WASHINGTON — U.S. and Chinese security concerns and an “action-reaction” dynamic could drive the two countries into a space arms race, several national security experts said yesterday.
The analysts were Phillip Saunders of the National Defense University, Joan Johnson-Freese of the Naval War College, and Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, speaking at an event sponsored by the Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Center for Defense Information, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and with Global Security Newswire afterward.
The analysts said a space weapons race has not yet begun, but they also said both countries have been doing and saying things that could signal trouble perhaps 10 or 15 years down the road.
“There is the danger of that kind of action-reaction cycle creating a space race which winds up hurting both sides,” Saunders said.
“It’s this cyclical propagation of hostile images of the other side, which is a classical arms control problem,” Kulacki said.
China and Russia have pressed for negotiations on a treaty prohibiting the weaponization of space. The United States has opposed such an agreement, citing potential harm to national security and restricting of U.S. missile defense capabilities.
“There simply is no problem in outer space for arms control to solve,” U.S. Ambassador Eric Javits, then the permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, said in a May 2002 speech, calling concerns about an arms race in outer space “groundless.”
U.S. ConcernsFueling U.S. concerns is a perceived Chinese interest in developing antisatellite weapons, the experts said.
Chinese “writings show an interest in this area, recognition that this is a U.S. vulnerability. There’s some scientific research going, strategic thinking about it, and probably development programs under way in some of these areas,” Saunders said.
Another concern is China’s potential for using space technologies to improve its conventional military capabilities in ways already mastered by the U.S. military, such as with satellites for communications, intelligence collection, and precision-guided weapons.
“In most of those cases there is a fairly primitive capability but potential for pretty rapid improvements,” Saunders said.
The U.S. Defense Department last month released a report on Chinese military capabilities that concluded China now lacks the capability to attack satellite systems short of launching a nuclear-armed ballistic missile.
It said, though, that China is working on developing antisatellite (ASAT) capabilities and could develop ground-based laser antisatellite weapons (see GSN, June 3).
“China clearly is working on, and plans to field, ASATs,” the report said.
Chinese ConcernsChina, meanwhile, is concerned about a U.S. ability to neutralize or destroy Chinese space capabilities, potentially coinciding with a conflict over Taiwan, the experts said.
Those concerns have been encouraged by stated U.S. military goals of space “dominance,” such as described in the Air Force’s Vision 20/20 document, and plans for developing counterspace capabilities and space-based interceptors as part of the U.S. missile defense program (see GSN, April 29).
“The Chinese are concerned that we have a lot of capabilities in space and are looking to improve those capabilities and are investigating concepts and technologies that might be applicable to space warfare, and so they look at that with some alarm,” Saunders said.
“Political and military classes or groups in China read these 20/20 documents, stuff which is really intended to get money out of Congress, and they’re interpreting that as our intent or our policy,” Kulacki said.
Johnson-Freese said discussion of Taiwan obtaining U.S. Patriot theater missile defense and other advanced military systems also “will get China really moving quickly” on space warfare development.
Suggested SolutionsShort of actual conflict, a worst-case scenario would be either country deploying antisatellite weapons, said Johnson-Freese.
The analysts suggested increasing dialogue, nonmilitary space cooperation that might encourage nonthreatening Chinese space investment, and negotiating an arms-control agreement or at least some “rules of the road” for preventing space warfare.
Kulacki suspects the Chinese antisatellite development may be driven in part by a belief that “arms control agreements happen when there is mutual vulnerability. If there is no mutual vulnerability, then why would another side agree to a treaty to ban arms?”
Saunders thinks dialogue and cooperation are worth pursuing, but probably would not resolve the security worries on both sides.
“The bottom line is a lot of these military security concerns are likely to limit the degree to which we cooperate with them,” he said.
One ground for optimism, Saunders said, though, is that “We are very early on in this process. The fact that we are not shooting at each others’ satellites right now means there’s some time to think about this and to try to work out some rules of the road in ways that avoid some worst-case scenarios.”