Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman from King's College London delivered the keynote lecture entitled 'Star Wars: A View from the Commentariat'. This was part of the conference 'Towards an International History of the Strategic Defence Initiative', held on Friday 31 May and Saturday 1 June 2019. It was a collaboration between The Open University's Research Group on War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century and ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS.
It aimed to use newly declassified archival sources to provide a fully international re-evaluation of the SDI, with a particular focus on the 1983-86 period. It combines a top-down approach, considering the responses of Allied governments to the American initiative, and a bottom-up approach, examining public reactions across Europe and North America and the role the SDI played within the burgeoning peace movement.