 • Hardback • August 2018 • $100.00 • (£77.00)

978-1-4985-6566-0 • eBook • August 2018 • $95.00 • (£73.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, Political Science / International Relations / Diplomacy, History / Cold War, Political Science / American Foreign Policy

The Strategic Defense Initiative

Ronald Reagan, NATO Europe, and the Nuclear and Space Talks, 1981–1988

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The Nuclear and Space Talks revolutionized arms control. The Cold War endgame commenced with the umbrella negotiations’ that linked START and INF negotiations to a regulation on the weaponization of space. This volume reveals a US grand strategy to replace deterrence with a collective security order. An entente of the superpowers was needed to transform bipolarity. The US planned the replacement of mutually assured destruction by mutually assured security. A global astrodome was to protect a nuclear disarmed world. The Franco-German special relationship in European affairs had to be amended by a US-SU special relationship to replace classic bloc politics. The Reagan Administration planned a global zero agenda, a joint development of a global protective system and a creation of a Common House of Europe. In brief, the superpowers prepared ‘the velvet revolution’ that eliminated the Cold War structures. Neither containment nor convergence offers a valid explanation of the Cold War endgame. Co-creation is the key to decipher the end of the Cold War. NATO Europe challenged the transformation of bipolarity. The European NWS resisted to a multilateralization of strategic arms control. In Europe the classic Cold War thinking survived the fall of the Iron Curtain. European conservatism contributed to the geopolitical catastrophe of the first order: the downfall of the Soviet Union.

The Reagan Administration developed a Grand Strategy to end the Cold War. The US-SU co-creation of an astrodome was meant to ease a global zero agenda. A global collective security structure under the United Nations was to replace deterrence. The superpower project collapsed due to the penetration of US decision-making by NATO Allies. The European NWS totally objected to a multilateralization of strategic arms control to preserve their relative position in the international system.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 202 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-6565-3 • Hardback • August 2018 • $100.00 • (£77.00)

978-1-4985-6566-0 • eBook • August 2018 • $95.00 • (£73.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, Political Science / International Relations / Diplomacy, History / Cold War, Political Science / American Foreign Policy

Author

Ralph L. Dietl is senior lecturer in international and European history at Queen's University Belfast.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Genesis of the SDI Project, 1981–83
Chapter 2: The Return from the Abyss: The Evolution of the Nuclear and Space Talks
Chapter 3: SDI: The Conceptual Battle
Chapter 4: SDI: Implementation versus Abrogation
Chapter 5: Cold Storage: The Delinking of the Nuclear and Space Talks
Conclusion: The SDI and the Cold War Endgame

Reviews

Dietl deftly employs a wide range of recently declassified archival sources from the United States, Germany, and Great Britain to support his argument. . . .In the book’s acknowledgments, Dietl writes that he wanted the manuscript to “question widely held popular and academic views of the end of the Cold War.” He accomplishes this.
— Journal of American History

Building on a wealth of newly available sources, Ralph L. Dietl has produced an analysis of the Cold War endgame that places the Strategic Defense Initiative within the context of both superpower relations and relations within the Atlantic Alliance. With a combination of analytic clarity and intellectual creativity, Dietl helps us understand the significance of SDI as both a factor in the arms control debates of the 1980s and as a catalyst for broader Soviet-American efforts at creating a stable bipolar balance. This study will be of great value to anyone interested in the Reagan-Gorbachev Era and to all students of arms control.

— Ronald J. Granieri, Foreign Policy Research Institute

Ralph L. Dietl has written a most comprehensive account of how President Reagan’s vision of a nuclear-free world impacted NATO. By using archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Dietl has crafted a new and provocative narrative on the end of the Cold War in Europe.

— Erin Mahan, historian