Golden Dome dangers: An arms control expert explains how Trump’s missile defense threatens to make the US less safe

  President Donald Trump’s idea of a “Golden Dome” missile defense system carries a range of potential strategic dangers for the United States.

  Golden Dome is meant to protect the U.S. from ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, and missiles launched from space. Trump has called for the missile defense to be fully operational before the end of his term in three years.

How to avoid nuclear war

  The new movie Oppenheimer has caused many people to rededicate themselves to the goal of achieving an international ban on nuclear weapons. But that’s never going to happen. There is no reasonable possibility whatsoever that the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA) would ever agree to dismantle its nuclear stockpile, especially since there would be no way to guarantee that foreign regimes would do the same.

North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons

  With North Korea accusing Secretary of State (and former CIA Director) Mike Pompeo of engaging in a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization,” it should be increasingly obvious to most everyone that North Korea is not going to destroy its nuclear bombs.

  This should not surprise anyone. The dumbest thing that North Korea could ever do is to destroy its nuclear capability. One thing is for sure: No matter how brutal North Korea’s communist regime is, it’s not stupid. The North Koreans know that the second that they were to destroy their last nuclear bomb, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and his communist regime would become one great big nothing-burger in the eyes of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The best hope for Korea: The North Korean citizenry

  With President Trump’s appointment of John Bolton as his new “national security advisor,” don’t be surprised if the Trump administration again begins banging the war drums against North Korea. Bolton has expressed support for initiating an attack against North Korea if it refuses to dismantle its nuclear bombs and missiles. For what it’s worth, Bolton was also a fervent supporter of the U.S. government’s attack in 2003 on Iraq, a country that, like North Korea, never attacked the United States.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Don’t be surprised to see Trump bomb North Korea

  After the in-your-face Fourth of July “gift” that North Korea delivered to President Trump in the form of an intercontinental ballistic missile test, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see President Trump and the Pentagon retaliate by bombing North Korea. The reason goes not only to Trump’s erratic behavior, especially when teased or taunted, but also because a bombing attack would reflect the Cold War mentality that unfortunately still holds the Pentagon in its grip.

  I’ll bet that most Americans today do not realize that during the Kennedy administration, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were recommending that the president initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much like the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Jacob G. Hornberger: South Korea should give U.S. troops the boot

  The best thing that South Koreans could ever do, both for themselves and for the American people, as well as the Japanese citizenry, is boot all U.S. troops out of their country.

  Isn’t the reason obvious?

  If President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA succeed in instigating a war with North Korea, guess who is going to pay the biggest price for such a war.

Tim Kelly: The MAD Myth

  Cold War dogma asserts that mutually assured destruction, however troubling, has worked in averting a nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

  Lending superficial credence to this idea is the fact the world has not yet been incinerated in a nuclear conflagration. This fact has been cited as vindication of the U.S. government's decision to amass a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and it is still used today to justify retention of that arsenal.

  Mutually assured destruction, or MAD, is a military doctrine based on the strategy of deterrence. This doctrine states that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two opposing sides would effectively result in the complete destruction of both the attacker and the defender. The theory here is that neither side, once armed, has any incentive either to initiate a conflict or disarm.