Successful missile strike validates Reagan's wisdom


While the Navy SM-3 missile didn’t knock down an incoming nuclear missile, the direct hit on a satellite proved again that U.S. anti-missile technology is mature and reliable, and that an effective anti-missile system is within our grasp. Traveling at 6,000 miles per hour after being launched from a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser in the Pacific, the SM-3 missile was even more accurate than anyone had predicted because it struck precisely at the satellite’s dangerous fuel tank.

The successful kill of the satellite also confirmed the ability of the SM-3 to intercept at a higher elevation than had ever been tested before. It revalidated the Bush administration’s expenditure of $10 billion a year on anti-missile defenses.




This demonstration of U.S. anti-satellite capability also had a useful side effect. It signaled China that we have anti-satellite technology and power.

China shocked the world on Jan. 11, 2007, by conducting the first successful test of an anti-satellite weapon. In its usual disregard for the health of humankind, China’s test left 2,500 pieces of debris in space spread out in a way that poses a danger to manned and unmanned spacecraft.

U.S. officials recognized China’s action as a new strategic threat. Killing a communications satellite could knock out U.S. military and civilian communications systems.

In his 1983 address, Reagan announced that he was "launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history." Indeed, it did. His speech extricated America from the defeatist McNamara-Kissinger-Nixon-Ford-Carter strategy of mutual assured destruction, known descriptively by its acronym MAD. 





The whole disarmament/pacifist crowd attacked Reagan unmercifully for his determination to defend America with defensive as well as offensive weapons. U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., led the pack by ridiculing Reagan’s plan as Star Wars.

Reagan’s opponents criticized him on every front, claiming an anti-missile system can’t work because it requires hitting a bullet with a bullet. This new test should finally put to rest the false claims that it won’t work.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that it was Reagan’s determination to push forward with what became known as his Strategic Defense Initiative that won the Cold War. The Strategic Defense Initiative was the centerpiece of his strategy.

At the Geneva and Reykjavik Summits, Mikhail Gorbachev, then the leader of the Soviet Union, offered every carrot and stick in his arsenal to persuade or intimidate Reagan into abandoning the Strategic Defense Initiative. When Reagan refused, Gorbachev realized the jig was up for the Soviet empire and its delusions of world conquest because the Soviets could not compete with the U.S. military-economic powerhouse.

Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, so courageously proposed in 1983, ultimately enabled him to defeat the "Evil Empire" without firing a shot. We know the system works, and it’s just as necessary in the post-Sept. 11 world as in the days of the Soviet threat.