William D. Hartung
One of President Donald Trump’s latest arguments for annexing Greenland is that it is essential to plans for a leak-proof Golden Dome missile defense system. Earlier this month, the president said, “[a]ll we want from Denmark, for national and international security, [is] to keep our very energetic and dangerous potential enemies at bay [with] this land on which we’re going to build the greatest Golden Dome ever built.” The overarching problem is that strong evidence suggests that a flawless Golden Done system is physically impossible if it includes a commitment to block an ICBM attack. Such an attack could involve large numbers of warheads traveling at 15,000 miles an hour, embedded in untold numbers of decoys indistinguishable from actual warheads.
Since Ronald Reagan announced a similar goal in his 1983 Star Wars speech, the Pentagon has not even conducted a realistic test under such a scenario, much less built a system to carry it out. As Dr. Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out, “Trump’s space-based interceptor shield is nothing but fool’s gold—shiny, but ultimately worthless.” Whether a part of the Golden Dome is based in Greenland or not, it will not work as advertised. If the president or the Pentagon secretly harbor more modest goals for the program, they should come clean and subject them to public and Congressional debate. Whatever form the Golden Dome ultimately takes, the administration has not made clear why having radars or interceptors in Greenland would make it any more effective.
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