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."
A near-space rivalry is fraught with potential dangers. The cold war remained cold in part because clear concepts of deterrence were developed, says Thomas Behling, until last year deputy under secretary for intelligence in the Pentagon. "But we do not know how to apply these in space. And we don't pay enough attention to this issue." The advisory committee giving expert help to author MacDonald in the compiling of his report was a roll call of defense-community heavyweights, chaired by a former commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis Blair, all of whom reportedly shared Behling's concerns.
China's anti-satellite technology raises a collateral, but arguably more pressing, issue: space junk. China's test missile destroyed its target by smashing into it, generating thousands of fragments that are still circling in earth orbit and will be for years to come because the shards are so distant it will take decades for gravity to draw them down to earth. Low-earth orbit is crowded with commercial satellites, representing an industry with revenues of more than $100 billion, each hurtling round at 18,000 miles per hour. Perhaps 900 or so of the weather-satellite fragments are big enough to damage any satellite that hits them. Did China realize that? Did China not care? It may be time to try to negotiate international rules of the-road to prevent a repeat of this sort of test. "It is essential that the world's governments provide leadership on space management issues today in order to protect the space activities of tomorrow," said David McGlade, CEO of the giant Intelsat, in a U.S. congressional hearing last year.
Negotiating any sort of international understanding on ASAT activities would be fiendishly difficult. A draft treaty "on the prevention of the weaponization of outer space" proposed years ago by Russia and China has gotten nowhere because, even its sponsors admit, nobody can figure out how to define basic terms like "space weapons" or even "outer space." For similar reasons, a straightforward ban on ASAT weapons and activities is an impossible goal: nobody has ever been able to work out how it could be verified. But some rules could plausibly be negotiated, along with a ban on ASAT test shots like China's of last year. "The question for U.S. policy is what kind of feasible and stable space regime best serves U.S. long-term security interests," says the Council on Foreign Relations report. "This question should be addressed early in the new administration's tenure, if not earlier." The United States, which has at once the dominant commercial space industry and the military most dependent upon space assets, has every incentive to act.