In his executive order to establish the “Iron Dome For America” missile defense policy, issued on Jan. 27, President Donald Trump invoked the memory of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Policy of the early 1980s. Reagan, he said, “endeavored to build an effective defense against nuclear attacks, and while this program resulted in many technological advances, it was canceled before its goal could be realized.” Reagan’s SDI policy was designed by Lyndon LaRouche, and a crucial part of the design was technology-sharing with the Soviet Union, without which the objective of making nuclear weapons obsolete would not be possible. Verified cooperation between the two nations is the only way to make sure one side doesn’t gain the upper hand over the other.
Instead, Trump’s EO makes clear that the modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal will go forward. “To further the goal of peace through strength,” the EO says, the U.S., among other things, “will guarantee its secure second-strike capability.” The EO also stresses cooperation with “allies and partners” on theater missile defense posture and missile defense technologies. These are policies not likely to guarantee strategic stability. These approaches will be seen in both Moscow and Beijing as confrontational rather than cooperative.
In fact, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated Jan. 31 about the Trump “Iron Dome” EO: “We see this as yet another confirmation of the U.S. focus on turning space into an arena for armed confrontation, warfare, and the deployment of weapons.” She added that it is “openly aimed” at negating the Russian and Chinese strategic deterrent, which “will not contribute to reducing tensions or improving the situation in the strategic sphere, including creating a basis for a fruitful dialogue on strategic armaments.”
