Major powers are “rapidly militarizing space” to prepare for a prospective conflict that could have devastating effects in the absence of norms to restrict such weapons, according to a senior Democrat.
“I suspect the norm is ‘he who is strongest will win at the end of the process,’ and we’ll all be dead,” California Rep. John Garamendi said during a congressional hearing on space policy.
A quartet of State Department and Pentagon officials appeared before members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Armed Services Committee for a discussion of “creating a framework for Rules-Based Order in Space.” Much of the conversation conceded the near-impossibility of establishing that framework, given Chinese and Russian disinterest in serious negotiations over such rules and their enthusiasm for developing capabilities that can threaten American satellites.
“Sometimes, the Russians do not even want to acknowledge that certain activities are indeed taking place,” the State Department’s Bruce Turner, a senior official in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, told lawmakers Wednesday. “We have done our best to bring experts, military and diplomatic experts, to some of these meetings to discuss these issues. But thus far, the Russians really have not engaged in a satisfactory way.”
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That lack of concord troubles Garamendi. “Clearly, we have a situation in which, on the military side of it, space is a domain to a war,” the California Democrat said. “And unfortunately, we are all — not just the United States, China, and Russia, but others — rapidly militarizing space with the anticipation that there could be trouble in the future.”
China has taken the most aggressive and visible step toward “the weaponization of space” from the American perspective by using a ballistic missile to destroy a defunct Chinese satellite in 2007. That test, perceived in Washington as a message from Beijing that Chinese forces can target American satellites in a crisis, has left thousands of pieces of debris orbiting the Earth in outer space.
“It certainly was irresponsible,” Space Force Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting said. “With 3,000 pieces of debris left on orbit that we continue to track 10 years later, 10% of all the trackable objects on orbit — I can’t imagine what led them to do that and to continue to pollute the domain and put us all at risk.”
Whiting emphasized that the U.S. doesn’t want to fight a war in space. “Let me be clear — even with this weaponization of space, we do not want a war to extend into space, and we want to do everything possible to deter that,” he said.
Such deterrence may prove the only plausible impediment to conflict in space if the pessimism of arms control negotiators is any guide. “We do not exclude the possibility of legally binding treaties down the road, but that’s not where we are given the kinds of competitions posed by Russia and China,” Turner said.
Garamendi, the California Democrat, expressed interest in developing potential norms at least for private sector commercial spacefarers, but another diplomat sounded a note of caution in that respect as well.
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“One of the difficulties we face is that, of course, with Russia and China, there really aren’t commercial activities,” the State Department’s Jonathan Moore, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, told the lawmakers.
