COMMENT Intercontinental
guided hypocrisy By a Special Correspondent
China's success on January 11 in
destroying one of its own old orbiting weather
satellites with a ground-based ballistic missile
sent shock waves through US military circles. Not
that it came a complete surprise to the Americans.
What surprised them was the timing.
The
unquestioned US dominance in space has now been
challenged. It developed the capability to shoot
down satellites in the mid-1980s and had felt
confident about its unchallenged supremacy. Only
the former Soviet Union also had those
capabilities. Now China has
emerged as the third country with anti-satellite
capabilities, requiring resources be spent to
develop countermeasures.
China has a long record of
boldly asserting itself as a potential military
competitor of the United States.
It
intervened in the Korean War, when its perceived
that its security was threatened by the US forces
on the Korean Peninsula.
Then it decided
to become a nuclear power in 1964, and took pride
in calling its nuclear capabilities evidence of
"self-reliance". In recent times, China never
ceased to remind the United States that it would
not forgo the option of using force to reunify
Taiwan with the motherland. In 1996 it fired
several missiles toward Taiwan on the pretext of
conducting "air and sea exercises".
China's demonstration of its
anti-satellite weapons is the latest evidence of
that boldness, while enhancing its
status as a US competitor in space.
Even though no one is yet willing to call
The most crucial feature of
the US's new National Space Policy is that it
"rejects future arms-control agreements that
might limit US flexibility in space and asserts
a right to deny access to space to anyone
'hostile to US interests'." US turns space into its
colony, Asia Times Online,
October 20, 2006
China a "peer competitor" of the
United States in space, there is little doubt that
the race in that realm began earnestly on January
11.
Interestingly, Japan, South Korea and
Australia want China to "explain the test". One
wonders what kind explanation they are seeking. If
those countries were looking for confirmation that
China indeed has the capabilities to shoot down
satellites, at least from the US side there is
nothing to explain.
The intrigue was
further thickened by the fact that China's defense
and foreign-policy authorities opted not to issue
any statement elaborating on their country's
anti-satellite potential, or even officially
acknowledging that it took place.
However,
by not issuing any statement, the leaders in
Beijing have clearly signaled that while China may
not emerge as a "peer competitor" of the United
States in the realm of high tech, it will remain
highly focused in the interim on developing
asymmetric capabilities against America's highly
advanced platforms either on land, at sea, or in
space.
One astute student of mainland
China in Taiwan, Chong-Pin Lin, had his own
explanation: China talks a lot about diplomacy and
peace, but the push to develop lethal, high-tech
capabilities has not slowed down at all.
At a time when US forces are under
mounting asymmetric attacks from Iraqi insurgents
as well as terrorists, China's own demonstration
of asymmetric capabilities in space is causing
ample concerns within the military wing of the
space community.
All countries indulge in
hypocritical rhetoric as well as doublespeak
regarding their strategic affairs. The United
States, without admitting that it has been
involved in developing military capabilities in
space, has been doing just that. Washington has
regularly asserted a right to "freedom of action
in space", which appears to other countries as a
euphemism for militarizing space.
Last
year the administration of US President George W
Bush proclaimed a new policy of asserting that the
United States regarded outer space as an important
dimension for the nation's security, equal to land
and sea. Not long after that, China shot down an
orbiting satellite.
The US also states
that it will deter others from impeding those
rights, including denying, "if necessary,
adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile
to US national interests". China has clearly
understood that it had better develop those
capabilities, if only for defensive purposes.
Beijing is fully aware that
low-Earth-orbit satellites have become
indispensable for US military communications,
Geographical Positioning System navigation for
smart bombs and positioning troops, and for
real-time surveillance. Consequently, it quietly
intensified spending its own resources in
developing defensive measures.
But, of course, China has also been a
practitioner of similar doublespeak. While criticizing
the United States for developing space weapons
and experimenting with a space-based missile
system, it has insisted that its own intentions
regarding space are purely aimed at promoting peace.
China's anti-satellite potential is not
likely to cause tensions with Washington in the
near future. The only assured outcome is the
intensification of competition in space, since
satellites play a crucial role in the lone
superpower's superior capabilities to shift its
military forces and assets globally.
China knew how damaging that US potential is for its
own maneuverability in the event of a
military conflict. China was long determined to level
the playing field. Now it has, and the Americans are
worried.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online
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