Word: sdi
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Hoffman asked what the American government would do after the various areas of current foreign policy fail. "Almost everybody agrees SDI won't work," he said. "The problem of what to do after there is a costly failure will be left to the next administration...
...Only two people in the world, maybe three, believe in SDI" said Hoffman, who is also the Director for the Center for European studies. He said only the president, the secretary of defense, and Shakespearean actor and physicist Edward Teller had faith in the 'Star Wars' program. "Not even the scientists working on it believe it will work...
...sight. But the whole startling package of proposals was hanging on the Soviet insistence that Star Wars research be confined to the laboratory. Ronald Reagan made a last-ditch appeal to Mikhail Gorbachev. He declared he had made a pledge to the American people not to trade away SDI. "Please," Reagan said, "don't ask me to do it." Impervious, the General Secretary replied, "Nyet...
...summarized his wide-ranging set of new proposals, including cutting the strategic arsenals of both sides by 50% and eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) from Europe altogether. Gorbachev called for ten more years of strict adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, a provision that would prevent SDI from producing "weapons of any new type which would provide military superiority to that side." He also made clear that the missile cutbacks were linked to curtailment of the President's cherished Star Wars plan...
...found themselves scrambling after Gorbachev's vision. The U.S. negotiators pursued a strategy that was in some ways a mirror of the Soviet one: putting together enough tantalizing agreements so that when the decisive moment finally arrived, the other side would be willing to back down a bit on SDI. The President accepted the 50% cut in strategic weapons as well as the plan on intermediate-range missiles, which was almost identical to the "zero option" the U.S. had proposed in 1981. But the two leaders sparred to a draw on SDI that afternoon...