“Let me share with you a vision of the future,” said President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983, in an address to the nation on defense and national security. “What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet [missile] attack. That we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies,” he continued. Reagan then called upon the American scientific community “to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering … nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” With those words, President Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). President Donald Trump hopes to fulfill Reagan’s vision.
Democrats, like Sen. Ted Kennedy, immediately voiced their opposition to SDI, labeling it “Star Wars.” They argued it would be too expensive and wouldn’t work. Instead, it would destabilize the “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) model of deterrence foisted upon the United States by Kennedy–Johnson Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, one of the worst defense officials in our nation’s history. But Reagan ignored the critics and persisted in moving forward with SDI.
Defense theorists like Edward Teller (father of the H-Bomb), Gen. Daniel Graham of High Frontier, Robert Jastrow of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Reagan science adviser George Keyworth, and others had laid the scientific, technological, and theoretical foundation for Reagan’s vision. Jastrow wrote a brilliant essay in support of Reagan’s SDI program in the January 1984 issue of Commentary. Gen. Graham wrote a book, High Frontier, that promoted the idea that a defense against nuclear weapons was possible.
Democrats in Congress and several U.S. scientists were joined by Soviet spokesmen in opposition to SDI as dangerous and destabilizing. A RAND study in 1986 noted that Soviet officials were concerned precisely because they thought SDI might render their offensive strategic missiles obsolete, or at the very least compel Moscow to spend much more on strategic offensive weapons than they could afford. Reagan stayed committed to SDI, refusing to trade it for deep reductions in nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik summit. For Reagan, SDI was never a bargaining chip; his goal was to defend the American homeland from nuclear attack. As Ed Feulner later pointed out, Reagan didn’t accept McNamara’s MAD doctrine. He wanted to “ensure that we have a viable missile defense capability that protects us all well into the future.”
More than four decades after Reagan’s historic speech about defending the homeland, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have announced that America will begin constructing a “Golden Dome” missile defense system. Trump stated on May 20, 2025: “I promised the American people that I would build a cutting-edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack. And that’s what we’re doing today.” Space Force General Michael Guetlein will command the project, which Secretary Hegseth described as a “bold initiative” to respond to growing missile threats from America’s adversaries.
Trump, like Reagan before him, believes that defending the American homeland is the most important job of the federal government. So does Hegseth, and so does Gen. Guetlein, who said:
While we have been focused on keeping peace overseas, our adversaries have been quickly modernizing their nuclear forces, building ballistic missiles capable of hosting multiple warheads, building out hypersonic missiles capable of attacking the United States within an hour and traveling at 6,000 miles an hour, building cruise missiles that can navigate around our radar and our defenses, building submarines that can sneak up on our shores and, worse yet, building space weapons. It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland.
Trump noted that Golden Dome will include “space-based sensors and interceptors,” reviving Reagan’s vision of a layered defense. And the budget bill that Trump is urging Congress to pass includes $25 billion to begin the project. Cost estimates for a working Golden Dome are around $175 billion.
Trump should expect the critics to say that Golden Dome is too expensive and it won’t work. Faced with similar criticism, President Reagan responded, “I … pledged to the American people that I would not trade away SDI, there was no way I could tell our people their government would not protect them against nuclear destruction.” If Trump is successful in building Golden Dome, Reagan’s vision will be fulfilled. This is the essence of America First.
READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa:
Trump’s Reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine Informs His Turn to Greenland
