Galileo: Why the US is unhappy with
China By Federico Bordonaro
It's simply useless to deny it: access to
Galileo's cutting-edge satellite-navigation
technology will increase Beijing's military power,
despite the fact that the European positioning
system is under totally civilian, non-military
control.
The accuracy of the information
that the new system will provide is superior to
that currently assured by Washington's Global
Positioning System (GPS), which means that
Beijing's cruise and
ballistic missiles, combat
aircraft and navy will have highly effective
navigation and target-finding instruments at their
disposal.
Consequently, a couple of
crucial questions will attract a lot of attention:
first, whether the European Union military embargo
against China retains any meaning; and second, how
Sino-European strategic relations will affect the
global balance of power.
A high-tech
jewel Satellite navigation entered a new
era at the end of 2005. On December 28, an
experimental 600-kilogram spacecraft named Giove-A
was launched into orbit on a Soyuz rocket from
Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Its mission: demonstrating
the key technologies required by Galileo, the EU
sat-nav system.
Once fully deployed, the
EU system will feature 30 satellites (27
operational plus three active spares), positioned
on three circular medium earth orbit (MEO) planes
- at an altitude of 23,616 kilometers above Earth
- with an orbital plane inclination of 56 degrees
with reference to the equatorial plane.
Galileo will provide a highly accurate,
guaranteed global positioning service under
civilian control, and assure interoperability with
the other two global satellite navigation systems,
the United States' GPS and Russia's GLONASS
(Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System).
This year, the EU plans to launch up to
four operational satellites for the in-orbit
validation (IOV) phase. It is hoped that the full
operational capability (FOC) phase will be reached
in 2008, thanks to the remaining satellites.
Since Galileo will make its service
available under all but the most extreme
circumstances - and will inform users within
seconds of a failure of any satellite - it will
mark a significant improvement in sat-nav
technology. It will thus be regarded as a
priceless tool for applications in which safety is
crucial, such as running trains, driving cars and
landing aircraft.
Because of the military
nature of America's GPS system, Washington cannot
in fact guarantee service continuity in the event
of a major crisis. The EU countries, along with
China and Israel, have therefore been insisting on
the need to launch an independent, civilian-run
system to overcome this drawback.
But here
comes the tricky part. Yes, the Galileo system is
under civilian control. And yes, the EU assures
the US it won't use it for military purposes.
However, America's attitude to the system has
remained suspicious. And probably not without good
reason.
It's not only about commercial
uses A quick look at how Washington has
reacted to the EU's sat-nav ambitions since they
were first expressed speaks volumes about
Galileo's strategic potential. On December 1,
2001, then US deputy secretary of state Paul
Wolfowitz sent a letter to EU defense ministers to
"convey [his] concerns about security
ramifications for future NATO [North Atlantic
Treaty Organization] operations if EU proceeds
with Galileo satellite navigation services". [1]
Wolfowitz and the Pentagon were convinced
the EU sat-nav infrastructure could hamper the
ability of the US to deny GPS to enemies in times
of military operations; moreover, he wrote, the US
was concerned that Galileo's Public Regulated
Service (PRS) would have "features of the GPS
military signal", and that the "civil forum" used
by the European Commission could not "provide the
proper venue to fully assess" [2] Galileo's
security implications.
In January 2002, a
spokesman for the Galileo project declared to the
press that the project was "almost dead" as a
result of US pressures, but in March 2002 the EU
and the European Space Agency agreed to fund the
project. Not only had Washington's pressures
failed to stop the program, they had irritated
France, Germany and other EU members at a time of
looming trans-Atlantic discord over the Iraqi
crisis.
Then, after the project had been
officially launched in May 2003, China joined up a
few months later, in September 2003, by investing
US$259 million in the satellite tracking system.
The US now had two main worries about Galileo: how
to avoid possible malfunctions and useless
duplications in the trans-Atlantic security
system, and, above all, what to do about China's
participation.
The EU appeared sensitive
to US concerns, and key members such as the United
Kingdom and Germany proved receptive to
Washington's lobbying against possible
military-oriented applications of Galileo (a
solution palatable to France).
After four
months of negotiations, the EU and the US reached
an agreement on Galileo and GPS at the end of the
summit held in Ireland on June 26, 2004: the two
systems would "navigate side-by-side", avoiding
interference with each other's signals. The deal
stressed the commercial nature of Galileo, but its
military potential remains obviously unaffected by
such statements.
In fact, after the United
States' first vigorous reactions in 2001-02, the
rise of the independent EU-sponsored sat-nav
system has been proceeding consistently since
2003, along with a new phase in de facto
Sino-European strategic relations.
And
it's not difficult to understand why China wants
to take a ride on the EU's high-tech spacecraft:
in today's strategic environment, space power is
the decisive enabler of air power.
"When
Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, the first
coalition assets to make their presence felt on
the scene were not air, naval or land forces but
rather the allied space systems already on orbit
high above the gathering storm." [3]
The
supporting role of GPS was pivotal in assuring
strategic air dominance to the US in the Gulf War,
and since then the world definitively discovered
how the concept of air power - and of power itself
- had changed thanks to space technology.
Undoubtedly, "Galileo will improve the
ability of armed forces to coordinate the movement
of units in battle, increasing their
effectiveness." But it will also "improve the
precision of weapons-guidance systems so that
bombs and missiles hit their targets more
accurately". [4]
When Galileo is fully
operative, it will not be difficult to take
advantage of it for military purposes. China, no
less than the EU and the US, is well aware that
the potential for transforming civilian
utilizations into military ones already exists in
the project. By installing transmitting devices in
bombs, the precision strike capabilities of the
attacking side would be tremendously enhanced,
thanks to signals sent by Galileo's satellites.
No wonder, then, that Taiwan - and its
security provider, the US - is not so terribly
happy about Beijing's access to the EU's high-tech
pearl. The very balance of power in China's
maritime realm is at stake.
A
now-meaningless embargo? In today's context
of quickly changing geopolitical equilibria, the
EU and US arms embargo on China is by right one of
the hottest issues. And the interesting thing is
that although the question of lifting this embargo
is frequently debated at the highest political
level in trans-Atlantic and European institutions,
few seem to be aware that its strategic
meaningfulness may already be waning - not only,
or not primarily, because of Paris's increasing
eagerness to end it, but because of three
structural aspects.
First and foremost,
Europe's move to characterize its cutting-edge
satellite system as civilian-only is driven by two
main considerations. The first is its careful
diplomatic stance in relation to Washington's
worries. The second is that anything and
everything of a declaredly military nature tends
to be unpopular with European citizens, and thus
becomes more difficult to fund. But in the end,
few can doubt that the next generation of Chinese
cruise missiles will be guided by Galileo's
(civilian) signals.
Second, concepts such
as "battlefield digitalization", "anti-satellite
weapons", "cyberwar" and "space strategy" have
already made their way into Beijing's strategic
discourse, not merely as trendy loan-words but as
strategic projects, at a time of fast-growing
Chinese technological capabilities.
Third,
despite the EU's political cautiousness and its
close partnership in trans-Atlantic security
institutions, a Sino-European strategic
relationship seems to be already in an early, but
increasingly important, stage of development. And
at a glance, its first effect on the global
balance of power will be to strengthen Beijing's
influence in the Pacific region.
Notes 1. Christophe
Guillemin, Comment la diplomatie americaine
s'emploie a court-circuiter Galileo, March 13,
2002. 2. Ibid. 3. Benjamin S Lambeth, "Air
Power, Space Power, and Geography", in Colin Gray,
Geoffrey Sloan (eds), Geopolitics: Geography
and Strategy, Frank Cass 1999, p 73. 4.
"Let's avoid another transatlantic feud",
International Herald Tribune, January 13, 2006.
Federico Bordonaro is senior
analyst with the Power and Interest News Report.
He can be contacted atfbordonaro@pinr.com.
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