Space Wars

China's great leap into space is inevitable. Like the Olympic Games, the launch this week of three astronauts, one of whom will perform China's first "walk" in space, asserts its rise as one of the Great Powers of this new century. The question now beginning to engage Washington is whether China sees itself as a collaborator in space, or as a potential adversary?

This dilemma became apparent on Jan. 11, 2007, the day China launched a missile that destroyed one of its own weather satellites in orbit. The experiment sent a powerful signal to the United States that many of the satellites upon which the U.S. military depends are now vulnerable, at least in theory, to Chinese attack. Nobody really knows if China is trying to acquire such a capability. But many policy experts have come to the conclusion that it's time for the United States to think seriously about some kind of arms-control regime to avoid a destabilizing rivalry in near-space. A Council on Foreign Relations study, released last week, is the latest to endorse this proposal.

For a generation, the United States has opposed any kind of limit placed on what nations can do in earth orbit. Although both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with anti-satellite weapons during the cold war, each realized that it had too much to lose. Satellites were key to the cold-war nuclear standoff. They informed each side what ICBMs the other deployed, allowed them to track any changes and alerted them almost immediately to any missile launches. Any move to destroy the other's satellites might have been seen as a prelude to a nuclear strike.

Circumstances, however, have changed. Over the past 20 years, America's conventional forces, as well as the nuclear ones, have come to rely on satellites. In Afghanistan, reconnaissance satellites beamed what they saw to the laptops of U.S. Special Forces. Communications satellites enabled the troops to talk with bombers on call overhead. The constellation of GPS navigation satellites then guided high-precision bombs on to the opposing Taliban. In Iraq now, unmanned drones—piloted from Nevada or California, via communications satellites—give U.S. soldiers an unblinking eye on the routes where bombers lay IEDs. Over Pakistan's ungoverned northwest frontier, U.S. pilots in California strike at Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders with missile-firing drones.

Conflict with China is unlikely, with one exception: if China tries one day to retake Taiwan by force. Many people in the U.S. defense community believe that China's goal is to target these satellites to neutralize a U.S. defense of Taiwan. If China did such a thing, the United States might be tempted to strike ASAT launch facilities on China's territory, escalating the conflict. How would China reply? When satellites are military tools of strategic significance, should attacks on them be deterred with the threat of nuclear retaliation?

The Bush administration seems to have edged toward this view. It declared in a 2006 "space policy" pronouncement that the United States considers its space capabilities "vital to its national interests." That phrase "carries a lot of freight with it," observes Bruce MacDonald, author of the Council on Foreign Relations study and a veteran of space and arms-control issues through several administrations. "That means in theory one would not rule out even a nuclear response if those interests were attacked."