Back in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the construction of a new missile defense system. A few days later, on Feb. 6, Canada’s Minister of National Defence Bill Blair jumped at the possibility of his country participating in the program.
In May, the U.S. informed Canada that it could chip in $61 billion for “protection” under the Dome or receive it for free by becoming the 51st state of the U.S.
Trump calls the missile system the “Golden Dome,” supposedly a defensive shield against incoming missile attacks based on Israel’s “Iron Dome.” It would be intended to destroy incoming missiles either before they were launched or during their flight.
But the Dome would not, in fact, be a shield. It would consist of a global system of orbiting satellites equipped with space-based interceptor weapons—a system of space-to-ground weapons that could be launched at any moment and at any target anywhere in the world.
What’s more, despite claims that the Golden Dome is a defense system, back in 2019, when Trump was first considering the missile plan, he said that such a system would be used for offensive purposes.
But is the Golden Dome something truly new? Not at all.
It is just another name and an extension of a program that goes back as far as the hard-right regime of President Ronald Reagan, whose plan to weaponize space was nicknamed by that administration as the “Star Wars” project.
In the 2000 U.S. election, Joe Lieberman was the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. He was a close friend and a major financial donor to the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation, an ultra-reactionary organization consistently tied to assassinations and terrorist activity. In 1997, for example, the group financed a series of terrorist hotel bombings in Havana. Lieberman was also the co-sponsor of legislation to fund the arming of the narco-terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army.
More to the point: Lieberman, as the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Subcommittee on Acquisitions and Technology, gave a speech on Feb. 27, 1998, in which he called for a substantially bigger military budget, in large part for, as he put it, “space weaponization.”
During the George W. Bush administration, the space weaponization program was given yet another name—the National Missile Defense system. This NMD, far from having anything to do with defense, was, like the Golden Dome, a central element of the U.S. plan to maintain and expand its global hegemony.
In the form in which it was then being presented, the NMD would involve a canopy of U.S. surveillance and communications satellites encircling the world. These satellites would be electronically connected to a series of ground-based missiles, which would then be launched at any projectile aimed at the U.S. and would explode such incoming projectiles above the atmosphere in outer space.
The proposed NMD was only a first step. The second step would involve a series of platforms, anchored above the high atmosphere and carrying U.S. nuclear missiles and high-energy laser beam weapons, all of which would be forever poised above the earth—nuclear and high-energy laser missiles armed and ready for a war from space.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, called for just such orbiting platforms and for “pre-emptive” strikes against ground targets. There is no doubt that engineers within the U.S. military-industrial complex have been working on designs for orbiting nuclear weapons for many years. Indeed, as long ago as 1959, such plans were being seriously considered within U.S. government circles.
The NMD was a system designed to circle our world, always ready to rain down radioactive death on any nation that would dare defy U.S. imperial will. The United States is intent on implementing its war from space, and as terrifying as this prospect is, it must be seen in terms of its efforts to maintain and expand its global hegemony.
Although the war from space is being framed in terms of peace and is being marketed to the U.S. population as a defensive measure and will be marketed to the international community as a benign tool for the extension of freedom and democracy, the truth is quite otherwise.
The space weaponization program will be the crowning military-technological achievement for U.S. hegemony and will facilitate Trump’s drive to fascism.
To a large extent, it will no longer be necessary for the U.S. to finance fascist dictators who will obediently overthrow democratically-elected socialist or Marxist governments—as the U.S. did in Chile, for example. It will no longer be necessary to finance death squads as the U.S. did in El Salvador or Guatemala or Brazil; or to massively finance opposition political parties as the U.S. did in Nicaragua, Italy, and Bulgaria. It will no longer be necessary to launch illegal lightning wars as it did in Panama, Yugoslavia, or Iraq.
While such wars are not necessarily precluded, implementing the Golden Dome space weaponization program means that the threat of targeted attack from space—of war from space—may well be sufficient to bend the will of sovereign nations to the demands of U.S. power. Once this system is fully operational, U.S. imperialism’s drive towards more aggression and even all-out global fascism becomes increasingly threatening.
As for Canada, as long ago as 1994, a Department of National Defence White Paper promoted the research and development of space weapons. In October 1997, the U.S. and Canadian militaries signed a Joint Statement of Intent for military space cooperation, which stated that the militarization of space “is in the mutual security and economic interests of both countries.”
The Canadian government’s Technology Investment Strategy 2000 declared: “Space will soon be the fourth medium of warfare … For future coalition warfare, space superiority will be fundamental.”
Note that the term used is “warfare,” not “defense”—this is typical of U.S. and Canadian government documents that are not intended for mass media release. The pretense about “defense” or “peacekeeping” is entirely stripped away in documents not intended for public consumption.
And, of course, the Canadian military-industrial complex was enthusiastically supportive of the Bush-era NMD system. According to the Canadian Defence Industries document, “The National Missile Defence Program: An Assessment of Market Opportunities for Canadian Industry,” there was a potential one billion dollars available in military-technology exports to the U.S.
On May 29, 2003, then Canadian Defence Minister John McCallum announced that the Canadian government would enter into discussions with the U.S. on NMD. Furthermore, the Liberal government at the time voted for a motion endorsing NMD in principle. And, of course, the wealthy ruling class that calls the shots in Ottawa stood to gain billions of dollars in profits from joint projects and sub-contracts with the U.S. military-industrial complex, as it still does.
This long history of collaboration makes it very clear where the major Canadian political parties will ultimately stand on the issue of the Golden Dome, whatever they may say.
What needs to be clearly understood is that the Golden Dome, and the program for the weaponization of space that lies behind it, is not merely an isolated and misguided policy but is a tool—indeed the key tool—in the U.S. imperialist plan for hegemony. That is, the plan for imposing its economic, military, and political might around the globe.
Global opposition to the Golden Dome needs to begin in earnest. In Canada, this needs to be combined with a campaign to win a new, independent foreign policy based on peace, disarmament, international cooperation, and respect for sovereignty.
The threat represented by the Golden Dome also highlights the need to fight for socialism, overturning capitalism, and putting an end to the social and economic conditions that give rise to one of the greatest dangers the world has ever encountered—war from space.
People’s Voice
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
