MOSCOW — Russia and China said on Wednesday (May 20) that US President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defence shield plans threatened strategic stability and that Washington had been irresponsible not to work on a replacement for a landmark nuclear treaty.
The rebuke was issued in a joint statement after President Xi Jinping welcomed President Vladimir Putin with an honour guard and a gun salute at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, as children waved Chinese and Russian flags.
The Golden Dome envisions expanding ground‑based defences such as interceptor missiles, sensors and command‑and‑control systems while adding space‑based elements meant to detect, track and potentially shoot down incoming threats from orbit.
These would include advanced satellite networks and orbiting weapons.
“The parties believe that the US ‘Golden Dome’ project, which aims to build an unlimited, multi-level, multi-sphere, and global missile defence system to destroy all types of missiles, including all types of ‘peer adversaries’ missiles, at all stages of their flight and before they are launched, poses an obvious threat to strategic stability,” they said.
“These plans completely contradict the key principle of maintaining strategic stability, which requires the interconnectedness of strategic offensive and strategic defensive weapons.”
China and Russia also said they regretted the “irresponsible policy” of the US which had allowed the 2010 New START arms control treaty to expire without a replacement earlier this year.
Russia said it supported China’s position on not seeking to take part in potential US-Russian nuclear arms control talks.
US critics of extending New Start say that the US needs to free itself from controls to take account of China’s rapid nuclear build-up.
Russia and China also said that certain unidentified nuclear powers had plans to forward deploy ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles which posed a threat to other states.
They said that attempts by some states to position “pre-emptive or preventive missile strikes in order to decapitate and disarm the enemy, are highly destabilising and pose a strategic threat”.
Russia on Wednesday showed what it said was footage of troops delivering nuclear warheads to mobile Iskander-M missile launch systems, loading them and moving them to launch sites as part of a major nuclear exercise across Russia and Belarus.
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