Following is an address by Paul H. Nitze, Special Adviser to the President and the Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters, before the Time Magazine Conference on SDI Strategic Defense initiative, Washington, D.C., June 3, 1986. The primary security objective of the United States is to reduce the risk of war while preserving our liberty and democratic political system. Over the past 25 years, the United States has pursued this objective through two related means. We have sought to deter war by maintaining a force structure adequate to convince potential adversaries that the risks and costs of aggression would far outweigh any possible gains. Simultaneously, we have sought to limit the nature and extent of the threat to the United States and to stabilize the strategic relationship with our principal adversary, the Soviet Union, through arms control agreements. The United States is now engaged in research to find out if new technologies could provide a more stable basis to deter war in the future by a shift to a greater reliance on strategic defenses. Arms control could also play an important role in designing a more stable strategic regime in the future. Tonight, I propose to examine the relationship among SDI, arms control, and stability. I hope to show that our SDI research and arms control policies, as currently defined, provide a cohesive and firm basis for enhancing strategic stability in the future and ultimately for reducing the risk of war.

The official monthly record of United States foreign policy.

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Through an analysis of the language and persuasive strategies used by the Reagan and Bush administrations in selling the SDI program to the Congress and the American public, Bjork takes a fresh approach to the study of U.S. foreign policy. She focuses on the shared meanings and understandings of policy as they are created through sociocultural interaction. Using Kenneth Burke's philosophy and critical method of dramatism as a theoretical framework, she shows how Reagan's SDI program appealed symbolically to a nostalgic sense of American history, replete with powerful images of American innocence and technological ingenuity in the face of difficult obstacles. Bjork concludes that the program has been shielded from criticism, has achieved symbolic and bureaucratic momentum, and serves to reinforce the isolation felt by ordinary American citizens from access to decisions over life and death issues.