The National Interest:
Bad advice could encourage a reckless U.S. president to pursue a risky foreign policy while wrongly taking comfort that the Pentagon’s missile-defense systems protect the United States from nuclear retaliation.
That’s the latest warning from Ted Postol, a scientist and nuclear-weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Statements made by Vladimir Putin clearly and unambiguously indicate that he understands that U.S. missile defenses currently have no capabilities to deal with existing Russian ballistic missiles, yet alone something like a hypersonic-like vehicle.”
“What concerns Putin is that U.S. political and military leadership is so out of touch and so politicized with regard to the missile defense issue that a future president might actually think that they could get away with striking Russian nuclear forces and then using missile defenses to defend against a straggling Russian counterattack,” Postol explained.
