Has the US entered a “new era of space diplomacy”? That’s the claim of an AP article that tried to tie together the recent US-India accord to fly NASA instruments on India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar mission as well as plans for NASA administrator Mike Griffin to travel to China later this year. James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies tried to tie the India and China trips together:
“If he [Griffin] can go to China with agreements with other partners, like India, it doesn’t give the sense that we’re desperate,” Lewis said. “It’s not like we’re coming with bent knees to the Chinese.”
However, it’s not clear that NASA would be “desperate” in talking with the Chinese regardless of deals with India and other nations. While cooperation with China might be useful, from either a strategic and/or technical standpoint, it’s hardly essential in either case. A possibility that is more interesting—and not explored in the AP article—is whether these overtures to India and even China, as well as existing cooperation with Japan, might be the beginning of a larger, geopolitical shift that sees more cooperation with these nations at the expense of Europe and Russia.
I don’t see any evidence that the two are linked. Cooperation with India has been under discussion for quite awhile. And although it is a significant deal, we should note that the U.S. struck a deal with Brazil a few years ago, so the United States has been expanding cooperation in limited steps.
However, I think that the Griffin visit to China, although modest, represents a significant shift in the administration’s position. Remember that the Chinese made similar overtures three years ago and they went nowhere. Obviously the administration decided to change its policies from “absolutely no” to “let’s see.”
Dr. Foust wrote:
“A possibility that is more interesting—and not explored in the AP article—is whether these overtures to India and even China, as well as existing cooperation with Japan, might be the beginning of a larger, geopolitical shift that sees more cooperation with these nations at the expense of Europe and Russia.”
This is an interesting question, but incomplete. There is much more context that we should consider, particularly the fact that Europe has struck more deals with both China and Russia in the past couple of years. They have done so for many reasons, but the result is that it indicates a shift away from sole dependence upon the United States. So the interesting question to ask is how much the U.S. overtures to India and China are a response to European overtures to China and Russia.
I don’t see our overtures coming at the expense of either Russia or Europe. There is a great amount of commercial joint ventures with these countries already as well as intergovernmental cooperation. I do not see the need so much for the government to step in and increase beyond the level it has already. In fact, the government needs to step back from or streamline the process (i.e. ITAR reform) and just let our commercial ties to Europe and Russia strengthen.
As for the question Dwayne raised, that is indeed very interesting. European commercial space manufacturing has grown much faster than US has of late. The deal Boeing was trying to have to create a joint venture with ISRO fell apart last year only to be picked up by EADS Astrium (along with a few satellite orders). Both Astrium and Alcatel have been selling alot of commercial satellites to China, a market the US is unable to take advantage of. If anything, we need to have these intergovernmental cooperative projects because commerce in space is being hampered by our own internal politics.
Mr. Zelnio wrote:
“Both Astrium and Alcatel have been selling alot of commercial satellites to China, a market the US is unable to take advantage of.”
I don’t think this is true. The US _can_ sell satellites to China. But there are restrictions. The Chinese might also be reluctant to buy from the US. I seem to remember that a couple of years ago a Chinese deal to buy a Boeing satellite fell through because of concern that the Chinese could use the technology for purposes other than communication. That might have led the Chinese to decide that they should look to buy comsats from others. But it’s not prohibited.
Think in geopolitical terms. The relationship between the U.S. and China is perhaps the single most important strategic relationship the U.S. needs to focus upon, and I doubt that Griffin going to China has anything to do with the comsat industry. If the Bush Administration was concerned about the health of the comsat industry, we would have a lot more evidence (for example, ITAR reform would be a topic).
Remember, in the few cases where Griffin has talked about China he brought up a strategic geopolitical issue (which is out of the ordinary for a NASA Administrator).
Think about it in basic geopolitical terms
1) We want certain strategic things from China.
2) China has repeatedly asked to have a larger cooperative space relationship with the U.S.
3) There is no downside for the President to send the Administrator of NASA to “talk” about cooperative projects (.e.g. to dangle a carrot).
– Al