North Korea on Tuesday denounced President Donald Trump's recently announced plans to build the Golden Dome missile defense system, vowing to bolster its security measures in response.
Pyongyang officials called the U.S. initiative "the height of self-righteousness, arrogance, high-handed and arbitrary practice" state media reported, citing a memorandum from the Institute for American Studies of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] Foreign Ministry.
"Down through history, the U.S. has justified its moves for space militarization, claiming that the perfect interception of nuclear missiles by its enemy states flying toward its mainland can be realized only by the introduction of the space-based interception system," the memo read. "Under the pretext of defending its mainland, it has been hell-bent on building a missile defense system targeting the independent sovereign states including the DPRK."
Trump's Golden Dome, which he estimates will cost $175 billion, is expected to function much like Israel's Iron Dome and defend from strikes in outer space. In the memo, the isolated East Asian nation seemed to reject the defensive mission of the project and accused the United States of attempting to incite a nuclear war.
"Clear is the reason why the U.S. is scheming to freeze the so-called 'threat' from sovereign states as a pretext for modernizing its missile defense system, persistently spinning out the time-worn sophism just like a guilty party filing the suit first," it said. "It is to preemptively attain military superiority in an all-round way by justifying its hegemony-oriented moves for space arms buildup and accelerating outer space militarization behind the screen of 'mainland defense' and to launch the military strike at its enemy states at its will by relying on it."
North Korea joins Russia and China in criticizing the outer space defense system, with the latter saying the project has "strong offensive implications."
"The United States, in pursuing a 'U.S.-first' policy, is obsessed with seeking absolute security for itself," China's foreign ministry said. "This violates the principle that the security of all countries should not be compromised and undermines global strategic balance and stability."
Trump has said the system would be fully developed by the end of his second term, but experts have questioned that timeline and suggested that the project would require bipartisan support from Congress, as well as more time to complete.
"We will not have space-based interceptors in three years," Melanie Marlowe, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Missile Defense Project, told The Hill. "That is a very challenging and expensive problem to solve. But if we start moving quickly, we can make good progress on getting missiles, radars and satellite constellations in that time frame."
In response to what it called the "largest arms buildup plan in history," Pyongyang vowed to ramp up its own security.
"The global security environment, which is becoming uncertain due to the U.S. undisguised moves for space militarization, proves that the security of the state and the region can be reliably guaranteed only by the symmetry of the matchless power capable of firmly bringing not only the current challenges but also the coming challenges under its control," the memo reportedly said.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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