Missile defence remains critically important to protect civilian populations from nuclear attacks via ballistic missiles by rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Guarding against attacks by relatively small numbers of incoming missiles was what George W. Bush had in mind in 2001 when he withdrew the US from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Bush was not pursuing Ronald Reagan's comprehensive missile defence shield, but one oriented instead to the strategic threats America and its allies faced after the Cold War. Outlaw states are asymmetric threats, unlike the Soviet Union, with which an exchange of nuclear salvoes could have extinguished civilisation. But recognising that Iran, for example, does not pose an existential threat to the US (although it might to smaller, nearby states like Israel) does not lessen its unacceptable risk. Nuclear weapons held by the rogues are best understood as weapons of terrorism, directed less against military targets than against innocent civilian populations. Rather than see Americans held hostage by religious fanatics or leaders with Hitler-in-the-bunker mentalities, a missile defence shield is entirely sensible.

Russia, at least in 2001, understood our thinking, and acquiesced quietly when Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty.  But many in Moscow never fully accepted Bush's rationale, believing the real plan was to allow America to make a first strike against Russia and have missile defences to blunt a Russian retaliatory "second strike". 

Such thinking was fanciful, but no less fanciful than Obama's. He never shed the Cold War arms-control theology's hostility to missile defence and a faith-based longing for ever-lower levels of deployed nuclear warheads. Obama conceded to Russia on both fronts, cancelling planned national missile-defence assets in Poland and the Czech Republic and agreeing to the New START treaty, which further decreased Russian and American deployed nuclear warheads. This was a revival of Cold War thinking that failed not only to deal with the threats posed by the rogue states, but also failed to account for China's growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, unlimited by any treaty.  

Not only is the need for missile defences against the rogue states more acute than when Bush extricated us from the ABM treaty, but future strategic threats may require a system closer to Reagan's original vision. The more rogue states there are (such as Pakistan falling to Islamic radicals, who would then control its substantial nuclear weapons arsenal), the greater the need for multiple layers of protection against overlapping or simultaneous threats. And it is not Cold War déjà vu to contemplate missile defence against a rearmed Russia, which has taken advantage of New START to modernise and improve its ageing nuclear and missile stockpiles, or China, increasingly emerging as a global strategic competitor and potential adversary.

China's future is opaque even for its own new generation of leaders. Will Beijing pursue a "peaceful rise" as a "responsible stakeholder" in world affairs as its Western admirers endlessly proclaim? Or will the PLA, the dominant voice in the still dominant Communist Party, continue exerting a disproportionate influence on China's policies? As noted above, the PLA has launched a substantial upgrading and expansion of its conventional and nuclear forces, but there is even more under way. The PLA is emphasising "anti-access" and "area denial" weapons systems to deny US naval mobility in the seas around China; it has perhaps the most advanced cyberwarfare capabilities on the planet;  and its war-fighting plans in space look formidable.  

Complementing these military strengths, Beijing's political posture is increasingly aggressive, evidenced by its audacious territorial claims to islands and reefs in the South and East China Seas, and its rhetoric about Taiwan. At the United Nations, its recent double veto (with Russia) of a resolution condemning the Assad regime's repression in Syria shows China stepping out from the shadows to defend its economic and political interests more assertively. These developments pose the question whether China's "peaceful rise" is simply a ruse, to be discarded when its military muscle matches its economic heft. At a minimum, US observers wonder whether our Western Pacific naval forces will have to be substantially greater than at present to dissuade China from even greater territorial and political aspirations. So doing, however, is simply impossible today, given the inadequate state of the fleet and the prospects ahead under Obama's budgets, sadly just when China's neighbours from Japan to ASEAN to India are nervously eyeing Beijing's every move.