When Ronald Reagan said no to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Reykjavik Summit and refused to kill America’s Strategic Defense Initiative, he became the first President in history to walk away from a bad arms-control deal. Some in the media and the Democratic Party rushed forward to criticize the President and predict that he would take a beating in the post-Summit propaganda. But it soon became clear that the American people overwhelmingly approved his stance.
The President made SDI a precondition for strategic-arms control by proclaiming it a vital safety net against cheating, and saying he would refuse to consider any agreement that required him to give it up. By refusing what some have called the most dramatic arms-control agreement in history for the sake of SDI, the President not only demonstrated how important he considers strategic defense, he made SDI the central issue in the arms-control debate, indeed the central strategic and foreign-policy issue of our time.
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