Washington, over time, has come to rely extensively on the threat of massive retaliation to deter its perceived adversaries like nuclear powers Russia and China, instead of actually building real defences, opting for the cheaper solution. However, it may soon have to face the consequences of its decisions in the early decades of the 21st century, believes Loren Thompson, a Senior Contributor to Forbes on national security.
The analyst states that Washington spent a trillion dollars between 2001 and 2019 in Afghanistan against the Taliban, while allocating just 5 percent of that amount, $50 billion, to its own defence against a potential ballistic missile attack by a nuclear power.
The Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute underscores the seeming fallacy of this decision, as it was unclear whether emerging new “potential aggressors” such as a nuclear-armed North Korea or Iran could be deterred by threats of retaliation.
In the newly-unfolding circumstances, the US opted to bolster its deterrence policy with a system that was called Ground-based Midcourse Defense, or GMD.
The name is self-explanatory, as the system that most of the $50 billion allocated towards homeland defence were spent on was meant to intercept attacking missiles in the middle of their trajectories, meaning in space.
In the US arsenal, the report relays, GMD is the only system capable of intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting the country.
