by Kingston Reif On March 11, 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke at a Heritage Foundation dinner commemorating the 25th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), labeled by critics as “Star Wars.” Cheney used the occasion to reiterate five Bush administration talking points about the need for missile defense: In 1972, […]
Star Wars Turns 25 Years Old, but Effective and Capable Missile Defense Still Elusive
by Robert G. Gard and John Isaacs On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan revived the effort, first launched in the 1950s, to defend the United States against an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack by producing a “shield that could protect us from nuclear missiles just as a roof protects a family from rain.” He called […]
Why Missile Defense Upsets Russia
by Kingston Reif Published in the Washington Post on March 18, 2008 In the March 13 op-ed “Moscow’s Missile Gambit,” Robert Joseph and J.D. Crouch II said the United States should proceed with plans to place missile interceptors and their supporting radar systems in Europe regardless of Russian opposition. A fundamental assumption underlying their argument […]
Downing a Sick Satellite, or Upping the Arms Race?
by Katie Mounts Published in the Topeka Capital-Journal on March 7, 2008 When the White House announced in January that a failed U.S. intelligence satellite would soon fall out of orbit to the Earth, Bush administration officials claimed the potential for risk was “very small.” That story quickly changed, however, in order to launch an […]
U.S. Arms Sales Agreements Worldwide, 1999-2006
by Travis Sharp Updated March 4, 2008 Check out our analysis of U.S. arms sales agreements with the Middle East. The United States is far and away the leader in worldwide arms sales agreements. Consider the following: From 1999 to 2006, the United States averaged $15.44 billion per year in worldwide arms sales agreements. That […]
