Reagan Missile Defense Speech Matters More than Ever

James Carafano / March 23, 2010

Twenty seven years ago President Ronald Reagan delivered one of the most important speeches in modern history. For almost five decades, Americans had lived under the threat of nuclear war. The arms race had become a stand-off between the superpowers called mutually-assured-destruction, where any nuclear exchange would likely evolve into a full-scale atomic war annihilating the East and the West. President Reagan believed that this was an immoral way to maintain an uneasy peace if there was a more responsible and proportional alternative. On March 23, 1983 he announced that there was. The president concluded that not only were missile defenses feasible, but that they would lessen the threat of nuclear war.

History proved Reagan right on both counts. (more…)