Pie in the sky: Is Trump re-exploring Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ with Golden Dome?

Matthew Powell

Trump has unveiled plans for a new “next-generation” missile defence system, which he says will be “capable even of intercepting missiles from the other side of the world, or launched from space”. The US President says 'Golden Dome', reportedly partly inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome system, will be operational by the end of his current four-year term.

But critics say it’s much harder to design a defence system to protect a land mass the size of the US. This is particularly the case in an era characterised by the threat from hypersonic missiles, such as those used by Russia against Ukraine, as well as attacks from space.

Ever since the first aerial attacks on civilian populations, there have been increasing calls to provide systems that can defend and destroy the potential for an adversary to attack people, governments and infrastructure.

During the cold war, which followed the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, research accelerated globally into ways of providing greater protection against nuclear attack. The most eye-catching of these ideas was the announcement by Ronald Reagan in 1983 of plans to develop a massive (and hugely expensive) land and space-based missile defence system.

The project, officially called the Strategic Defence Initiative quickly became known colloquially – if slightly mockingly – as 'Star Wars'.

The concept behind the missile defence system was that it would provide a way of effectively making nuclear weapons obsolete. Through the application of a defensive system that incorporated both land and space-based missiles, it was believed that any nuclear warhead fired would be destroyed before it was able to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

This would not only prevent intercontinental ballistic missiles from striking their intended target, but their destruction so high above the Earth would mean that they would not pose a threat in terms of nuclear radiation and fallout.

It’s important to note that what was announced by Reagan in March 1983 was not about the development, construction or application of an actual defensive system. It was about funding research into the technologies that would be required for such a system.

Reagan claimed this was a move to create a more peaceful world by making nuclear weapons effectively obsolete. But it was certainly not seen this way in Moscow.

By developing a defensive system that would make strategic nuclear weapons almost obsolete, it was hoped this would force the hand of the Soviets and effectively compel them to agree to talks.

But at the same time, as far as the decision-makers in the Kremlin were concerned, such a system – if developed and deployed – would give the US a colossal strategic advantage. By the mid-1980s, it was highly unlikely that the Soviets could ever afford the investment in research and development and production capabilities to design their own system. This would mean that the Soviet Union was now highly vulnerable to a nuclear attack, while the US would be protected.

This would place the US in a similar position to that which it had enjoyed between 1945 and 1949, when it was the only nation that had the ability to launch nuclear weapons. The theory of mutually assured destruction would fall almost overnight, meaning that the US had very little to fear from launching a nuclear attack, as any Soviet response would be futile.

Given the potential for nuclear blackmail by the all-powerful US, it might cause the Kremlin to consider launching a pre-emptive strike against the US before such a system could be developed or implemented. Rather than making the world a safer place and diminishing the place of nuclear weapons, the world would become more dangerous.