China Hits Its Target
Oberg, James
China Hits Its Target . . . And it's on West 43rd Street. by James Oberg Two weeks ago, high above eastern Asia, a Chinese missile unerringly hunted down and struck its target. The precision was...
...Rep...
...More important, the space shot hit home in the editorial offices of the New York Times...
...ident and his top officials cannot speak the truth about decades-old Soviet space weapons or the current Chinese test, how trustworthy have they shown themselves to be about less-verifiable space plans in the future...
...Indeed, China and Russia, along with other nations, have for years been pushing for what they call a "treaty to prevent the deployment of weapons in space...
...No, the target wasn't the derelict weather satellite that happened to get blown to smithereens by the missile's impact...
...Their recommendation: "For the time being, to put on hold the verification issue until conditions are ripe, and to negotiate a treaty without verification provisions could be a practical alternative...
...Such a robot could destroy a satellite every bit as effectively as an explosive would...
...Lengthy discussions on the definition issue might impede reaching a political consensus on the prevention of the weaponization of and an arms race in outer space...
...Responding exactly as could have been expected, the Times editors first accused the Bush administration of having "bellicose attitudes" of its own, then urged the administration to sign on to "an arms control treaty for space," which would ban what China had just done...
...The glaring exception would be in the United States, where a ratified treaty would be subject to federal court enforcement and thus would mean whatever any crusading judge responding to any political pressure group's lawsuits wanted it to mean...
...Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations told the Times, "It puts pressure on the U.S...
...The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, declared his doubts that the "alleged test" even occurred...
...Russia, too, stepped in to demonstrate bluntly the vanity of hopes that transparency and honesty could provide a firm basis for a credible anti-space weapons treaty...
...Would adding a pair of wire cutters be all that is needed to transform them into "space weapons...
...Worse, a slippery slope between military and civilian applications of dual-use technology means that reliable verification of a nonweapons space mission would mean intimate inspection of the hardware and flight plans for every launch...
...Vladimir Putin, James Oberg is a space consultant and author in Houston...
...This clause is intended to "grandfather" the one true weapon known to be deployed today in outer space, the survival pistol carried aboard every Russian manned spaceship that docks to the International Space Station...
...Various definitions are nonetheless suggested for discussion, including one with this curious loophole: "except those devices needed by cosmonauts for self-defense...
...As far as I know, the first such tests were carried out back in the 1980s" by the United States...
...It's a trivial but telling exception—the Russians have a weapon in space, and their proposed definition simply dodges the issue by calling the pistol a "nonweapon...
...to negotiate agreements not to weapon-ize space...
...A wide range of space projects by NASA, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies could easily be accused of weapons "intentions" and thereby be subjected to delays, disclosures, and legal harassment...
...The warhead flown on January 12 had no explosives, and its guidance package probably shared many—if not all—of its components with the rendezvous control hardware being developed for Shenzhou manned spaceships, which clearly would not be banned...
...He worked 22 years at NASA Mission Control...
...visiting India, sniped that China "is not the first country which has conducted such trials...
...But just as with Abraham Lincoln's famous five-legged dog ("If I call a tail a leg, does a dog have five legs...
...First of all, there is no accepted definition of what is to be banned...
...At a recent disarmament conference, Chinese representatives admitted that verification of a space treaty would be "extremely difficult to negotiate...
...Russian negotiators concurred...
...The editorial claimed it had destroyed a retired "communications satellite...
...agreed: "It is urgent that President Bush move to guarantee...
...Elaborating the treaty without verification measures, which could be added at a later stage, might be a preferable option," they said...
...The way to counter China or any other potentially belligerent space power is through an arms control treaty...
...protection [of American satellites] by initiating an international agreement to ban the development, testing, and deployment of space weapons and anti-satellite systems...
...That's not a bad long-range goal from the Chinese strategic point of view...
...Edward Markey (D-Mass...
...Not that the Times fully comprehended what China had done...
...The paper advanced various views, including one that "suggests that there is no need for definitions, on the ground that formulating them is both very difficult and unnecessary...
...The precision was impressive—and frightening in its strategic cunning...
...The manipulation of Western media and political forces in that direction, at the point of a space gun, is a good payoff for blowing up one surplus satellite...
...So the treaty being promoted by the New York Times and others—at the instigation of a Chinese missile fired up their backsides—would mean only what each signatory thought it meant...
...In the aftermath of the secretive Chinese test and official obfuscation at all levels of the Beijing regime, any such hope is as shattered as the ill-fated Fengyun weather satellite...
...If the Russian presIf the Russian president and his top officials cannot speak the truth about decades-old Soviet space weapons or the current Chinese test, how trustworthy have they shown themselves to be about less-verifiable future space plans...
...A dozen projects around the world are developing robots to fly to targets in space to inspect and manipulate them (for repair and resupply...
...In its January 20 editorial, the Times adopted a tone of sweet reason: "Surely it would make military and diplomatic sense," the editors urged, "to seek to ban all tests and any use of antisatel-lite weapons...
...In a May 22, 2006, working paper at the Conference on Disarmament, Russia and China observed that "no consensus has been reached so far on the definition of 'space weapon'" or even of "outer space...
...this so-called treaty has no prospect of delivering on its grandiose title...
...An international treaty "banning" space weapons, as the Times advocates, would depend crucially on the expectation that, absent effective verification procedures, the parties would be able to trust each other because of a track record of openness and candor...
...And the Boston Globe celebrated the Chinese strike because "it could lead to something positive" since it might persuade the Bush administration to talk about a treaty...
...But the explosion in space destroyed something else, too...
Vol. 12 • February 2007 • No. 20
