Space Supremacy

According to that document, “the President authorized a new national space policy on August 31, 2006 that establishes overarching national policy that governs the conduct of U.S. space activities.” The document sets out a series of principles, goals, and guidelines that largely conform to the recommendations of the Commission to Assess United States National Security, Space Management, and Organization–otherwise known as the Rumsfeld Commission. That commission, which presented its recommendations in January of 2001, was authorized by a coalition of Republican senators who were concerned by the fact that “annual [Defense] budgets repeatedly short-change space programs,” and was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld, who had become the nominee for Secretary of Defense by the time the commission’s recommendations were delivered.

The ultimate goal of this new policy, as recommended by the commission more than five years ago, is to assure that the United States is able to “develop and deploy the means to deter and defend against hostile acts directed at U.S. space assets and against the uses of space hostile to U.S. interests.” As General Lance W. Lord, the former commander of Air Force Space Command, told an Air Force conference in September of 2005, “Space supremacy is our vision for the future.”

And space supremacy is now the official policy of the United States government. Among the principles set forth in the new document is that the United States “rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space;” furthermore, “the United States will view purposeful interference with its space systems as an infringement on its rights.” It goes on to assert that the United States will “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space . . . and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.” In an outright rejection of the sovereignty of the international community in space, the new policy also states that the United States “will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space.”

THIS WAS BIG NEWS in the foreign press, where headlines characterized the policy as a new imperialism. The Independent blared “America intends to claim a new empire,” and the Times of London proclaimed “America wants it all–life, the Universe and everything.” The administration’s domestic critics have blasted the policy as unilateral and unnecessary. Both points were made by the American Prospect‘s Matthew Yglesias, who wrote that,

The only problem is that this “extremely hypothetical” scenario is already reality. Earlier this month the Pentagon confirmed that China had tested a ground-based anti-satellite laser and had disabled a U.S. satellite in the process. There has long been speculation about China’s research into high-energy laser weapons for the purpose of disrupting satellite communications, but this was the first hard proof that the Chinese were capable of deploying such a system.

(This was not, howevever, the first attempt by a foreign government to interfere with American military satellites. As General Lord pointed out in an interview with Harrison Donnelly in the journal Military Aerospace Technology, “during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Saddam Hussein tried to take away our precision strike capability by jamming our GPS satellites. Then-Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche stated, ‘The war in space has begun.’ And I’d add: ‘We didn’t start it.'”)

Mind you, China’s recent test was probably not its first experiment with asymmetric methods of countering America’s current space superiority. Last summer the Department of Defense submitted a report to Congress on the state of the Chinese military and concluded that “China is working on, and plans to field, ASAT [anti-satellite weapons] systems.” Even before then, Larry M. Wortzel, former director of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, was at the Heritage Foundation pointing to “ample evidence from Chinese scientific and military journals that the PRC is developing maneuvering micro-satellites that can attach themselves to enemy satellites and destroy or jam them, or could be used to collide with and destroy enemy satellites.”

Wortzel, now chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said he took “the reports [of a Chinese ASAT test] at face value.” “Space is absolutely militarized,” Wortzel said, “Chinese armed forces and military planners believe space is just another domain” for military operations. “There’s no doubt the Chinese will put weapons into space” with the aim of “destroying command and control and communications satellites.” Wortzel also expressed concern that while the United States and the Soviet Union had long ago resolved to avoid “interfering” with each other’s satellites–as such interference would likely be interpreted as a prelude to attack–it’s not clear that the Chinese have “thought through the implications” of such actions.

But space supremacy isn’t only about the emerging military threat from China. The apparent stalemate that has developed between the United States and North Korea–or between the United States and Iran for that matter–is more than anything, the result of a paucity of options. Air strikes present tremendous risks to American interests and offer only the possibility, significant as it may be, of retarding those programs. Wortzel says space-based weapons systems like the rods from god or Brilliant Pebbles might “give us increased options” when dealing with rogue states. Space supremacy could become the big stick that allows American policymakers to walk more softly on the international stage.

Is there a diplomatic alternative to space supremacy? Probably not. As Wortzel explains, the difficulties of verifying compliance with any negotiated prohibition are likely to be insurmountable. But even if verification were possible, it’s not at all clear that a diplomatic alternative would be preferable. Much like the English navy once secured the world’s sea lanes, so too might the American Air Force secure space for 21st century commerce. As Everett Dolman, a professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told the Kansas City Star, “While the rest of the world will condemn us for it, within five years of having a domain in place it will be seen as a public good.”

Of course, nothing is foreordained. As Pavel Podvig, an expert on Soviet ASAT systems, explains, the Soviets started down the path toward space supremacy more than 40 years ago–only to abandon their efforts after a cost-benefit analysis. Podvig says there is an “institutional inertia” driving many of these programs as the aerospace industry positions itself to gain access to the billions of federal dollars that would be authorized for any space-based system. He’d be surprised if any of the proposed systems “survive the reality-check” of the appropriations process given their enormous price-tags and uncertain potential.

But those are political decisions for the American people to make. With its new space policy, the Bush administration has offered its vision for the future.

Michael Goldfarb is deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.