President Trump's Justification for Nuclear Arms Control
Part 2
Part one: The Golden Dome and Strategic Nuclear Arms Control: A New Treaty of Tricks and Deception?
President Trump has long been interested in nuclear arms control. In 1984, he advocated leading US negotiations with the Soviet Union, telling a reporter, "It needs to be done by someone who knows how to negotiate, not the kind of people I've seen in the past," adding confidently, "To learn all about rockets"It will take an hour and a half" (Romano, 1984). At that time, the world was awaiting new negotiations between Secretary of State George Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, which eventually developed into negotiations on nuclear and space weapons and then led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Gwertzman, 1984).
Given his interest in nuclear issues, it is not surprising that President Trump has made three arms control attempts during his first term: negotiations with Kim Jong Un on the denuclearization of North Korea, an attempt to reach a trilateral arms control agreement with China and Russia, and, when those efforts failed to bring in China, bilateral talks with Russia.
President Trump thinks he's rationalizing "denuclearization" talks—perhaps as a hybrid of his previous diplomatic efforts to limit North Korea's nuclear arsenal and achieve trilateral arms control—with three ideas in mind. First, Trump notes, "We already have so much nuclear weapons… You could destroy the world 50 times, 100 times” – here Trump is clearly exaggerating; nuclear arsenals have been weakened by an order of magnitude in total megatonnage since the mid-1960s (Miller and Price 2025).
Second, the president argues that spending could be redistributed across all three countries if nuclear buildup is limited. Finally, Trump alludes to China's nuclear buildup, believing that Beijing's nuclear program is on track to match the arsenals of the United States and Russia. Each rationale is a common element of the long-standing US strategy of gaining control over the nuclear weapons of potential adversaries (Miller and Price, 2025).
Reducing the nuclear risk to the United States and the likelihood of nuclear use has been, and will likely remain, a U.S. national security priority. During his first administration, President Trump's Nuclear Posture Review noted significant progress in reducing the global nuclear arsenal by more than 85 percent since the end of the Cold War, and called the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty "the cornerstone of the nuclear nonproliferation regime" (U.S. Department of Defense, 2018).
The Nuclear Posture Review formulated a nuclear policy consistent with historical The US approach, which supported global nonproliferation and disarmament efforts while guaranteeing the United States a monopoly on nuclear deterrence and guaranteed superiority over any country except Russia, is not uncommon among US presidents who traditionally prioritize arms control, even if reductions are currently unlikely given today's geopolitics.
Cost savings are also a well-known goal of US arms control policy. While preventing war and escalation is typically a priority in arms control, reducing pressure to increase nuclear spending and diverting these resources to other purposes is equally important (Larsen and Wirtz, 2009). The United States could use these potential savings to fund other defense priorities, free up resources for domestic investment, or reduce the budget deficit. By limiting the growth of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces, the United States could meet its own need for a significant increase in nuclear forces, which comes with significant costs.
Finally, the Trump administration is alarmed by China's growing regional ambitions and its rapid buildup of strategic nuclear weapons and new strategic delivery systems—all of which serve as a powerful incentive for Washington to explore approaches and meaningful engagement with Beijing on arms control.
The Biden administration held its only arms control and nonproliferation consultation with China in November 2023, failing to achieve concrete results on either nuclear arms limitations or more modest risk reduction agreements. Unsurprisingly, Chinese officials, citing the much larger arsenals of the US and Russia, continue to advocate for more significant reductions between the United States and Russia before China will consider engaging in arms control.
President Trump notes the destabilizing effect of China's expanding nuclear arsenal, which will push back China's traditional focus on limited and effective deterrence. Arms control cooperation could help reduce the opacity of US-China nuclear relations, even if quantitative limits remain elusive in the near term (Gottemoeller, 2025).
The Golden Dome and the Dynamics of Development of Offensive and Defensive Weapons
Executive Order 14186, "Iron Dome for America," establishes the goal of U.S. missile defense policy as "deterring—and protecting—our citizens and critical infrastructure from any foreign air attack on the United States" (White House, 2025). Thus, the policy aims to address threats posed by ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) possessed by peer, near-peer, and non-peer adversaries (Defense Intelligence Agency, 2025).
The presidential decree instructs the Ministry of Defense to submit technical and military requirements for new missile defense capabilities, as well as a plan for their implementation and funding. In the near term, the Pentagon will consolidate existing air and missile defense capabilities under a unified command and control system focused on a more comprehensive defense of the country, while simultaneously developing plans for an even more extensive system in the long term (Shinego, 2025).
In the medium term, President Trump has already discussed deploying space-based sensors, detection and tracking capabilities, and interceptor missiles—a system designed so that “hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, and advanced cruise missiles will all be shot down in mid-air”—to complete “the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago” (Trump, 2025).
Judging by news The Department of Defense is reportedly continuing its work: officials are developing "various options" for implementing the executive order's directives and briefing the appropriate congressional bodies on the initial structure of the Gold Dome program (now called "Iron Dome for America"). In April, Defense Department officials presented President Trump with low-, medium-, and high-complexity options, with corresponding price points (Copp, 2025). However, it remains unclear which option (or options) President Trump will select as the program evolves.
A less ambitious plan might envision a modest increase in the U.S. ability to defend against limited missile attacks. Missile defense experts could implement such a plan at relatively low cost, without significant changes to the planned force structure and composition. For example, the Department of Defense could modestly expand the existing ground-based midcourse defense system, consisting of 44 interceptors based in Alaska and California, or the Secretary of Defense could order warships equipped with the system. Defense and the Aegis missile defense system, prioritize US missile defense. A more modest approach could even include a limited number of space-based interceptors to repel ballistic missile attacks.
Combined with US offensive nuclear capabilities, a more limited version of the Golden Dome program, based on the policies outlined in the two most recent missile defense reviews, could ostensibly sow doubt in the minds of any adversary, including Russia and China, about the success of a limited conventional or nuclear attack against the United States. As a result, the adversary would be forced to launch a larger missile strike to increase the likelihood of operational success, which carries an increased risk of massive retaliation and escalation by the US. Faced with such a choice, the US defense system could deter Russia or China from launching limited strikes—at least, that's the theoretical framework being developed in the Pentagon.
On the other hand, Trump's most ambitious plan, the "Golden Dome," would be designed to defend against the full spectrum of potential missile threats against the United States, including large-scale and sophisticated attacks from Russia and China, both separately and simultaneously. The Trump administration's public statements about the "Golden Dome" appear to fit this "high-level" category, but it is unclear whether the practical steps necessary to realize such a broad vision will—or can—be implemented and resourced within the next decade. Such a plan would reverse long-standing U.S. policy aimed at focusing national missile defense on deterring limited missile attacks. In addition to significant investments in U.S. defense against drones and cruise missiles, this would almost certainly require significant investment in space-based missile defense to counter ballistic missiles.
Proponents of a robust, full-spectrum national missile defense system in the United States argue that, in addition to the benefits of a limited system, a robust capability would strengthen the United States' position in future New START negotiations and enhance nuclear deterrence by making its adversaries question the effectiveness of its second-strike nuclear capability, which could withstand a combination of US offensive and defensive capabilities. Hawks in the United States who adhere to this strategy believe:
If an adversary fears a US first strike as a more likely option in an escalating conflict, it is believed that it may be less inclined to engage in conventional aggression or escalate the conflict to a full-scale nuclear exchange.
The technical barriers to creating a space-based network of sensors and interceptor missiles are now much lower than they were during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars." However, attempting to create a "Golden Dome" designed to act as a "missile shield" against large-scale Russian and Chinese strikes would be costly and would compete with other defense priorities (Congressional Research Service 2025). Certainly, the US push for space-based missile defense, even if it is unlikely to ever achieve a truly impenetrable "shield," would be of the greatest concern and anxiety to Russia and China.
Claims by both proponents and critics that a Star Wars-style missile defense system could be 100% effective are exaggerated. Russia and China are developing offensive missile systems specifically designed to penetrate American missile defenses.
Existing and planned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) have sufficient range and throw-weight to deliver large numbers of nuclear warheads to targets within the United States in a manner likely to overwhelm even the most formidable defenses. The Russian 9M730 Burevestnik cruise missile system is designed to fly curved, low-altitude trajectories, allowing it to launch nuclear strikes while bypassing missile defenses. The Poseidon torpedo, meanwhile, can deliver multimegaton-class nuclear warheads to the US coast from underwater (Kaur, 2023).
China, for its part, is investing in hypersonic maneuverable missiles and a fractional-orbital bombardment system, both designed to guarantee the delivery of warheads to the US territory even in the presence of a robust defense. China is also actively increasing the number of deployed missiles, ensuring the ability to launch large-scale and complex strikes that would overwhelm even the highly effective US defenses (Defense Intelligence Agency, 2025).
Critically, the tradeoff—the cost of deploying improved or additional offensive capabilities compared to the cost of compensating defensive measures—will likely continue to favor offensive capabilities. Successfully intercepting missile defenses is technically complex and depends on highly effective interceptors, non-kinetic capabilities, sensors, and high-speed communications.
Missile defense to protect the United States from various missile attacks is far more complex than, for example, the missions performed by Ukraine against Russian attack drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles, or the joint US-Israeli efforts against missile attacks by Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. According to one estimate, deploying a missile defense system with 90% effectiveness would require the United States to spend at least eight times more than the attacker (Moric and Kadyshev, 2024).
The complex threat landscape facing missile defense developers is prompting proponents of the Golden Dome project to consider space capabilities. As General Stephen Whiting of the U.S. Space Force explained:
It's time to make it clear that we need space-based missiles and weapons systems. We need orbital interceptors... We call them weapons, and we need them to deter space conflict and to succeed if we engage in such a fight (Copp, 2025).
Russian and Chinese Perceptions of US Missile Defense
Russia and China have long opposed the expansion of the US missile defense system, and in recent years they have been unwilling to engage in substantive dialogue with the United States aimed at reducing nuclear risks and advancing arms control agreements. For 20 years, Russia has blamed the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the US development of advanced missile defense systems as the most serious obstacle to strategic stability. Discussions of missile defense and strategic stability have typically focused on actions taken by the US.
The ABM Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union limited the deployment of antiballistic missiles to two sites in each country: one to protect the capital and one to protect an ICBM base. It also required that antiballistic missile systems be located far enough apart that their integration would not create a regional defense or the beginnings of a national defense system. In 1974, the parties amended the treaty, further limiting the permitted defensive systems to one site per side.
In the lead-up to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, Russian officials warned that the American missile defense system conceived by President George W. Bush would violate the ABM Treaty and undermine the carefully constructed bilateral strategic order. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov detailed the arguments for preserving the ABM Treaty, as well as its continued linkage to further strategic offensive arms reductions, in Foreign Affairs (Ivanov, 2000). Ivanov warned that the demise of the ABM Treaty "would have a devastating domino effect on the existing system of arms control and disarmament agreements." However, in 2002, the United States withdrew from the treaty anyway.
Under both Clinton and Bush, the stated rationale for creating a limited national missile defense capability was supposedly to forestall threats from "rogue states," not to deny Russia the ability to strategically deter the United States. However, for Russia, the American missile defense, designed to address the missile threats from so-called rogue states that were evolving and expanding year after year, meant that defense against limited threats would morph into defense against the advanced ballistic missiles that formed the core of Russia's deterrent. Perhaps equally important, Moscow viewed Washington's decision to destroy the carefully crafted architecture of strategic stability as a unilateral projection of US power.
Despite concerns, Russia initially reacted to the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty with considerable restraint. In 2002, the same year the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the US and Russia even successfully concluded the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads for each country to 1700–2200. However, the situation changed at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, when Vladimir Putin spoke out against Western intrusions into Russia's near abroad, as well as into the country's domestic politics (Shanker and Lander, 2007). He argued that US plans to expand the ABM system would "disrupt, completely disrupt" the fragile balance of strategic offensive forces that underpins stable nuclear deterrence.
The Russian side has continued to insist on this very argument for two decades. Russia currently possesses an offensive potential, limited by the New START Treaty, of 1,550 nuclear warheads capable of reaching targets within the United States. However, with a powerful US missile defense system, the probability (reliability) of delivering strategic nuclear weapons to their targets could sharply decrease from 0,89 (89%) for ballistic missiles and 0,8 (80%) for cruise missiles to 0,1-0,2 (10-20%), taking into account countermeasures from a national missile defense system. This argument drastically alters the balance of strategic power and leads to increased instability in Euro-Atlantic relations. This argument quite naturally encourages Russia to modernize and update its nuclear arsenal and to avoid any desire to allow the Americans to control its strategic weapons.
China also opposed the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, noting its importance for maintaining strategic stability. Chinese experts feared that the development of US missile defense, along with advanced conventional strike capabilities, could include non-nuclear counterforce capabilities that could compromise Beijing's strategic nuclear second-strike capability (Zhao and Stefanovic, 2023). For Beijing, the top-down approach necessary for stabilizing relations overall required that US missile defense remain a secondary bilateral issue while both sides sought to build trust.
As tensions in bilateral relations have risen, China's negative attitude toward the American missile defense system has also intensified. In response to President Trump's 2019 Missile Defense Review, Chinese officials expressed "extreme dissatisfaction and strong opposition," accusing the United States of undermining strategic stability and "baselessly" talking about the threat posed by China (O'Connor, 2019). Chinese and Russian responses to the 2019 Missile Defense Review were similar and likely coordinated to some extent, indicating a growing convergence of the two countries' positions on strategic issues.
China's pursuit of a rapid buildup of its nuclear forces suggests that it has either significantly revised its assessment of the forces required for a guaranteed retaliatory strike or considers conflict with the United States more likely. It may also indicate that China has transformed its military and nuclear strategy in such a way that nuclear forces are required to address additional challenges, such as the threat of limited nuclear use as a shield for conventional aggression against neighbors, escalation management options in the face of existing and emerging limitations of US nuclear capabilities, or a combination of these.
Regardless of the motivation, China will likely view a more robust U.S. missile defense capability as reinforcing the rationale for and increasing the need for further expansion of its nuclear forces; at a minimum, Beijing's leadership will find justification for expanding the development of hypersonic glide vehicles, conventional ICBMs, and orbital bombardment systems, which together could pose unique, unforeseen threats to the U.S. homeland, placing additional strain on U.S. strategic defenses.
Russia and China will undoubtedly react negatively to the Golden Dome project, and it will undoubtedly influence their approach to any arms control initiatives with the United States. In May, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that the Golden Dome "increases the risk of space becoming a battlefield, fuels an arms race, and undermines international security," in response to President Trump's description of the new architecture (Reals 2025).
While highly effective missile defenses can impact the ability of strategic offensive weapons to achieve their objectives, Russia and China possess sufficient nuclear capabilities to defeat U.S. missile defenses today, tomorrow, and in the near future. However, each country's pessimistic projections of what might happen in the future, coupled with a desire to use U.S. missile defenses as a political weapon, ensure that neither Moscow nor Beijing is likely to seriously consider arms control negotiations with the United States if missile defense is removed from the agenda.
To be continued in the next part...
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