Fitzgerald, Frances. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 592 pages.

This is an extremely-detailed study of the evolution of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the Reagan years. With the resurrection of this program under the George W. Bush administration, it becomes more than just another book by a prize-winning historian. Instead, it provides clues that help us read between the lines of current Pentagon press releases.

The first clue is that all the experts conceded in the 1980s that there was no such thing as a "shield" against MAD, or "mutually assured destruction." They pretended that there was after the administration stumbled into a PR coup. In the early 1980s, a massive global nuclear freeze movement was underway, and Reagan took a dive in the polls. When he naively began talking about a "shield" as an antidote to MAD, his numbers went up and the freeze movement died down. He kept talking, and aides scurried to make it a reality. That was Star Wars in a nutshell. The second clue is even more relevant today. It turns out that what worried the Soviet Union then, and Russia and China today, is that the U.S. is the only country in a position to develop space-based weaponry. These will be "defensive" in public rhetoric, but offensive in reality (just reprogram some chips). Someday, lasers from space may police the world on behalf of the U.S. and its elite transnationalist clientele.
ISBN 0-684-84416-8

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