In Defense of Missile Defense
23rd June 2024
The basic case for missile defense is quite simple: nuclear weapons aren’t something you want detonating in your country, and shooting them down seems like a good idea. But as appealing as this is, it is usually countered by a pair of counterarguments, that it’s far too hard to shoot down all incoming missiles, and that it would be destabilizing if it was possible. But this relies on the basic premise that any missile defense system which can’t shoot down all missiles is useless, and there’s no reason that would be true unless someone was smuggling it in to defeat missile defense for other reasons. (We’ll come back to that in a bit.) A system which stops 50% of incoming missiles means that only half as many people will die in a nuclear war,1 obviously a desirable result.