How Reagan Became a Believer

During the first two years of his White House tenure, Ronald Reagan rarely immersed himself in the arcane details of nuclear issues. The difficult minutiae seemed to bore him. But one broader element intrigued him: the question of whether there was any realistic alternative to Mutual Assured Destruction. To Reagan, MAD was the equivalent of two men pointing cocked pistols at each other.

The President was instinctively sympathetic to the arguments of Edward Teller and other outside advocates of new defensive systems. But both the Defense and State Departments were wedded to traditional deterrence. Giving new emphasis to a defensive policy would be wrenching, and Reagan’s then National Security Adviser, William Clark, was loath to upset his “client” bureaucracies. Thus when Teller obtained an audience with Reagan on Sept. 14, ) 1982, Clark attended as devil’s advocate. He posed skeptical questions that tended to undercut the scientist’s presentation.

Just weeks later, however, Clark’s own deputy, Robert McFarlane, started to move in the opposite direction. McFarlane, who would succeed Clark as National Security Adviser in October 1983, was worried that U.S. strategic-military policy was breaking down. The nuclear freeze movement was gaining ground in Congress. Negotiations in Geneva were going nowhere. McFarlane could foresee a time when the Soviets might spurt far ahead in the missile race.

Seeking a way to rattle the chessboard, McFarlane reasoned that a defensive research program would attract bipartisan support at home and might someday be useful in Geneva. He mentioned these possibilities to Reagan, knowing he would be receptive. But McFarlane was still a relatively junior player. Though he quickly persuaded Clark that the new policy should be considered, he needed another ally of standing, one who shared Reagan’s moral distaste for those cocked nuclear pistols. That ally turned out to be Admiral James Watkins, Chief of Naval Operations. Late in 1982 McFarlane and Watkins consulted informally. The product of those talks was a document, known to insiders as the “freedom from fear” briefing paper, conveying McFarlane’s views over Watkins’ name.

Next Watkins got his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to approve a briefing for the President. On Feb. 11, 1983, they sat down with Reagan in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. The nominal agenda for the luncheon meeting was offensive weapons. Watkins took the opportunity to talk about the growing threat of instability. Then he made his pitch: the advances in defensive technology were so promising that the President should throw his weight behind a major research effort. McFarlane interjected: Are you saying that over time this could lead to deployable systems? Exactly, Watkins replied. McFarlane then polled the other four military leaders around the table. None dissented.

Reagan promptly seized on Watkins’ argument. It validated his conviction that there had to be a way out of the MAD trap and played on his often stated faith in U.S. science and industry. Reagan said that he wanted the ideas pursued promptly.

Had Clark and McFarlane run the scheme through the orthodox interagency review process, immediate objections would have either slowed its progress or stopped the plan altogether. Instead, the ideas discussed Feb. 11 were translated into firm policy on a “close-hold” basis inside the White House. It was only in mid-March that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz were fully informed about what was coming next. There was no real policy debate.

Even inside the White House, there was uncertainty about when to announce the new scheme and how vigorously to push it. McFarlane urged a go-slow approach, but Reagan’s political advisers wanted the President to express a large, fresh idea in his next defense policy speech. Thus the President unveiled Star Wars in a televised address on March 23. Reagan’s science adviser, George Keyworth II, excluded from the loop until five days before the speech, now talks with relish about the bureaucracy’s “surprise, if not shock, at this demonstration of top-down leadership.”

For Reagan’s part, he was eager to spread the word. What he enjoyed most, his intimates say, was describing “a vision of the future that offers hope.” Reagan’s enthusiasm eventually silenced doubts down the chain of command. He was now personally engaged in nuclear affairs as never before. In the six weeks between the J.C.S. meeting and his televised speech, he had drastically changed U.S. strategic policy.