Generate text that refutes this claim: As a matter of principle, every country, including the United States, has the right to defend itself to the best of its technological and economic ability  The nation-state is the fundamental building block of the international system, and is recognized as such in all international treaties and organizations (Mearsheimer, 1993). States are recognized as having the right to defend themselves, and this right must extend to the possession of a strategic national missile defense system. The United States has every right to develop such a system if it will furnish a greater measure of defense for its citizens and interests. US military technology is the most advanced and prodigiously financed in the world, which is why it is generally the United States that stands at the forefront of new defense and combat systems. The National Missile Defense program is simply the newest tool in the arsenal of the world’s greatest military, whose purpose is entirely defensive. To shield itself from potential ballistic missile, and even nuclear, attack the United States has the right to build a missile shield to defend itself and its allies under its aegis. There is no principled justification for a country to not pursue defense initiatives that benefit itself and that it wishes to pursue.
defence science science general house supports development missile defence
It is not always within the right of a state to develop weapons and technology, since international treaties ban, for example, the development of chemical and nuclear weapons. Furthermore, when the development of weapons will be detrimental to the state that builds them, it is in their interest no to do so. In the case of national missile defense, the United States is angering several countries, particularly Russia, and potentially upsetting the balance of mutually assured destruction (Harding, 2007). Clearly more than a right to self-defense must be considered when developing new kinds of armament.