“Ever since nuclear-armed intercontinental-range missiles were deployed in the 1950s, the United States (and its potential adversaries) have been vulnerable to nuclear attack. This is very unnerving, and has caused our leaders to search for some kind of technical fix that would change this situation by making it possible for us to defend ourselves against such an attack. Fixing this situation is also very appealing to the public. As a consequence, new systems for defending against ICBMs have been proposed again and again, and about half a dozen have been built, costing large amounts of money, in the hope that a technical fix could be found that would make us safe. But none of these efforts have been successful, because the difficulty of defending against nuclear-armed ICBMs is so great.”
https://www.404media.co/scientists-explain-why-trumps-175-billion-golden-dome-is-a-fantasy/
While this is obviously true now, in hindsight, it’s certainly not fair. The entire western world put all of their eggs in the USA basket… why? Because after WWII there was a real sense that the USA was trustable. That they would work toward freedom, democracy, and (importantly) expanding markets in the world. The USA made the basket and the rest of the world piled in their eggs. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc all), the world continued to believe the lie that America was happy promulgating. Nobody reasonable believed America would take a hard right turn to fascism and voluntarily elect a leader that would throw the basket — the basket they made to always favour America — in the trash. But here we are. Yes, the world never should have agreed to America putting itself at the top of the pile. But we did and now the world is busy re-orienting without America. I think that’s for the better, but then again I’m not American. I think Americans are in for a rude awakening when the Trump policies actually come home to roost… of course he’ll be gone by then and they’ll just blame whatever democrat inherits the burning hulk of America that he leaves behind.