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In recent years, Russia and China have urged the
negotiation of an international treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space.
The United States has responded by insisting that existing treaties and rules
governing the use of space are sufficient. The standoff has produced a six-year
deadlock in Geneva at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, but the
parties have not been inactive. Russia and China have much to lose if the
United States were to pursue the space weapons programs laid out in its
military planning documents. This makes probable the eventual formulation of
responses that are adverse to a broad range of U.S. interests in space. The
Chinese anti-satellite test in January 2007 was prelude to an unfolding drama
in which the main act is still subject to revision. If the United States
continues to pursue the weaponization of space, how will China and Russia
respond, and what will the broader implications for international security be?
The American Academy called upon Pavel Podvig (Stanford
University) and Hui Zhang (Harvard University) to elucidate answers to these
questions and to discuss the consequences of U.S. military plans for space.
Each scholar suggests that introducing weapons into space will have negative
consequences for nuclear proliferation and international security. As Podvig
points out, Russia’s main concern is likely to be maintaining strategic parity
with the United States. This parity will be destroyed by the deployment of
weapons in space, making a response from Russia likely. Podvig suggests that
Russia does not have many options for the development of its own weapon systems
in space but is likely to react to U.S. development of space weapons through
other countermeasures, such as extending the life of its ballistic missiles.
Podvig describes such measures as “the most significant and dangerous global
effects of new military developments, whether missile defense or space-based
weapons.”
Zhang arrives at similar conclusions. He describes how
U.S. military plans for space will negatively affect peaceful uses of outer
space, disrupting civilian and commercial initiatives, but he focuses his
discussion on a much greater concern among Chinese officials—that actions by
the United States in space will result in a loss of strategic nuclear parity.
China’s options for response, as detailed by Zhang, include building more
ICBMs, adopting countermeasures against missile defense, developing ASAT
weapons, and reconsidering China’s commitments on arms control. Thus, a U.S.
decision to introduce weapons into space would destabilize the already
vulnerable international nonproliferation regime. Zhang concludes, “U.S. space
weaponization plans would have potentially disastrous effects on international
security and the peaceful use of outer space. This would not benefit any
country’s security interests.”
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