Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• D. G. Brennan

Titel

Strategic Weapons

Ist Teil von

• Foreign Affairs, 1969

Erscheinungsjahr

1969

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

BSC - Ebsco (Business Source Ultimate)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• THE subject of defense against ballistic missiles probably occupies a unique position among strategic issues of the nuclear era. It has been more intensely debated in the United States than any other weapon system selected for deployment, such as the air-defense system or Polaris or Minuteman, or than any arms-control measure adopted to date, including the ban on nuclear tests. In fact, the decision to deploy such defenses may well be more important than any other single decision so far made concerning our strategic nuclear forces. Most of the published articles relating to defense against ballistic missiles (BMD for short; sometimes, but not here, denoted ABM) have opposed deployment of missile defense by the United States.[i] This is odd, in view of the fact that, at least through 1968, the Administration and Congress both clearly supported American deployment of BMD, and that most senior American academic strategists and many prominent advocates of arms control favor deployment at least under some conditions. The doubts increasingly expressed in the Congress in early 1969 may well result from the highly one-sided literature on the subject.