Science, Health, and Environmental Issues: Achieving Space Security - Research Paper Example

Achieving Space Security Research Paper of Introduction More than fifty years after the launching of space exploration in the 1950s, the United States sees itself in a position of unparalleled global power and strength. In spite of this power, a number of U.S. policy scholars and elected officials are anxious that space is a weakness, an arena on which the nation is exceptionally dependent upon but also where in it is very exposed to potential attack. Thus space exploration should be continuously funded by the United States in order to defend important military resources in space. The primary source of this global power is the space technology of the United States. Satellites reinforce and improve military, business, and individual communications across the globe, transmitting massive volumes of information almost immediately (Lambakis, 2001). Remote-sensing and weather satellites portend imminent calamities and increase agricultural productivity. Global positioning system (GPS) spacecraft monitor goods, and rescue human lives by lessening fatalities and damages, transporting weapons with perfect accuracy, preventing plane crashes, and finding ships. Exploration and military early-warning satellites compel agreements, assist in locating enemies, and give early information on impending missile attack (Perdomo, 2005). Apparently, the United States massively invests in space technology. However, as mentioned above, U.S. officials are anxious that the space is a site where the country is very susceptible to potential attack. They believe that the growing number of nations, like North Korea and Iran, currently getting hold of ballistic missiles may be capable of installing matters into space, such as simple weapons, to threaten the resources of the United States. There are also worries that space leaders with more sophisticated capacities, like China, will create weapons that would sooner or later capture or salvage U.S. satellites (Perdomo, 2005). Therefore, U.S. policy scholars and officials claim that the country’s space defenses will be required to defend important military resources in space. Because of these concerns, the U.S. from 2001 to 2008 continued thorough deliberation about anti-satellite (ASAT) offensive and anti-ballistic missile (ABM), space-based defenses—agendas it had mostly kept aside in the 1990s (Moltz, 2011, 3). Several members of Congress and air force leaders kept on demanding space-based armaments and ‘Global Strike’ capacities, whose assemblages of military guided missiles may tear down expanding missiles, terrorist sites, or enemy states sheltering weapons of mass destruction (WMD) (Lele & Singh, 2009). From their point of view, emerging dangerous situations in space give justification for the need to continue funding space exploration and technology. The opposite view states that space is an important ‘sanctuary’ from existing military crisis and installed weapons. Proponents of this perspective emphasize that the Soviet Union and the United States did not deploy armaments in space; they try to determine whether threats nowadays are really greater than the threats during the Cold War (Brunner & Soucek, 2011). A particular research finds out that “If the United States detected a missile that appeared to be attacking a satellite, even a relatively small maneuver could essentially eliminate the probability of an intercept” (Moltz, 2011, 3). This point of view claims that the vigorous experimenting and deploying of space offensives and defenses would change substantially a structure of formal and implicit limit in space activities during the Cold War, impairing the defense system of the United States in the long term (Moltz, 2011, 3). They believe that the active experimenting of kinetic-kill armaments in space could damage space for other reasons and may provoke an international armed conflict. Their solution to the security issue depends on developing new agreements to protect space against arms race, using space’s transparency for the needed confirmation (Brunner & Soucek, 2011). According to Lambakis (2001), they emphasize that the vast majority of nations at the United Nations are in fact denouncing the idea of armed conflict in space and that very few nations sustain military space programs, largely for communications and exploration. The Militarization of Space Military space operations rapidly grew during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. Not like his forerunners, Eisenhower displayed a forceful and strong interest in matters relating to space and, more particularly, he resolutely recognized the exploitation of satellites for diplomatic and military affairs. Drawing on the studies conducted on satellites by the air force and RAND Corporation during the administration of Truman, Eisenhower systematized these attempts with the launching of national space legislation (Kalic, 2012). Furthermore, although Eisenhower led the militarization of space he appealed as well to the UN for a global policy to safeguard space as a ‘weapons-free’ haven for all countries to explore. He confronted greater demands from the military to safeguard the developing space interests of the U.S., which the military considered to be of integral geostrategic value in the rivalry with the Soviet Union in the Cold War (Kalic, 2012, 29). In order to pacify the military, Eisenhower permitted initial studies on ballistic missile defenses (BMD) and anti-satellite systems. He backed up these projects because he was confident that they may be utilized to prevent a Soviet plan to seize power over space. Although BMD and ASAT studies commenced in Eisenhower’s tenure, they flourished into totally subsidized programs under the auspices of former U.S. presidents Johnson and Kennedy (Perdomo, 2005, 81). The space legislation of Eisenhower developed within the Cold War’s competitive constraints; hence, the bipolar competition between the Soviet Union and the United States was an integral factor in the formation of the early space legislations and projects of the United States. In papers from the National Security Council (NSC), the overwrought competition of the Cold War is apparent (Kalic, 2012, 30). The security issues raised by the Science Advisory Committee’s Technology Capabilities Panel (TCP), and in NSC assemblies, led to the creation of policy documents like NSC-5520 and NSC-162/2 that validated space exploration for national security reasons. Even though the NSC formulated NSC-68 during the term of Truman, Eisenhower depended on its wide-ranging proposals to fortify the U.S. military services (Perdomo, 2005, 113). Although NSC-68 does not clearly talk about space agendas, Eisenhower made use of its central rationales to formulate a political case for the militarization of space. NSC-68 particularly indicated that the U.S. should sustain a powerful global position to prevent the alleged plans of the Soviet Union (Kalic, 2012, 30). Eisenhower considered satellites as important national security resources derived from the suggestions of the Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP). The TCP was tasked to describe how the U.S. may employ engineering, technology, and science to reduce the president’s apprehension over the power of the Soviet Union (Perdomo, 2005, 115). In 1955, TCP members wrote their paper Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack. The panel members analyzed the susceptibility of the U.S. and evaluated areas where in science and technology may be used to resolve this ‘threat’. TCP members emphasized that “technical innovations could be powerful instruments for creating strength,” (Kalic, 2012, 30) and a “deterrent to war” (Kalic, 2012, 30). They named communication and intelligence as two domains where the U.S. may take advantage of the uses of satellites. Contrary to the administration’s enlarged interest in the growing military threat of the Soviet Union, the members of TCP stressed the urgent need to strengthen nonhuman intelligence potentials of the U.S. (MacDonald, 2008). This acknowledgment of the need to employ sophisticated technological methods to gather military intelligence on the Soviet Union encouraged them to visualize the utilization of satellites as a superior method of acquiring intelligence. The TCP also supported the creation of civilian research satellites in order to facilitate the development of the intelligence-gathering satellites and military reconnaissance technology. TCP members argued that the civilian satellite system would produce information and methods to relieve the creation of military programs like protected overseas communication, photo reconnaissance, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) (MacDonald, 2008). Eisenhower’s administration, most prominently Direct of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became intensely interested in the ability of the Soviet Union to instigate a surprise attack on the U.S. With the increasing anxieties of the DCI over the production of ICBMs in the Soviet Union, satellites surfaced as integral elements in the American pursuit of technological supremacy and security (Kalic, 2012, 30-31). These concerns confronting Eisenhower’s administration matched the concerns and assumptions discussed by the United States Air Force (USAF) and RAND Corporation during the tenure of Truman when satellites were initially recognized as having military capability (Perdomo, 2005). The main dissimilarity between the two administrations was apparent when Eisenhower ordered his NSC personnel to formulate space legislation and to go ahead with the development of satellites. The Nature of Space Defense In space, the realization of security requires the task of prevailing over both natural and human-made dangers, due to the severe unfriendliness of the space environment. Because orbital operations necessitate a particular degree of communication or relations with other players, the actions of all space-exploring bodies, such as private individuals, universities, corporations, and states, unavoidably influences the safety measures of others (Lyall & Larsen, 2009). Generally, ‘space security’ may be defined as “the ability to place and operate assets outside the Earth’s atmosphere without external interference, damage, or destruction” (Moltz, 2011, 11). Sadly, threats to space security are rising nowadays, especially as space becomes more congested. Perhaps, three policy options are available (Moltz, 2011, 11): (1) space actors can assume the worst and prepare for eventual warfare; (2) they can hedge their bets with weapons research and begin efforts at better coordination and conflict avoidance; or (3) they can reject military options altogether and heighten their efforts to build new cooperative mechanisms for developing space jointly. As shown above, during the Cold War, the actions of the U.S. and the Soviet Union controlled space security concerns. These two nations carried out roughly 95% of space operations during the Cold War. Even though Russian operation has diminished since 1991, by 2005 the pooled sum of Russian and American operations still comprised 68% of military launches, 63% of civil launches, and 50% of commercial space launches (Moltz, 2011, 11-12). For the Soviet Union and the U.S., attaining space security was for decades mostly an issue of knowing the strategies of the other party and attempting to reach an agreement on how to handle conflicts and avoid aggressive measures. With the conclusion of the Cold War, space became a domain governed largely by the U.S. Nevertheless, after 2001, a new U.S. administration, placing emphasis on developing overseas missile warnings and ultimate American space susceptibilities, regressed to a military-based approach in the assumption that antagonistic players would emerge among new space leaders and pose dangers necessitating military interventions (Lele & Singh, 2009). Partly because of this, it pulled out from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, one of the major space security agreements of the Cold War, and also formed more space-based military programs for security or defensive purposes. Nevertheless, the U.S. did not leave the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 or several other collaborative arrangements (Brunner & Soucek, 2011). Several scholars argued that the decisions of the administration of George W. Bush had ultimately opened up the opportunity for a historically definite progression of the weaponization of space and the emergence of intense military rivalry, which had been interrupted by technological and political forces. According to some scholars, “If freedom of space is our guidestar, what is being done to nurture and protect it? Are not U.S. policymakers setting a bad precedent by unilaterally restricting national activities in the force-application and space-control areas, limiting in effect the country’s freedom to exploit space?” (Moltz, 2011, 12). For some policy analysts, these occurrences defined a conclusive and unfavorable movement away from sensible strategies by previous presidents that had contributed much to the creation of U.S. space supremacy. Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information stated in 2003 that “unfortunately, this [Bush] administration has done little thinking about the potential for far-reaching military, political and economic ramifications of a U.S. move to break the taboo against weaponizing space” (Moltz, 2011, 12). Cynics think that any sort of weaponization would be problematic, likely to lead to an armed conflict and a regression of nations to military-based strategies. Twenty-First Century Space Defense The pursuit of predicting the future and prospect in space is an arena that can merely be engaged in with a certain extent of foreboding. The messages of history are understated and conflicting, providing no simple solution, justification, or conclusive results. In looking at the proofs provided by early human space operations, there are cases of aggressive rivalry and direct collaboration, even though luckily without major conflict. The positive news is that any state may have deviated from the rules of space exploration and still none has wandered so far (Lyall & Larsen, 2009). The limitations imposed by the superpowers in tackling space security during the Cold War stemmed largely from the effect of environmental and technological forces. Yet, in spite of this complicated procedure and the unwillingness of numerous players to escape from earlier patterns military controls occurred and survived over time. This process of ‘learning against one’s will’ (Moltz, 2011, 12-14) underlines the delicateness of space control and its reliance on political relations as well as an agreement of the sufficiency of authentication. Unluckily, the proof of weapons control during the fifty years of space history exhibited no conclusive or ultimate preference change by players as regards collaborative kinds of space security, in spite of the requirements of strategic and practical interdependence. The evolving point of view of each incumbent national leadership is still an aspect that can defy and even impair formerly recognized space rules, as witnessed in 1981 and 2001 (Kalic, 2012, 45). The ASAT experiment of China in 2007 is a good case in point, where in a national administration that did not take part in current space discourses disobeyed earlier rules against high-altitude testing (MacDonald, 2008). Still, what is important is whether fundamental environmental and control-oriented agreements among key space-exploring nation can be enlarged and sustained, or rather whether these rules are supplanted or displaced by new, thoughtless, forceful, and hostile policies. The Cold War superpowers, particularly the United States, collaborated to maintain an important universal good, namely, secure access to space (Lele & Singh, 2009). These policies worked favorably, even during times of major political conflict. A primary justification of this collaborative control was the advantages the superpowers gained from nonviolent space explorations and uses, as well as military services. Conclusions The future of U.S. space security obviously depends on the support of the state, private individuals, corporations, the public and international organizations. The continuous funding of space exploration remains imperative because of the growing threat from other space powers like China and North Korea. However, this financial support for space exploration is not necessarily intended for military activities or defensive operations; instead, space activities should be funded by the U.S. in order to develop and carry out space programs that will conform to the diplomatic and sensible space policies of previous U.S. administrations. The current focus on the weaponization of space is ill-advised. It will only provoke a space-based armed conflict. Hence it would be wise for the succeeding administrations to follow or improve the space policies developed by the Eisenhower administration. References Brunner, C. & Soucek, A. (2011). Outer Space in Society, Politics and Law. New York: Springer. Kalic, S. (2012). U.S. Presidents and the Militarization of Space, 1946-1967. Texas: Texas A&M University Press. Lambakis, S. (2001). On the Edge of Earth: The Future of American Space Power. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. Lele, A. & Singh, G. (2009). Space Security and Global Cooperation. New York: Academic Foundation. Lyall, F. & Larsen, P. (2009). Space Law: A Treatise. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. MacDonald, B. (2008). China, Space Weapons, and U.S. Security. New York: Council on Foreign Relations. Moltz, J. (2011). The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Perdomo, M. (2005). United States National Space Security Policy and the Strategic Issues for DoD Space Control. New York: U.S. Army War College. Read More