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On January 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed the first National Security Decision Directive for his fledgling Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), launched the previous year. This presidential directive, NSDD 119, has now been fully declassified. One part of the document, which had been redacted in versions released earlier, expressed "growing concern over a potential Soviet breakout from the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty."
The directive added, "Evidence of Soviet efforts to develop a ballistic missile defense capability makes it incumbent upon the U.S. to do its utmost to acquire its own strategic defense options as one possible response to a Soviet breakout. Unilateral Soviet acquisition of an effective defensive capability would confront the U.S. and its allies with the real threat of nuclear blackmail and political/military coercion."1
It is now evident that this concern about Soviet breakout was exaggerated. The evidence was based in part on concerns about the purpose of the ill-fated Krasnoyarsk Radar, but the Soviets were nowhere near such a move, nor had they had all that much success in developing missile defense technology.2
The fear of a breakout was a classic example of Cold War mistrust, secrecy, and propaganda at work. In these years, the United States did not see clearly the troubled state of the Soviet military-industrial complex. The Soviets could not fully understand Reagan's purpose and motivations in proposing a globe-spanning missile defense system. They suspected a hidden rationale and mission for it. As the Harvard Nuclear Study Group noted in 1983, "The United States cannot predict Soviet behavior because it has too little information on what goes on inside the Soviet Union; the Soviets cannot predict American behavior because they have too much information."3
New information from archives and other sources reveals these misunderstandings more clearly and offers lessons for today. One of them is to make sure policymakers fully understand the intentions of an adversary. Do outsiders have a better understanding today of the mindset of leaders in Iran and North Korea than was available about the Soviet leaders in the final days of the Cold War?
Looking back at the early years of the SDI and examining how the Soviet Union reacted to Reagan's project, one can see clearly that both sides were guilty of misperceptions and error....