President Trump’s decision to establish a Space Force courts “a military confrontation in outer space,” according to a Russian diplomat.
“The purpose of the instruction was described in very clear terms — dominance in space,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, per state-run media and the Russian embassy to the United States. “A military confrontation in outer space could have the same destructive effects as the nuclear race into which the United States plunged the world after WWII.”
Trump ordered the Pentagon to establish a sixth military service on Monday, citing a need to ensure that Russia and China do not eclipse American capabilities in outer space. Both countries responded by accusing Trump of instigating a potential military crisis, although the Pentagon has suspected both countries are developing the ability to launch crippling attacks on U.S. satellites.
“If the U.S. is to avoid a ‘Space Pearl Harbor,’ it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on the U.S. space system,” as a 2001 Pentagon report put it.
Russia denied any such charges. “As for those who wish to know more about Russia’s military-space force, I’d like to stress that its nature is purely defensive,” Zakharova said. “Our country is not interested in tackling any tasks in space with the use of attack weapons.”
That’s not true, according to military and intelligence officials. “[T]hey understand the dependencies that we have on space and so they’re developing capabilities for how to counter that, whether it’s a direct-energy weapon that is terrestrial, whether it is a co-orbital attack satellite, whether it’s jamming from the ground,” Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.
Some congressional Republicans sought last year to establish a new military branch, which would carve the current military space capabilities out of the Air Force, only to find that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis opposed the effort. But Trump’s decision could put those efforts into overdrive.
“We don’t want China and Russia and other countries leading us,” the president said. “When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space.”
Zakharova said the pursuit of “dominance in space” could lead to an arms race comparable to the nuclear buildup of the Cold War. “A military buildup in space, in particular, after the deployment of weapons there, would have destabilizing effects on strategic stability and international security,” she said. “Russia takes a fundamentally different position and attaches priority to using and exploring space exclusively for peaceful purposes.”
