The World - News from Feb. 25, 1988

The Soviet Union is trying to undermine President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative through political means rather than spend valuable resources on developing its own space-based defense system, a RAND Corp. study said. The report, commissioned by the Air Force, also said that Reagan’s “Star Wars” program has placed the United States in a stronger arms control bargaining position with the Soviet Union than at any time since the early 1960s. The report noted that, economically, it is more feasible for the Soviets to raise objections to space-based missiles in the international community and to hope for domestic U.S. opposition to scuttle the SDI program.