On Thursday, President Trump released his much-anticipated Missile Defense Review. Speaking at the Pentagon, he talked up the plan to boost missile defense in grandiose terms, but the real message of the review, both unclassified and short on specific calls to action, wasn’t the president’s words but the challenges it lays out, most significantly complacency and new threats from China and Russia. Unfortunately, the report and the president’s address points to the wrong way to combat them.
For the first time, the Missile Defense Review explicitly lists both China and Russia as a threat: “While Russia and China pose separate challenges and are distinct in many ways, both are enhancing their existing offensive missile systems and developing advanced sea- and air-launched cruise missiles as well as hypersonic capabilities.”
