Volume 47, Number 8 · May 11, 2000
Fantasia
By Lars-Erik Nelson
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
by Frances FitzGerald
Simon and Schuster, 592 pp., $30.00
Modern history, as it is taught in Republican campaign speeches and conservative Op-Ed articles, holds that when Ronald Reagan took office as president in 1981 the Soviet Union was a thriving superpower, militarily superior to the United States and able, without much apparent strain, to outdo America in developing and deploying dangerous new weapons. Year after year during the 1980s, the Pentagon issued a slick booklet, 'Soviet Military Power,' that recounted breathtaking new feats of Soviet weaponry. Experienced defense intellectuals warned of a 'window of vulnerability,' a period during which Russia might calculate that it could start and win a nuclear war. One theory, put forth by Paul Nitze, speculated that Russia had such superiority that it might launch a nuclear attack on the United States, ride out the inevitable US nuclear retaliation by sheltering in its extensive civil defense network, and then fire another nuclear salvo that would leave the United States devastated and unable to respond. Almost as bad, the Kremlin could merely point to this alleged strategic advantage and American leaders, seeing the undeniable calculus, would be forced to accept Soviet diktat.
Review, 4630 words
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