Vasily Klimov — about Washington's latest attempt to provide protection from a nuclear strike
The return of Donald Trump to the White House has led to drastic and decisive changes in many aspects of domestic and international politics: gender, foreign trade, and the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. Trump has managed to bring back to the White House the energetic start that has been so lacking in American politics in recent years. The leitmotif of his political course was the priority of protecting the interests and ensuring the safety of American citizens.
At the very beginning of his presidential term, Trump made a very controversial decision to create a large—scale space-based missile defense system that could not so much strengthen US security as undermine its foundations. On May 20, 2025, in a solemn ceremony, it was announced the choice of the architecture of this system, which "will incorporate the latest technologies on land, at sea and in space, including space sensors and interception facilities." However, in his quest to gain unconditional protection of the US territory, Donald Trump is by no means a pioneer, a similar practice has taken place in the recent past.
Remembering the past
Over the 80-year history of missile defense, the US position on its development has changed several times. The most radical change was President Ronald Reagan's grandiose attempt in the 1980s to create a large-scale missile defense system with space-based echelons. On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan called on the U.S. scientific community to develop a missile defense system that would make nuclear weapons "impotent" and "obsolete." Subsequently, this program was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and was dubbed "Star Wars" by the general public.
Supporters of the SDI were convinced that they had found some kind of substitute for bilateral nuclear deterrence based on the possibility of mutually guaranteed destruction of the Soviet Union and the United States. In the hope of a highly effective missile defense system, it was supposed to switch to a "guaranteed survival" model, ostensibly with the prospect of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. However, in practice, Reagan's demarche represented nothing more than the US abandoning the nuclear deterrence model and returning to unilateral deterrence of the USSR based on "insurmountable" missile defense. As part of this fantastic idea, it was planned to place more than a thousand interceptors on earth and launch hundreds of weapons into space, including those based on new physical principles: laser and beam weapons, high-speed electromagnetic cannons.
However, technical obstacles, international expert criticism, and active opposition from the US Congress stood in the way of creating a high-tech and effective missile defense system that was supposed to "devalue" nuclear weapons. In view of the Pentagon's planned space tests and the intention to create a territorial missile defense system, the SDI opponents unanimously stated the risks of violating international legal obligations under the 1972 ABM Treaty: "not to create, test or deploy space-based missile defense systems or components" and "not to deploy a missile defense system on the territory of the country." The political and academic community in the United States and abroad also justified the inconsistency of the overambitious plans of the Reagan administration, especially regarding the withdrawal of interception assets into outer space.
In the end, under political pressure and the gradual loss of legislative support, the United States did not create the promised large-scale missile defense system capable of making nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Over the 10 years of its existence, more than $30 billion has been spent on the program, and it has not even moved to the pre-deployment stage. Having failed to materialize, Star Wars had a destabilizing effect on arms control, becoming a brake on Soviet-American negotiations on strategic offensive arms reductions.
Trump's "Manifesto"
Despite the changes in the political and strategic situation, international norms and the development of technology over the past 30 years, it is assumed that the fate of the Reagan program is destined for the Golden Dome project.
President Trump is confident that he will be able to "put this large-scale system into full operation" by the beginning of 2029, along with the space missile defense echelon. According to his administration, $175 billion will be enough to create the Golden Dome, the first part of which — $25 billion — will be allocated by Congress in 2026. Both traditional missile defense companies - Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — and new ones capable of implementing the latest technological solutions (SpaceX, Anduril and Palantir) will be involved in the implementation of the program. A key element of the future "mega-missile defense system" will be the space component, which, due to an extensive network of information and strike assets, will acquire the potential to destroy ballistic and hypersonic missile-planning targets. At the same time, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, at least 20 years and approximately $524 billion can be spent on the development and launch of interceptor missiles into space alone.
A distinctive feature of Donald Trump's policy is that he does not need to adjust his missile defense policy to international legal norms, as it was during the Reagan era. In 2002, under the pretext of providing protection from nuclear missile attacks by "rogue states," the United States withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty, previously considered the cornerstone of strategic stability in Soviet relations./Russia and the USA. If, during the implementation of the SOYBEAN program, the US Congress and the concerned expert community pointed to the international legal obligations of the ABM Treaty, then the issue of compliance with international norms will not appear in future debates around the Golden Dome.
The inevitable consequences
However, other equally important international security issues remain unresolved. The Trump administration has openly announced its intention to defend itself not only from limited strikes from North Korea and Iran, but also from a more sophisticated nuclear missile attack from Russia and China. At the same time, no explanations are given regarding the prospects for maintaining strategic stability between the Russian Federation and the United States, which, due to the development of the American large-scale missile defense system and the retaliatory improvement of Russia's strategic offensive weapons, may be subject to erosion. In the absence of transparency and trust measures, not to mention the limitation of missile defense systems and the continuation of START reductions, an intensification of the arms race is expected, which will multiply the risks of a military conflict with the use of nuclear weapons.
Technological innovations in the development of space satellites and artificial intelligence, which Trump himself often talks about, can to some extent improve the characteristics of a promising missile defense system. However, this will not be enough to achieve its absolute effectiveness in repelling attacks using nuclear weapons, the demonstration of the destructive power of which may result from an unsuccessful interception.
Ultimately, despite the stated goal of "ensuring the safety of American citizens like never before," under tight deadlines, I think the Trump team will not be able to build a large-scale missile defense system with a combat space echelon. With a central focus on repelling attacks from Russia and China, the United States, even taking into account the continuity of the course, will create only a limited system capable, with some reservations, of repelling a small strike from the so-called rogue states.
Klimov Vasily
Candidate of Political Sciences, Researcher at the E.M. Primakov Center for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor at MGIMO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia
