Ronald Reagan and the Enemy Missile Defense Program
Enemy Missile Defenses Enemy missile defense has always been an argumentative subject and spans over six decades. The first defense plan to be somewhat successful was President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Some critics believe that a defense plan has hurt the United States more than it has benefited it. Due to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, improvements have been made in the National Missile Defense, the Strategic Defense Initiative itself, and the Ballistic Missile Defense. A national defense program was thought of after the Nazis sent hundreds of V-2 rockets during the end of World War II (Garamone 78). President Nixon came up with a National Missile Defense Program, but many critics thought this was useless, because no nation had the capability of delivering a ballistic missile to the United States (Anderson 1). A well-functioning system was well out of reach, and large costs for its development were one factor in stopping the program from taking affect (Anderson 3). Only the United States allies had the capabilities, and all of the United States’ allies were against a missile defense program (Anderson 1). Something needed to be done to ensure the safety of the United States citizens. It was on May 26, 1972 that the United States and the Soviets signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (Anderson 2; “History” 1). The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, or the ABM Treaty, began two years after Congress, in 1969, introduced the first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or otherwise known as SALT (“History” 1). This treaty limited the United States and the Soviet Union to two missile defense sites with no more than one hundred ground-based interceptors (Kimball 2). It was then modified in 1974; the modification reduced the number of sites to where both countries could deploy only one interceptor each (“History” 1). This treaty prohibited any development, testing, or deployment of any air, space, sea, or mobile land-based