From the late 1960s to the present, the first-order response to U.S. missile defense initiatives by political opponents has been to assert this logic with confidence, pointing to all historical evidence as proof. The supposed historical proof of the 'inevitable' superiority of the offense, however, is nonsense. Defensive measures have frequently, and for long stretches of history, dominated the offense. Athens's defensive walls, for example, precluded a bloody invasion by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. The defensive walls of Constantinople provided security for nearly a thousand years. British air and naval defenses shut down the planned Nazi invasion of the British Isles, Hitler's "Operation Sea Lion." Of course, Karl von Clausewitz considered defense in general to be the stronger form of warfare. Obviously, the lethality of nuclear weapons would necessitate extremely effective defenses if comprehensive protection for cities against a large-scale ballistic missile attack by a peer challenger were the goal. This, however, is not the declared U.S. goal, and whether powerful new defensive technologies, such as 'exotic' beam weapons, will make this type of defense possible in the future is not known; but it hardly can be ruled out as if by some inevitable law of history. Historical evidence supports neither the assertion that offense must dominate defense nor the argument that an action-reaction arms race cycle is inevitable. In fact, predictions based on the action-reaction model have often proven to be far different from the subsequent course of events.

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Payne, Keith R. "Action-Reaction Metaphysics and Negligence." Washington Quarterly. Vol. 24, No. 4 (Autumn 2001): 109-121. [ 3 quotes ] [ page 113 ]