By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 19, 2007
China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.
Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.
Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.
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White House officials said the United States and other nations, which they did not identify, had “expressed our concern regarding this action to the Chinese.” Despite its protest, the Bush administration has long resisted a global treaty banning such tests because it says it needs freedom of action in space.
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In late August, President Bush authorized a new national space policy that ignored calls for a global prohibition on such tests. The policy said the United States would “preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space” and “dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so.” It declared the United States would “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”
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The Bush administration has conducted research that critics say could produce a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would be used against enemy satellites.
The largely secret project, parts of which were made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress last year, appears to be part of a wide-ranging administration effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive.
A while back, I was confounded by an Associated Press article in which a Bush administration official threatened of the vulnerability of American satellites to ‘terrorists’ and ‘rouge nations.’ (All emphasis in both articles via bold, underline and italics are added by me)
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
…Undersecretary of State Robert G. Joseph also reasserted U.S. policy that it has a right to use force against hostile nations or terror groups that might try to attack American satellites or ground installations that support space programs. President Bush adopted a new U.S. space policy earlier this year.
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Joseph, the senior arms control official at the State Department, said nations cannot all be counted on to use space purely for peaceful purposes.
"A number of countries are exploring and acquiring capabilities to counter, attack, and defeat U.S. space systems," Joseph said
He also said terrorists "understand our vulnerabilities and have targeted our economy in the past, as they did on 9/11." He said terrorists and enemy states might view the U.S. space program as "a highly lucrative target," while sophisticated technologies could improve their ability to interfere with U.S. space systems and services.
Joseph did not identify terror groups or nations that might have such motives. An aide to Joseph, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said that information was classified.
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"No nation, no state-actor, should be under the illusion that the United States will tolerate a denial of our right to the use of space for peaceful purposes," he said.
Now that it’s clear that the commentary was delivered preemptively toward China, the irony and hypocrisy inherent in the Bush Administration’s position is unbelievable. First off, the idea that the Chinese, or any other world power are under any obligation to report their activities to the United States, while CIA operatives are actively kidnapping innocent foreign citizens in their home nations and rendering them to torture and interrogation in secret prisons around the world, is condescending and naïve.
Second, once again we have a prime example of how the White House manipulates the canard of terrorism into unrelated policy debates. Is the People’s Republic of China a terrorist regime, or rouge nation? If not, why confound the issue by attempting to convince citizens that our satellites are under imminent threat from terrorists? If terrorists have the ability to launch weaponry that can break the Earth’s atmosphere, we have problems of greater significance than worrying about our spy satellites. It is the patent dishonesty in the administration’s wielding of terrorism as a tool to push forward their ideological viewpoint that makes them entirely untrustworthy.
The fact of the matter is that the Bush Administration, and as result the entirety of the United States is attempting to avoid an international accord to restrict the proliferation of anti-satellite weaponry. Mr. Joseph and other administration officials are willingly attempting to convolute the issue by incorrectly claiming that the United States is creating such weaponry to defend itself and its spy satellites from attacks by terrorists. The irony is, and will remain that while we spend countless millions (billions?) on developing this unnecessary technology, and borrow billions from China to waste away in our unnecessary war in Iraq (whose estimated cost rises above the trillion dollar threshold); our economic health languishes, and perpetuates the eventual demise of the United States unquestioned hegemony.
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