"Space-strike weapons" and the Soviet response to SDI

Diplomatic History

Volumn 32, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 955-979

  Westwick, Peter J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 54249090332     PISSN: 01452096     EISSN: 14677709     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7709.2008.00736.x     Document Type: Article

References (207)

1. Historians of science and technology have recently renewed attention to this subject. See, for example, John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth, Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs vol. 21, Osiris (Chicago, 2006).
2. For an introduction to recent literature on laboratories, see the special issue of Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 32, no. 1 (2001)
3. for a different perspective, see Robert E. Kohler, Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (Chicago, 2002).
4. Francis FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (New York, 2000)
5. Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York, 2005). Among the many contemporary discussions of SDI, William Broad framed the principal scientific view, although with the result of an exclusive focus on the Livermore weapons lab.
6. See William J. Broad, Star Warriors: A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists behind Our Space Age Weaponry (New York, 1985) and Teller's War: The Top-Secret Story behind the Star Wars Deception (New York, 1992).
7. Nigel Hey, The Star Wars Enigma: Behind the Scenes of the ColdWar Race for Missile Defense (Washington, DC, 2006), does discuss some of the technical program, more so for Soviet lasers.
8. Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI, 1944-1983 (Lawrence, KS, 1992).
9. Donald Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, MA, 1990)
10. John Cloud, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Corona and the Clandestine Geography of the Cold War" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000)
11. William E. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York, 1986)
12. Curtis Peebles, The Corona Project: America's First Spy Satellites (Annapolis, MD, 1997).
13. Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace against the Nuclear Threat, The Large-Scale Anti-Missile System and International Security (Moscow, 1986; originally published in Russian, 1984)
14. Evgeni Velikhov interview, 3 October 2006.
15. Anatoly S. Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev, trans. Robert D. English and Elizabeth Tucker (University Park, PA, 2000), 32, 56
16. Roald V. Sagdeev, The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Adventures in Nuclear Fusion and Space from Stalin to Star Wars (New York, 1994), 273
17. see also Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962-1986) (New York, 1995), 591.
18. Vaporware is not hardware or software, but rather something that does not exist but can still be bargained with - what George Shultz referred to as "giving them the sleeves off our vest," quoted in Frances FitzGerald, "The Poseurs of Missile Defense," New York Times, 4 June 2000.
19. David Holloway, "The Strategic Defense Initiative and the Soviet Union," Daedalus 114, no. 3 (1985): 257-78
20. Stephen M. Meyer, "Soviet Strategic Programmes and US SDI," Survival 27, no. 6 (1985): 274-92
21. Mary G. FitzGerald, "The Soviet Military on SDI," Studies in Comparative Communism 19, nos. 3/4 (1986): 177-91
22. Benjamin S. Lambeth, "The Soviet Union and the Strategic Defense Initiative: Preliminary Findings and Impressions," RAND Corporation report N-2482-AF (June 1986)
23. Bruce Parrott, The Soviet Union and Ballistic Missile Defense (Boulder, CO, 1987)
24. E. M. Holoboff, The Soviet Response to Star Wars: Past, Present, and Future (Toronto, 1987).
25. Meyer, "Soviet Strategic Programmes"
26. Sagdeev, Soviet Scientist, 213.
27. Meyer, "Soviet Strategic Programmes"
28. Parrott, Soviet Union
29. Holoboff, Soviet Response
30. David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven, CT, 1983), 104.
31. Paul Nitze, who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty, rejected the idea that the treaty represented a common commitment to deterrence, or anything beyond the treaty's specific obligations; see Nitze in Michael Charlton, " 'Star Wars' or Peace-in-the-Skies (II)," Encounter (March 1986): 13-27.
32. Aleksandr' G. Savel'yev and Nikolay N. Detinov, The Big Five: Arms Control Decision- Making in the Soviet Union, trans. Dmitriy Trenin (Westport, CT, 1995), 85, 94n1. A search of Soviet statements by American analysts saw the "space-strike" term first come into use in June 1984, in a proposal to begin talks on space weapons.
33. Lynn Rusten to Wolfgang Panofsky, 12 March 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6).
34. One exception is Matthew von Bencke, "International Identity Crises: Explaining Soviet and Russian Strategic Defense Policies" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2004), 54-58, although von Bencke focuses on antisatellite weapons.
35. See also William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, CT, 1998), 170.
36. The triumphalist view appears most forcefully in Robert C. McFarlane, Special Trust (New York, 1994)
37. Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York, 1994)
38. and Mira Duric, The Strategic Defence Initiative: US Policy and the Soviet Union (Aldershot, England, 2003).
39. The contrary view: Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York, 1992)
40. FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue
41. Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Ithaca, NY, 1999)
42. and, more generally, Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition (Washington, DC, 1994)
43. and Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow, Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (New York, 2004).
44. On SDI "unsettling the Russians," see John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (Oxford, 1992), 131.
45. On early concepts, see Peter J. Westwick, The National Labs: Science in an American System, 1947-1974 (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 143-44.
46. Harvey Lynch, "Technical Evaluation of Offensive Uses of SDI," working paper of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, 1987 (Townes, accession 22,004, 10/NAS-CISAC). For comparison, 40 J/cm2 is about the same fluence as that delivered by a 20 kiloton nuclear warhead at a distance of 2 kilometers.
47. Theodore B. Taylor, "Third-Generation Nuclear Weapons," Scientific American (April 1987): 30-39.
48. See also Paul S. Brown, "Requirements for the Development of Advanced Nuclear Weapon Concepts," Livermore report UCRL-JC-103507 (15 January 1990), who notes that "as with any weapon, NDEWs [nuclear directed-energy weapons] could be used in an offensive manner as well as a defensive one." The White House Science Council received briefings on several third-generation designs the summer before Reagan's SDI speech: White House Science Council, Military Technology Panel (Frieman panel), agenda 23 June 1982 (Townes, accession 22,004, 16/OSTP).
49. CISAC joint meeting with Soviets, minutes, 29 September-1 October 1986 (Townes, accession 22,004, 10/NAS-CISAC)
50. Evgeni Velikhov, "Science and Scientists for a Nuclear- Weapon-Free World," Physics Today (November 1989): 32-36.
51. On Soviet fears of surprise attack, see Holloway, Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 10-12.
52. P. V. Zarubin, "Academician Basov, High-Power Lasers and the Antimissile Defense Problem," Kvantovaya Elektronika [Quantum Electronics] 32, no. 12 (2002): 1048-64.
53. D. Tikhanov, "Interview with Col. Gen. Yuriy Votintsev," Vecherniy Almata, 2-3 June 1993, in JPRS-UMA-93-035, 22 September 1993, 8-9
54. Col. Gen. Yuriy Votintsev, "Unknown Troops of an Extinct Superpower," Voyenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal 9 (1993): 26-38, and 11 (1993): 12-27
55. Steven J. Zaloga, "Red Star Wars," Jane's Intelligence Review 9, no. 5 (1997)
56. Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 418-20
57. Hey, The Star Wars Enigma, 40-51. The Soviets also used lasers for space tracking; in October 1984, at the order of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, a Terra laser was beamed on the U.S. space shuttle Challenger in orbit, causing malfunctions and eliciting a formal U.S. protest.
58. On plasma physics, see Loren R. Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History (Cambridge, England, 1993), 209
59. see also David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven, CT, 1988), 358-62.
60. Simon Kassel, "Soviet Development of Gyrotrons," RAND Corporation report R-3377-ARPA, May 1986
61. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1983, quoted in Jeff Hecht, BeamWeapons (New York, 1984), 172
62. A. Karpenko, "ABM and Space Defense," Nevsky Bastion 4 (1999): 2-47
63. Zarubin interview
64. William T. Lee, The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite Illusion and Delusion (Washington, DC, 1997), 86. The plasma weapon used microwaves to ionize an area of the atmosphere ahead of a missile's trajectory and was pursued for many years by academician A. Avramenko
65. after 1991, he proposed that Russia and the United States collaborate on what he now called Project Doverie, or Trust, with testing to take place at the U.S. missile defense complex at Kwajalein.
66. Dan Fenstermacher, "Arms Race: The Next Generation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March 1991): 29-33
67. Peter Laurie, "Exploding the Beam Weapon Myth," New Scientist (26 April 1979): 248-50.
68. E. N. Avrorin et al., "Review of Theoretical Works on X-Ray Laser Research Performed at RFNC-VNIITF," Laser and Particle Beams 15, no. 1 (1997): 3-15.
69. The leaks appeared in Aviation Week, 23 February 1981.
70. Zarubin, "Academician Basov," and Zarubin interview, 5 October 2006.
71. Evgeni Velikhov interview, 3 October 2006
72. Sagdeev interview
73. Arbatov interview.
74. See also the criticism of the "absurd idea" of UHF weapons by ABM designer Grigoriy Kisunko: "ABM Designer Sees 'Squandering' of Resources," Sovetskaya Rossiya, 5 August 1990, FBISSOV- 90-151.
75. Peter Zarubin interview, 5 October 2006
76. Karpenko, "ABM and Space Defense" Sagdeev interview
77. "Projects of Combat Space Complexes," excerpt from "Rocket- Cosmnautics Corporation Energia," trans. Maxim Taraskenko (available from http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/ soviet), accessed 12 August 2008.
78. See also V. N. Mikhaylov, "Why Should the Country's Nuclear Test Sites Remain Silent?" Pravda, 24 October 1990, reprinted in Mikhaylov, I Am a Hawk (Durham, England, 1996), 80-91, on 84. Mikhaylov, a former Arzamas physicist who would soon become minister of atomic energy for Russia, warned against "the development of the third generation of nuclear weapons or the so called directed energy weapons." The "evil 'jinn,' " as he called them, would "be capable of killing strategic targets of an adversary both in outer space and on earth."
79. Holoboff, Soviet Response, 5
80. Meyer, "Soviet Strategic Programmes," 285
81. Parrott, Soviet Union, 39
82. FitzGerald, "Soviet Military on SDI," 182.
83. Dale R. Herspring, "Nikolay Ogarkov and the Scientific-Technical Revolution in Soviet Military Affairs," Comparative Strategy 6, no. 1 (1987): 29-59
84. Andrew Krepinevich, "The Military-Technical Revolution: A Preliminary Assessment," Office of Net Assessment (July 1992), available from http://www.csbaonline.org
85. Eliot A. Cohen, "A Revolution in Warfare," Foreign Affairs 75, no. 2 (1996): 37-54.
86. Maj. Gen. G. V. Batenin at UN disarmament meeting at Erice, Italy, 25-26 April 1986, quoted in memo (no author; probably Lowell Wood) to Teller, 5 May 1986 (Teller, 139/SDI [Soviet comment]).
87. In 1985, Akhromeev declared that SDI systems "are in fact strike weapons for strikes against targets that belong to the probable opponent in all spheres," quoted in FitzGerald, "Soviet Military on SDI," 180-81.
88. Sagdeev interview, 9 March 2006
89. Alexei Arbatov interview, 5 October 2006.
90. On the role of Chervov's department, see Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 60, 185.
91. Chervov consistently sounded the theme in public of space-based weapons "hitting targets on land, at sea, in the air, and in space": See, for example, Chervov interview on Moscow "Studio 9" television, 29 June 1985 (JPRS-TAC-85-109), 3
92. interview in Otechestven Front, 4 October 1985 (JPRS-TAC-85-042), 2
93. and interview on Moscow television, 3 February 1986 (Arms Control Reporter, Outer Space II, chronology 1986).
94. Alexei Arbatov interview
95. on Gromyko's following the Defense Ministry and KGB, see Alexander Bessmertnykh in William C. Wohlforth, ed., Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore, 1996), 128.
96. Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 164-65.
97. Proposed "Treaty on the Prohibition of the Use of Force in Outer Space and from Space against the Earth," 19 August 1983.
98. Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 170-71.
99. For a chronology of Soviet statements, see Lynn Rusten to Panofsky, 12 March 1986 (Townes, accession 22,004, 10/NAS-CISAC).
100. N. P. Gribin, "American Policy on the Militarisation of Space," 13 February 1985, in Instructions from the Centre: Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985, ed. Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky (London, 1991), 107-15.
101. Military use of the space shuttle to bypass missile-launch warning systems, by deploying nuclear weapons from orbit or from shallow dives into the atmosphere, was a persistent Soviet concern: See Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin interview, 4 October 2006
102. Roald Sagdeev interview, 9 March 2006.
103. Some Americans held the same fear about Soviet shuttle designs: See James E. Oberg, "The Elusive Soviet Space Plane," Omni, September 1983, 124-29, 143.
104. Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace against the Nuclear Threat, "Prospects for the Creation of a U.S. Space Ballistic Missile Defence System and the Likely Impact on the World Military Political Situation," 1983 (Bethe, 33/30), and The Large-Scale Anti-Missile System and International Security, 24-28.
105. Andrei A. Kokoshin, Soviet Strategic Thought, 1917-91 (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 183.
106. (Kokoshin was coauthor of the reports, and hence had an interest in not admitting to propagandizing.) On American views of the reports as propaganda, see CIA white paper, "Soviet Directed Energy Weapons - Perspectives on Strategic Defense," March 1985 (Digital National Security Archive), and U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "The Soviet Propaganda Campaign against the US Strategic Defense Initiative," 1986 (Teller, 139/SDI [Soviet comment]).
107. Gorbachev to Reagan (unofficial translation), 10 June 1985 (RR/SDI, 1/1985).
108. The Department of Energy seems to have appreciated the appearances of taking the arms race to a new level, by seeking to classify the term "third-generation nuclear weapon" itself: See Hecht, Beam Weapons 132.
109. Teller to Reagan, 23 July 1982 (RR/SDI, 1/1982).
110. Concerned Argonne Scientists, "Statement on National-Security Impact of Increased Nuclear-Weapons Testing," 28 November 1982 (Bethe, 17/43).
111. Interagency Intelligence Assessment, "Possible Soviet Response to the US Strategic Defense Initiative," 12 September 1983, NIC M83-10017 (available from http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars).
112. Philip M. Boffey, "Dark Side of 'Star Wars': System Could Also Attack," New York Times, 7 March 1985. In this article, Teller dismissed the offensive potential of SDI systems.
113. See also Brad Knickerbocker, " 'Star Wars' Defense May Lead to Space-Based Offense," Christian Science Monitor, 23 January 1985.
114. Albert Latter and Edward Teller, Our Nuclear Future (New York, 1958)
115. Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 443-45
116. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, CA, 1983), 361-62.
117. Albert A. Latter and Ernest A. Martinelli, "SDI: Defense or Retaliation?" RDA Logicon report, 28 May 1985 (Bethe, 20/300).
118. Lt. Col. James R. Beale, "Morality to Strategy: Perspectives on Offensive Weapons in Space" (Air War College, Maxwell AFB, March 1986), iii.
119. Marvin Atkins to Albert Latter, 7 August 1985, with attached "Analysis of 'SDI: Defense or Retaliation?' " (Garwin, CISAC 6).
120. Latter and Martinelli, "Comments on DNA Critique of the RDA Report 'SDI - Defense or Retaliation?' " 1985 (Garwin, CISAC 6), and H. L. Lynch to file, 5 March 1986, attached to W. K. H. Panofsky to R. Garwin, R. Muller, and C. Townes, 11 March 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6). Lynch expanded his short critique into a detailed quantitative analysis of possible offensive uses against air and ground targets: H. L. Lynch, "Technical Evaluation of Offensive Uses of SDI," working paper of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, Stanford University, 1987 (Townes, accession 22,004, 10/NAS-CISAC). Lynch also noted several strategic implications of offensive uses, such as the fact that exhausting laser fuel on ground targets would leave the attacker open to a nuclear missile barrage.
121. "Study Finds that SDI Could Be Offensive Threat to Soviets," Aviation Week and Space Technology (30 November 1987): 23.
122. Cf. Gregory H. Canavan, Military Uses of Space, Los Alamos report LA-11344-MS, August 1988, which addressed but discounted the offensive threat. Yet another study by an Argonne scientist extended the Latter-Martinelli scenario by suggesting that laser-sparked fires could have disastrous climatic effects akin to nuclear winter.
123. Caroline L. Herzenberg, "NuclearWinter and Strategic Defense Initiative," Physics and Society 15, no. 1 (1986): 2-5.
124. Michael Liebig, ed., Electromagnetic-Effect Weapons: The Technology and Strategic Implications, Executive Intelligence Review special report (Wiesbaden, 1988)
125. Liebig quote from foreword, on 7.
126. "An Interview with Gorbachev," Time, 9 September 1985, 22.
127. Interagency Intelligence Assessment (quote), "Possible Soviet Response to the US Strategic Defense Initiative," 12 September 1983, NIC M83-10017 (http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars)
128. CIA white paper, "Soviet Directed Energy Weapons - Perspectives on Strategic Defense," March 1985, National Security Archives. An analyst who helped draft the 1983 report has since written that the passage on economic pressures was inserted as boilerplate and should have been removed, because none of the economic analysts would back it up.
129. See Allen Thomson, "Drafting History," comments available from http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars.
130. Reagan to Gorbachev, 28 November 1985 (RR/SDI, 1/1985)
131. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York, 1993), 689.
132. On Reagan's impression from Geneva, see also Jack Matlock comments in Wohlforth, ed., 21-22. Soviet scientists and military analysts had apparently not learned about the "rods from god" proposal: Evgeni Velikhov interview, 3 October 2006
133. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin interview, 4 October 2006.
134. This incident is described in Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 491-92
135. Wohlforth, Witnesses, 57
136. Dobrynin, In Confidence, 561.
137. Marvin Goldberger to Academicians M. A. Markov and E. M. Primakov, 23 August 1980, and Thomas Malone to Charles Townes, 2 December 1980 (Townes, accession 22,004, 10/NAS-Basov/Prokhorov).
138. W. K. H. Panofsky to files, 20 December 1985, and notes on Academy council briefing, 23 February 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6). A small initial meeting on 18 September 1985 was followed by a larger meeting on 19 December.
139. CISAC meeting, summary minutes, 20 January 1986, and Timbie to Panofsky, 10 February 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6).
140. Reviewer's comments attached to Porter Coggeshall to Lynn Rusten, 17 March 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6).
141. "Offensive Uses of SDI Components and Systems," CISAC brie.ng to State Department, revised draft 4 April 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6; also in Townes, accession 22,004, 11/NASCISAC). The CISAC brie.ng also discussed kinetic-energy weapons; the briefers were no doubt aware of "rods from god," but they focused only on devices studied under SDI, which were generally too small to get through the atmosphere.
142. "Offensive Uses of SDI Components"
143. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 689.
144. Reagan response at Reykjavik afternoon session (from Russian transcript), 11 October 1986, and "The President's Trip to Reykjavik," issues checklist for Secretary of State Shultz, 7 October 1986 (Digital National Security Archive, available from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203).
145. Draft summary minutes, CISAC meeting 23 February 1986 (Garwin, CISAC 6), and "Offensive Uses of SDI Components and Systems."
146. Gorbachev to Reagan (unofficial translation), 10 June 1985, and Reagan to Gorbachev, 28 November 1985 (RR/SDI, 1/1985).
147. FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue
148. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces.
149. Hendrik Hertzberg, "Laser Show," New Yorker, 15 May 2000, follows FitzGerald in this argument.
150. In FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue, 436.
151. Andrei Sakharov, Moscow and Beyond: 1986 to 1989 (New York, 1991), 21-24
152. Evangelista, Unarmed Forces, 328-29
153. FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue, 409-11.
154. Frank von Hippel, "Recollections of Sakharov," in Andrei Sakharov: Facets of a Life (Gif-sur-Yvette, 1991), 325-33.
155. SDI backers in the United States turned it around: Sakharov's willingness to criticize SDI won his release from exile. Daniel Graham, "SDI Frees Sakharov," High Frontiers Newswatch (Bethe, 20/53).
156. On Gorbachev's malleability, see John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York, 2005), 230
157. more caustically, Valery Boldin, Ten Years that Shook the World: The Gorbachev Era as Witnessed by His Chief of Staff, trans. Evelyn Rossiter (New York, 1994), especially 76-77.
158. Sakharov would later note that his early outlook on nuclear weapons was closer to Teller than to those urging restraint; see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 319.
159. Karpenko, "ABM and Space Defense"
160. Zarubin interview
161. Sagdeev interview
162. S. P. Korolev Space Corporation (Energia), Ot Pervogo Sputnika do "Energii - Curana" i "Mira" [From first satellite to Energia - Buran and Mir] (Kaliningrad, 1994), 17, 110-11.
163. See also Ed Grondine, "Polyus," in Encyclopedia Astronautica (http://www.astronautix.com). The United States was conspicuously silent about possible attempts to examine the Polyus wreckage on the South Paci.c seafloor. A new article on Polyus states that the laser was left off the first launch, which instead was to test just the attitude control and aiming systems, but that Gorbachev and the Politburo then ruled out even these system tests.
164. Konstantin Lantratov, "The 'Star Wars' that Never Happened: The True Story of the Soviet Union's Polyus (Skif-DM) Space-Based Laser Battle Stations," Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 14, no. 1 (2007): 5-14, and 14, no. 2 (2007), 5-18.
165. Thomas W. Simons, Jr., The End of the Cold War? (New York, 1990), 68-69, 80
166. Dobrynin, In Confidence, 620-26
167. Bessmertnykh in Wohlforth, Witnesses, 168
168. on Shevardnadze, see Alexei Arbatov interview, 5 October 2006. The Defense Ministry housecleaning followed the landing of a small plane near Red Square by a young West German named Mathias Rust.
169. Simons, End of the Cold War?, 147
170. Yakovlev memo, "To the Analysis of the Fact of the Visit of Prominent American Leaders to the USSR," circa December 1986 (Digital National Security Archive).
171. Alexei Arbatov interview.
172. Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 159.
173. On the role of the Defense Ministry, VPK, and KGB, see Velikhov interview.
174. Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five, 181.
175. This view is supported by Nikolai Sokov, Russian Strategic Modernization: The Past and Future (Lanham, MD, 2000), 47, who sees most Soviet concessions on SDI starting in 1989.
176. "Current Soviet Views of Ballistic Missile Defense: A Strategic Red Team Item of Interest," Strategic Defense Initiative Organization report (January 1991), iv.
177. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York, 1995), 455.
178. FitzGerald, Way Out There in the Blue, 411.
179. Exceptions include von Bencke, "International Identity Crises," and Pavel Podvig, "Ballistic Missile Defense as a Factor in Strategic Relations between USSR/Russia and the USA, 1945-2003" (Ph.D. diss. [in Russian], Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Moscow, 2004).
180. Savel'yev and Detinov, The Big Five
181. Alexei Arbatov interview. On the NTS system in the ministries, see also Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 142-43
182. and Peter Almquist, Red Forge: Soviet Military Industry since 1965 (New York, 1990), chs. 1, 4.
183. CISAC, draft summary minutes, 16 December 1986, 12-13 March 1987, and 9-10 September 1987 (Townes, accession 22,273, 26/NAS-CISAC).
184. Warren Strobel, "FBI Agrees to Investigate Nitze Role with Scientists," Washington Times, 24 November 1987.
185. Cf. Richard Pipes, "Team B: The Reality behind the Myth," Commentary 82, no. 4 (1986): 25-40, in defense of the hawkish Team B intelligence study of 1976, criticizing the positivism and universalism of science advisers as the source of U.S. reliance on deterrence. Pipes admitted exceptions to his rule, notably Sakharov and Teller.
186. Pavel Podvig, "Did Star Wars End the Cold War?" (unpublished manuscript).
187. On SDI strengthening Soviet hawks and undermining reformers, see Georgi Arbatov, The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (New York, 1992), 321
188. Pavel Palazchenko in Wohlforth, Witnesses, 59
189. Alexei Arbatov interview
190. see also Dobrynin, In Confidence, 544.
191. Outer Space Treaty, 1967.
192. U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Fiscal Year 1983 Arms Control Impact Statement, 324.
193. Teller to Gen. George L. Butler, 10 January 1992 (Teller, box 435), describing a nonnuclear approach "for delivering potentially highly effective but non-nuclear strategic striking power with many of the characteristics of ICBMs and SLBMs - this is variously known as Advanced Strategic Strike Systems and 'Fire from Heaven.'"
194. Hans Bethe, handwritten notes on "our SDI research", n.d. (circa 1985) (Bethe, 20/18)
195. Janet Raloff, "EMP: A Sleeping Electronic Dragon," Science News, 9 May 1991, 300-302
196. Janet Raloff, "EMP Defensive Strategies," Science News, 16 May 1991, 314-15.
197. U.S. Space Command, Vision for 2020 (available from http://www.fas.org/spp/military)
198. Robert Preston et al., "Space Weapons, Earth Wars," RAND Corporation report MR-1209 (June 2002)
199. Bruce M. DuBlois et al., "Space Weapons: Crossing the U.S. Rubicon," International Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 50-84.
200. See also Doug Beason, The E-Bomb: How America's New Directed-Energy Weapons Will Change theWay Future Wars Will Be Fought (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
201. "Russia, China Want Guarantees against Weapons Deployment in Space," ITARTASS, 28 June 2002 (FBIS-SOV-2002-0628)
202. Frances Williams, "China Calls for Ban on 'Weaponisation' of Space," Financial Times, 8 June 2001.
203. Bryan Bender, "Space Weapons Seen as Possibility," Boston Globe, 19 May 2005
204. Peter Spiegel and James Gerstenzang, "Chinese Missile Strikes Satellite," Los Angeles Times, 19 January 2007.
205. Lowell Wood testimony to U.S. Congress, House Committee on National Security, Military Research and Development Subcommittee, 16 July 1997 (available from http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress)
206. William R. Graham et al., Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, 2004 (available from http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/congress).
207. For an example of the recent recognition of offensive uses in the foreign-policy literature, see Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York, 2002), 303.