Outer space begins
where Earth's atmosphere ends, some 100 kilometers
above the globe's surface. The United States wants
the ability to militarize outer space to sustain
its world dominance. The Pentagon can already
monitor the world from space. Now it seeks to
develop and deploy military systems in space that
allow the US to strike with great force anywhere
on Earth in less than
an
hour.
The Defense Department's Global
Strike Integration policy seeks to "gain and
maintain both global and theater space superiority
and deliver tailored, integrated, full-spectrum
space support to the theater commander, while
maintaining a robust defensive global
counter-space posture".
This means
occupying space with surveillance and
reconnaissance satellites and anti-satellites,
ballistic missiles, missile or kinetic
interceptors, and other advanced technology
weapons to assist US land, sea and air forces in
maintaining military hegemony throughout the
world. It also means preventing any other country,
by force if necessary, from using space for
similar purposes, including self-defense.
Aside from the satellites, which have
become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of
the other technology is in the research and
development stage or awaiting deployment decisions
from the White House that are complicated by
political complexities.
The George W Bush
administration - especially the Defense Department
and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is
anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of
space, regardless of its enormous expense and the
fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation,
generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and
undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in
this century.
The rightists and
neo-conservatives are not unaware of these
potential consequences but they are confident the
US will prevail because of its overwhelming power.
In effect, "It's worth the price." But that
mindset is not shared so far by most Americans
outside the hard right, particularly in the
absence of any other country that could come near
to threatening the United States for global
primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation
in the world, including Washington's close allies
in Canada and the European Union, opposes the
weaponization of space, as is evident from
repeated votes at the United Nations.
What
this means is that the US is clearly heading
toward space militarization - more slowly during
the Bill Clinton administration, more swiftly
during the Bush administration - but not yet with
the acceleration the war hawks demand or the
Bushites would prefer.
The annual US space
budget amounts to about US$36 billion. This
constitutes 73% of what the world's nations
collectively spend on space, including China,
Russia, the European Union, Japan and India,
according to the Space Security Project.
At a certain point, perhaps in the not
distant future, one Washington administration or
another may be able to convince the American
people, and particularly the elite that rules the
country, that Russia, China or both have become
such grave threats to US hegemony that survival
depends on extending the reach of Fortress
Americana into the heavens. Since the Second Cold
War against both these countries is getting under
way, the pretext is in the process of becoming
established.
The plan to use outer space
as part of America's war preparations was put
forward by the right wing during the vehemently
anti-Soviet years of the 1980s, resulting in
president Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" anti-missile
program and the creation of the Air Force Space
Command in 1982, the mission of which is to
"defend North America through its space and
intercontinental-ballistic-missile operations -
vital force elements in projecting global reach
and global power".
By the 1990s, the
neo-conservatives were developing ideas for
projecting US power throughout the world,
including the militarization of space - resulting
in an influential document published in 2000 by
the Project for the New American Century titled
Rebuilding America's Defenses. A year after
the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon
and New York's World Trade Center, President Bush
included most of these ideas in a new National
Security Strategy for the United States. At about
the same time, Bush withdrew the US from the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which had
barred development of missile defenses and
space-based systems.
One complication for
the Pentagon is that the US, as a signatory of the
1967 Outer Space Treaty, may not "place in orbit
around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear
weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass
destruction (chemical or biological killers),
install such weapons on celestial bodies, or
station such weapons in outer space in any other
manner".
Thus at this stage the US
military space program is based on "conventional"
warfare, not weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
but with a few adjustments this could change. For
instance, more than 70% the Pentagon's "shock and
awe" bombing of Baghdad during the first days of
the invasion of Iraq was coordinated and sent to
target through military satellites in space. These
bombs were conventional explosives, but satellites
could have guided nuclear weapons as long as they
were not launched from space.
According to
Hans M Kristensen of the Federation of American
Scientists, "Although Global Strike is primarily a
non-nuclear mission, the information collected
[about the program] reveals that nuclear weapons
are surprisingly prominent in both the planning
and command structure for Global Strike."
Both China and Russia, among many nations,
have been attempting to gain UN passage of a new
treaty banning conventional weapons in space as
well as WMD, and also prohibiting the use of
satellites to guide warfare on the ground. True to
its militarist imperative, the US will not allow
any such treaty to interfere with its plans.
Bush put forward a 10-page unclassified
version of the new US National Space Policy last
October, superseding the Clinton administration
policy of September 1996, but it generally
obfuscated the government's real intentions. The
new policy was similar in some instances to the
Clinton era policy but more unilateral, arrogant
and favorable toward space militarization, though
not coming out with it honestly.
Only by
reading between the convoluted lines was it
possible to comprehend fully that the US
government intends to do as it
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