This essay outlines the direction and nature of destabilisation being wrought by the US decision to deploy NMD. An important theme here has been the transformation of military competition into a 'post-heroic' era such that techno-economic progress has become wholly deterministic in the distribution of capabilities. Further, looking at the character of the incipient order, on the one hand, a hegemonic discourse threatens to instrumentally dehumanise the populace of rogue states; while on the other, an aura of absolute security might encourage the use of horrendous disruptive technologies.