It all started with President Ronald Reagan’s vision for avoiding nuclear war
In March of 1983, President Ronald Reagan gave an Oval Office address announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative, a decision he’d made involving “the most basic duty that any President and any people share, the duty to protect and strengthen the peace.”
That day, Reagan put America on the road to developing the technology and building a missile defense, and not relying just on constant buildups of offensive missiles as a method of deterring nuclear attack.
“What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?” Reagan asked.
He answered his own question with a bold move, one that set off controversy. Democrats in Congress derided the decision as “Star Wars.”
But Reagan was firm, and humane in his approach to avoiding nuclear war.