Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics,and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative

Abstract: Professor Aaron Bateman will be presenting his forthcoming book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024). Weapons in Space uses newly available sources to provide fresh insights into the history of accelerating superpower military competition in space from the late Cold War onwards. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he established the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively known as "Star Wars," a space-based missile defense program that aimed to protect the United States from nuclear attack. Weapons in Space draws from recently declassified American, European, and Soviet documents to situate SDI within a new phase in the militarization of space after the superpower détente fell apart in the 1970s. In contrast to existing narratives, Weapons in Space shows how tension over the role of military space technologies in American statecraft was a central source of SDI's controversy, even more so than questions of technical feasibility. By detailing the participation of Western European countries in SDI research and development, Bateman reframes space militarization in the 1970s and 1980s as an international phenomenon. He further reveals that even though SDI did not come to fruition, it obstructed diplomatic efforts to create new arms control limits in space. Consequently, Weapons in Space carries the legacy of SDI into the post–Cold War era and shows how this controversial program continues to shape the global discourse about instability in space—and the growing anxieties about a twenty-first-century space arms race.

Bio: Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and a member of the Space Policy Institute within the Elliott School of International Affairs. His research focuses on the relationship between technology and international security. Exploring the connections between space policy and broader U.S. national security priorities during the Cold War, including nuclear operations and intelligence, is a significant part of his research agenda. His forthcoming book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024), investigates the origins, evolution, and enduring consequences of Ronald Reagan's controversial missile defense program. Aaron's research has been published in Foreign Affairs, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Intelligence and National Security, the Oxford Handbook of Space Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Science & Diplomacy, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and War on the Rocks.

Aaron received his PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to graduate school, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with assignments at the National Security Agency and the Pentagon. He has completed multiple intensive Russian-language courses in the United States and the Russian Federation.