Golden Dome and Its Enemies

Guess what? Hostile powers prefer to be able to nuke us with relative ease.

Should we be surprised that nuclear powers that could target the United States for attack don’t like the idea of a U.S. missile defense?

The Wall Street Journal just ran a report headlined, “Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Riles Nuclear-Armed Foes.”

Trump does a lot of riling, some of gratuitous or misdirected, but if you’re going to upset anyone for any reason, it seems that unsettling nuclear-armed adversaries with your plans to defend yourself from catastrophic attack should be high on the list.

The concerns related in the piece — emanating from Russia, China, and North Korea, as well as domestic opponents of defenses — are a farrago of arms-control cliches that have been part of the missile-defense debate going back decades.