On March 23, 1983, twenty-five years ago, President Ronald Reagan started one of the greatest waste of resources ever proposed in human history: "What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that (...) we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?" That was the military program later known as "Strategic Defense Initiative," and popularly baptized, Star Wars after George Lucas's movie of 1977.
Reagan went on: "I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. (...) But isn't worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is!"
The end of XX Century lapsed, eight more have passed, and no system capable intercepting and destroying strategic ballistic missiles exists today, nor will exist in a foreseeable future. From time to time, the Pentagon claims that a "successful" experiment has been performed, more often the attempts to shut down a high-altitude missile, or satellite, fail. Just to remember what 25 years means in the field of technology, one could point out that in 1983 there was no Macintosh computer, there were no portable phones, and internet was a mininetwork solely for military use, in the event of a full-scale nuclear war, nothing compared with the round-the-globe, free communication tool that we know today.
Other military endeavours, like the Manhattan Project, were completed in a short time: the program to build an atomic bomb from scratch was started in 1941 and had its first test in July 1945, not to mention the tragically successful explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Four years were enough.
And what about satellites orbiting around the Earth? The U.S. Earth satellite program began in 1954 and, after the shock created by the Soviet success in launching Sputnik in October 1957, it was accelerated, with the goal of putting an American engine into orbit as soon as possible. On February 1, 1958, the Juno I rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, propelling Explorer 1 in space. Again, the task was accomplished in four years.
Let's take the example of the design of a pressurized water reactor for submarine propulsion: In February 1949, admiral Rickover was assigned to the Division of Reactor Development, Atomic Energy Commission, and the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched and commissioned in 1954: six years.One must wonder if today American scientists are definitly more inept than their predecessors. As massive incompetence seems improbable, the reasons why Reagan's dream of an anti ballistic defense is still on paper must lay elsewhere. Probably, it is because a broad range of experts believed then – and still believe today – that a missile shield capable to destroy thousands of warheads from incoming nuclear missiles and guarantee full protection of the U.S. territory is simply impossible to build. Unless, that is, the United States used that shield to launch a first strike. Such an attack might destroy 90% or 95% of hostile missiles on the ground, before they could be fired. Only a handful would be left for the missile shield to knock down and this is the reason why Moscow leaders (Andropov then as Putin now) are ferociously opposed to it.
Russian paranoia may be understandable, but the results achieved after spending at least 150 billion inflation-adjusted dollars remain elusive.This didn't prevent the Cheney-Bush administration from spending more money than previous presidents on the project, and from breaking the United States' commitment to the 30-year-old ABM Treaty, ten years after the dissolving of the Soviet Union. The theory that the program should continue as a "guarantee" against the possibility of an attack by North Korea or Iran cannot be taken seriously.
How much domestic spending in repairing crumbling infrastructure, or establishing a universal health care system, would have been possible using that money? The real mystery of American politics is how such a boondoggle could still get Congress appropriations every year, and its creator Ronald Reagan be revered as one of this Country's great presidents.
