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

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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battleground,” Washington Post military commentator George Wilson
observes, thus initiating “a new and expensive competition,” and an
extremely dangerous one. Current Soviet anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons
are “little better than the ASAT weapons the United States deployed in
the Pacific in the 1960s and then abandoned,” as relatively worthless,
but with Reagan’s program in operation the USSR will no doubt
“intensify work on a new generation of satellite killers,” again increasing
the threat to US security, given our reliance on satellites. An Air Force
officer interviewed by Science notes that destruction of early warning
satellites would “provide an excellent cover for a limited nuclear strike.”
The USSR would have less than 15 minutes to prepare for retaliation
and would face enormous difficulties in transmitting orders, with
satellites destroyed—so that a perceived threat of destruction might well
trigger a desperate preemptive strike. Current ASATs are regarded as
virtually useless, Science notes, citing the chairman of the Joint Chief of
Staff and others. Howard Ris, executive director of the Union of
Concerned Scientists, observes that the US was the first to deploy an
operational ASAT system, dismantled in 1975, and considered the
current Soviet system 20 years ago, but rejected it as impractical. “The
Soviet ASAT ‘threat’ is a fiction created by the Reagan administration to
justify the U.S. program,” he notes, though if no treaty is signed barring
future improvements, they will endanger US security. 32
It is clear enough why the USSR sees SDI as a grave threat. Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger said in December 1983 that unilateral
Soviet development of such a system “would be one of the most
frightening prospects I could imagine.” A White House document added
that under such circumstances, “deterrence would collapse, and we
would have no choices between surrender and suicide.” Soviet analysts
are capable of drawing similar conclusions. Furthermore, though SDI is
called a “defense” plan in the US, its offensive potential is quite real;