FOR many, it defined the presidency of Ronald Reagan. A grandiose plan to build a defensive shield against nuclear missiles, it was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) by Reagan and his allies. The label that stuck, however, was “Star Wars,” coined by arch-enemy Senator Ted Kennedy the day after Reagan announced the scheme in 1983.
Reaganites saw it as a bold initiative to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” and end the nightmare of nuclear war. To the critics, it was a costly and impractical scheme that threatened to dangerously destabilise relations between the US and the Soviet Union.…
