The Return of Star Wars? Examining Missile Defense after the Cold War

• In Event: The Conduct of Warfare: Perceptions and Beyond

Abstract

What explains the divergence in states’ war-fighting capabilities? Although Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was met with domestic and international skepticism, the issue of missile defense never really left the military-policy agenda. Under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the development of missile defense capabilities re-emerged as a priority in the United States, marked by the procurement of the ground-based midcourse defense system to strike down incoming ballistic missiles from so-called rogue states. Whereas the Americans focused on strategic missile defense, the United Kingdom and France opted to stick with theater missile defense, with the former mainly focussing on sea capabilities, while the latter also invested in a land-based missile defense system. Though the literature would point to security threats, state capacity, organizational dynamics, or strategic culture as explanatory variables, I argue that the ideas of different domestic actors about the future warfare—what I call “images of warfare”—and their ability to advocate for those ideas within the decision-making process, by building coalitions and exploiting formal and informal access points to the state, explain the variation in missile defense capabilities across these three countries after the Cold War. To test this hypothesis, I build on sixty semi-structured interviews with high-level stakeholders including military personnel, civilian bureaucrats, politicians, scientists and defense analysts, as well as the available primary source materials regarding missile defense policy.

Author

• Sanne Verschuren, Brown University