A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Global Conflict and Cooperation)

Lakoff, Sanford,York, Herbert F.

ISBN 10: 0520066502 / ISBN 13: 9780520066502

Published by University of California Press, 1989

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative (Global Conflict and Cooperation)
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520066502
• ISBN 13: 9780520066502
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

In March 1983, Ronald Reagan made one of the most controversial announcements of his presidency when he called on the nation's scientists and engineers to develop a defensive shield so impenetrable as to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."

This book provides the first comprehensive review and evaluation of the project launched to implement that announcement ―the project officially known as the Strategic Defense Initiative and more popularly as "Star Wars." The authors―a political scientist and a physicist who has played a key role in developing military technologies―provide an intriguing account of how political rather than technical judgment led to the initial decision, and they explain the technical issues in terms accessible to nonspecialists.

Judging SDI as "a classic example of misplaced faith in the promise of technological salvation," the authors examine the implications of the program for strategy, arms control, the unity of the Western alliance, its prospective economic impact, and the way the American political process has dealt with all these issues.

About the Author

Sanford Lakoff is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and co-editor of Strategic Defense and the Western Alliance (1987); Herbert F. York is Director of the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation at UCSD and author of Making Weapons, Talking Peace: A Physicist's Odyssey from Hiroshima to Geneva (1987).