Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Soviet Union in a first strike, leaving the heart of its nuclear
arsenal with too few surviving warheads to be able to penetrate
American defenses. This threat can only strengthen the Soviet
predilection to attack preemptively in a severe crisis.
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
291
George Ball describes the President’s SDI proposal as “one of the
most irresponsible acts by any head of state in modern times.” 35
The first strike threat is in my view exaggerated, since, as already
noted, no imaginable system would prevent a crippling Soviet response
(or conversely), and a first strike might itself have immensely destructive
global consequences. But in situations of crisis all bets are off,
particularly with reliance on computer-based response systems. And one
can hardly have any confidence in the rationality of planners who have
repeatedly shown that they are willing to approach the brink on the most
astonishing grounds, and who are much honored for this display of
courage—in reality, lunacy (see chapter 4, section 1).
It is a noteworthy fact, not adequately stressed, that SDI was not
motivated by military considerations; these were devised after the fact to
justify a program undertaken on other grounds. The idea was proposed
well before the President’s surprise announcement of March 23, 1983,
in a privately-funded study initiated by right-wing industrialists
associated with the Heritage Foundation, with technical advice from
Edward Teller and General Daniel Graham, though Teller (who
nonetheless supports SDI) noted that the USSR could overwhelm the
proposed system at 1/10 its projected $100 billion cost. A high-level
Pentagon review dismissed the project, as did a congressional Office of
Technology Assessment, George Ball reports. He comments that the
project “was opposed until the last minute by [Reagan’s] secretary of
defense and other principal members of his government.” Top Pentagon
specialists were neither consulted nor informed, knew nothing of the