Editing World War III (section)

===Strategic Defense Initiative===
{{main|Strategic Defense Initiative}}

The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was proposed by US President [[Ronald Reagan]] on 23 March 1983.<ref name="fas_milestones">[[Federation of American Scientists]]. [https://fas.org/spp/starwars/program/milestone.htm Missile Defense Milestones] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306023546/http://fas.org/spp/starwars/program/milestone.htm |date=6 March 2016 }}. Accessed 10 March 2006.</ref> In the latter part of his [[Presidency of Ronald Reagan|presidency]], numerous factors (which included watching the 1983 movie ''[[The Day After]]'' and hearing through a Soviet defector that [[Able Archer 83]] almost triggered a Russian first strike) had turned Reagan against the concept of winnable nuclear war, and he began to see nuclear weapons as more of a "[[Wild card (foresight)|wild card]]" than a strategic deterrent. Although he later believed in [[Nuclear disarmament|disarmament treaties]] slowly blunting the danger of nuclear weaponry by reducing their number and alert status, he also believed a technological solution might allow incoming ICBMs to be shot down, thus making the US invulnerable to a first strike. However, the USSR saw the SDI concept as a major threat, since a unilateral deployment of the system would allow the US to launch a massive first strike on the Soviet Union without any fear of retaliation.

The SDI concept was to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic [[nuclear weapon|nuclear]] [[ballistic missile]]s. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of [[Mutual assured destruction|mutually assured destruction]] (MAD). The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the [[United States Department of Defense]] to oversee the Strategic Defense Initiative.