Clayton Swope and Melissa Dalton
Will the Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s proposed national missile shield, start a new nuclear or outer space arms race, destabilize the balance between the major global powers, and exacerbate strategic instability? Beijing has asserted the initiative will weaken “global strategic balance and stability,” as well as turn “space into a war zone,” and Moscow has called it a “very destabilizing initiative” that would “[undermine] strategic stability at its core.” Meanwhile, for years, Moscow and Beijing have been tilting the scales to their strategic advantage, expanding their nuclear and missile forces and strengthening their military space power. The United States cannot ignore this threat and should anchor U.S. security on superiority, rather than hope that China and Russia would suddenly end initiatives to improve and expand their strategic forces. While the administration should strive for greater transparency with Congress and the American people on significant questions regarding costs and plans, and pursue deeper coordination with international partners, the Golden Dome and strong missile defenses will provide the United States a valuable security edge, a new tool for strategic deterrence, and a path to preserve peace.
The challenge in refuting arguments about the impact of the Golden Dome on strategic stability and its potential to spark an arms race—a nuclear arms race or arms race in outer space—is that both “strategic stability” and “arms race” are terms without agreed-upon definitions and are impossible to objectively measure. If the litmus test for strategic stability was whether anyone was engaged in a full-scale nuclear war, then yes, the world is basking in a period of strategic stability. But if strategic stability is when nuclear-armed states neither feel compelled to use their nuclear weapons first nor feel the need to increase the size of their nuclear forces—this is a common definition of strategic stability—one arrives at a different conclusion. The United States must sensibly modernize its nuclear forces. By contrast, China and Russia are actively expanding their strategic arsenals with new and novel capabilities. Since 2020, China has tripled the size of its nuclear arsenal, improved the quality of its nuclear weapons, and expanded its military footprint in outer space. Russia is fielding new nuclear weapons systems, including hypersonic ones, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, and a nuclear-armed torpedo. But stability hinges on more than just nuclear weapons. Beyond nukes, China and Russia are also aggressively developing and expanding new tools in the space, cyber, information, and irregular warfare spaces, accelerated by AI, quantum, and other emerging technologies, to undermine U.S. and allied interests and ability to achieve their operational objectives —there is no sign they seek balance.
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