Reaching Critical Will

Reaching for a Critical Mass of Political Will for Nuclear Disarmament

China's anti-satellite test
A new arms race in space?

25 January 2007
From The Economist print edition

There are better ways to manage China's space rivalry with America

David Simonds

IF THERE is to be a new arms race in space, China will be in it. Its belated admission that earlier this month it destroyed one of its own satellites-blowing it to smithereens by slamming a ballistic missile into it over 500 miles (800km) up in space-is China's way of saying that it will cede control of space to no one. The feat itself was not particularly impressive: both the United States and the then Soviet Union carried out similar space tests more than 20 years ago. But shooting down its own satellite shows that China could now blast someone else's out of the sky, too (see article). Putting its marker in the heavens in this way reflects badly on China as a terrestrial power. Yet its poor space etiquette could be turned to advantage.

Satellites are as vulnerable as they are valuable. America and Russia stopped such anti-satellite tests because both stood to lose: each side's eyes-in-the-skies monitored the other's nuclear weapons, helping to avoid awful mishap. These days satellites are used far more widely for communications, terrestrial navigation, crop monitoring and much more. With its provocative test, China has thumbed its nose at the many satellite-dependent countries.

As a purely practical matter, there are better ways of dealing with redundant satellites. China's way ensures that those smithereens-thousands of bits of debris, large and small-will orbit like bullets in space for years (another reason the Americans and Russians desisted). They may damage other satellites and put space-farers at risk. What irony if China, which takes pride in its own recent manned space flights, were to find its ambitions to put a man on the moon and eventually to build a space station set back someday by the still ricocheting rubble from its own irresponsible action.

China evidently calculates that all this is worth it. Its space blast was really aimed at rival America. Satellites not only add to America's already far superior conventional fighting power. These and other space-based sensors also aid the Bush administration's nascent missile-defence plans. If push ever came to shove over Taiwan, China worries that regional defences might help protect the island from the threat of around 900 missiles now pointed at it from the mainland. Meanwhile longer-range defences could blunt the deterrent value of China's rockets (few, but growing in number and being modernised) aimed at America itself.

For years China has blocked discussion of other issues at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament because America has refused to negotiate a new treaty banning the "weaponisation" of space; the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits only the placing of weapons of mass destruction in space, though with strictures against harmful contamination of space, too. The Bush team counters that there is no arms race in space (officials deny plans to place weapons there), and therefore no need for a new treaty. Both sides are being disingenuous. China's occasional musings about whether defending Taiwan would be worth losing Los Angeles help (along with the antics of North Korea and Iran) to bolster support-and not just in America-for the missile defences that it wants a space treaty to constrain. Yet America's secretive space plans worry even some of its friends, too.

China's anti-satellite test makes a race to weaponise space more likely. Contacts between American and Chinese space scientists, broken off some years ago after accusations of Chinese spying and only recently tentatively resumed, are likely to shrivel once more. That is a pity, since co-operation can mitigate the suspicions that go with competition.

A better way upward

An arms race in space would leave everyone, including its "winner", worse off. Likewise, insisting on a treaty or nothing, with interminable debates over the legal definition of what is a space weapon-just something that can be fired or also the sophisticated bits and pieces that help find and track targets too?-won't stop the emerging space competition turning ugly. Better to try something more modest: a code of responsible conduct between existing space powers that emerging ones could also sign up to.

Such a code proposed by the Washington-based Stimson Centre, a think-tank, working with a group of non-government experts from China, Russia, Canada, France and Japan, would rule out interfering with other nations' space systems, including using lasers to harm satellites (another trick several, including China, have practised), and avoid activities that create long-lasting space debris. It would also provide advance notice of space manoeuvres that might get in others' way.

America is still more powerful in space. China has shown what damage it can do. Their competition won't end there. But there are surely better ways to manage it.