Nuclear Threats Are Growing. How Should U.S. Missile Defenses Be Upgraded?
Loren Thompson
When future historians analyze U.S. security policies during the early decades of the 21st century, they may be hard-pressed to explain what policymakers were thinking.
Between 2001 and 2019, Washington spent a trillion dollars defending Afghanistan from the Taliban. During the same period it spent 5% of that amount, $50 billion, defending the U.S. homeland against ballistic missile attack by another nuclear power.
The logic explaining why so little money went to a seemingly more important mission was that Washington had come to rely on the threat of massive retaliation to deter Russia and China from nuclear aggression. Threatening horrible consequences turned out to be cheaper than building real defenses.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2020/03/05/nuclear-threats-are-growing-how-should-us-missile-defenses-be-upgraded/#2d32811017b7
