MOSCOW, May 30. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump's efforts to build a missile defense system could ratchet up the risk of a nuclear-arms conflict, according to Vasily Klimov, researcher at the Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"The Trump administration openly announces its intention to defend itself not only against limited strikes from North Korea and Iran, but also against a more sophisticated nuclear missile attack from Russia and China. At the same time, no clarification is given as to the prospects for preserving strategic stability between Russia and the US, which, provided that the US develops a major missile defense system and Russia retaliates by improving its strategic offensive weapons, could be subject to erosion," the analyst, a member of the institute’s Center for International Security, said in a column for TASS. "In the absence of transparency and trust measures, not to mention the limitation of missile defense systems and the continuation of START reductions, an intensification of the arms race is expected, which will raise severalfold the risks of a military conflict with the use of nuclear weapons."
According to Klimov, technological innovations in the realm of satellites and artificial intelligence could improve US missile defense to some extent.
"However, that will not be enough to achieve its absolute effectiveness in repelling nuclear strikes, which would demonstrate their destructive power in the event of a failed interception," he said.
The analyst said he doubted Trump’s team, despite its stated goal of making America safe like never before, will be able to build an extensive missile defense system with a space-based echelon, given the tight deadline. Despite the main focus being on deflecting attacks from Russia and China, even if there is policy continuity, the US will build only a limited system capable - with some reservations - of deflecting a strike with a small number of missiles from the so-called rogue states, according to Klimov.