Star Wars or Strategic Defense Initiative: What's in a Name?

Abstract

Popular culture can influence debates over security policy. This article studies the use of Star Wars in the debate over Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The term Star Wars was widely used to refer to SDI during debates in the 1980s. Scholars have pointed to both disabling and enabling effects of popular culture on political debates. This article refines these effects and introduces a third effect that comes from the widespread use of popular culture: a neutralizing effect that turns popular culture references into descriptive shorthands. Studying these dynamics contributes to our understanding of why popular culture is or is not used as a framing device and how it is used and perceived by decision-makers. I rely on content analysis of newspaper articles, congressional records, and political speeches and incorporate findings from elite interviews and the norm literature to conduct my analysis. I find that critics capitalized on linkages between the movie franchise and the policy to frame Reagan's missile defense system as Star Wars and to criticize his policy proposal. This science-fictionalization soon constituted the sociopolitical context surrounding Reagan's missile defense initiative. Most decision-makers perceived the Star Wars label to have a disabling effect as it cast doubt on the viability and desirability of SDI. Opponents initially tried to mobilize this effect, whereas most proponents argued against the label or refrained from using it. Few tapped into the enabling potential of Star Wars to communicate the potential benefits of SDI. The introduction of the professional term SDI helped proponents mitigate science-fictionalization in expert settings, while among the public the widespread use of the Star Wars label neutralized its meaning and turned it into a descriptive shorthand.