2.3 (July 2002): 303-305
© 2002 National Communication Association

Hallucination or Deception? The Rhetoric of Star Wars

Robert P. Newman

Gordon R. Mitchell. Strategic Deception: Rhetoric, Science, and Politics in Missile Defense Advocacy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000. xix + 399 pages. $24.95 (paper). 

Gordon R. Mitchell has waded into the burning controversy over missile defense (Star Wars) not just from the limited perspective of rhetorical or argumentation theory, but as a public intellectual.  This book presents us with the state-of-the-controversy as of the time of writing; it is what we need to know to make an informed judgment.

Mitchell’s is an orientation fortunately encouraged by the academic debating he participated in and describes in his preface.  It is pertinent to know in general the provenance of a writer’s discourse practice, but listing the names of all 106 of his associates in that activity somewhat clutters up the preface.  Perhaps it would be enough to know the names of the authorities whose advice he tapped, the editors who carried his early work, and those who reviewed his final manuscript.  That is an impressive list and assures us that this is not just an intercollegiate debater’s brief.

Mitchell’s research is literally overwhelming; he leaves no stone unturned in his effort to explore all relevant issues and evidence.  His critical approach goes far beyond textual analysis of Reagan’s Star Wars speech to demonstrate that though the Cold War may be over, the military-industrial-academic complex retains its hold on the United States Government.  That government’s claims of missile defense as scientifically plausible cannot be taken at face value.

This approach leads Mitchell to consider the prickly “rhetoric of science” controversy, which he covers exceptionally well.  The disabling of public discourse by the cancer of government secrecy is portrayed brilliantly, with insights Mitchell gained in interrogating principals in the missile defense dispute.  Mitchell claims accurately that his findings are “deliberately positioned as interventions in present-day missile defense controversies yet to be resolved.”  As I am writing this review, Bush’s insistence on pushing through a missile defense in the face of unanimous foreign opposition, including that of a still potentially lethal Russia, shows clearly the need for Mitchell’s analysis.

After his introductory chapter, Mitchell devotes chapters to three case studies: Reagan’s Star Wars proposal and the “fictional script” claiming to justify it; the rhetoric of Patriot accuracy in the Gulf War, which rhetoric he calls a “placebo defense”; and the dubious physics of the Theater Missile Defense “Footprint Controversy.”  Each of these chapters is exhaustively documented and footnoted: 266 notes to the Reagan Star Wars chapter, 207 for the Patriot Missile, 124 for the Footprint Controversy.  Overkill, perhaps, but some of Mitchell’s most telling analysis is in the notes.

The Star Wars chapter is significant for Mitchell’s assiduous mustering of reluctant testimony, from scientists on the government payroll, that they had lied about the tests and covered up the lies: “The charges of heavy-handed intimidation, excessive secrecy, doctored experimental results, and rigged test designs levied against Star Wars operatives such as Teller and his assistant Lowell Wood deserve investigation, simply because the prospect of systematic fraud in such a massive government research program counts as an alarming public policy concern”  (49). Well, we expected this kind of chicanery from Reagan.

The second case study is of the Gulf War.  It is equally thorough.  We have heard challenges to the claim that Patriot missiles failed to find Scuds more often than not.  To this reviewer, the most enlightening section here was the answer given by the military after they were forced to admit missile failure.  It is called the Placebo Defense: it holds that “even if the Patriot did not actually work, it was still politically effective as a symbol.  With such a strategy, missile defense advocates skirted the issue of actual performance . . . [since] the Patriot was good enough to stop Israeli retaliation, said Representative William Dickinson (R-PA).  ‘In providing even a limited defense to Israel the Patriot allowed Israel to stay out of a war and thus save the coalition from fragmenting and ensured a militarily united front’” (152-53). Conning the Israelis into believing that they need not attack Iraq was no doubt of some value.  Mitchell notes, however, that such a strategic deception can work only once.

The third case study, the Footprint Controversy, shows a Clinton Administration performing no better than its predecessors, though perhaps less aggressive in pushing this questionable expenditure.

In the concluding chapter, Mitchell looks to possible amelioration of the U.S. missile hang-up.  There are plenty of smoking guns connecting the defense community with gross crimes, but he finds no elixir to dissolve this institutional corruption.  He considers various stratagems, such as those of Jonathan Schell, but has no great hopes for them.  American opposition to all its allies might be significant: “Specifically, NATO members might use their leverage as providers of early warning data” to force changes in American policy.  But even this is weak: “Given the durability of strategic deception as a staple of missile defense advocacy, it should be expected that we will see the patterns of argumentation analyzed in this book recurring and resurfacing in future contexts” (285).

I have only minor quibbles with Mitchell.  NSC 68 was not promulgated in April 1950; it was top secret until declassified in February 1975 (89). German military doctrines of deceiving the enemy are irrelevant to a democracy deceiving its own people (36). Mitchell’s 304 dense pages of text and footnotes will not attract a wide readership.  But for those who use it, meaning those who care about this monstrous government hallucination, it will be conclusive.

Robert P. Newman, professor emeritus of communication at the University of Pittsburgh, currently teachers at the University of Iowa and the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.