In mid-August, US State Department officials criticized Russia over its newly launched “abnormal” and “disturbing” inspection satellite. These claims connote a belief held by the American intelligence that the Russians have launched a weapon into space. While this doesn’t appear to be the case (astronomer Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has identified the satellite in question and denied the presence of any abnormal activity), the episode comes at a convenient time.
President Trump’s “Space Force” isn’t a new idea, nor is it a good one. For the proposal to be portrayed as necessary, there must be a belief that America’s adversaries are actively preparing to target American satellites already in orbit. Any belief that outer space should be kept for peaceful and scientific purposes is simply naïve.
This now-conventional line of thinking is, in the long run, a fairly significant divergence of US policy. In 1957, Henry Cabot Lodge spoke to the UN General Assembly on behalf of the United States, calling for outer space to be “devoted exclusively to peaceful and scientific purposes”, and that the testing of space technology be brought under “international inspection and participation.” Ten years later, in 1967, the United States would sign the Outer Space Treaty, promising to keep outer space “free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law” and to use it “for the benefit and in the interests of all countries.”
Today, China and Russia stand out as the two most powerful entities actively supporting the original goals of the Treaty while the United States has progressively chosen to wander down a different path.
Contemporary discussions on the militarization of space often stem from the 1980’s with Ronald Reagan’s announcement of his “Space Defense Initiative.” This program was, arguably, not designed to militarize space as its focus was anti-nuclear missile defenses rather than American supremacy over the atmosphere or space-based offensive weaponry. This changed in 1997, when Space Command committed the US to a policy of “Full Spectrum Dominance.” Predicting that “space power will evolve into a separate and equal medium of warfare,” Space Command committed the US to “gain and maintain space superiority” through a number of means, including “offensive counterspace operations.” Such operations would “destroy or neutralize an adversary’s space systems” through “lethal or non-lethal” means.
This mindset continued into the Bush administration, when Donald Rumsfeld proposed the creation of a “Space Corps,” a separate branch of the military designed to “maintain and ensure continuing superiority” in space. Warning of a “Space Pearl Harbor,” a report released by Rumsfeld’s “Space Commission” warned that interstellar warfare was a “virtual certainty.” This was quite a claim to make, considering America’s most powerful adversaries were all signatories to the Outer Space treaty, and none of them were speculating about “superiority” and “offensive counterspace operations” in the same way that America was.
This hawkish shift led to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) to write in 2002: “There is growing international concern [over] the USA’s quest for ‘full-spectrum dominance’… China and Russia have taken the lead in calling for the negotiation of a new multilateral treaty prohibiting the deployment of weapons in space and restricting its use for peaceful purposes. For its part, the USA has shown little interest in agreements that would constrain its military activities in space.”
This criticism has merit. The UN General Assembly voting record shows that the US has either abstained from or voted against resolutions preventing an arms race in outer space for decades, on a near yearly basis, and almost always without significant additional support.
For example, no more than two months after the statement by SIPRI, the United States was one of three nations (along with Micronesia and Israel) out of 162 at the UN General Assembly to abstain from voting for the Proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty. This proposal, spearheaded by Russia and China, recognizes “that prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security” and “[c]alls upon all States, in particular those with major space capabilities, to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space…and to refrain from actions contrary to that objective…in the interest of maintaining international peace and security and promoting international cooperation.”
According to John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State, the US is “not prepared to negotiate on the so-called arms race in outer space. We just don’t see that as a worthwhile enterprise.”
By 2005, according to the Arms Control Association, the US was “pursuing a number of military systems that could be used to attack targets in space from Earth or targets on Earth from space. To China, current US deployment of a Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense system represents an intentional first step toward space weaponization.” A year later, the US released its National Space Policy which rejected “any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space.”
In response to this build-up, as well as the apparent rejection of bilateralism in American rhetoric, China demonstrated their anti-satellite capabilities in 2007 by shooting down one of its own satellites. Not long after, China, along with Russia, re-affirmed its commitment to the PAROS treaty at the UN General Assembly. During that meeting, the Chinese delegation rightly claimed that the US “has been blocking for so many years the process of negotiations on outer space issue in the [Conference on Disarmament]. If the United States really cares about the peace and security in outer space, it should change its negative position on outer space issue as soon as possible, and agree to negotiate and conclude a legal instrument on outer space in the CD.”
In 2008, the US responded to the Chinese test by shooting down one of its own satellites “to protect people on the ground from debris.” That same year, the US cast the sole vote at the General Assembly against a resolution “recognizing that the prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger to international peace and security.”
Under the Obama administration, the US voted against the Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space. This treaty, again supported by both China and Russia, “reiterates the importance of a weapon-free outer space, defines relevant terms such as ‘weapons in outer space,’ and proposes the creation of an additional protocol to establish ‘measures of verification of compliance with the Treaty.’” The US voted against the same treaty again in 2014, the same year the Obama administration announced the launch of three satellites to keep “neighborhood watch” on those being operated by other nations.
The United States continued to vote against the PAROS treaty because, according to the Federation of American Scientists, “there are no weapons—and thus no arms race—in outer space at this time.” With the “P” in PAROS standing for the “prevention” of an arms race, arguing that there is no such arms race going on at the current moment is a lazy excuse, at best, to consistently reject an incredibly popular international peace treaty.
In response to the “dogmatic assertions” being made by the United States, the Union of Concerned Scientists noted in 2014 that “China is just now deploying the kinds of space-based military-support capabilities the United States has used for decades, including satellites and supporting ground systems for reconnaissance, communication, navigation, and weather monitoring.”
Toward the very end of the Obama administration, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said in a speech in Silicon Valley:
While in the past some may have thought of space as a sanctuary, DoD must now prepare for, and seek to prevent, the possibility of a conflict that extends into space, and we are. In our budget, we’re continuing to invest more in space, totaling more than $22 billion, including with investments to enhance our ability to identify, attribute, and negate threatening actions by others.
“Some in the past” did think of Space as a sanctuary, including the United States in 1957 and 1967. Today, some still do, namely Russia and China who continue to propose and support overwhelmingly popular UN proposals designed to prevent an arms race in space. Supporting such proposals, rather than spending billions of dollars to “negate threatening actions by others,” might be a better way to “prevent the possibility of a conflict that extends into space.”
This attitude continued into the Trump administration. In his “America First Space Policy,” President Trump writes that, while the US “would prefer that the space domain remain free of conflict,” it “recognizes that our competitors and adversaries have turned space into a warfighting domain.” General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command, echoed these sentiments, stating in late 2017 that America’s primary issues is “being outpaced by our adversaries,” the solution to which is to “assure continued American dominance, especially in the critical domain of space.”
In 2018, the Union of Concerned Scientists reaffirmed the position it took in 2014, writing: “There have been military satellites in orbit since the very beginning of the space age, but so far, no destructive weapons have been deployed there.” It seems that having the United States invest in weaponized space technology to counter non-existent space weapons supposedly being deployed by adversaries is not the best way to ensure that “the space domain remain free of conflict.” Similarly, voting against a UN resolution supported by both China and Russia which pledged “no first placement of weapons in outer space,” as the US did in 2017, would be inimical to keeping the domain unsullied by military intrusion.
Arguing in favor of “American dominance” is arguing against change. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “75 percent of global space funding is by the United States…43 percent of all active satellites are US owned.” Theresa Hitchens at the Center for International Security Studies writes “[t]he US’ military space budget is more than 10 times greater than that of all the countries in the world combined.” With this in mind, it’s hard to see how any fear of America being overtaken by a foreign enemy can be validated. However, this is what’s necessary if the march towards war in space is to continue. Hitchens writes:
A few (admittedly alarming) weapons tests aside, no country in the world has yet weaponized space…the United States has long been leery of treaty-based efforts to constrain a potential arms race in outer space, as supported by nearly every other country in the world for decades…the US military – backed by the Intelligence Community which operates the nation’s spy satellites – seems to be shouting to the rooftops that the United States is in danger of losing the space arms race already begun by its potential adversaries. The underlying assumption — a convenient one for advocates of more military spending — is that now there is nothing that diplomacy can do.
History has shown that there is quite a bit that diplomacy can do; if the United States had supported the PAROS treaty, all of the world’s most powerful nations would have agreed to refrain from actions contrary to “the objective of the peaceful use of outer space…in the interest of maintaining international peace and security and promoting international cooperation.” Not only is diplomacy viable, it’s becoming increasingly necessary.
Professors Deganit Paikowsky and Gil Baram at the University of Tel Aviv write: “Satellites are used to support phones, the Internet, and banking systems. They are also used to monitor land, air, and maritime traffic; facilitate global communications; transmit mass media in real time…gather intelligence; and send early warnings of incoming ballistic missiles.” The Center for International Security Studies writes more ominously:
[B]ecause of the dual-use nature of space technologies, weapons placed in space would be difficult or impossible to differentiate from benign satellites, meaning everything would become a potential target. Civilians and the US military each rely on commercially-operated communications satellites and the GPS constellation. Attacks on those spacecraft could cripple the global economy.
Considering that warfare against orbiting satellites could mean an increased risk of ballistic (and potentially nuclear) weapons attacks via the blinding of security and warning systems, as well as serious economic disruption, it would make sense that the world’s most influential and militarized nations would commit to a policy of keeping space de-militarized. Perhaps, in time, the United States will join them in this pursuit.