快猫短视频

FOR many, it defined the presidency of Ronald Reagan. A grandiose plan to build a defensive shield against nuclear missiles, it was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) by Reagan and his allies. The label that stuck, however, was 鈥淪tar Wars,鈥� coined by arch-enemy Senator Ted Kennedy the day after Reagan announced the scheme in 1983.

Reaganites saw it as a bold initiative to render nuclear weapons 鈥渋mpotent and obsolete鈥� and end the nightmare of nuclear war. To the critics, it was a costly and impractical scheme that threatened to dangerously destabilise relations between the US and the Soviet Union.

Most scientists were sceptical, and scoffed at the idea of high-energy lasers blasting every Soviet missile out of the sky. But their doubts didn鈥檛 stop a lot of them holding out their hands for Star Wars cash. Others were unhappy, especially laser scientists who had spent decades trying to convince the public they were not building death rays, only to see Reagan spotlight laser weapons.

More than two decades later, missile defence has neither triggered a third world war nor got anywhere near achieving Reagan鈥檚 ambitious goals. And though George W. Bush still spends billions on minimal missile defence, the emphasis has moved to terrorism and Iraq.

So what was Star Wars? After retiring as public information officer at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, Nigel Hey spent years digging into books and official archives, and interviewing leading US and Russian scientists. And while my guess is that there are more critical books yet to be written, this one gives the best overview to date of what became a major catalyst for change in the 1980s.

The most telling comments Hey quotes come from Gerry Yonas, at the heart of the action as chief scientist for SDI during its heyday. Whatever Reagan鈥檚 intent, Yonas says, Star Wars became a huge bluff, the ultimate deception in the series of lies the US and the Soviets told each other.

But it was a bluff improvised on the wing, not a carefully scripted plot. 鈥淲e were clueless but lucky,鈥� says Yonas, citing the success of a key 1984 anti-missile test and subsequent Soviet overreaction. As a journalist who wrote about Star Wars, I can only agree.

Reagan鈥檚 vision drew on plans from three groups, each with its own agenda. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, claimed that a 鈥渢hird-generation nuclear weapon鈥�, a bomb-powered X-ray laser, could fire dozens of pulses simultaneously to hit targets across the sky. The aerospace industry lobbied for orbiting, chemically fuelled, laser battle stations. Meanwhile, the 鈥淗igh Frontier鈥� group wanted to send conventional weapons into orbit.

It quickly became clear that none of these ideas would live up to the hype. There were numerous problems 鈥� with tracking targets, delivering lethal energy to targets, developing suitable space hardware and launching massive equipment. Despite setbacks, the advocates were resilient. For example, after his X-ray laser project collapsed, Teller quickly devised Brilliant Pebbles, a plan to hit enemy missiles with projectiles fired from orbit.

The projects drew on the best brains money could buy, yet the ideas put forward were essentially for science-fiction weapons, plausible as long as they didn鈥檛 have to work. The Soviets were sceptical, but the game of strategy meant they had to assume the worst case 鈥� Star Wars might actually work. They were also in deep economic trouble, deeper than American analysts realised.

When Reagan sat down to arms talks with Mikhail Gorbachev, Star Wars amounted to little more than a cardboard mock-up. Meanwhile, Gorbachev鈥檚 pockets were empty, leaving him with no choice but to fold his hands and scrap part of his nuclear arsenal. Reagan, who began his term blustering about the 鈥渆vil empire鈥�, ended it by building bridges with Moscow.

鈥淪tar Wars was little more than a cardboard mock-up鈥�

While it never developed beyond a brilliant ruse, Star Wars was potentially dangerous 鈥� so poorly controlled it ran a real risk of going off the rails. Hey鈥檚 book also slips out of control here and there, with stacks of sound bites and too many politicians praising Reagan. It could have done with a better explanation of technical issues and a decent index. That aside, it succeeds in giving the most coherent account yet of the controversial programme that effectively ended the cold war.