National Missile Defense
Ever since nuclear weapons of mass destruction have existed, people have been attempting to create ways to prevent a war that would bring about a worldwide Arma-geddon. Many of today's top military and government officials have been studying ways in which the United States can protect itself from a nuclear missile attack. What they have come up with is the National Missile Defense program, or NMD. The NMD would consist of a network of satellites, early-warning devices, and missiles pro-grammed to spot an incoming nuclear missile. When a nuclear missile is detected, the NMD would automatically launch the computer-guided interceptor missiles to seek out and destroy the incoming nuclear missile. This program, however, should not be im-plemented or researched any further. There are a few factors to support this claim. First, the NMD program is very costly. According to the website of the Federation of American Scientists, the projected total costs by the year 2005 !will be close to $14 bil-lion dollars, obviously a large amount of money that could be well spent elsewhere. Second, the NMD program is ineffective. There are many ways for a rouge state or a terrorist group with nuclear capabilities to get around the N
------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**Chafetz, Glenn. " (Hulme 1999) As an example of this statement, look at Russia. (Cirincione and Von Hippel 1999, 2) After signing the NMD act of 1999, President Clinton ordered another $6. First, the program is much too costly. '" (Teller 1987, 7) By the end of Reagan's presidency, support and enthusiasm for SDI had almost completely faded away, and Americans were "ambivalent about Reagan's vision, and political support began to decline. As study has shown, it will benefit nobody to develop and build one, and it will only hinder world peace and stability in the long run. "Charter of the United Nations" 3 Bevans 1153 26 June. The Ameri-can government taught the American people to live in fear of a possible pre-emptive nuclear strike by the Soviets. Why is it not in a state's self inter-est to build a nuclear device? Won't that give it power over others? The truth is, as we have already seen, if one state has nuclear capabilities, then all the other states will work towards this as well, once again leaving the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction as the basis of feeling safe. Additionally, the Cold War was coming to an end, and Americans and Soviets no longer felt as threatened by each other's military capabilities as they had before. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. The Americans! and the Soviets were close to striking a deal on nuclear missile reduction, and President Bush began scaling down funding for SDI research. Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom.
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