U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to build an American version of the “Iron Dome” to protect the U.S. from airstrikes will prevent China and Russia from threatening the United States with nuclear weapons, but analysts warn it could trigger a three-way arms race.
On Friday, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency requested the defense industry to identify available technologies and capabilities for constructing the American Iron Dome. The deadline for this is the end of February.
On January 27, President Trump signed an executive order mandating the creation of the U.S. Iron Dome.
The executive order states that the United States will ensure the protection of all citizens and the nation by building a next-generation missile defense system.
The U.S. Iron Dome would defend the United States “from ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation air attacks from adversaries with military capabilities comparable to those of the U.S., adversaries with similar capacities, and adversaries presenting security threats,” the statement reads.
This system would allow the U.S. to have “counter-response capabilities,” meaning the ability to launch a nuclear counterattack.
The order also includes a review of missile defense posture to identify ways that U.S. allies and partners can enhance cooperation in missile defense development and operations.
Trump instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to develop a plan over the next three months to build the missile shield.
Strengthening Preventive Capabilities
Robert Peters, a researcher on Nuclear Prevention and Missile Defense at the Heritage Foundation, said on a phone call Thursday that the American Iron Dome would eliminate the possibility that a foreign actor could use nuclear threats to pressure the U.S., while also protecting the country from potential attacks.
“We have the capabilities to build an Iron Dome,” he said, adding, “There is no reason why we shouldn’t do it, especially when we see autocrats in North Korea, China, and Russia engaging in nuclear threats.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons during the war in Ukraine, which began with Moscow’s large-scale attack in 2022.
In November, President Putin signed a new doctrine outlining when Moscow could respond with nuclear retaliation, after President Joe Biden allowed Ukraine to use long-range U.S. weapons to attack military targets in Russia.
According to the revised doctrine, a conventional attack on Russia by any state, supported by a nuclear power, is considered a joint attack and could trigger a nuclear response. Previously, Russia reserved the right to use nuclear weapons only in the event of an attack threatening the country’s existence.
Patrycja Bazylczyk, a researcher at the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, “If implemented properly, the American Iron Dome could strengthen U.S. defense and influence our adversaries’ strategic calculations.”
She told Voice of America that “improving air and missile defense would make any potential nation considering attacking us less confident in the success of their attack,” adding that “this helps prevent attacks.”
The plan for the Iron Dome is similar to former President Ronald Reagan’s dual initiative for Strategic Defense and Nuclear Disarmament, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
The program, known as “Star Wars,” was announced in 1983 and aimed at developing a system to protect the United States from nuclear missile attacks.
Risk of an Arms Race
President Trump’s initiative for the “Iron Dome” somewhat reflects his concern about nuclear weapons, but “a stronger American missile defense system would almost certainly make it more difficult to reach a nuclear agreement with Russia and China due to mutual concerns that more effective missile defense would increase the threat to their nuclear counterstrike capabilities,” said Kristensen.
In a video message at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 23, President Trump said he wanted to discuss “nuclear disarmament” with Russia, and China should also join the talks.
Kristensen told Voice of America on Thursday that “the Federation of American Scientists welcomes Trump’s statements on the need to place restrictions on nuclear weapons and possibly eliminate them, and calls on the administration to work toward achieving these objectives.”
He added that nuclear reduction talks “are urgent because the ‘New START’ treaty will expire in about a year.”
The treaty between the United States and Russia on limiting nuclear weapons, ‘New START,’ will expire in February 2026.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told Voice of America that President Trump plans a “more ambitious system to prevent strategic missile attacks from Russia or China than the efforts he made in 2019.”
“It is unrealistic to believe that an effective system would be operational in the near future, primarily because adversaries would respond by attempting to break through missile defense systems in order to preserve the ability to prevent a conventional or nuclear strike by the U.S.,” he said.
However, Kimball added, “We welcome Trump’s interest in negotiating agreements with Russia and China to reduce the ‘extraordinary’ costs of nuclear weapons through negotiations to lower the nuclear arsenals with Russia and China. Without such an agreement, we would witness an expensive, three-way nuclear arms race, with no winners.”
According to the Federation of American Scientists, the United States has about 5,044 nuclear warheads, Russia has over 5,500, and China has roughly 500 nuclear warheads.
The Pentagon wrote in its annual military assessment of China, released in December, that China could have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2020.
North Korea, through its state news agency KCNA, expressed its opposition on Monday to the U.S. plan to build the Iron Dome, calling it a “hegemonic attempt to maintain its military supremacy.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington told Voice of America on Monday that it had no comment on the issue.
A senior Russian diplomat, quoted by the state news agency Tass on Thursday, said that the U.S. Iron Dome “puts an end to the prospects for a strategic reduction of nuclear and missile arsenals and leaves room for the increase of these arsenals in quantity and quality.”
Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, told Voice of America on Thursday that “Russians and Chinese have always said that if the U.S. builds better defenses, they will build better offensive capabilities in order to surpass American defenses.”
He told Voice of America that the effort to build the Iron Dome, along with President Trump’s interest in nuclear reduction talks with China and Russia, aims to reduce threats to the United States, but it will be difficult to bring China to the table for nuclear weapons removal talks.
