I noted here last week a “hearing” last Wednesday on space security by an international organization called e-Parliament. I didn’t attend the hearing, but Taylor Dinerman did, and writes about the hearing in this week’s issue of The Space Review. He isn’t terribly enthused, to say the least, about the content of the hearing, which he considers to be an international effort to hinder the US’s ability to defend itself and its space assets.
As I mentioned a few threads ago, I think misnomers in terminology are a big part of the misunderstanding here.
Also, it’s important to draw a distinction between offensive space-based weapons like lasers, and defensive space-transiting weapons like missile defence.
There’s a strange implication in the article that arms races are not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not sure I agree; they could be highly destabilizing, though I do concede that if we could avoid that instability it would greatly advance space technology, and that nearer-term space development may increase our species survival odds for the next few hundred years.
As for treaties, it is an ideal of Sun Tzu to win wars without fighting. Thus, treaties have been instruments of military deception for thousands of years. Basic human nature is unchanging, so there have always been and we will always be plenty of gullible people (and countries) out there.
The thing that strikes me is that China and Russia act as though they get their information from sources like that nearly fictional New York Times article back in May, yet they must surely have better intelligence than this.
At least if Time’s account of Titan Rain is to be believed (and the full article is very disturbing) China should know better than most US generals that there is effectively nil US effort towards offensive space systems right now. Heck, we can’t even squeeze out a new recon sat system these days without nearly bankrupting the Air Force, or so it seems.
I think, in general, Dinerman was correct in his assessment that most people, particularly politicians and peaceniks, have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to 1) space and 2) military affairs. I would also agree that the international arena revels in America-bashing, though sometimes perhaps we need a good kick in the ego. This is especially true when the chief executive of the most powerful nation on Earth is about as articulate as an average 17-year-old.
I would submit, however, that military folks often have no idea how to think about space in a strategic or even visionary way, since they continue to slap “space” labels on systems and programs designed to enable efficient terrestrial warfare. There are significant exceptions, but most of these conceptual studies, sometimes highlighted in Air Power Journal among others, are lost in the libraries of Maxwell Air Force Base and the virtual catacombs of the Internet. At a recent meeting I attended, a 3-star general reiterated the misconception among many that 1991’s Desert Storm was the first “space war.” It took a good deal for me not to blurt out my objection.
When troops are commanded from orbit or from the Moon to neutralize targets on Earth or anywhere else, then I’ll be impressed.
Seventeen? You’re being very generous. The VSE presentation, much as I support its goals and the President in this goal, is truly painful to listen through on the DVD that came with the book. (It is interesting: since I don’t watch television, I almost always see the President’s speeches in print, and I’m hearing the writer rather than the speaker. In the rare instances when I actually hear Mr. Bush, it is always a shock how much like a young child he actually sounds.) At least on the speaking front, why can’t we once have a Tony Blair?
I’d have infinitely more respect for this President if, in addition to learning to talk, he rediscovered the ancient maxim that wars are best won when you don’t have to fight them.
— Donald
Donald
“…wars are best won when you don’t have to fight them.”
You are right on this count. Smart military leaders know this in their loins.
“Seventeen?”
I was being “respectful.” I could have easily been much more colorful in describing our president’s intellectual capabilities.
I’ve had all of this “Bash Bush Blog” I can take.
See ya!!
With regard to America-bashing, in a unipolar power structure it’s an in-built tendency of humans to band together and counterbalance the dominant power. We’re seeing this now with the cooperation of Russia and Europe on space matters, and the cooperation of China with Europe on Galileo.
This was to some extent inevitable after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it’s not fair that scrutiny is so unevenly applied by people whose instinct to do so blinds them, but I don’t think it helps to begrudge it either. It’s just one of those things to be weathered.
Russia and China are pushing hard for a ban on space weapons. Russia is probably sincere, or at least sincerely out of cash, but there is no way to verify how sincere China is. History teaches us that doubletalk is the rule rather than the exception:
Eienhower originally proposed a ban on military activity in space but the USSR rejected it. Later, as the US took the lead in space it became the USSR’s turn to push for a ban on space weapons, while simultaneously developing the Polyus space battlestation and using their Terra-3 ASAT complex to test-fire a laser at the Shuttle. The military laser research is very strong in China right now I hear…
Anyway, the bottom line is that countries tend to energize the peace treaty idealogues as and when it suits them militarily.
Destabilizing is one of the most overused, misunderstood, and patently moronic terms ever used in strategic debate. It carries the assumption that life as it is now is as good as it will ever get and to improve would be pointless and unacceptably dangerous. I, for one, would be all for destabilizing the current strategic scene if it meant America would move boldly into space with commercial, colonial, and exploratory endeavors covered by a dominant, armed US Space Force. I wouldn’t care how pissed China, France, or anyone else was. I really believe that only by making serious military moves in space will a real spacefaring culture come into being. “Stability” and avoiding “destabilizing” situations is what caused us to prop up dictators in the Cold War and conduct other moral disasters. The US has nothing to fear from moving boldly into space with both swords and plowshares.
The whole “guns vs. butter” argument doesn’t hold water either. We get a whole lot more butter today because the US ponied up the cash for the “gun” of DARPA internet experiments, computer technology, and GPS and communications satellite systems back in the day. So I believe will military space equipment (if deployed properly) provide dividends far in excess than their up front cost.
These “peacenik” yahoos that congreate in groups like e-Parliament (read “people whose opinions no one cares about”) are far worse to the interests of the United States than any Chinese MiG or even fanatic terrorists. The anti space weapons activists are wrong on so many levels, but its that their false use of the “moral high ground” has so cowed people that no one will talk about WHY space weapons are a good thing. This atmosphere of fear and recrimination for anyone who advocates space weaponization and a vibrant space military also play right into the hands of Air Force leaders, whose interest in space extends only so far as if their GPS bomb hit their target 1/2 millimeter closer to target and whether they can call home on the weekend.
Of course, I firmly believe in their right to free speech regardless of how dangerous and irresponsible I believe their ill-conceived opinions to be.