“The era of the peace dividend is long gone. The security architecture that we relied on can no longer be taken for granted. Europe is ready to step up. We must invest in defence, strengthen our capabilities, and take a proactive approach to security.” – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, March 18, 2025
“The Government will protect Canada’s sovereignty by rebuilding, rearming, and reinvesting in the Canadian Armed Forces. It will boost Canada’s defence industry by joining ReArm Europe, to invest in transatlantic security with Canada’s European partners.” – Canadian speech from the Throne, May 27, 2025
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Once at the peak of U.S. – NATO supremacy of the entire planet, the great hegemon found that several alternatives have begun to emerge and decide they don’t want to play games by Uncle Sam’s rules anymore. [1]
Since 2022, Russia demonstrated their ability stand up to and fight back against the geopolitical plans of American hawks attempting to subjugate the entire globe since the collapse of the Soviet Union.[2]
It is not hard to see the rival powers are shaping up to fight in a vast match. The U.S., UK, Western Europe, NATO and Israel on one side and Russia, China, Iran, North Korea on the other. These latter nations being well situated with oil and critical minerals. Russia, China and the BRICS also seem to be winning over support from Global South nations in Africa and Latin America.
Are incentives to start another major war?
In March of 2025, the European Commission unveiled the White Paper for European Defence and the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030. The paper called European nations prioritizing the supply of strategic equipment, like air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles, ammunition and drone and anti-drone systems. This would cost in total about €650 billions with an additional €150 billion in loans to buy defence capabiblities. [3]
Canada has followed suit. This past Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a plan to spend 2 percent of Canada’s GDP this year – a full half decade ahead of his stated plan. Moreover, he also confirmed that talks with the United States about improving economic and security partnership would “naturally include strengthening NORAD and related initiatives such as the Golden Dome.” This Golden Dome partnership would cost Canada an estimated $61 billion US. [4]
What would happen to programs in the public interest if we diverted a substantial amount of funding for the military?
Elements of Canadian society that disagree with this strategy get comparatively little attention in mainstream media. However, an independent radio program like the Global Research News Hour dares to hold a microphone to their lips and broadcast what they have to say for those of us subjected every day to the monotone “pro-war” policy of the mainstream media.
In our first half hour, we have a very refreshing discussion with the much-renowned scientist Dr. Theodore Postol, who has studied and investigated missiles and missile defence systems and explains the fundamental flaws in the Golden Dome system that would jeopardize both the security and the economy of Canada.
This interview is followed by Tamara Lorincz, a prominent peace activist in Canada who refutes the claims that spending an astonishing level of funds at preparing for preventable wars are good for the weapons industry but really bad for the environment and human survival.
Finally, we talk to Morrigan Johnson, a writer and organizer with the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network, about the summit of the leaders of the G7 nations coming to Kananaskis in Alberta. He will discuss what is wrong with their agenda, and what regular working class people can do over the next couple of days to fight back, both at a counter summit and in the streets.
Theodore A. Postol is a Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to study methods of basing the MX Missile, and later worked as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. He also acted as a key technical and policy advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations on matters related to national decision-making by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Tamara Lorincz is a long-time member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Tamara is also a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada. As well, she is on the advisory committee of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, World Beyond War and the No to War, No to NATO Network. Tamara was awarded the Rotary International World Peace Fellowship in 2013. In addition to her activism, Tamara is currently a PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
Morrigan Johnson is a member of the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network and he is also a regular journalist for The Canada Files.
(Global Research News Hour Episode 477)
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Transcript of Dr. Theodore Postol, June 11, 2025
Global Research: Professor Postol, based on what has been announced to the public so far, what flaws have you spotted in the ability, even of an insanely expensive system, to ever outsmart a major technical adversary like Russia or China launching missiles at us?
Theodore Postol: Well, perhaps I should start by saying that the claims that are being made by the Trump administration with regard to this system are, I would say, total fictions. My only yes as to why they are doing it is that it is something designed to play to their political base.
If you really believed that you could do something like this, I want to underscore, if you really believed it and had done any elementary work on this, you’d know, for example, that a few hundred satellites, if you could make them work, that’s another important thing, but let’s assume you could make those satellites workable against ICBMs launched from the surface of the Earth, you would need between 1,500 and 2,000 of them in orbit if you were going to be able to engage a single ICBM launch from anywhere from the surface of the Earth. So that assumes you have, I’ll be specific, I’ve done the analysis, you’d have the satellites in orbit at 400 kilometers, each satellite would have a single interceptor on it with maybe a five kilometer per second burnout speed, and this is based on serious technical analysis. So a baseline would be 1,500 satellites carrying a single five kilometer per second burnout speed interceptor, that’s to be able to engage a single ICBM launch from anywhere on the Earth.
If you wanted to engage, for example, a mass launch, which would be localized, so these satellites would be spread out, but the launch would be from a small area on the surface of the Earth, you’d need to increase the size of the constellation by a hundred, if there were a hundred, if the mass launch were, let’s say, postulated to be a hundred ICBMs simultaneously, and that would require 150 to 200,000 satellites in orbit, not hundreds of satellites, but hundreds of thousands of satellites. So the idea that you could even launch that much mass into orbit, assuming the mass were just bags of dirt, is well, well, well beyond any possibility of, you know, given the resources available for launching things into space. So this is just a technical joke.
GR: They also, I mean, I imagine the response on the part of the, I guess the Russians would be, if we build this shield, the way of outsmarting it is to send even more missiles than we could, so that, you know, a certain proportion will get through, especially also considering they’re hypersonic and can, you know, deviate in all kinds of different directions from the ballistic missile trajectory.
TP: Well, the simplest way, well, I don’t know if it’s the simplest way, but one of the simple ways, there are many ways to defeat this, but for every additional missile you can add to an advanced launch, I mean, to a launch that’s a bunch of missiles together, for every missile that you would add, an ICBM you would add, the United States to counter it would have to add between 1,500 and 2,000 satellites to a constellation that would already be hundreds of thousands of satellites in size in order to deal with a mass launch. I mean, this is a no-win situation at the arithmetic level, assuming, of course, that the technology works.
I want to underscore that the technology is not proven, but assuming it works, you know, just the numbers are astounding. And of course, if you were to talk, if you would do just a simple, the most simple arithmetic estimates of the costs of launching such a system, assuming you could build it again and launch it, you’re talking about many trillions of dollars, not $175 billion. That’s nothing.
That’s not even a pinprick for putting a system like this in place. So I would say that the Canadian leadership needs to have its scientific staff advise them on what the reality of this system is. And if they want their technical staff to contact me and I can provide them with references to analysis, I’d be happy to do that.
Canadians certainly have a scientific establishment that’s well up to the job of verifying what I just said here. And if they haven’t already done so, which would not surprise me, but it’s really important that political leaders get advice from the scientific and technical people who work for them. I mean, this is a failure of responsibility on the part of Canadian political leadership if they go ahead with an agreement without consulting their own experts who are more than up to the job of providing them accurate information.
I’m a little bit on a campaign here because having watched the situation politically over the last few years, I have really gotten into a mindset of blaming our political leaders in the West, which includes not only the American political leadership, but Western Europe and Canada, for not doing their homework. You know, you’re in a job that’s responsible. And in order to do that job responsibly, you need to have information.
And if you’re not getting that information and you’re making decisions without finding that information, then I’m afraid I would have to say you are not serving the Canadian people well. You are doing a disservice to the Canadian people.
GR: Well, I mentioned that this project is intended to be actually an extension of NORAD, to which we have been committed for decades.
But a lot of members of government are actually saying that they aren’t crazy about this Golden Dome ballistic missile defense system. I guess you’ve been a scientific advisor to the Canadian government before.
TP: I’ve been asked to speak to the parliament, and I have.
GR: Yes. Yeah. So I guess I have to ask, what key points that you talk about being scientifically accurate, but you also have to consider that this government, they’re sort of in a position of having Donald Trump holding this tariff axe over our heads.
So I mean, even if they know it’s not feasible, is this sort of a maneuver they’ve got to make in order to keep them on side? Because I mean, if they don’t, then they would just attack. I mean, that seems to be his style.
TP: Well, I mean, first of all, I’m not a Canadian citizen, so I feel very reserved about providing advice about what they should do.
But I will say that the people in leadership roles have been put in those positions by the Canadian public, the Canadian citizens, citizenship, to make informed and well-founded decisions in support of Canadian national security. And I would say if they can’t figure out a strategy that doesn’t compromise Canadian national security, which I think blindly going along with this could have that effect, I won’t say it will, then I think the Canadian electorate has to think about new leadership. We have this problem in the United States.
I’m not ideologically opposed to Donald Trump, but I am opposed to irrational decisions that hurt the nation. This is not the only policy position President Trump has taken that I believe hurts the national security of the United States. I say this without malice toward him or his administration.
I just simply say, as a person who has expertise on national security matters, I think this is a very bad idea. I think this will hurt certainly the national security of the United States. And it will actually be vastly, I can’t underscore this enough, vastly destabilizing.
And let me explain why this is destabilizing. The first satellites that have interceptors on them that are launched will have an anti-satellite capability that has not yet been seen from any of the spacefaring countries in the world, Russia, China, United States. By putting these interceptors in orbit, these satellite interceptors that are supposed to attack ICBMs, those interceptors will have a better capability to intercept high altitude satellites that have never before been reachable with anti-satellite systems.
That is to say, a few dozens of satellites, not hundreds or thousands. So the process of launching this system would introduce grave instabilities internationally. A few dozens of these satellites would have interceptors on them that could attack in theory and reality all satellites in what are called geosynchronous orbits and all of the navigational satellites in semi-synchronous orbits.
These are the satellites called GPS and the Russian version called GLONASS. Now those particular satellites, which have not yet been threatened by any anti-satellite capability deployed by any nation would contain critical, absolutely sensitive early warning communication systems and navigation systems that are at the heart of the national security capabilities of China, Russia, and the United States. If anybody thinks that these countries are going to stand by and not do anything about this, I think they are sadly mistaken.
This is going to violate the treaty, the outer space treaty that says you cannot put weapons in space to attack satellites. This will create reactions that I cannot even begin to predict from at least the Chinese and Russians and possibly even the Europeans that will cascade into an international crisis. This is not a minor issue.
This is beyond the question of expense, which of course is well beyond the capabilities of even the United States to do and launch capabilities, which the United States simply does not have and can certainly not build in three years. It’s just a joke. We’re getting back to a situation as unrealistic as the Strategic Defense Initiative was when it was first deployed.
I might add that I was in the Pentagon and an advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations when that absolutely reckless, crazy, and hallucinogenic idea was being put forth. My boss, the Chief of Naval Operations, was part of a reckless process that led to the President announcing that we were going to go ahead with the Strategic Defense Initiative. I witnessed firsthand the reckless ignorance of top political leadership in the case of the Strategic Defense Initiative.
This is exactly what’s going on again here.
GR: You just got about a minute left. Would you propose a counter solution to the problem of growing tensions between the United States and Canada and the so-called enemy states, Russia and China, especially now with a threatened attack from Russia in response to Ukrainian attack on certain aircraft?
TP: Well, I think that the United States has to take a hands-off attitude toward Russia.
We have to stop trying to find ways to threaten the Russians. They are not intimidated by this. I want to underscore this.
Your average listener does not know this, but I will state this unambiguously because your press, and when I say your press, I mean my press as well, has not done its job informing the populations of the United States and Canada. Russia has won the war in Ukraine hands down. What we’re going to see in the next few months is them cleaning up the situation and completely negating the Ukrainian government as a threat to Russia.
That’s in the process of happening. Unfortunately, our press, I consider Canada a very close and intimate ally of the United States. Our press has done a disservice to both our democracies.
We need to take a hands-off attitude toward Russia because Russia is going to do what it needs to protect itself from these aggressions on the part of the West. People who are interested enough in this, you may want to have another discussion with me about it, but these aggressions are causing the Russians to arm themselves, and they are doing a very good job. They can outproduce the West in military equipment now.
I do not think they have any intentions of going after the West militarily, but they will negate anything the West tries to do to them, and they are in a position to do so.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.
The programme is also broadcast weekly (Monday, 1-2pm ET) by the Progressive Radio Network in the US.
The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca
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