53Received 14.10.2025. Revised 28.10.2025. Accepted 28.11.2025.
Abstract. “The Golden Dome”, D. Trump’s new missile defense program for the United States, raises concerns about strategic stability enhancement. The project means complete and ultimate rejection to recognize the existence of inseparable interrelationship between strategic offensive arms reduction and the level of quality of strategic defensive arms. Within “the Golden Dome” concept, it is planned to revive R. Reagan’s fantastic ideas known as Strategic Defense Initiative. Nuclear-weapon States are in fact offered escalation of the arms race, but with an access to outer space. Meanwhile, a high price of the program is ignored by Washington. The entire “Golden Dome” program is hardly feasible. However, even partial implementation of it can undermine the concept of nuclear deterrence and disrupt the international balance of power. International peace strengthening requires extra diplomatic efforts as well as repudiation of building up a large-scale program designed to establish unconstrained, global, deeply layers and multi-domain missile defense system to protect against any missile threats, including all types of missiles from “peer and near-peer adversaries”. It is necessary to apply diplomatic efforts to coordinate the principle of world practice by joint efforts – it is impossible to strengthen national defense at the expense of the security of other states.
Keywords: ballistic missile defense, destabilizing effect of the “Golden Dome” program, nuclear arms control, national security, negotiations on strategic stability
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