China Hits Its Target . . . And it's on West 43rd Street.
by James Oberg // Weekly Standard // 1/27/2007, Volume 012, Issue 20

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Check....=13219&r=eztbj

Two weeks ago, high above eastern Asia, a Chinese missile unerringly
hunted down and struck its target. The precision was impressive-and
frightening in its strategic cunning.

No, the target wasn't the derelict weather satellite that happened to get
blown to smithereens by the missile's impact. More important, the space shot
hit home in the editorial offices of the New York Times. Responding exactly
as could have been expected, the Times editors first accused the Bush
administration of having "bellicose attitudes" of its own, then urged the
administration to sign on to "an arms control treaty for space," which would
ban what China had just done.

Not that the Times fully comprehended what China had done. The editorial
claimed it had destroyed a retired "communications satellite." But the
explosion in space destroyed something else, too. An international treaty
"banning" space weapons, as the Times advocates, would depend crucially on
the expectation that, absent effective verification procedures, the parties
would be able to trust each other because of a track record of openness and
candor. In the aftermath of the secretive Chinese test and official
obfuscation at all levels of the Beijing regime, any such hope is as
shattered as the ill-fated Fengyun weather satellite.

Russia, too, stepped in to demonstrate bluntly the vanity of hopes that
transparency and honesty could provide a firm basis for a credible
anti-space weapons treaty. V-Putin, visiting India, sniped that China "is
not the first country which has conducted such trials. . . . As far as I
know, the first such tests were carried out back in the 1980s," by the U-S.
The Russian defense minister, Sergey Ivanov, declared his doubts the
"alleged test" even occurred. If the Russian pres and top officials cannot
speak the truth about decades-old Soviet space weapons or the current
Chinese test, how trustworthy have they shown themselves to be about
less-verifiable space plans in the future?

In its January 20 editorial, the Times adopted a tone of sweet reason:
"Surely it would make military and diplomatic sense," the editors urged, "to
seek to ban all tests and any use of antisatellite weapons. . . . The way to
counter China is through an arms control treaty." Rep. Edward Markey
(D-Mass.) agreed: "It is urgent that President Bush move to guarantee
protection [of American satellites] by initiating an international agreement
to ban the development, testing, and deployment of space weapons and
anti-satellite systems." Gary Samore of the Council on Foreign Relations
told the Times, "It puts pressure on the U.S. to negotiate agreements not to
weaponize space." And the Boston Globe celebrated the Chinese strike because
"it could lead to something positive" since it might persuade the Bush
administration to talk about a treaty.

Indeed, China (and Russia), along with other nations, have for years been
pushing for what they call a "treaty to prevent the deployment of weapons in
space." But just as with Abraham Lincoln's famous five-legged dog ("If I
call a tail a leg, does a dog have five legs?") this so-called treaty has no
prospect of delivering on its grandiose title.

First of all, there is no accepted definition of what is to be banned.
The warhead flown on January 12 had no explosives and its guidance package
probably shared many-if not all-of its components with the rendezvous
control hardware being developed for Shenzhou manned spaceships, which
clearly would not be banned. A dozen projects around the world are
developing robots to fly to targets in space to inspect and manipulate them
(for repair and resupply). Would adding a pair of wire cutters be all that
is needed to transform them into "space weapons"? Such a robot could destroy
a satellite every bit as effectively as an explosive would.

In a May 26, 2006, working paper at the Conference on Disarmament, Russia
and China observed that "no consensus has been reached so far on the
definition of 'space weapon' or even of 'outer space.'" The paper advanced
various views, including one that "suggests that there is no need for
definitions, on the ground that formulating them is both very difficult and
unnecessary. . . . Lengthy discussions on the definition issue might impede
reaching a political consensus on the prevention of the weaponization of and
an arms race in outer space."

Various definitions are nonetheless suggested for discussion, including
one with this curious loophole: "except those devices needed by cosmonauts
for self-defense." This clause is intended to "grandfather" the one true
weapon known to be deployed today in outer space, the survival pistol
carried aboard every Russian manned spaceship that docks to the
International Space Station. It's a trivial but telling exception-the
Russians have a weapon in space, and their proposed definition simply dodges
the issue by calling the pistol a "non-weapon."

Worse, a slippery slope between military and civilian applications of
dual-use technology means that reliable verification of a non-weapons space
mission would mean intimate inspection of the hardware and flight plans for
every launch. At a recent disarmament conference, Chinese representatives
admitted that verification of a space treaty would be "extremely difficult
to negotiate." Their recommendation: "For the time being, to put on hold the
verification issue until conditions are ripe, and to negotiate a treaty
without verification provisions could be a practical alternative." Russian
negotiators concurred. "Elaborating the treaty without verification
measures, which could be added at a later stage, might be a preferable
option," they said.

So the treaty being promoted by the New York Times and others-at the
instigation of a Chinese missile fired up their backsides-would mean only
what each signatory thought it meant. The glaring exception would be in the
United States, where a ratified treaty would be subject to federal court
enforcement and thus would mean whatever any crusading judge responding to
any political pressure group's lawsuits wanted it to mean. A wide range of
space projects by NASA, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies
could easily be accused of weapons "intentions" and thereby be subjected to
delays, disclosures, and legal harassment.

That's not a bad long-range goal from the Chinese strategic point of
view. The manipulation of Western media and political forces in that
direction, at the point of a space gun, is not a bad payoff for blowing up
one surplus space satellite.