THE upward spiral in the nuclear and missile arms race among the great powers is alarming.
It is increasing the significance of nuclear weapons in militarily insecure states and augmenting the demand for missile defence systems.
President Donald Trump hinted at negotiating arms control and defence budget cuts with Russia and China.
Still, his announcement to develop and field the American Iron Dome has blighted the euphoria of arms control and further limited the chances of nuclear risk reduction measures’ negotiations in South Asia.
The United States has colossally invested in its nuclear modernization program.
The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review of the United States and Russian new nuclear doctrine “escalate to de-escalate” and exit from Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ratification manifest the invention of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
China qualitatively and quantitatively augmented its nuclear arsenal by developing next-generation, highly manoeuvrable hypersonic missiles that are very difficult to intercept.
North Korea is maturing its missile and nuclear inventories; India, Pakistan, and Iran all make clear nuclear risks will define the 21st century.
The Russian ruling elite has signaled the use of nuclear weapons to prevent the physical involvement of NATO in the Ukrainian war since the beginning of the war in February 2022.
Russia’s egregious violation of the assurances provided to Ukraine in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum exposes the limits of negative security assurances and increases the significance of nuclear weapons to deter aggression.
Therefore, today, the Ukrainians are condemning their leader’s decision to transfer the Soviet-made nuclear weapons on their soil to Russia and acceding to the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states.
President Trump signed an order that mandated a process to develop an ‘American Iron Dome’ on January 27, 2025.
He said, “The Iron Dome will further the goals of peace through strength.
By empowering the United States with a second-strike capability, the Iron Dome will deter adversaries from attacks on the homeland.
”Technologically, the Iron Dome is effective against relatively small and slow weapons, not incoming hypersonic cruise missiles and ICBMs.
Still, Trump’s order appears to use “Iron Dome” as branding for a different kind of system entirely—one that, among other things, puts interceptor weapons in orbit.
In March 2018, the first Trump administration floated the concept of space weapons/interceptors.
It will be a next-generation U.S.missile defence shield against ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles, and other forms of aerial attack.
The American Iron Dome will increase the confidence of the other ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems aspirants, including India.
Since the mid-1980s, India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation has strived to develop BMD systems.
Despite decades of investment and scientists’ claims, India’s BMD system is at least a decade away from operational maturity and fielding.
Whether these weapons are operationally reliable or not, Pakistani defence policymakers cannot ignore the steady development of India’s BMD systems.
They must improve the country’s missile arsenal qualitatively and quantitatively so that its cruise and ballistic missile inventories overwhelm the adversary’s missile shield numerically and qualitatively.
Russia has expressed serious reservations about President Trump’s decision to build a new missile defence shield, which has the potential to destabilize the global strategic equilibrium among the great powers and increase the probability of military confrontation in space.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s statement on January 31, 2025, highlighted this concern, stating, “It (the plan) directly envisages a significant strengthening of the American nuclear arsenal and means for conducting combat operations in space, including the development and deployment of space-based interception systems.
” The U.S. weaponization of space could turn it into an arena of armed confrontation, and the development of an advanced Iron Dome could instigate Russia to expand and upgrade its nuclear arsenal.
The optimistic news is that President Donald Trump expressed a desire to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China to cut massively defence budgets.
On February 13, he said, “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many.
” He opined, “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.
And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.
” He also indicated that in his first meetings with President Xi and President Putin of Russia, he convinced them “to cut our military budget in half.”
The billion-dollar question is how well Trump’s proposals will work with Russia and China.
Realistically, cutting the military budgets in half and starting trilateral nuclear arms control negotiations is difficult.
The trends in the international strategic environment do not support President Trump’s aspiration.
On February 21, 2023, Russia announced suspending its participation in the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which was extended in 2021.
China has maintained that nuclear arms control talks would be possible if the U.S. and Russia first significantly and substantially reduced their much larger arsenals.
In summary, the advancement of the American Iron Dome will fast-track military modernization and further shrink the space for arms control, despite President Trump’s rhetoric about arms control and a decrease in defence budgets.
The U.S. strategic competitors and adversaries would develop countermeasures that render the Iron Dome less effective.
—The writer is Prof at the School of Politics and IR, Quaid-i-Azam University. (jaspal_99@hotmail.com)
