After three generations of futile efforts to develop reliable defenses against ICBM’s, tracing back to the Nike, Patriot, and Sprint programs of the 1950’s and 60’s and warped by Ronald Reagan’s science fictional “Star Wars” scheme, the Trump administration will today pick up the eternal torch. The chimera of anti-missile weaponry remains the most inexhaustible strategy for channeling hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury into the military and its industrial minions—far, far easier than even an endless war. It is now part of the everyday furniture of American life. Future historians will marvel at this mendacious folly.
