Golden Dome reheats Cold War nuclear arms race

When President Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983, the programme faced constant and repeated criticism. The SDI, or “Star Wars” programme as it became known, was impractical, expensive, violated existing treaties, and threatened to push Cold War tensions to new heights.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the programme gradually lost political support and was eventually redirected towards terrestrial conflict.

Forty years later, the spirit of Reagan lives on in President Donald Trump whose recent announcement of the US$175 billion ‘Golden Dome’ defence system is something straight out of the late Cold War. This proposed system, intended to be a space-based anti-missile shield, is already facing criticism from independent think tanks such as Chatham House.

The deployment of this technology by the US would “…almost certainly be seen by its adversaries as an attempt to undermine the logic of nuclear deterrence”, Chatham House Research Associate Julia Cournoyer writes, adding that the Golden Dome threatens to trigger “… a dangerous global arms race.”

Closer to home, Minister of Defence and Minister of Space, Judith Collins, has given the Golden Dome a seal of approval. At a recent security summit in Singapore, Collins emphasised that it was a defence mechanism, going so far as to say, “I don’t see it as an attack mechanism.” Claiming that weapons systems are only for “defence” is rhetoric that has justified all manner of sin.

Throughout the Cold War, superpowers such as the US and the Soviet Union spent vast sums on weapons development. Most notably, this spending took place in the realm of nuclear technology. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that by the 1980s, when Reagan first proposed the SDI, the global stockpile of nuclear warheads soared above 60,000, peaking at an approximate 70,000 warheads in the middle of the decade before a steady decline.

While global stockpiles of nuclear warheads sat at an estimated 12,331 at the start of 2025, the yield and effectiveness of these weapons has increased since the days of the Cold War. Much of the reduction is due to decommissioning of older weapons, not because of strong attempts to reduce nuclear arsenals.

Throughout this arms race, the existence of Armageddon-inducing weapons had constantly been justified through the rhetoric of defence. Nuclear weapons stockpiles were apparently necessary for deterrence, to prevent attack – conventional or nuclear – and to be used primarily as a means of massive retaliation.

Concepts such as “mutually assured destruction” precluded efforts for the superpowers to fully disarm, although there were many international attempts at disarmament and limitations on nuclear arsenals.

Among the various treaties and arms limitations agreements, one of the most successful was 1967’s Outer Space Treaty (OST), which emerged out of Cold War tensions and the early years of the Space Race.

The launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik I in 1957, prompted significant concern in the US over the use of outer space for military purposes. Articles in magazines such as Life theorised about the possibilities of attacks from outer space, the creation of military space platforms, and even the establishment of missile bases on the moon.

The Outer Space Treaty sought to limit the potential militarisation of this new frontier. It built on previous efforts such as the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to formally prohibit the deployment of nuclear weapons in space and also established that outer space should be treated as a place of scientific cooperation.

However, the treaty didn’t ban all military activity in outer space. So far, the Earth’s orbit has escaped the worst of humanity’s obsessive militarisation.

Dreams of missile bases on the moon or space stations that functioned as weapons platforms were left behind in the 1950s. Outside of high-altitude weapons testing and the occasional Soviet cannon-mounted space station, outer space has not become a conventional battleground.

Instead, its militarisation has focused on surveillance satellites and communications technology. In recent years, however, there has been a shift in attitudes. The US and China have both established independent ‘space forces.’
Satellites have played a major role in intelligence and communication during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and there has been renewed interest in anti-satellite weaponry, Russia’s Cosmos 2553 satellite is alleged to be one such object.

Seventy years of human space exploration has, so far, avoided becoming an arms race. The Golden Dome threatens to end this period of relative peace.

In this context, Collins’ comments, as Minister for Defence and Space need greater scrutiny. With her apparent endorsement of the Golden Dome, she is departing from New Zealand’s long history of anti-nuclear proliferation.

From the early days of the United Nations, New Zealand has supported nuclear disarmament resolutions and efforts to limit nuclear proliferation. On a domestic level, we established a clear stance on nuclear issues in 1984 when we refused American nuclear ships entry to our ports, harming our military relationship with the US and hastening the decay of ANZUS. These decisions were made despite heightened Cold War tensions, a renewed arms race, and New Zealand’s relationship with the US; it was a moral stand.

Former Prime Minister David Lange and his cabinet did not discern between the ‘defensive’ nature of American nuclear policy and the weapons’ offensive uses. Space-based weapons systems may not necessarily be as destructive as conventional nuclear weapons, but the capacity for harm remains high.

How would nuclear-armed nations respond if their military satellites are targeted? In what world does it make any sense for New Zealand to support this new and dangerous arms race?