The outer space constitutes the last great frontier of the power struggles between the great global powers. Traditionally dominated by EE. UU., The space has become today a priority objective for China and Russia, but also for new regional powers. Thus, Beijing and Moscow are trying to minimize their strategic inferiority in space by leaps and bounds. The question is: will they succeed without a spatial conflict?
Generally, when talking about the militarization of space, the first thing that comes to mind is some movie from the famous saga of George Lucas Star Wars. And, oddly enough, this relationship that is established in the collective imaginary is not altogether wrong. Not in vain, the franchise launched in 1977 with the premiere of Star Wars: Episode IV - A new hope responds to a certain context of the international system where the space race between the US. UU and the USSR had intensified by forced marches in the very heart of the Cold War.
Thus, while entire generations dreamed of being astronauts and following in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, Valentina Tereschkova or Yuri Gagarin, the two superpowers competed to achieve a strategic military superiority for which outer space had become a cornerstone. This would be a rivalry in which the Soviets had started with an advantage in the late 50s and early 60s to subsequently lose ground in favor of the progressive US hegemony. Following this trend, since the 70s, EE. UU it would gradually consolidate a military power that has survived to this day. In this way, the militarization - not necessarily the weaponization - of space is a reality that is increasingly present and plays an essential role in the international security panorama and, therefore, in the external relations of the main nuclear powers. of the world.
The origins of the militarization of space
In the first place, it is necessary to clarify that militarization and weaponization of space are two different concepts. The first involves the use of space for military purposes. The second refers to the deployment of weapons in space, although there are also those who consider weapons systems located on land, sea and air with an outer destructive capacity as examples of space weapons.
Once this difference is clarified, the beginning of the race for the control of outer space can be placed at the launching of the Soviet unmanned satellite Sputnik I on October 4, 1957. This occurred in a context of arms competition between the two superpowers in the one that the threat of a nuclear war served like main device of mutual dissuasion. For this reason, the successes of the Soviet space programs in the 50s and 60s gave rise to considerable concern in Washington. The answer of the Eisenhower Administration was almost immediate: to create in 1958 the Space Agency of the United States (NASA for its acronym in English). This would be followed by the programming, already during the mandates of John F. Kennedy, Lindsay B. Johnson and even Richard Nixon, of the "New Frontier" plan to develop a space program -Apolo- towards the end of the 60s that, on the one hand, He managed to take man to the moon and, on the other, he sent a strong message of superiority to Moscow.
Paired with these developments were the interests that both Americans and Soviets possessed in securing their strategic dominance outside of Earth's orbit to achieve the desired control of space -command of the commons- and extend their dominion to all battle environments. : land, sea, air and space. Under this logic, the two superpowers developed the first defensive anti-satellite missiles, known as ASAT. In addition, on the Soviet side, orbital weapons such as the first series of intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBMC in English) or orbital fractional bombing (FOBS) systems would be promoted, while the Americans would develop the Nike Zeus and Nike X anti-ballistic missiles, as well as the Sentinel or Safeguard programs, designed to neutralize possible Soviet IBMC attacks and protect the US nuclear deterrent capabilities. UU
A key moment in this process occurs during the Reagan Administration with the announcement of the launch of its Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI in English) in 1983, known as "Star Wars" for the original trilogy. It sought to overwhelm the theories of massive retaliation and mutual assured destruction (MAD in English). Thus, with the collaboration of physicist Edward Teller, Reagan aimed to articulate a complex defense system capable of anticipating and eliminating nuclear threats through the development of ICBM with orbital trajectory and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). These capabilities would make up a missile defense shield capable of detecting and destroying the missiles fired by the enemies in their two stages of launch and navigation, which would make a surprise attack by Moscow impossible. However, despite the echo achieved, the initiative ended up being strongly criticized and discarded due to its technical infeasibility.
Some years later, after the dismemberment of the USSR, there would be a change of ideational and material context in which missile defense would become of less strategic importance for the US. UU However, the North American hegemony in the battle for space had already consolidated and endowed the country with an absolute dominion that allowed it to articulate two National Security Strategies in 2002 and 2006 under the doctrine second-to-no-one, which establishes that EE UU it can not be in military inferiority with any other power in the world. This dynamic has continued to this day, although more and more countries are trying to dispute the US dominance in space.
The spatial doctrine of EE. UU in the XXI century
The 21st century began for EE. UU with the unipolar mirage and its absolute superiority in space. With the arrival of George W. Bush in power, this "last frontier" would no longer be seen by the Pentagon as a world heritage site to transform itself into a new appendix of geopolitical struggles that aimed to spread the pax americana "to infinity and beyond".
In the Bush doctrine, initially embodied in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, any obstacle to the freedom of action of the United States. UU in space it would be unacceptable and violate its national sovereignty. That is why, just two months after 9/11, Washington decided to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) established with the USSR in 1972. The ultimate goal was to develop an anti-missile shield to protect the US. UU by all means at your disposal against hypothetical attacks from rogue states. Under this pretext, laser systems on board spacecraft (ABL), new ASATs and other instruments to protect American satellite infrastructures against a possible "Pearl Harbor space" would be developed. Such initiatives caused numerous sectors to accuse the Government of undertaking an arms race unilaterally and contrary to the current international regulations on the peaceful use of space. However, in its 2006 National Space Policy, the Bush Administration stated that, since it did not have weapons in space, there would also be no need to regulate its use through international agreements, a position that was maintained until the end of its mandate, especially after the 2007 Chinese ASAT trials.
In 2010, with the National Space Strategy presented by the Obama Administration, certain forms of this doctrine were changed. This statement should not invite us to think that EE. UU was or is willing to take lightly a binding legal framework on the regulation of space armaments. In fact, Obama's line remains continuist with the importance of securing the American strategic advantage in space. No wonder, then, the trials with the SM3 missiles incorporated into the ships of the Aegis combat system (ACG in English) or the launch of the Boeing X-37B space plane. But what does change is the will to solve the problems of space security through a transnational cooperation strengthened, more multilateral, and not only through the unilateral path of his predecessor. In this sense, the Obama doctrine has been slightly less reluctant to possible space weapons regulations, as long as such provisions are equitable, verifiable and increase the national security of EE. UU The objective is to avoid as much as possible a future arms race, preferably through political agreements, although, if this is finally inevitable, the priority would be to maintain the spatial superiority over its competitors. In this way, the Obama Administration has not renounced to reinforce, through the Defense Innovation Initiative at the end of 2014, the offensive and defensive spatial capabilities that ensure North American strategic dominance. Moreover, its main concern lies in the absence of effective deterrence against possible enemy attacks towards its constellation of space systems. The reason is simple: there are capabilities that only EE. UU he possesses in this field and, therefore, the retaliation would have to be necessarily asymmetric. However, there are more and more critics who argue that this strategic superiority can not be maintained for much longer with the current insufficient investment and rapid Russian and, above all, Chinese advances in this field.
The Sino-Russian battle to dethrone the USA UU of its space hegemony
China and Russia are the two main candidates to try to limit - or, if you prefer, to wear down - the US military, technological and strategic superiority. UU outside Earth's orbit. Both powers are aware that space infrastructures are increasingly important for the development of military operations, location, identification and destruction of targets, navigation and communications, drone piloting or missile launches, among other functions. Knowing this, China and Russia have become the main advocates of the establishment of international legal frameworks on space demilitarization, supported by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The most evident example is the successive Geneva Disarmament Commissions, which these countries have advocated on more than one occasion for the non-militarization of space and the prohibition to install weapons systems in outer space.
This strategy has been perceived by the different US administrations as a Trojan horse with which both powers intend to reduce the technological gap they have with Washington. Such suspicions are accentuated by the fact that both China and Russia are also developing military capabilities enabled to operate against terrestrial and outer-space targets.
Countries with orbital launch capabilities. Source: California Technology Institute
The Sino-Russian battle to dethrone the USA UU of its space hegemony
China and Russia are the two main candidates to try to limit - or, if you prefer, to wear down - the US military, technological and strategic superiority. UU outside Earth's orbit. Both powers are aware that space infrastructures are increasingly important for the development of military operations, location, identification and destruction of targets, navigation and communications, drone piloting or missile launches, among other functions. Knowing this, China and Russia have become the main advocates of the establishment of international legal frameworks on space demilitarization, supported by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The most evident example is the successive Geneva Disarmament Commissions, which these countries have advocated on more than one occasion for the non-militarization of space and the prohibition to install weapons systems in outer space.
This strategy has been perceived by the different US administrations as a Trojan horse with which both powers intend to reduce the technological gap they have with Washington. Such suspicions are accentuated by the fact that both China and Russia are also developing military capabilities enabled to operate against terrestrial and outer-space targets.
China, for example, has been developing tests with ASAT missiles since 2007, with which they have achieved the destruction, by means of a KKV kinetic ballistic missile, of the old Fengyun 1C meteorological satellite. Such an achievement was a real coup d'état that caused a strong international protest because it had not been previously announced. In parallel, the essay sent a message to the world in general and to EE. UU in particular: China had entered fully into the competition for the militarization of space.
This reality would be confirmed in the White Paper on Defense, published by the Popular Liberation Army (ELP) in 2015; it defines space as the "cusp of international strategic competition". Therefore, China is interested in modernizing its space capabilities through the development of its own global positioning system, the BeiDou, as well as new kinetic and cybernetic ASAT, directed energy weapons (DEW in English) and advances in the C4ISR system (Command , Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Recognition). There are even some who point out that the country seeks to undertake the development of a Solar Energy Space Program (SBSP for its acronym in English) to satiate its internal demand for clean energy by taking advantage of solar resources from space. To this end, Beijing is trying to promote mining programs on the hidden side of the Moon and on different asteroids, not to mention its intentions to build its own space station, the Tiangong, in 2020.
According to the Chinese analyst Dean Cheng, some of these measures are focused on developing early launch capabilities of space missiles, space surveillance systems, vehicles of kinetic destruction and other offensive as well as defensive capabilities. With this, China seeks to achieve the domain of space and, above all, information through asymmetric strategies and thus try to overwhelm the superiority of conventional American forces in a hypothetical conflict over Taiwan. In addition, China is trying to exploit as much as possible the vulnerabilities it observes in the US dependence on its advanced ultra high frequency (AEHF) satellites. Therefore, the Government of Xi Jinping seems to have given greater prominence to the space sphere, where it knows that it can obtain greater competitive advantages over what for many can be the hair of Samson of Washington.
En el caso ruso, las pretensiones de acortar la brecha espacial con EE. UU. no distan mucho de las chinas. Tras el desplome de la URSS, el país ha pasado por años difíciles; pese a ello, sus analistas de defensa han coincidido en señalar que las nuevas guerras se caracterizarán por la creciente preponderancia del ámbito aeroespacial. Esto se debe a que es en esta dimensión donde se ubicarán los sistemas de información satelitales, indispensables para el desempeño de los combates, cada vez más robotizados y automatizados, del siglo XXI.
Currently, the Russian Military Doctrine of 2010 and its 2014 revision consider the militarization of space and the deployment of conventional strategic precision weapons as one of the main threats to the national security of the country. Thus, Russia claims to reject outright the deployment of weapons in space. That is why it has been trying to promote the different drafts of the Treaty of prevention against the deployment of weapons in outer space and the threat of the use of force against objects from outer space, in 2014. In addition, the concern of Moscow is accentuated especially due to the poor quality of its space infrastructures and the relative underdevelopment of its satellite information systems, in many cases the modernized heirs of the old Soviet models.
However, this has not been an obstacle for the Putin government to try to increase its military capabilities, oriented towards outer space in recent years. In addition to the development of ASAT missiles, lasers or destructive space robots, Russia has intensified since 2007 its military programs for early warning, optical recognition, intelligence or communications and navigation. All these instruments have a high operational value, with early warning satellite systems as being especially relevant for a power such as Russia, whose deterrence continues to rest on its strategic nuclear forces. In addition, like Beijing, Moscow has sought to consolidate its own global positioning system, known as Glonass. In this regard, agreements have even been reached for the joint use of this Russian GPS with India, Kazakhstan, Ukraine or Cuba. Even so, in comparative terms, Russia is well behind the US. UU and China in terms of the dynamics of militarization of space.
The risks of multipolarization of space
The threats of a weaponization and struggle for control of space are increasing. The main superpowers are the most important actors to avoid such dynamics, although not the only ones; after all, more and more countries, like Israel, Iran, Japan or India, are focusing on the stars.
The multiplication of risks that this involves is not minor and the unleashing of security dilemmas in space could have devastating effects for the entire planet. While this is happening, advocates of soft law -soft law-, such as the EU or Canada, are trying to exercise their diplomatic leadership through multilateral and regulatory mechanisms such as the International Code of Conduct on Activities in Outer Space in 2014, although for the time being results are limited by power struggles between states.
Given this panorama, it is necessary to deepen the knowledge of this reality in order to understand risks that go far beyond the national security of the main global powers. Today more than ever, the consequences of a possible arms race in space pose a threat to the security of global citizenship as a whole
fuente:
https://elordenmundial.com/2017/01/10/la-militarizacion-del-espacio-ultima-frontera-las-power-politics/
