The National Interest:
In recent weeks, Russia has conducted a number of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests with experimental payloads that are designed to penetrate advanced missile defenses. The idea is to ensure that Russian nuclear weapons can reach their targets even in the event that their targets are protected by a missile shield—even if such a defense system does not currently exist.
The Soviet Union and later Russia has been leery of missile defense systems even before President Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983. Both American and Soviet nuclear weapons experts have considered missile defense systems to be highly destabilizing since the 1960s when such systems were first envisioned. Most nuclear weapons experts in both the United States and Russia still hold to this view even though President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in December 2001.
