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    "label": "NSDD 172 Presenting the Strategic Defense Initiative",
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    "title": "NSDD 172 Presenting the Strategic Defense Initiative",
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        "Numbered National Security Policy Papers",
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            "day": 30,
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    "seq": 2,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
    "url": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/65/8797/6879765/content/arcmedia/presidential-libraries/reagan/nsdd/NSDD172_2.jpg",
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    "ocrText": "SECRET\nSEGRE\n2\nThe Challenges We Face. Our nation and those nations allied with\nus face a number of challenges to our security. Each of these\nchallenges imposes its own demands and presents its own\nopportunities. Preserving peace and freedom is, and always will\nbe, our fundamental goal. The essential purpose of our military\nforces, and our nuclear forces in particular, is to deter\naggression and coercion based upon the threat of military\naggression. The deterrence provided by U.S. and Allied military\nforces has permitted us to enjoy peace and freedom. However, the\nnature of the military threat has changed and will continue to\nchange in very fundamental ways in the next decade. Unless we\nadapt our response, deterrence will become much less stable and\nour susceptibility to coercion will increase dramatically. (U)\nOur Assumptions About Deterrence. For the past twenty years,\nwe have based our assumptions on how deterrence can best be\nassured on the basic idea that if each side were able to maintain\nthe ability to threaten retaliation against any attack and thereby\nimpose on an aggressor costs that were clearly out of balance with\nany potential gains, this would suffice to prevent conflict. Our\nidea of what our forces had to hold at risk to deter aggression\nhas changed over time. For example, we have moved away from\nsimply holding at risk significant portions of Soviet industry and\npopulation. Today, we do not target population per se. Instead,\nour current strategy focuses on being able to deny basic Soviet\nwar aims by holding at risk the military, industrial and C3\ncapabilities needed to carry out and exploit aggression.\nNevertheless, our basic reliance on nuclear retaliation provided\nby offensive nuclear forces, as the essential means of deterring\naggression, has not changed over this period. (C)\nThis basic idea -- that if each side maintained roughly equal\nforces and equal capability to retaliate against attack, stability\nand deterrence would be maintained -- also served as the\nfoundation for the U.S. approach to the Strategic Arms Limitation\nTalks (SALT) process of the 1970' s. At the time that process\nbegan, the U.S. concluded that deterrence based on the capability\nof offensive retaliatory forces was not only sensible, but\nnecessary, since we believed at the time that neither side could\ndevelop the technology for defensive systems which could\neffectively deter the other side. (U)\nToday, however, the situation is fundamentally different.\nScientific developments and several emerging technologies now do\noffer the possibility of defenses that did not exist and could\nhardly have been conceived earlier. The state of the art of\ndefense has now progressed to the point where it is reasonable to\ninvestigate whether new technologies can yield options, especially\nnon-nuclear options, which could permit us to turn to defense not\nonly to enhance deterrence, but to allow us to move to a more\nsecure and more stable long-term basis for deterrence. (U)\nSEGRET\nSECRET\nCOPY / OF 9 COPIES"
}