{"id":3856,"date":"2020-08-16T18:44:57","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T18:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2020-08-16T18:44:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T18:44:57","slug":"star-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/2020\/08\/16\/star-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Reagan complicated matters still further with a bombshell speech in March 1983 proposing a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a missile defense system employing lasers from space-based platforms that could intercept and destroy enemy missiles before they struck U.S. or allied soil&#8230;. SDI proved a typically Reaganesque stroke of political genius.\u00a0 Scientists and many national security experts promptly dismissed it as outrageously costly and wildly impractical and dubbed it &#8216;Star Wars&#8217; to highlight its chimerical nature.\u00a0 But it also touched a responsive chord with the public.\u00a0 Reagan shrewdly couched his appeal for SDI as a way to restore the sense of security Americans had enjoyed before World War II.&#8221; &#8211;George Herring,\u00a0<em>From Colony to Superpower,\u00a0<\/em>p. 869-70<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How was SDI or Star Wars characteristic of what Herring calls President Reagan&#8217;s &#8220;political genius&#8221;?<\/li>\n<li>Over the course of his two terms, how did Reagan&#8217;s approach to the Soviet threat evolve? What were the key turning points?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Reagan complicated matters still further with a bombshell speech in March 1983 proposing a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a missile defense system employing lasers from space-based platforms that could intercept and destroy enemy missiles before they struck U.S. or allied soil&#8230;. SDI proved a typically Reaganesque stroke of political genius.\u00a0 Scientists and many national security [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71431],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syllabus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}